Where Romeo first met Juliet....

There is a city in the world known as the City of Love. There are around 15 other cities around the world named after it because it is so popular - and, I imagine, because it is so full of the one thing everybody has in common; the one thing we all strive to achieve and the one thing we are all so desperate to find.

Love.

When people ask you, "what do you think love is?", how do you answer them? Do you tell them it is a feeling we get when we have met our other half? Do you tell them it's an utter devotion to something you cherish in your life? Or do you tell them that it is an emotion which brings the best out in all of us?

Before coming to this city, I always believed that love was undefinable. There is no way we can describe love or explain it to anyone who hasn't felt it before because, simply, we can't. Everyone, in some way or another, has experienced love. And being here, in the very heart of love's true devotion, anybody can see that. Or rather, anybody can feel it.

Verona captures you the very first moment you enter the city. Residents describe the walls it is surrounded by as their safety net, for outside this walls, nobody is safe and anything can happen. But at the same time, inside them, anything too can also happen.

You feel an enormous amount of safety when you enter this city. It is like the walls not only surround your location but also your heart- and not in a guarded way. Because, at the same time, those same walls provide a key which can open the hardest of hearts.

It becomes apparent that however lonely or in love you may be, Verona offers you her soul and in return, you grant her a fresh wave of hope that you too, like her, will someday find a love that will make not only your heart sing, but hers.

Verona appears incredibly religious. There are crosses everywhere and people praying on the streets in front of life size monuments of worshipped gods and religious icons. And you think that it might be considerably overpowering, if not for the amount of freedom you witness as you turn every corner.

Love is everywhere here. It doesn't matter if you are young and your partner is old, or if you are black and your partner is white. It doesn't matter of you're little kids or the withering elderly. It doesn't matter if you are a boy in love with another boy or if you are a girl in love with another girl. Love is love and it makes the word seem so much more meaningful.

Juliet has her own house here in which you can purchase a padlock and chain it to the gates of her courtyard- directly under her infamous balcony. On this padlock, you write your name and then the name of someone - or something - you love. There are thousands and they all come in different shapes, colours and sizes: just like love; just like our world. It's like locking your love in the place that love was first locked. There is nothing like it and it is beautiful.

So, now, as I make my preparations to leave Verona and journey on in this life, I ask myself the same question I asked when I first entered these walls.

And my answer?

Love.... Well. Love is love.