West to Verona

Tuesday 6th October
West to Verona
Our concerns of last night that the incoming backpackers might be a noisy lot were realised during the night or some early hour of the morning.For a while there were arguments,shouting and loud talking in the vicinity of our mobile home with wafer thin walls and our sleep was disturbed.
Then,sleep,and the next we knew it was time for the early morning departures from Marco Polo airport.There is no way we can miss those!!
Today we plan to visit Verona,the city in which Shakespeare used for his tale of love,Romeo and Juliet.It is only about 120km away so it should be a short day on the road.
After that we will head for our accommodation at a farm stay near Castiglione d Stiviere about another 50km further away from Verona.
Our stay in the mobile home has been very good,except for the noisy crowd for a short while last night,as it has had everything we needed and surprisingly plenty of room to move around and store our luggage and the food we are carrying with us.We have enjoyed it so much that we will try and book the same arrangement just outside Rome where the company that own a chain of camps also have a similar facility to this one near Venice.And of course the price is good for the BBA!!
Keeping to the local roads out of Venice by using the atlas road map looked very complicated and with the road signage being not always reliable,we chose the motorway to get us on our way.
When we thought we had cleared enough of the “spaghetti roads” on the map we paid the toll for the distance we had used and drove off to find route #11 and take the slow way to Verona through the local towns and villages.
Unfortunately we had come off the motorway at a point where there wasn’t direct access to the #11,even though the map showed there was,and after getting told to move on from a side lane we had parked on to try and find the way to #11,we returned to the motorway.Apparently the side lane we had parked on was about to be closed by a road construction firm and we could have found ourselves locked in behind a gate and nowhere to go.
So we tried to escape the motorway a short distance further on and this time it worked with the exit road from the toll road joining straight in with the #11 and we were on our way to Verona again via the small towns and villages that are far more interesting than the countryside the motorway was taking us.
The outskirts of Verona was all industrial and then apartment blocks and we wondered whether we were ever going to find the old city which dates from the 1st century.We found a road that pointed towards centro and took it but missed a turn and ended up in a parking lot for several apartment buildings.We stopped here for a tail gate lunch and probably had the neighbours in the apoartment buildings looking down on us and wondering what the hell we were up to.We had thought at one point we might have chosen the wrong are to stop for lunch as the late model car next to us in the parking lot had had a side window smashed,probably by someone to steal something valuable from inside on the back seat.
We retraced our path and found ourselves back on the way to centro and found a parking building to safely(we hope after what we saw in the apartment parking lot)park RR while we took in some sightseeing.
The whole atmosphere of the city changed once we entered through the archway into the old city area.The hustle and bustle of buses, trucks and cars ended and before us was the expansive Piazza Bra free of traffic and ringed by cafes and restaurants and on the far side the 1st century Roman amphitheatre known now as the Arena.We will come back to that shortly.
First though we headed down a narrow street to the Palazzo degli Scaligeri a castle and former residence of the Della Scala family built in the 14th century when the family was the richest in town.A very impressive structure that was well preserved on the banks of the river.
From there we went back to the Piazza Bra and paid the admission fee to enter the Arena,the third largest of its kind in existence.Again the structure was very well maintained despite its age and in fact today it is used for open air concerts and opera.There was a lot of work going on inside and we guess that they were preparing for an upcoming event.
As we sat on the stone steps high above the circular arena itself we tried to imagine what it must have been like during the days of the Roman gladiators when people were put before the lions.
Much of the outside structure was built of what looked like large river stones cemented together while internally the walls were also of stone but with much rougher edges.The corridors around the arena were circular with entries into the arena itself every 20 metres or so.The place has a capacity of around 20,000 people and demonstrates just how many people you can pack into a circular structure over one that is square or oblong in shape of a similar floor area.
We took a stroll down one of the shopping streets that led to the medieval town hall in the Piazza dei Signori where there were a number of stall selling local wares set up.Gretchen brought a couple of items she wished she had in Venice.
Then it was back to RR and onto our overnight accommodation at Castiglione D Striviere which we found without too much trouble.
Our stay is to be at a farmhouse with rooms added or converted for accommodation.Our room is in the Italian tradition with tiled floor,dark timbered ceiling and shutters on the windows.All the rooms are on the same level looking out towards the farm barn which smells like it houses a chicken house that hasn’t been cleaned out for many years!!!Thankfully the smell can be kept out by closing the door and shutters and it is only for one night.

---

---