Day 10

Sunday, and moving day. We packed up and left our wonderful Verona apartment about 10:30 in beautiful weather with sparkling clear air after the violent storm of the night before. Our plan for the day was vague other than we needed to end up at our hotel near the Venice airport at the end of the day for our departure home on Monday.
We began by driving to the town of Valeggio about 25 km from Verona where we planned to visit a small suburb called Borghetto sul Mincio, considered one of the most beautiful villages of Italy. We found it uneventfully and found that it was quite the lively place because it was hosting both a Vespa convention and also a classic car show.

Maybe for Rocco and Rosie??

Most of Italy appeared to be there for these events but nevertheless, it WAS a lovely little town. We strolled through it stopping at some of the shops and admiring the scenery in general.

We decided against staying for lunch because of the crowds and came to the decision to go to Mantova (Mantua) because I had some vague recollection of there being something there to see and it was fairly nearby. Once there, we asked a passerby if he could recommend a restaurant which he did and we stopped there for lunch. We had an appetizer of culatello (the most prime part of a prosciutto) accompanied by chunks of grana padano (a hard grating cheese similar to Parmesan) and mostarda, something we had never heard of. Mostarda is fruit which is cooked in water with vinegar and sugar until the fruit is tender. The fruit is removed, the liquid reduced to a syrup and the fruit and dry mustard and dijon mustard are added. It was a really nice counterpoint to the meat and cheese. It was a delicious antipasto. 

 Annette and I shared a pasta dish of asparagus, shrimp, mushroom in a tomato cream sauce (tasty and they provided grated cheese despite it having seafood in the pasta) then split a main course of seafood spiedini (seafood on a skewer) which was just OK.

Anabel had a filet in a truffle sauce which she said was the best meat she had on the entire trip! It came with a gigantic order of roasted potatoes, enough for the three of us along with any passersby that may have needed a few potatoes.

We had wine, of course, and then shared a dessert of the worst panna cotta ever!
After lunch we made a rather feeble effort at looking at Mantova and easily gave up and decided we may as well head to Venice 1-2 hours away since it was close to 4 PM by then.

An attractive canal in Mantova

We had a completely uneventful drive to our Best Western about 5 minutes from the Venice airport, checked in and went to the airport to return the car. (And incidentally forgetting that we had not gotten gas...another contributor to the gigantic rental car bill!) Our hotel asked us to call and they would send a shuttle for us on the hour or 1/2 hour so we gave them a call and they told us where to wait. Well.....the Venice airport is totally unintuitive in terms of finding your way around and even with the instructions from Hertz, it required wandering through a dark parking garage, crossing a busy street and meandering through the employee parking area to find the shuttle. We were delighted when a Best Western van showed up and we hopped in along with a couple of women from China. The driver immediately entered the autostrada which struck us as strange since the hotel was just up the street and after about 10 minutes of 80 miles/hour, we realized something was terribly wrong. Annette, sitting in front queried the driver on his destination which......SURPRISE....was a completely different Best Western 30 minutes away. He refused to discuss the problem until we reached HIS destination. After much discussion with his manager, it was decided that we could be returned to our hotel for a cost of 6 Euros each. Such is life...we paid up and were returned. Some hours later, our desk clerk telephoned to say that she didn't think it was right that we had had to pay when the driver should have asked where we were going so she had a discussion with his manager and our 18 Euros was returned!
After settling in a bit, we decided to go to a small cafe a few doors up where we shared a pizza and Anabel and I had a beer. Annette had an exotic Aperol spritz, a drink with one part seltzer water, two parts Aperol (an orange colored Italian liqueur made with herbs and orange flavor), and three parts prosecco, garnished with a slice of orange and an olive. She pronounced it tasty!!

While enjoying our pizza, the sky opened up and never stopped so we got significantly wet making our way back to the hotel. Packing up happened and off to bed. Anabel was getting up at 4 A.M. for her very early flight. Annette and I were a bit later and could sleep until 7. 
And that was the end of our Italy adventure. A good time was had by all.