// Italy //

Arrived in Venice in nice weather but it quickly turned rainy and cold. Venice is beautiful...when the sun shines, we were not overly impressed with the place so we decided the leave after one day. It's the most expensive place in Italy but worth seeing since it's gonna sink in about 100 years. Later on in the evening the sun came out and the gloom lifted and we liked Venice better all of the sudden, too bad though because by then we had decided to go to Milan. Here are some pics from Venice...

The alleyway to our hotel

Our $100 plus dollar a night hotel room, complete with leaky shower and sewer fragrance

A view from the Grand Canal

St. Mark's Square and my attempt at a non-cliche picture

St. Mark's Cathedral, the line was really long so we unfortunately didn't go in.

Me getting attached by pigeons (self inflicted, we were holding the feed)

Kirsten getting attached by pigeons (self inflicted)

I feel so welcome all of the sudden...can't argue with them though

The train station, last thing we saw of Venice

On the way to Milan we broke up the travel time by stopping in Verona which is about halfway between Venice and Milan, it was a great little city and had lots of Roman ruins. We went to the ampitheatre, (where I saved a whole $1 on admission!) which is still in use today, in fact it was being setup for a Sting concert and they had these cool props in front of it...

Props for the Sting Concert

In your face prop

Arrived in Milano Centrale an hour earlier than I had setup with Flora but she was there anyways and it turned out that she had misunderstood me on the phone, I guess these things have a way of working out. I botched the traditional Italian greeting (the kisses) and just hugged her (doh!) Milan was great, not that great of a city but great for me because I got to spend time with Flora, my ex-girlfriend who lives there. It's been 4 years and was a little weird at first because our lives have both changed so much since we last saw each other but we quickly adjusted and had a great time.

We went out and had a few drinks with her and her new boyfriend Tobin who was a great guy and his ex-girlfriend Nicola. Tobin is a painter and you can visit his website to look at his work at www.flozbox.it How's that for weird? two ex's in the same city at the same time, one from the US and one from England, I didn't want to look like a dumb tourist so I didn't take any photos this night.

I'm going to break Italy into a few posts to make it more readable...
- posted by mark @ 12:47 PM