Day 7

Buongiorno,

Today we explored Verona. It did not take long.

We had heard some good reviews of Verona, how beautiful it is and how romantic.

Verona was an important town within the Roman Empire, so it had the usual Roman buildings, including a very well preserved arena (colosseum). This one seats 20,000 people, and like the one we saw in Nimes, is still used today for concerts and operas. In fact when we were arriving in the town centre they were setting up for a rock concert for that night - some Italian rock band.

Verona is full of the usual churches, including a basilica, of course. We went inside as mass was being conducted. We stood at the back and watched and listened for a while.

We didn’t really know what to expect of Verona. We just wandered through the old town and looked at the various shops and buildings. The one place we wanted to find was Juliet’s house.

Verona is said to be the town in which Shakespeare set his play Romeo and Juliet. Down one street, through a tunnel, is a house with a little stone balcony. This is said to be the balcony on which Juliet stood as she said “Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo”. Modern Translation: “Where the bloody hell is Koro / Daddy / Husband / Jordan, he’s late again!”.

Inside the tunnel leading to Juliet’s balcony, the city of Verona has hung huge blank canvasses and invited everyone to write a special message to their One True Love. Grandma wrote a message to her One True Love.

Like most Old Towns there were a lot of specialty shops. We found a shop for people who love to draw. Not paint, draw. There were books with beautiful paper, and all the different types of pens, pencils and markers you can imagine. None of them cheap. Miya would have loved this shop, I am sure she would have happily spent all day in here.

We had lunch in a beautiful piazza full of tourist trap restaurants and tourist trap market stalls. The restaurant trapped Koro, and the markets trapped Grandma.

It was a very warm sunny day, and it was nice sitting and watching the people in the crowd. Koro couldn’t stop laughing at the number of young ladies who had to primp and pose before their boyfriend was allowed to take their picture. Then the girlfriend had to inspect the photo. We saw one poor boyfriend get severely berated, presumably because the results weren’t good enough.

By the end of lunch we felt we had seen enough of Verona. The Old Town is nice, but it is not very big, and once your get outside of the Old Town, Verona is not a very nice modern city. It is actually quite run down and rough looking, or at least the parts we saw were.

So we decided to drive over to Lake Garda, about 45 minutes away. We had heard that Lake Garda is very beautiful, so we went for a look.

It was beautiful and it was very busy. Just like the road at Mount Maunganui on a Sunday in summer. Unfortunately we didn’t have our togs, otherwise we would have gone for a swim. The water looked very blue and very clear. Quite a contrast to the lakes in New Zealand.

The beach was a stone beach, and there were lots of families enjoying the day. Being a stone beach, all the toddlers wanted to do was stand at the waters edge and throw stones into the water. Kids and water.

There were ducks, of course. Where there is water there are always ducks.

We stayed for a couple of hours on the beach, then we headed back to Verona for dinner. It was a beautiful warm, still night, and we sat outside gazing at the colosseum and watching the crowds. The concert started while we were having dinner, and we could hear the band playing.

Then it was home to bed.

Love from Grandma & Koro. XXX OOO.