Friday, October 1, 2010

Venice-Verona-Innsbruck

We woke on Monday morning to the sound of an approaching thunderstorm. We weren’t sure how the water buses would be affected by storms and having been caught not being able to catch a ferry before, we decided to leave early to be sure of making it to the railway station. Claire headed off with umbrella and jacket while Peter returned the key. Claire arrived at the water bus stop not too wet, to be greeted by a dry Peter. Our kind host had offered to give us a lift but Claire had headed down a one way street the wrong way so they couldn’t follow to pick her up. Luckily it wasn’t raining too heavily.

We had a three hour wait in Verona and Claire decided she was not going to miss Juliet’s balcony.

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As it turned out Verona is a very attractive city. We had fun exploring it for a couple of hours. There are areas of Roman remnants.

DSC_0877 The Arena. They have kept the facade and modernised the interior. Peter Gabriel played there the night before.

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We could label the rest of the pictures if we hadn’t lost the map in the dash back to the station in the rain.

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The trip from Verona to Innsbruck was on the best train yet. There was room for our luggage and plenty of seats to choose from. We met a very friendly American couple, Frank and Penelope, who spend 6 months in Florida and 6 months in Tennessee. Peter gave Penelope one of his kangaroo pins and Frank gave Peter a helicopter medallion. He flew helicopters in the US Air Force, Peter was very impressed with the medallion. We chatted about Italy for a while. They had not heard of Cinque Terra before, but are now determined to visit some time.

The scenery became more and more spectacular as we reached the Italian Alps, then crossed the border into the Tyrol. We had been joking about snow before we reached the mountains, but it became very obvious that most of the mountains had snow on their peaks.

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We arrived in Innsbruck, left the station and were greeted with the following view.

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After the heat of Italy the change in weather was very refreshing. We had both started to feel quite tired, but there was something about the crisp air which was very invigorating.

We found our accommodation, the Gasthof Weisses Kreuz, a lovely old hotel in the old part of town and went exploring.

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It wasn’t long before we found the Irish pub that we had had a drink in 7 years ago.

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Of course we went in and had a drink. Then we had dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel. In honour of our first night in Austria Claire had schnitzel.

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