If you thought Venice was nice during the day, wait until it gets dark, then your looking at picturesque Churches, Cathedrals, and canals. All very pretty and very easy to Photograph without a tripod as there are plenty of walls and mooring posts for which to prop your camera on top of, sweet!
I did wander around the streets and canals, it was getting dark and I tended to stick with routes I knew from the morning when I was checking out potential photographic points. It all seemed very safe and there was plenty of foot traffic.
And the Grand Finale shot before heading back to join my Contiki Group – the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.
Venice, one of the cities I really wanted to see on this trip to Europe. For one reason, because of its unique canal structure and flare, and secondly
Welcome To Verona! A city by any other name would still be the setting for which Romeo and Juliet was based. We rolled into this small but tourist crowed Italian town on a cloudy day, fortunately staving off rain for our visit.
We had to walk towards Juliet’s Balcony, the end-goal of our short stop over. Across cobble stone roads and past coliseums and quaint buildings. 
On our way back we pasted by some additional sculptures, it seems people riding horses continues to be a popular theme in European road statues. 
Amsterdam – Heineken Factory
Look at me! I’m a beer Label… and clearly not a standing upright one either…
Interesting factoid – Heineken bottles sold in Netherlands and some other countries are sold in the original brown bottles. However, when marketing to the US and some other more “western” countries the bottle colour they used was green because in those markets brown was associated with well… you know.
Above is a picture of the Contiki Crew, whereas below is my chemical engineering instincts took hold!
Amsterdam also boasts the Van Gogh Museum, my primary reason for visiting this city. It’s a great museum except that no cameras are allowed inside so this a short blog entry.
To Amsterdam
And, of course, the first place we stop… Mc Something or other!
We eventually reached a man-made lake, pretty cool to see.
Then, we headed back to the bus to head off to the next place – Cheese & Clogs!
Once we were underway, one of the shipmates gave us a guided tour down the river, explaining what each building was called, and if time allowed a bit of history on each.
The ferry then drops you off at the docks right beside the Tower of London, convenient!
Once you go into the side halls, you can see various mummified remains behind glass enclosures, I’d suggest bringing a small cloth to wipe away all the finger prints; especially at child level. Overall, I wasn’t as impressed with the mummies as they seem to lack a lot of the golden head dresses, etc. that one would normally think of when talking about mummies (aka King Tut).
So I continued on and there were more statues to be found… a lot more.
