Italy and Malta Trip (Day 3): Verona

Ahhhh I wish I could go back to Hotel Olimpia and have breakfast there!

Remember how I mentioned that I was easily entertained by vaporetto trips? Turns out that I was also entertained by trains. I was so excited to see trains that my boyfriend thought I was nuts. It reminded me of the Hogwarts Express and I exclaimed, "No wonder Sheldon (from The Big Bang Theory, of course) likes trains!"

This is the face of an excited human. The excited human later hung her coat on a hook and relaxed. On the way, she took pictures of the scenery as the train zoomed past the countryside.

Anyway, I boarded a bus with my boyfriend and we passed this pretty castle. 

According to my boyfriend's plan, we were supposed to go there later or something, so we did not alight right in front of the castle. But we should have because we ended up backtracking to the castle!

This is my "世界那么大" (the world is so big) pose. We didn't check out the museum at Castelvecchio but we admired the red bricks and crossed the bridge.

It was really bright and sunny that day, which was a welcome change from the gloomy skies we had seen in Venice! 

Strolled over to Verona Cathedral just to check out how pretty it looked.

We were walking down the street when we decided to had lunch at a random restaurant. Since I had not tried the pizza in Italy yet, I decided to do so. However, I looked around the restaurant and realised that people were sitting alone and having an entire pizza to themselves. I knew that I could not finish one whole pizza by myself, but as the saying goes, "When in Rome (or in this case, Verona) do as the Romans do." So I did my best. In the end, my boyfriend grabbed a couple of slices for himself.

Later, I searched the Internet about this and found a hilarious article about how not to order pizza in Italy on Huffpost.

Well, anyway, Piazza dei Signori (city square) was decorated for Christmas!

And also Hanukkah! Of course, the purpose of these pictures is actually to get a nice shot of the Lamberti Tower.

There was a Christmas Market and there were plenty of different stalls! We found a crowded makeshift German store, Käthe Wohlfahrt, and it sold Christmas decorations of all sorts. I bought some aromatherapy candles for my mother. There were interesting scents like fir and roasted almonds, but since we aren't fluent in German we had to guess what the they were from the pictures!

After shopping, we headed up the Lamberti tower for the amazing view.

Since it was included in the price of the ticket, we visited the art gallery too.

I guess the highlight of this day trip should have been Casa di Giulietta. However, it was too crowded and actually quite a disappointment. 

There were notes, scribbles and love locks all over the place! People were constantly taking pictures. There was a souvenir shop nearby and of course, you could pay to enter Juliet's house and get a glimpse of her balcony. 

It was so difficult to get a shot of Juliet on her own!

Everyone wanted a piece of the bronze statue. I'm sure it would be a lot more crowded in summer, so at least I really have to queue up for an extremely long time to take a picture with Juliet. In fact, there wasn't a queue at all! We just waited and took turns with other tourists.

I know that you're supposed to touch her right breast for luck, but obviously I don't believe in such nonsense. And I don't think Juliet would have liked strangers fondling her right boob. Besides, to quote Mulan's grandmother, "How lucky can they [Romeo and Juliet] be? They're dead!"

Even more love locks! I bought a magnet of Romeo and Juliet as cats from a shop elsewhere. Much cuter than the souvenirs that depicted actual people, but that's just my opinion.

Our last stop before dinner was Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheatre! We didn't enter but we enjoyed the Christmas market in the square. The white structure in the background is also known as the Christmas star.

I think that December is truly the best time of the year. Oh, I forgot to mention that I visited Venice on the 13th of December, on my birthday. Apparently, the Christmas market at Piazza Bra also ends on the 13th. The market was so huge! We tried a nutella frittella, which basically looks like roti prata except that nutella was inside and it was folded in two.

We didn't buy anything else but it was nice to walk around and just check out what people were selling. 

What a gorgeous tree!

There was a highly rated Chinese restaurant in the vicinity called Capitol Chinese Restaurant, so we headed there for dinner and had no regrets. I mean, okay, the restaurant was plain-looking and there were barely any customers in sight, but the noodles were extremely tasty. And Asian food in Europe usually means cheap food. I also don't feel as terrible because I won't be wasting as much food as compared to dining at a Western restaurant. 

Italy and Malta Trip (Day 2): Venice

Exploring Venice early in the morning. It was so quiet and deserted. 

My boyfriend and I visited the Jewish ghetto. We found a shop selling paintings of cats in Venice!

Had some biscuits that were bought from a bakery there.

