Viva Italia - Verona - our last day

It's been a really long day. We were up so early to catch the 7:40 train to Verona that we caught the 7:09am train instead. Once in Verona, we decided to catch the bus from the train station out to our hotel near the airport in order to save some money except that the bus driver did not speak any of my languages (good thing I can point) and when he dropped us at the stop we'd asked (pointed?) for, it was on the other side of the highway from the hotel. So, we played Frogger, running between the cars from one side of the road to the traffic islands to the other side. BUT we got here AND they had a shuttle back to the centre of Verona, so we dumped our stuff in our room and went off to explore.

First stop - breakfast / brunch / lunch / food / COFFEE!! (because there had been no opportunity for breakfast) so we sat in the sun in Piazza Bra across from the Arena. (Verona has a colliseum like Rome, but it's smaller and they call it an arena. They hold concerts there in the summer). Then we set off to explore and wander. After much searching, we found "Juliet's Balcony" which was created a couple of hundred years ago in tribute to Romeo and Juliet. It is well staged, complete with vine covered wall for climbing over or hiding in the shadows of... But soft what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun

The best part of our day was Giardino Giusti (the Giusti gardens). They're smaller than the Boboli Gardens in Florence, but we had just as much fun exploring and imitating the statues. Lemon trees. Orange trees. Fountains with fish and turtles. A lookout over Verona and a secret chapel.

Wandering in warm sunny weather makes Peter thirsty. Fortunately for him, here in Verona a large beer is 1 L. Nice and big (understatement). Good and cold. I discovered the Aperol Spritz. Absolutely divine and a good thing it isn't available anywhere I live on a permanent basis.

I was underwhelmed by Verona. We had 7 hours to prowl around (based on hotel shuttle bus drop off and pick up) and it was a stretch. To be fair, we didn't spend our time doing museums and churches, we spent our time wandering around getting a feel for the place, and we didn't need 7 hours to do that. Verona had a Pisa-esque feel to it, in that there were a fixed number of things to do, and when we'd done what we came to do, we'd had enough. But unlike Pisa where we hopped on an earlier train to go back to do more of Florence, today there was nowhere to hop back to. We head back to Sweden tomorrow (v-e-r-y early 4:45am). It's been a good week. We really lucked out with the weather, but as my grandmother used to say every time she came to visit, it's nice to get away, but nothing tastes quite as good as bread and butter at the kitchen table when you get home.