The Wandering Genealogist: Verona - a special place with an incredible history

Another sunny and warm day. Although our walking today involved fewer sets of stairs and inclines than did our Venetian adventure, I'm up to 11,200 steps and I haven't yet wandered down the corridor to dinner. My feet are doing better than I thought they would, but they are campaigning for overtime pay and a soak in Epsom salts.

We departed Lido de Jesolo at 8 am on the dot this morning and enjoyed the drive to Verona. Just short of the city we stopped at a rest stop which I presumed would be much like the stops on the 401 at home. Hah! We in Ontario have a long way to go before a comparison can even begin. You can get coffee, of course, wine, beer, cookies, candy, many kinds of food, electronics, toys, hardware, clothes I think ... And yes, there are washrooms too. Given that we are incredibly well fed on this trip, I didn't see the need to make any purchases. I must say a lot of wine and beer made its way onto the bus for private consumption. €12 got you a 3-pack of regular sized wine, i.e. 750 ml bottles. Not mini-bottles.

Once we arrived in Verona we met our guide, Monica. Unlike yesterday's microphone problems for Elizabeth, the guide du jour, the microphone chosen today was perfect. We each have a receiver, on a lanyard of course, and an earpiece, and we could hear Monica tellling us the incredible history of Verona. It's a very beautiful city and once we reached the old historic part, we were surrounded by what I call "eye-candy." There's an old Roman colisseum sort of 'arena' that has been upgraded to now be a theatre. See photo below. We didn't go in, but I believe it was featured in the opening ceremonies for the recent winter olympics.

Walking around, admiring the buildings and alleys, we learned of the famous inhabitants, much of which I can't recall. I believe it was the La Scala family that seemed to have been everywhere. They even have a very extravagant set of, um gravestones? They were huge sarcophaguses (sp?), statues, ornate structures topped with a figure mounted on a horse.

We learned the original story of Romeo and Juliet, and after lining up with hundreds of other tourists, we did enter a courtyard to see Juliet's balcony. Yes, of course I took a picture.

After a wonderful lunch, we had some free time to wander around. There are stalls in the open air market square and in the surrounding streets are designer stores. Chanel, Boss, Cartier, Rolex, um, I don't shop at those stores so can't recall the names of others. The store windows are inviting but not being a shopper I gave them little notice. Besides, my budget would not like to be totally used up in one shop.

About the food - eating three course meals is a struggle. I consume only half of what is put in front of me and still get more than enough. All the meals are included on this trip, and apart from tonight's very disappointing dinner, which was pretty awful, the food has been excellent. At our previous hotel the meals were amazing. I skipped dessert the first night but had chocolate ice cream, (not gelato) with fresh strawberries last night. I turned down the Creme Brulé and Tiramisu. The salad each evening at the Bristol hotel was a huge selection of roasted or otherwise cooked veggies, and was wonderful. The appetizer always had pasta as a choice, and the main course was top notch. I had Grilled swordfish the first night and poached sea bass the second.

The lunches we had were in fabulous unique restaurants and the offerings were really tasty. Today's lunch had a tray of mini pastries for dessert. Our opening course of salad was nice, and the main course was delicious pork (don't recall the name of the dish). Potatoes seem to be served at every evening meal.

My only complaint is that dinner doesn't start until 7:30 and takes at least two hours. We're so tired from all the walking that we hit the sack shortly after dinner. This is not optimal but, hey, this is Italy.

Here is today's photo offering - it was hard to choose which pictures to include: they didn't download in order that they were taken.