Agree entirely.

What's fascinating about Venus is that we don't know what might have been there in the past. Mars we have some decent ideas, but at present, some models predict Venus was allways a hellhole, some predict it could have been quite Earthlike for billions of years. And it's not unlikely that the Earth will end up like Venus someday.

Personally, I do gravitate towards Mars, for selfish reasons. First, what we find on Mars is more likely to be visible and interpretable to my non-specialist mind. Finding isotopic ratios in old rock on Venus that proves it had plate tectonics just wouldn't have the same impact. And, given the more benign conditions on Mars, and the headstart we have thinking about it, we're more likely to figure out Martian puzzles than Venusian ones in the next forty years or so.

Heh, to go into science fiction mode, it isn't even impossible that Venus had intelligent but non-space faring life in the the past (I'm assuming we would have noticed the remains of Venusian landers on the Moon or Mars by now). Given the resurfacing that's taken place, we simply don't know what used to be there. No, I'm NOT saying I think there was such life, just that we know enough about Mars to constrain the maximum possible extent of past life to microbes, and even then small populations at best. Early Venus is still a mystery.