Verona, the city of love

After a fun night of tasting the local Italian vino, we all woke up early and headed to Verona. This is the city where the story of Romeo and Juliet took place, and is about an hour’s drive from Vicenza.

Verona is a beautiful town, and the first of many the family saw on their trip. We parked and walked through the ancient city gates you see behind us here:


These actually aren’t the oldest gates to the city (which we would run into several blocks into our walk), but I didn’t get a picture of that so this is what you have to look at!

Next we come to the Piazza Bra that surrounds the Arena di Verona. Here you can see a row of the buildings to the left as you enter this area:



This is a huge tourist area, as you can see with all the canopies full of gelaterias. But it was so pretty!

Here is the picture of the Arena di Verona, which resembles Rome’s Colosseum:



It dates back to the 1st century A.D. Four arches of the “outer circle“ and a complete inner ring still stand, which is impressive because a pretty big earthquake hit this area in the 12th century. In the summer it becomes an opera house, with performances of Macbeth, Madama Butterfly, Aida and more. They say that it still doesn’t need microphones for performances as the acoustics remain top notch based solely on the way it was built.

Btw, I don’t normally link my arms with my little brother, I think I was trying to keep him in the picture. He turns into Sulky Sally sometimes and doesn’t like to take the millions of pictures mom and I require.

On our way through Verona we passed some shops, so I just wanted to include this pic to let you know that there are plenty of shops in Italy that we see every day in America (I guess this might apply to the Chicago folks primarily):



So the main event of Verona for us came once we arrived at Juliet’s house. No one’s really sure if this is actually the authentic home of the Capulet’s Juliet (ok does anyone else think it’s funny her name was Juliet Capulet? How did I never realize that before?), and many locals believe it to have been a bordello in the 19th century. As you walk into the courtyard underneath Juliet’s balcony, you see all of the tributes visitors have left on the walls:

And here is the balcony itself:

I have to include an older picture of VP from when Carl and Sarah visited Verona for the first time. Legend has it that the statue of Juliet in the courtyard is good luck, but only if you rub her right breast. So everyone that comes through rubs the bronze breast and takes a picture. VP decides to be a gentleman and grab her hand instead:

The building has been turned into a museum, so we all toured it and found out you can actually stand on Juliet’s balcony. So, being the Americans we are, we did this:

“Where for art thou Romeo?!?!?!”

The museum itself had some great history on the story of Romeo and Juliet, told throughout the years. Although I think the boys were about done with this place as soon as we walked in.

After our tour of love we had some lunch in the Piazza delle Erbe (Square of the Herbs), formerly the Roman city‘s forum:

In the center is a fountain dating from the 14th century and a Roman statue dubbed The Virgin of Verona. The weather was gorgeous, so we all had our first taste of a true Italian meal, alfresco-style. Dad got some outrageous seafood thing that grossed us all out and the rest of us enjoyed fresh salad and pasta along with him.

Today the piazza is known for its fruit-and-vegetable market, complete with a ton of Veronese shoppers and vendors. The market we came upon was just to the right of where the main piazza is you see above. Mom and I had a blast browsing over the different types of food. Here’s a taste of what the olives looked like:

Then we walked along the Adige River, which had some gorgeous views. Here you‘ll see the parents in front of the Castelvecchio (I think that means the Old Castle). This is the former home of the Della Scala family and is now an art museum, housing 14th and 15th-century sculptures and paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries:

And after walking back through town, we decided we were going to take part in the tourist area near the Arena di Verona and enjoy some gelato:

I think you can tell by this point the boys had had enough of our, “Ok let’s get together for a picture!!” excitement. But that gelato was damn good, so they played along. All in all, a good day - love and ice cream.