Verona and Venice

We stopped off at Verona on our way to Venice as we wanted to see Juliet's House which the recent film is based on and involves people leaving letters for Juliet of Romeo and Juliet fame. We saw the balcony along with hundreds of strangers, then had lunch and caught the train again.
When we arrived in Venice we were greeted by a brass band which, although very nice, wasn't really necessary. Then we saw gondola races up and down the main canal in front of our hotel. It seems we arrived during a special week of festivities.
We took a boar tour out to Murano and Burano islands and saw them make blown glass and lace respectively. We both bought a few souvenirs of glass for bracelets and small iutems of hand made lace but we didn't get carried away with spending too much.
We also walked all over the city, seeing St Mark's Square and the Bridge of Sighs (Ponte Rialto). There were crowds of people and we had some rain for the first time on our trip but we didn't let it spoil our plans.
We met some other Aussies at dinner last night and they told us there was going to be a rail stike today so we decided to get up a bit earlier and take the train to Rome while they were still running. When we arrived we found that there were demonstrations in the centre of Rome and we couldn't get a taxi to our hotel so we walked for 45 minutes dragging our cases. We were very happy that we havn't been shopping much yet.
We spent the rest of today wandering around and enjoying Rome again and we fly out to Hong Kong for 2 nights, leaving here in the morning. Not sure if we'll have internet in HK or not as we didn't have it in Venice but I'll update as soon as I get home if not earlier.
It's hard to believe that the trip is almost over after all the planning and we're looking forward to seeing Hong Kong and maybe doing a bit of shopping there.
Thanks for following our travels.
Hugs, Jan Mac