Our day started in beautiful Bellagio where we found ourselves gasping at how pretty it was when we left our apartment that morning, as if we had forgotten overnight. Today was a real adventure day where we haven’t encountered anyone who speaks a word of English – all encounters have been made up of a mixture of hand gestures, our basic Italian, or when all else fails just speak in your own language while they speak in theirs! We stopped at a few places on the way through to Verona, again opting for a scenic back road approach, rather than the faster motorway route and while it wasn’t as pretty as driving through Switzerland there was still plenty to keep as occupied – mainly reading out signs and passing advertisements in Super Mario Brothers’ accents! Great fun.
We arrived at 3pm where we dropped off our bags and headed straight out into the Italian sunshine. We’ve been blessed with the weather and have had 25 degree sunshine every day. Summer is coming folks!
Our hotel (Valverde) is nice and central and just a few minutes’ walk to Verona’s old town. Again, it’s near impossible to describe how pretty it is and the photos just don’t do it justice, nevertheless I will try! It’s just like a scene out of Romeo and Juliet or Gladiator, in fact we did have a stroll through the old amphitheatre which is the third largest in the world don’t you know. It’s amazing and I was half expecting Russell Crowe to stroll out in his get-up at any moment. Our next stop was the home of Juliet where we fought through the crowds for a pic of Juliet’s balcony. Rather than pay the €6 like we did for the amphitheatre, we decided to make do with a few shots outside, before strolling through the Piazza Erbe and Piazza dei Signori, which are essentially big markets in the beautiful old town square. We shopped up a storm before deciding to head on to Casa Romeo, where you guessed it – Romeo lived! Not quite as crowded as Juliet’s pad (it seems Juliet’s fan base was much more active), we got a token few shots of Romeo’s joint before deciding to lose ourselves in the tiny, beautiful streets, taking photos of anything and everything, including old theatres (Teatro Romano)), bridges (Ponte Nuovo, Ponte Pietra)and cathedrals (Anastacia, Vescovado Duomo). I’m sure the names don’t mean too much to you and let’s face it, in a few months we’ll have forgotten the names too, but we just wanted to reassure you that we’re getting our cultural fix as well as stuffing ourselves with gelato and pasta!
After our calves were aching and we couldn’t walk anymore, we headed back to our hotel where we sat on our balcony (just like Romeo and Juliet), sipped back the Limoncello, which is a deliciously bitter version of very alcoholic lemonade and watched the world pass by. When hunger took hold, which to be fair was disgraceful after all the eating we’ve done today, we decided to pop down to a local restaurant which we saw was bustling with Italians, without a foreign face in sight. After not recognising a single thing on the menu, we each chose something random, plus a pizza acting as a safety net. In our miniscule Italian we ordered, clarified that yes we did want three meals between us and no she hadn’t misheard, and sipped our local red wine watching the Italians around us. We weren’t disappointed with our food, but we sure as hell weren’t expecting what showed up – not that we let this stop us though as within a few minutes the plates were near empty... All three of them!
Tomorrow we are back into Austria to spend some time in the Austrian Alps in a little party/ University town called Innsbruck. We’ll take the scenic route which will add a few hours onto the journey, but when you’re stopping every few minutes to take photos and pick up even more food, getting there is only half the fun!
We’re heading back to Italy more times than we count, but if we weren’t, leaving tomorrow would be near impossible. So pretty, so delicious, so wonderfully clichéd – ti amo Italia!
Xx
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