Verona. The City of Romeo & Juliet

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After 13 hours of travel, and only a few hours of napping on the train, we made it to Verona! What a fairytale we are in!!!
After Schwandorf we took a train to Munich. From Munich to Verona was the most beautiful landscape you could imagine! We traveled through the Swiss and Italian Alps.

The mountains look similar to those of the Sierras in California—they are steep and more jagged, but have huge chunks of rock just like the Sierras at home. Thhe main difference here is that there are beautiful green fields that are mixed in with the rock. The towns are formed in little fields, and people farm on the steep hills. Bright green hills at the base of the mountains are dotted with white houses and red roofs. It is more than beautiful!

Our train followed the river, which was a crystal blue color. It looked much more clean and picturesque than any river I have seen in the U.S. We passed long bridges, went through long tunnels, but always emerged to the cute, sunny villages in the Alps.

I wish I could save the landscapes in my mind and replay them over and over to show everyone. No photo or video could EVER do this place justice. It’s too magnificent to be caught on film. I could definitely do this 7 hour train easier than any 7 hour travel in California.

The sky is a bright blue with huge cotton-ball looking clouds.

Lauren and I were wondering if it would be obvious once we crossed into Italy—it most definitely was. Suddenly the cute little white homes with green farms turned into Italian villas each equipped with a vineyard.

Each house had colorful shutters, flowers in the windowsill, and rolling vineyards. The mountains in the background look like the perfect backdrop for a movie. That’s how it feels. It feels like we are in a Mary Kate & Ashley movie or something. Complete with the adventures, getting lost everywhere we go, and the best landscape in all of Europe.

About half way through the train ride, a woman with her little girl came up to us and began speaking in German. We had no idea what she was saying…but then she pointed to her ticket and then pointed to me. Yes, we were in their seats.
The trains here are bizarre because you don’t need a reservation, but you can get a reservation for seats if you would like. So we had no idea we were sitting in their seats until they boarded the train in some ho-dunk town.

Now we were seat less, in the Alps, with our backpacks and bag of snacks. The train was packed!! No two seats were visible to us…We were slightly hungry so we decided it would be a great time to go into the dining cart and enjoy some wonderful train food. We stayed in the dining cart for probably at least 2 hours. Watching the Alps pass by, eating our smoked salmon salads, and drinking our $4 small glass bottle of water. The waitress was sweet, but didn’t speak a word of English. It’s always an interesting experience when language is such a barrier. It worked out though, and we left her a “hefty” tip (10% is a BIG tip here).

We eventually found a couple seats in these nice, private cabin things that have doors that close, fit about 6 people, and are air-conditioned. It was Lauren and I, an Italian woman and a German woman. The German woman was quite talkative, but she knew we didn’t speak German, and she didn’t speak any English. Throughout the ride the continued to try to talk to us like we would respond in German, but we just sat there and nodded our heads politely as we smiled. The Italian woman was a little fed up with this Chatty Cathy, because she was the middle man—the translator for the German. It was an interesting train ride.

We finally arrived in Verona and didn’t want to risk getting lost (our bed and breakfast was somewhere outside the city…we didn’t know how far outside) so we just hailed a cab.

Just to our luck, the cabbie spoke zero English. From the directions online, it was clear that the address of our Bed & Breakfast wouldn’t even come up on a GPS, so we had to type another address in for the drive. Once we reached this address, there were specific directions as to how to get to the b&b…Sounds easy enough, right? No way.
Soon enough we were far, far away from the city, on a very narrow, windy, one lane road. Our cabdriver seemed to have never driven up here before, but was going quite fast! He honked before each curve in hopes that an oncoming car would hear him… :/ At least the views were unforgettable! It was right around sunset, and the entire valley had a pink-ish tone. We passed by a castle looking building that was glowing in the sun. It was stunning!

We thought we had gone too far up the hill, but couldn’t tell the cabbie to turn around. We tried motioning, but he didn’t understand. So up we went, as the meter ticked on and on. Eventually he stopped and asked if we had a phone number. He called the b&b owner and talked to him in Italian…we were back on track.

After that adventure, we pulled up to our adorable Italian style house. No one seemed home…so we thought maybe we entered through the back. As we headed back toward the road a car drove up with a man waving in it. He had come searching for us after we called him lost!

An older woman was driving, but the man who runs the b&b jumped out and is much, much younger than I was picturing. He is probably about 30 years old!

The house is huge and has sweeping views of the valley of vineyards, homes, and the city in the distance.
We settled into our one bed room (it would be very romantic for a couple! Lauren and I felt like a honeymoon couple sharing a bed in the hills of Verona). It is a very stylish house. Everything is new and very modern. No screens meant huge bugs welcome. A huge wasp thing found its way into the room right off the bat. Lauren hates bugs…she kind of flipped. Especially after Mariel’s wasp bite in London!

After we settled in we met some very nice people who were staying in the room next to us. Two guys and two girls from Luxembourg.

We learned that they speak Lëtzebuergesch (yes, they have their own language! We had no idea)
It was already 8:00pm and we were starving.

Our host, Cristian, suggested we go up the street to the Pig Farm—yes, a pig farm. The Luxembourg-ers already had a “reservation”, if you can call it that, so we just tagged along.

We walked up the little dirt road in the dark, with no directions except “Look for the pig sign”. Eventually we found it, walked up the driveway, and found a house with a big bbq grilling.

We heard some people eating, but still it looked like we had just walked up to someone’s private home!
We followed the noise, and the six of us were suddenly standing in front of a huge, loud, classic Italian family eating dinner. The second they saw us walk up, the were silent. None of us speak Italian…

They were the only people eating. We had no idea what we were doing!

We wandered inside…it looked like a restaurant, except we were the only ones there on a Saturday night! The pig farm is set on top of the hill, with sweeping views of the city and the entire valley. The lights of Verona sparkled in the dark.
We found the chef, and he sat us all down next to the Italians.

We all ordered pasta as our first dish, then some sort of pork dish, though it was all in Italian so we didn’t exactly know what we were getting.

It ended up being delicious!!!! The pasta, the meat, everything was delicious!

After we finished up, the Italian family was still there, and asked us if we wanted to join in a game of fooze ball. We were too stuffed to even move, so we passed, but it looked really fun!!

When we returned to the house, we walked in the front door and smelled fresh bread baking in the oven! Cristian pulled out a home made loaf of bread along with muffins from the oven, and we only guessed that it was for our breakfast the next morning.

We went upstairs to our romantic room and passed out. We were so tired from traveling!

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