Up early-ish for breakfast in the World Cafe, leaving us enough time to get back to the cabin to collect bags and get down to the Atrium for 8:15 … our apparent time off the ship. Except that it wasn’t. We had to wait around 30 minutes more for our tag to be called and then off the ship one more time, collect our suitcases and find our coach for the post-cruise excursion - Verona and Lake Como.

We were staying overnight at a hotel quite a way outside of Verona itself so, to avoid us getting to the hotel too early, the morning was spent at a winery, where we also had lunch, and then time in some pretty gardens before finally arriving at the hotel.

The winery was located at Soave, Veneto - a walled town where the castle sits atop the Tenda Hill.

After walking up to the winery, we went on a tour of the plant. This is not the main bottling plant and the plant itself was not running but there was plenty to see stored away! At the end of the tour, we had a tasting of three wines, two from this winery and the red from a nearby winery.

After lunch at the winery, we drove on to the Palazzo Giardino Giusti, a botanical garden on the outskirts of Verona. We had some free time here to wander around the gardens before the final coach drive to the hotel.

There isn’t much to say about our evening accommodation and meal, to be honest. The hotel was Villa Quaranta Tommasi Wine Hotel & Spa and was quite a distance (15km) from Verona. Our room did not have working Wi-Fi. The evening meal was OK but not brilliant and the breakfast was similarly so-so.