Also, we visited on the day of Hanukkah. When we arrived, the Venetian Jews were putting up a menorah in the square. We arrived at the entrance of the Jewish Museum too early. When were finally entered, we did so with a bunch of students who seemed to be on a field trip. Thankfully, they all had to gather in one of the rooms and listen to their guide, and the place was still relatively empty.

The museum covered the history of Venetian Jews and it also provided information about Jewish customs. After that, we found a monument at the square that was built to remember the Jews who were deported to Nazi concentration camps. 

I love how you can just enjoy a meal outside! Unlike Singapore, it isn't humid at all. And everything looks so pretty and perfect. I like the brick walls and the flowers on the window sills.

Anyway, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant. We had yummy and crunchy bruschetta as an appetiser and I had carbonara that I could not finish for my main course. Even though it was tasty, it became too cheesy for my liking after a while.

I managed to capture a picture of a seagull in mid-air!

We took the vaporetto back to San Marco. Along the way, we passed the Rialto Bridge again. This time, we were sitting at the back of the vaporetto and we could feel the biting cold air brushing against our cheeks.

I think I am very easily entertained. But you don't get to travel by boat every day, so I enjoyed vaporetto trips very much. 

My boyfriend had signed us up for an island tour and our first stop was Murano.

We were treated to a demonstration by a professional glassmaker.

It was really impressive to see how he managed to shape glass! He made a bottle just by rolling the metal stick around and blowing into it a little, as if it was an extremely easy task. After that, he used a pair of metal tongs to shape a glass horse. 

We were led to a gallery with all kinds of glassware that came in different shapes and sizes, but they were all too expensive and besides, we didn't plan to decorate our house with glass figurines. After a brief look at the rows of endless, dazzling products, we finally found the exit and explored the island, which was mostly deserted except for a few cats.

These were the first cats I met in Italy! There were not too friendly but they looked adorable! I seemed to have interrupted some sort of meeting and they all stared at me.

Our next stop was Torcello. We had to walk quite a long way in from the pier, past empty playgrounds and abandoned deck chairs, vacant restaurants and lonely cafes, to reach the Church of Santa Maria Assunta.

We did not pay for admission and climb to the top of the bell tower because we were afraid that there would be no time to get back to the boat, and we were thankful that we did not since we were too busy admiring the view around us as well.

Spotted another black and white cat! So cute and fat.

Last stop: Burano. Look at the colourful buildings! Burano was definitely more crowded than the other islands. Unfortunately, the sun had already set by the time we got there, so my pictures may make it seem a little gloomy.

We bought all kinds of souvenirs here, including cookies, magnets, and sweets.

This particular shop sold all kinds of food, and we also had to buy some gelato in Italy, hadn't we? 

The dude who scooped our ice-cream accidentally broke the cone or something, so he gave us another one. I think that this is another sign that I should live in a cold country: I eat ice-cream quite slowly compared to the average Singaporean. And it is really annoying for ice-cream to melt quickly, especially if you have sensitive teeth like me. However, in Italy, I could savour gelato slowly.

The other sign was how my nose was unblocked most of the time in Italy. In Singapore last year, my nose was almost always blocked. I either had a blocked nose or a runny one. Thus, I visited Italy practically with a luggage full of packets of tissue paper. I was all ready and I had placed a big packet on my bedside table in every hotel that we travelled to. Yet it turned out that I hardly needed tissues after all!

I simply adored the cute little figures and magnets of colourful houses and boats in Burano. Anyway, that's it for day 2!

Italy and Malta Trip (Day 1): Venice

My boyfriend and I flew off to Italy last December and it was so much fun! After coming back, I continued to rest at home until I cleared all my leave and had to go back to work again. It was then that I realised how hard it was to get back in the groove (do people actually say this or am I just weird) after a much needed break.

Anyway, I finally have a little bit of time to blog about the trip and I'm going to do it chronologically this time. This is how the first day looked like from the skies of Switzerland:

Since we took Swiss Air, we had to transit at Switzerland. Snapped this photo when we took off from Switzerland, and we were on our way to Italy!

When we were flying from Singapore to Zurich, I was nervous because it's been such a long time since I had taken such a long flight. I mean, the flight was 13 hours long I think. I have been so accustomed to shorter flights and the last time I've been to Europe was in 2009. I was also afraid that I would freeze in Italy. My father gave me heat packs, which kinda came in useful later on, and I brought the thick winter jacket that I had worn in Korea in 2012. Needless to say, this was extremely useful. Thankfully, I didn't listen to my mother's advice. She told me to bring only my leather jacket, which did not do a good job of keeping me warm at all!

