Advertisement
Published: December 12th 2011
Hello again all!
Saturday morning was an early morning, but well worth it.
Before coming to Italy Chiara asked me if there was anything really specific I would like to see. Well, the answer was I would like to see Como, Florence, Rome, Venice, Cortona, Milan, Switzerland, maybe the Alps, a couple of real Italian Ferrari’s…there were a million and one things I wanted to see in Italy. However, seeing as we only had ten days and I didn’t want to get too far away from Chiara’s home I looked on the handy-dandy map of Italy my Mom sent me and Verona caught my eye. Didn’t seem too far away, and Chiara confirmed that indeed it wasn’t!
Chiara e-mailed me a bit before I left to tell me that she found a pretty handy way to get there with a tour bus and it came with a guide. “It will probably be us and a whole bunch of old people and the guided tour will be in Italian, but if we don’t like it we can just leave them and go look for ourselves.” Sounded like a good plan to me!
We arrived to the bus stop and yes, it was mostly old people, but we were not the youngest ones there; there was a Mom with two small children. 😊
I wasn’t exactly totally awake yet, but as we were waiting in line to get on the bus, a woman putting her bags underneath the bus started yelling; the doors to the storage area were closing...on her. The door hit her in the back and the driver didn’t realize it. She got out in time, but she looked like her back was really sore. She decided not to go on the trip and actually grabbed her bags and went home. I was awake now.
I was pretty excited it was only older people on the bus because I thought, “It will probably so nice and quiet and I can sleep on our way to Verona so I am rested for the day.” No. No, I forgot that the older folk like the early morning, and that older people love to chat. Old Italian people love to chat on busses in the wee hours of the morning. When we got to Verona Chiara told me that they had all
been complaining the whole time that we hadn’t stopped for a bathroom break. Haha!
The guide did only speak in Italian, but Chiara interpreted. “She is saying a lot of things, but I will tell you the important stuff.” Some of what she said I could pick out, well, the words that are the same in Spanish as in Italian I could pick out, and I understood most of the dates because numbers sound similar.
Our first and longest stop was to a church just outside the city center of Verona. It was built in the, oh gosh, Chiara may have to comment on this one, but I’m pretty sure it was built in the 9
th century and it is dedicated to Saint Zeno and it is said that it is where Romeo and Juliet were married in Shakespeare’s play. It is really intricately and beautifully designed with many “frescos” which are paintings that are painted directly on the wall, not on a canvas or other surface. These are paintings which have literally been there for around a 1000 years. Pretty impressive.
Outside the basilica there were many of these people in fluorescent outfits, setting
up for something, we didn’t know what for or stay to see, but some of the men were wearing the alpine hats that look like what Robin Hood wears, or what we picture Yodeler’s to wear. We saw a group of them the week before when we went to the Fiera in Milan. They are members of the Alpini, which is the oldest active mountain infantry in the world and they were a part of the Italian Army charged with protecting Italy’s northern border. I really just thought the hats were awesome, but look, I learned a bit of Italian history from it; I bet that is why they wear those hats, so we curious tourists go look up why they wear them. 😊
Once we headed toward the city center, I got to see just how beautiful Verona is. The only word I can really think of is “lovely,” just a really lovely place. It sits in what seemed like a little valley and so there are houses up along the hills. The day started a little cloudy, but after the St. Zeno’s Basilica the sun started to come out and really made for a nice
day. Verona reminded me of Paris just a bit because of the river that runs around it and all of the bridges that cross. During WWII the Germans destroyed the bridges that led into the center of the city, one of which, the oldest in Verona, was built in the 1300’s (right Chiara? Chiara, feel free to correct me on anything about Italy that I mess up ok? Haha!). After it was destroyed the people of Verona rebuilt it using remains of the original stones, which I thought was pretty amazing. It has so much more to it that Romeo and Juliet. Verona is small, but it is very old and has many remnants from when the Romans occupied the area. The largest piece of Roman architecture left is the arena. It turns out that for the Christmas season there was an expo of nativity scenes inside part of the arena and as part of our tour package we got tickets to go in and see it!
