Day 10

We left Venice in the late morning after quickly checking out the Musee Correr. We tried once again to sit on vaporetto#1 for a tour of the Grand Canal but were rebuffed by the early rising tourists. Darn tourists!! (Not like we're tourists or anything....). Anyway, we headed to Verona for the quickest of stopovers. I think we were there for 4 hours? Definitely was enough time to see the sights there, but once we saw the Roman amphitheatre and realized that it was opera season, we wished we could have stayed to see an opera! To see Aida in an open-air Roman amphitheatre... that would have been an unforgettable experience!

Anyway an opera we did not see. Instead we jumped back on the train (stupid trains.. I made up a song about the trains. Perhaps I shall post it one day) and headed to Bolazno!

Bolzano is like a little taste of Austria and Germany in Italy. While most people speak both Italian and German there, German is their mother tongue. German Italian accents --- neat! We stayed at Hotel Feichter and it had to be a highlight of our Bolzano times. The owner is the most adorable German man who hardly makes any sense when he talks (English) but is so lively and just... charming. =) AND, they serve the BEST breakfasts.. Oh how my stomach misses them. Best coffee, however, was at HOtel Bernadi in Venice. So smooth, rich... Anyway, I digress!

We went to Bolzano so we could hike in the Dolomites, which are part of the Alps. We took the cable car up to an area called Ritten. We took a train and then "hiked" about 30 minutes to see their "Erdpryamids", which to me looked more like glorified dung piles... in a large scale. =) Ok, no, they looked better than that but didn't seem worth the 30 minutes. We decided to hike back to our original drop off point. This was suppose to take 80 minutes but it took about TWO AND A HALF. We got lost partway and Monica refused to backtrack so we ended up going on 2 separate trails before we finally met up with teh right one. I was so grumpy! It was so hot!!! Ok, whining is stopping now. Because we got lost though, we did get a closer view of part of the Dolomites, which were pretty spectacular. Being so close to Canadian scenery probably reduced the ooooh part of the ahhhhh but the craggy peaks were in no way regrettable. So in the end, I forgive Monica for refusing to go back up Zaberbach, hehe.