Adventures in Italy - Day 3

Stop 4 - Verona, Italy: For our first stop of the day we headed into the city center of Verona to see the Romeo & Juliet sites. As we walked through the streets we were impressed by the charm of the small city. Although the Juliet balcony and wall of love notes are a bit of a tourist trap, we enjoyed getting to post our own love note on Juliet's Wall. After posting our note on the wall, we could barely get a picture of it because so many people were stopping to read it and take pictures of it. We laughed because we did it for our kids not realizing how many people were actually going to read it. 

Stop 5 - Santuario Madonna della Corona: After our quick stop in Verona we headed to the breathtaking Santuario Madonna della Corona (a small church located on the side of a steep cliff). Unfortunately, it began raining in Verona and never let up as we drove to the church. When we got there, we turned off our car and found that the car wouldn't start when we tried to turn it back on. After getting a German couple to jump start our car, we still needed to go see the church so we turned off our car again leaving us stranded once more. Since it was still raining, we decided to take turns going to see the church so we wouldn't have to take the kids into the pouring rain. While Ryan went and saw the church, I called the rental company and when we swapped, Ryan got another family to jump start the car. Despite the chaos, the stop at the church was truly one of the coolest things we've seen in our travels. 

After leaving the church, we had to drive back to Verona only to find that the rental company didn't have an automatic car to replace our car with. Grudgingly, we drove  to yet another rental location and got the car swapped out. Once the car situation was finally taken care of, we drove to Lake Como and got settled into our apartment for the night. 

Stop 6 - Bellagio, Lake Como: Having had such a crazy day, we still hadn't eaten dinner by the time we arrived at our apartment. Milo was grumpy so Ryan and Maeli decided to do a mini date and get some dinner. They walked down to the town with Maeli riding on Ryan's shoulders. The picked up dinner and took a seat by the lake while enjoying some gelato together. Ryan described their date as being "perfect" and said that their chat by the lakeside was a moment he will never forget.