It was really pretty amazing. There were nativity scenes from all over the world. Some were small and simple; others were large and amazingly detailed and intricate, right down to
having pillows on the beds and blankets hanging over balconies and even a scaled version of the main piazza in Siena with a real working clock tower. It was unbelievable, and there were so many! My parents would have
loved to see it. My Mom loves nativity scenes, this year our “Christmas Tree” is actually a table with a nativity set on it with the gifts underneath the table (the leaning Tree of Christmas got hauled out to the sidewalk so Mom got inventive). Not only that but they played the Andrea Bocelli Christmas CD the whole time, the one that my Dad has the DVD of and watches a few times every Christmas. I could just hear him in my head, “Oh! Andrea Bocelli! I am just enjoying this music!” Haha!
Verona really helped get us into the Christmas spirit. They too had a very large Christmas market that went most of the way around the arena and was in the piazza. However that wasn’t they only Christmas market they had. There were two more and one of them was a German Christmas market! Chiara and I worked our way through all of them enjoying the
Siena
This is actually a 1:50 scale!smells of food and looking at all the neat gifts. I found a pretty great stocking that that was a moose’s head, but when I went back to look at it after the tour it was gone…guess it just wasn’t meant to be, sorry Mom.
While there was so much to see, we did not neglect the inspiration for going to Verona, La Casa de Guilliette. Unfortunately the movie “Letter’s to Juliet” romanticized it a bit. They don’t really post letters on the wall, but Chiara said that read in our Verona guide that you actually can write letters to Juliet. Supposedly if you write a letter and on the envelope write “Juliet, Verona, Italy” it actually gets to Verona and there are people who sit down and read all of the letters. I’m not really sure if they write back, but each year they select two letters and the writers of those two letters get some sort of prize. Chiara couldn’t remember exactly what it was but it’s something along the lines of on Valentine’s Day they read the letters out loud and maybe the writers get to come to Verona. Well, I advise everyone to
My Favorite
This was my favorite Nativity write a letter and maybe you’ll get picked and we can figure out what actually happens! 😊 Either way, we came prepared to leave a letter for Juliet, so I still left one. The “thing” to do at Juliet’s House is actually to leave a padlock on the gate or one of the vines inside her courtyard. I already have my padlock on Pont des Artes in Paris, so I felt like having two locks is sort of double dipping; just didn’t feel right, so I just left my letter.
It’s also good luck to touch the left breast on the statue of Juliet. Chiara and I felt like we could use some luck, be we agreed we did not want it documented, hence no photos. Haha!
After a long day Chiara and I were exhausted, and cold. We were pretty happy to see that bus. We got there like 15 minutes or so before the bus left and we thought we were pretty early, but according to older people time we were actually running behind, haha! The bus was nearly full by the time we got there! We sat down and settled in
and Chiara turns to me, “They are all talking about who is missing from the bus.”
“Do they all know each other?”
“Well, most of them are from the same town and the town is pretty small so they know who everyone is.”
Oh gosh. I love older people.
The ride home was pretty quick and Chiara and I got off at an earlier stop. As we were leaving the leader of our trip, Patricia, said (something along the lines of) “Say goodbye to the Americana!” which was followed by a small applause from a bus full of smiling Italians and a chorus of “Ciao"! Did I mention I love older people?
After we inhaled our risotto Chiara and I didn’t really have a hard time falling asleep.
However, before I went to bed I got to talk to my friend Ryan from Clemson for a bit. He is coming to Sweden next semester! I’m really excited to have him nearby, although I must say, Ryan, your town is almost more difficult to get to than Cádiz is. That night was semi-formal for the crew team
and Uncle Rick and Aunt Lyn had a dinner for some of my friends (and some people that I didn’t even recognize, haha!) so that they could get the Christmas gifts I sent and have a nice dinner before finals. They are pretty amazing people I have to say. They aren’t only generous and kind to me, but they just love having my friends over! I don’t think there is ever going to be a sufficient way for me to say "Thank You" to them for all they have done for us. I think it’s pretty awesome how much my friends and I appreciate them and I think they appreciate us too. 😊 It was nice seeing everyone all together in the photos. I miss Clemson a lot, like, a lot, a lot. I miss my friends and I missed semi-formal. I appreciate this experience so much and I love Europe, however one of the lessons and I have learned is that I will never take for granted the amazing friends and family that I have back in the States. They aren’t even here, but it makes me feel so much better when I take a trip or see something
NUTELLA!!
I have never seen one that big!!! that reminds me of them, it makes it all the more special. I miss you guys so, so much. Good luck with finals this week, and as always I am thinking of you, but this week I’ll think about you a little extra, ok? 😊
Love always,
Devin 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0369s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
