Verona

Fun fact: Verona is the city where the story of Romeo and Juliet was set! I didn't know this till we were actually walking along the streets and Justina said: Let's go see Juliet's balcony! 

Verona was another lovely Italian city, entirely different from Venice but still beautiful in its own way! Again, Justina and I had no plans whatsoever of what to do in Verona and we just explored the streets to our liking :) 

This was my fav photo of the trip! 

So many cafes in Italy offer vegan croissants and at the same price as regular croissants!! This is what I call equality for all! They are really flaky yet soft at the same time - just like the original version

What is Italy without gelato 

After endless hours of walking around the city, Justina and I got really tired a slightly cranky and we just wanted a place to chill before dinner because the restaurant that we had planned to go to was only open at 7 

Justina then randomly found this gem of a bar because she saw many people standing outside of it! Typical Singaporean mentality I guess - when a place is crowded, it must be because it is good hahaha We both had a refreshing cocktail each, which came with crisps and mini sandwiches 

We then headed to Ristorante Flora, a vegan restaurant, and to our dismay, it was only open at 7:30 despite it stating 7pm on Google. At least we had arrived only at 7:15 but we were starving by then and really tired :( 

But the food was really good so it was worth the wait! This was a pumpkin dish with mushrooms and yummy macadamia cheese

We also had a platter of flavoured rice balls served with caramelised onions and potatoes and a sweet dipping sauce :) Justina and I then got on the bus back to our air bnb and had a lovely night's rest! 

Despite waking up at 8am the next morning, we only left our air bnb at 10:30am because our train back to Castellanza (the town where my sister was having her exchange in), was only at 4pm and we had already seen most of Verona. So, we headed out in the late morning for brunch at a Saos, a health food cafe, whilst getting some work done (we both had more assignments due). I had an acai bowl and Justina had an incredible green matcha bowl and it was a really lovely and relaxed morning 

After a couple hours, we headed to explore more of the city that we hadn't seen. We came across this beautiful view when we walked towards the river :') 

We also came across a lot more natural environments, which was a nice change from all the man-made buildings and architecture that we had been looking at for the past 2 days. After getting some gelato, we then headed back to our air bnb to grab our bags and got on the train back to Castellanza!

We ended the night with massive and I mean massive (the same size as that huge pizza I had in Venice) for just 5 euros! They were so generous with the toppings as well!! We enjoyed our yummy pizzas whilst watching The Tourist (just because it was shot in Venice hehe) 

The next day, Justina and I attended a cross fit class in the morning followed by a huge grocery shop at the health food store and supermarket. We then had lunch together and Justina went for class in the afternoon and we headed out for dinner with her friends! Dinner was so lovely and Justina's friends are so lovely as well. I am so glad to see that she has found these wonderful people on her exchange and from what I can see, they're probably going to be lifelong friends :'))  

On my last day, I woke up incredibly sore from the cross fit class, lazed around in bed and then prepared breakfast with Justina using Tess Begg's incredible oatmeal hack!! It involves blending your oats with bananas and milk and it cooking it on a pan - it comes out so incredibly creamy with extremely well balanced flavours and I will say no more, you'll just have to try it (I've been having my oatmeal like this every single day). After devouring our oatmeal in the communal kitchen, we headed back to the room and Justina did more work for her Italian exam that she had later that afternoon. Lunch was a yummy meal of a vegetable medley cooked with quinoa in vegetable stock and tomato sauce!! I then did some last minute packing and headed back home to Edinburgh :'(( 

I am so grateful to have had the chance to visit my sister on exchange! It was so nice being able to actually see and experience a bit of her life on exchange and I'm also just happy that I could be there for her - it can get quite lonely or sad not seeing family for such a long time! Traveling with my sister is always great because we get along so well, and even when we don't, we deal with it really well and we have similar interests and we're just so chill when we're together!! Love you so much Jie ♥