Read about Day 5 here.

May 9, day 6 of our Eurotrip with TopDeck, was a travel day from Interlaken, Switzerland to Venice, Italy. Thankfully the transit was nowhere as long as our ride from Paris to Interlaken; we even got a surprise side trip to Verona!

By this time, I got suddenly very conscious of how slowly I moved so I made it a point to get up super early (read: 5:15AM) because there was a serious shortage of bathrooms and toilets in the hostel that we stayed in and I didn’t want to be that person who held everybody up because they took too long to shower. Balmer’s Herbage was undergoing major reconstruction at the time we were there so there was only one toilet and one shower per floor, which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fact that there were about fifteen people on each floor. Luckily (this is up for debate but I consider it somewhat lucky), there was a water heater malfunction and a lot of people decided not to take a shower. Because I had no problems with taking cold (very, very, very cold) showers, I took the chance and found that it just took a long time for the water to heat up. It wasn’t too bad, actually; the cold helped wake me up.

Breakfast was better than our Paris fare because they actually served fresh fruit at Balmer’s and by 7:30, we were all hauling our stuff to the bus. We were off by 7:45 AM.   Traffic wasn’t too bad I don’t think but I just slept while Bourne Supremacy played on the TV so I can’t really be sure. Our first stopover was at a McDonald’s that probably holds the record for having the best view outside of a McDonald’s window.

We made a second stop over at a petrol station a little bit after noon where we had lunch on our own accounts. After which, Lana informed us that because we had left on time and traffic was super light, we all could make a side trip to Verona! The catch being was that because Verona wasn’t part of the Europe Express itinerary, we all had to pitch in to cover the bus parking fee, which when split by almost forty people came up to 5 Euros per head.

We pulled into Verona at about half past one in the afternoon and Lana took us for a short walking tour to Juliet’s Balcony where we all got to touch her boob for good luck in romance, LOL. The weather was glorious in Verona that afternoon; for the first time in Europe, I didn’t have to wear two layer of clothes. I think I even actually sweated that day!

After which, Lana left us to our own devices until four in the afternoon and of course our first order of business was to find and eat legit, Italian gelato. We ended up roaming around the square with A, M and M where we just basked in the warm weather and checked out the wares the locals were selling on the street.

It was a short drive from Verona to our accommodation in Venice, a place Camping Village Jolly where, to my utter delight and joy, A and I got a unit all to ourselves for the two full nights we would be staying there. We even got our own private bathroom! It turns out that Camping Village Jolly rents out small trailers for campers and because Venice was a main stop over for most of TopDeck’s European tours, they had installed a catering tent where all TopDeck groups were served free dinner and breakfast. Dinner that night was amazing: we got bottles of wine, an anti-pasta place, nyoki and pasta. I didn’t get to take photos of dinner because we were all so hungry that we just went for it.

After dinner, A and I did our laundry which was pretty adult and boring of us (10euros for 10kgs worth of clothes) and then we just went to sleep, sated and a little tipsy because of the free wine.

Stay tuned for Day 7.