When we started our overseas trip in 2008 and I said ‘What if we we get a taste for this?’ Michael said something like ‘ Oh, I don’t think that’s likely’! It was with a similar assurance that he said  that since Juliet’s balcony in Verona was entirely contrived we wouldn’t want to see it. But you can’t go to Verona and not at least walk by it, can you?

The balcony itself is completely unassuming.

Down below is an absolute phenomenon. The saying is that if you rub the right breast of the statue of Juliet beneath the balcony, you will find a new lover. (I teased Michael that that is why he didn’t want me to go). So everyone mills around waiting their turn or cheering on and photographing friends doing it.

And on every available surface there are love messages on chewing gum, paper, post-its and locks, or written straight onto bricks, pipes, branches and railings.

The shop in the courtyard is well stocked with a good range of locks from tiny pink hearts to huge rectangular clunkers. The two sides of the entrance archway from the street are a mass of millions of love heart messages, too, and again people pose to have their photos taken in front of it.

This amused me:

There was also a brisk trade in machine embroidering items with love messages. This is another of those looping videos of one of the machinists doing a love heart for a young woman.