Friday 9th Jan - our last full day in Italy. We didn't want to hang around in Milan for the day so we caught the train to Verona, and so glad we did. Verona is a main tourist city that sits on the Adige river. It's popular because of the artistic heritage, roman ruins, fairs and operas. A couple of the major attractions are the Arena and The house of Juliet with that famous balcony featured in Shakespeare's play. The Arena is a Roman amphitheater built in the 1st...

Thursday 8th Jan - wanting to see a little of lake Como we chose a train trip to Varenna and a the short ferry trip to Bellagio. This little place, which is very popular in summer is known as the pearl of lake como, sitting at the peak where the two legs of lake Como meet. After just a short 1 hour train trip to Varenna, our first stop was for a coffee to warm up. We found our way to the jetty easily and bought the tickets for the ferry, having an hour to wait fo...

Tuesday 6th Jan - Milan is the second largest city of Italy, badly affected by WWII and after Nazi occupation the city became the main center of Italian resistance. It's the financial centre of Italy and no need to mention, a major in world fashion and design. Also not to forget it's the home for two of the worlds major football (soccer) teams - AC Milan and F.C. International Milano. Only a short train ride from Torino so we took it easy arriving about 13.00. ...

Monday 5th Jan - After looking at the map of Italy and wanting to get Liam up to some snow we chose to have a day trip to this delightful little town in northern Italy, hoping to find some snow to play in, and it was only about 2 hours by train. Aosta is a bilingual town in the Alps close to the entrance of the Mont Blanc tunnel, the major transport link of Italy to northern Europe. It has many very old roman ruins, but we didn't see any of the town! While resear...

Friday 2nd Jan - We left Padova to head for Torino (also called Turin) which caused some confusion when booking the hotel. Torino is what the Italians call the town, Turin is the english version of the name. It's the fourth largest city in Italy after Rome, Milan & Naples. It was the first capital of the united kingdom of Italy from 1861 - 1865 and home to the Royal family. It's a major city for academics, artists, tourism, Italian car industry and sports, an...