So anyway, back to what happened. After arriving at Venice, we searched for Hotel Olimpia. My boyfriend was in charge of booking all the hotels but obviously I looked at the hotels as well and we chose them together. We boarded the bus from the airport, alighted at the bus interchange and dragged out luggage to the hotel. I was already getting all the Venice vibes (again, do people say such things?) because I could see all the gondolas and canals. I could not believe I was finally in Venice, the place that I've been wanting to visit since secondary school. If there was a chapter in your Social Studies textbook about Venice, you would know exactly what I'm talking about!

Although my boyfriend was the one who booked the hotel, I was the one who spotted the hotel from afar because I recognised how it looked like from the pictures on the hotel booking website he used. We checked in and while waiting for our room, the staff served us some beverages. My boyfriend was pretty surprised that they would serve us drinks but I thought it was a pretty normal thing (Eh hello! This is an atas hotel what!) and I've experienced it before in other countries too. (And I thought he was the one who was more well-travelled?)

I think I loved the hotel in Venice the most because this is how it looked like:

I have a thing for Victorian era furniture. Everything just seems more grand!

Then it was time to get vaporetto tickets and explore! Vaporettos are the water taxis/buses there, since there aren't any public buses or actual taxis you can take. Everyone takes the vaporetto in Venice! I think we bought a 2-day pass so that we can tap all we like and travel around with ease. It's a good idea too; if you ever get lost, you could just take the vaporetto back to the stop that is nearest to your hotel. 

But in the first place, that situation was unlikely to happen because John got a SIM card for the purposes of GPS and also in case we needed to do more research on the Internet. He was complaining about how cold it was so we also bought some beanies. Gloves, beanies, and Pinocchio figurines were being sold everywhere. 

This is the view from the Rialto Bridge. Everything in Venice was picture perfect! 

After lunch at a crappy-place-that-shall-not-be-named, we boarded a vaporetto and headed off once more!

And of course, I was so fascinated with the vaporetto. It was cold but we stood outside to admire the view.

Soon, we arrived at St Mark's Square. I was captivated by the old buildings around me and there were many people feeding the birds. (cue the song from Mary Poppins) At first, there weren't that many people around but later, more and more people started trying to sell us flowers, and some others were trying to persuade us to feed the birds out of our hands and let the birds stand on our arms or whatever, but we weren't interested. If your mother had always warned you about how dirty pigeons are, you would probably think twice too. However, I think what concerned me more was the size of the seagulls. They were probably four or five times the size of normal seagulls in Sydney! They were just weirdly humongous!

We strolled around St Mark's Square and peered into the windows of shops and cafes. Then, our first stop was St Mark's Basilica, which is basically the cathedral you see in the above picture. I don't think my boyfriend planned on bringing me there, but I was so fascinated by the architecture that I wanted to go in to have a look. Besides, we found out that admission was free. Photography was not allowed in the cathedral and it was too dark anyway, but of course, the intricate designs and paintings on the walls and ceilings of cathedrals never cease to amaze me.

Next, we bought tickets to St. Mark's Campanile, or bell tower. The cold was intense and we tried our best to bear with it so that we could admire the magnificent view from up above.

In the distance, we could see San Giorgio Maggiore, one of the islands nearby. We were supposed to visit this church but we didn't have the time to do so in the end.

Why does everything look so pretty!

Our last stop for the day was Doge's Palace. This impressive building is enormous and I don't think we managed to look at all the exhibits. There were simply too many!

I'm not familiar with Venetian history at all, but I'll just mention some interesting things that I remembered. We visited the prison area and peeped through the tiny gaps in the windows just like how prisoners used to do when they were moved from the courtroom to their dark and lonely cells. The prisoners would be able to see the structure known as the Bridge of Sighs, and it was named as such because the prisoners would supposedly sigh after getting their last look at freedom. 

There were also many institutional chambers and the walls were covered with paintings of important-looking people. In the 'Scrigno' or coffer room, I read about the Golden and Silver books, which kept a record of aristocrats or families of ancient Venetian origin. These books were kept in a chest and there were also cabinets for all the documents that could prove one's legitimacy or whatever. While reading, I was reminded of the book that Hermione referred to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, entitled 'Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy'. Ugh.

Our visit had to be cut short (we only spent an hour there) because the museum was closing, and when we came out we were surprised to see how dark it was already!

After dinner, we took the vaporetto back to the hotel. It was drizzling, so it was cold and we couldn't stand outside. I was so tired from all that travelling that I ended up dozing off on my boyfriend's shoulder. Every time the vaporetto stopped, I would wake up and ask him how many stops we had left. He found this oddly amusing. (He is weird too)

And that's it for day 1!