We had some down time in Burano, another popular island in the Venetian lagoon, around seven kilometers from Venice by boat. It was a good idea to get away from the crowd in Venice and we enjoyed a very early and very heavy fisherman's dinner consisting of various fresh seafood caught in the lagoon at the Trattoria da Romano, said to be one of the best, if not the best place to eat on the island. The trattoria (told you...in Italy, there are many different eatery categories.

After a tranquil night in Venice the previous night, we took a vaporetto (water taxi) and sailed back from our Lido Island hotel to join the rest of the crowd in exploring Venice. The Grand Canal certainly had a different vibe in the daytime compared to its more subdued version the night before. As the main traffic corridor in the city, it was teeming with gondolas, motor boats, and other vaporettos filled with tourists like us. The ride was like a trip across time, from the

From the Lido, we boarded a small private launch to go to Venice for a little night of music after an early dinner at our hotel. We sailed down the Grand Canal at dusk, and as the sun was setting, we passed by grand mansions with facades in richly toned plaster work, glided along palazzos illuminated with twinkling chandeliers from the grand ballrooms inside, and went under Venice's iconic bridges. It was a most romantic ride...making us feel we were in a sepia-toned film as

After leaving Verona, we passed by Padua to head to another romantic Italian city – Venice. But we only got a glimpse of it at this time. We took a ferry from Tronchetto in Venice to San Nicolo on Lido Island, an 11-kilometre-long barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon, where our hotel was located. Along the way, we caught sight of bustling Venice from the Giudecca Canal side. I thought it was a good idea to stay a bit further away from tourist-laden Venice. The Lido was only

We headed to the shopping streets of Via Mazzini, where the expensive brand-name stores are located, and the Corso Porta Borsari, where the more regular shops are lined up. We didn’t really buy anything. We just checked out what was available and passed by the costumed street performers around the corner. One thing I noticed was the shiny, coppery-rose marble on the pavements of the most expensive streets. Our guide said this is called Rosso di Verona , a locally-quarried mar

Our first stop in Italy was Verona, made famous by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . But apart from being the setting of a most-tragic love story, Verona was a Roman city with many ruins that have been preserved, most notably, The Arena, an enormous amphitheater that is almost like a smaller version of The Colosseum in Rome. Our guided tour took us around the centre of the city, which used to be an old Roman military settlement. We walked around the maze of elegant squares wit