In fair Verona, where we lay our spleen

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The first destination today was The Duomo, which I'm told means the main cathedral of the town. It is large, and filled with interesting sights and sounds, which unfortunately included a vacuum cleaner. I wish it had included the organs, because those things are enormous. Speaking of organs, I've had to look at a bunch of crucified Christs today, and noticed in a lot of them that the soldiers appeared to have speared him right in the gallbladder. I got some satisfaction thinking his last act may have been to spray his tormentors with hot bile, and I imagined it melting their skin like the Alien Queen's blood in Aliens. My mother does not think the gallbladder theory holds much water, and my career as an art historian ended as quickly as it began.

After that church (I wish I could say "the", but there were many), it was off to the beautiful castle San Pietro (my italian is now so brilliant I know that means St. Peter's Castle), from which there is a beautiful view of the city. It is also where I saw my first Italy lizard, who have proved too quick for me to photograph so far. The view is excellent from up there, though my father thought it was rather hampered by the large number of skinny Italian fir trees, or Cupressus sempervirens, the Mediterranean Cypress also known as Italian, Tuscan, or Graveyard Cypress, or Pencil Pine. It is a species of cypress native to the easternMediterranean region, in northeast Libya, southeast Greece (Crete, Rhodes), southernTurkey, Cyprus, Northern Egypt, western Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Malta, Italy, westernJordan, and also a disjunct population in Iran. It is a medium-sized evergreen tree to 35 m (115 ft) tall, with a conic crown with level branches and variably loosely hanging branchlets. It is very long-lived, with some trees reported to be over 1,000 years old. They are sometimes known to hamper Don Dunbar's view.

Next was Giardino Giusti, a beautiful gem in the middle of Verona. The garden was planted to surround the villa Giusti in 1590, and is apparently one of the best renaissance gardens in Europe. There were fountains with turtles, a hedge maze, and very best it smelled like jasmine and honeysuckle and the only sounds were the chirping of birds and the excited chirping of my mother, since this is one of her favorite places. Then the school next door had recess, and the birds and mom were drowned out by squeeky italian shrieks. We had a delicious snack of salami, cheese and apples we'd brought, which had the immediate effect of putting us into a stupor and forcing us to have short nap in the grass. Hopefully an Italian bug hasn't crawled through my eardrum into my brain. Unfortunately, the grass had just been cut, so when we got up we looked a bit like Ents.

Big walk across town to the San Zeno church, which was built mostly in the 1100s. It has a big crypt, and I did not like that there were banging sounds coming from One of the tombs. It would be more than inconvenient if my mother's new super power was the ability to resurrect moldy saints. It really baffles me that such an enormous and complex structure could have been built so long ago, and still look so magnificent. Apparently they had to restart after an earthquake hit halfway through construction, which is probably almost as annoying as having your computer fail halfway through a long blog post.

More walking, this time along the river which is lined by by white roses, which were smelled thoroughly by all. I should design for my parents, and in particular my mother, little sashes to hang across their bottoms that says "frequent stops, keep back" to avoid incidents of accidental frottage. As it was, my father had to employ some impressive matrix bullet dodging moves to avoid knocking over my mother.

We hadn't had any chips yet today, so we grabbed some at the store to have with our afternoon wine at home. When in Verona, right?

We decided to go to a little low key place around the corner for dinner called Trattoria la Mollinera. The first thing they did when we sat down was slap a pile of sliced spiced meat on our table with some buns. This seemed like an excellent omen. What's better than assembling your own appetizer sandwich? Everyone else there was Italian, the waiter spoke no English, and there was no English on the menu, which also seemed like good signs. Like many places here, the menu is spit into appetizers, first entrees (usually pasta), second entrees (meat) and salad, or dessert. Since the menu was in Italian my father and I were counting on my mother for help with our choices. Once she recognized "horse" in the meat section we decided to stick with pasta. I ordered some sort of tortellini, and my mother tried to order a kind of pasta we'd never heard of, and the waiter looked skeptical and launched into a frenzy of rapid Italian explaining my mother's choice. We all got the impression he was trying to provide full disclosure, and this spooked mom so she got the same thing as me.

My pasta was...odd. It was a squash ravioli, as it turned out, with pomegranate sauce. If it sounds like these favors wouldn't harmonize well, and that's because they don't. It was an interesting mix of favors, and I wondered if perhaps this is what authentic Italian food is like - none of that cheese and tomato sauce we westerners associate with the country. I saved room for dessert, and had the tiramisu, which was tasty, however my discerning taste buds and eyes could tell that the substance sprinkled on top was in fact instant hot chocolate mix, and not cocoa powder with cinnamon. The restaurant was kind of funky and fun however, and who knows, perhaps that was the most authentic italian experience we'll have on the whole trip. They had a ton of graffiti on their wall, and right next to my father was a drawing of an elephant having a bowel movement, and that's not a dining experience you have every day.

Tomorrow we're taking the train to Venice, which is very exciting and confusing since I'm poorly educated about access to Venice and thought it had to be aquatic. Hopefully the train conductor has it figured out and doesn't pull a Costa Concordia on us.

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Photos

The incredible front doors at San Zeno church
This is one of many, many photos of mom pointing at something

On st. Peter's bridge
One of 10 bridges in Verona

Workers at San Zeno
They were trying to pull that big wheel 50 meters high with two men pulling a rope