In the Land of Romeo and Juliet

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Sadly this morning we said farewell to Florence and headed north. Our destination for the day is Verona on the way to the Dolomites, part of the Alps. Igor is very good about comfort stops which are on the highways much like rest stops in the US. However the coffee bars are distinctly Italian. You go to the cash desk to pay and then at the bar you present your receipt and reorder your drink. If the comfort stop is crowded the coffee bar is mobbed. At one such stop some of us ladies were ushered into the gents' along with the gents. Crazy!
Arriving in Verona, we met our guide and proceeded across the bridge through the grounds of the Medici palace. Verona has Roman antecedents and the Roman amphitheatre is today a working opera and concert venue. The excitement of the day was an Andrea Bocelli concert planned for tonite. Many people were in town dressed to the nines. Italian fashion is brilliant anyway, but today was hot and Saturday and yet a lot of what we saw was over the top!
We had a guided tour and got a taste of the various Piazzas and how they morphed over the years. We noted the Jewish ghetto and heard how Jews were treated under Fascism
In fact, Allied soldiers were imprisoned there as well as Jews and anti-Fascists before being shipped off to Dachau and other camps/elimination sites. We saw statues of famous sons of Verona such as Dante who was from Florence but was protected here. From the old Roman square called Bra, we walked on a pink marble street to another square. The pink marble was full of fossil shapes from an age when the mountains where the marble is quarried were under the sea. One of the most interesting points was the tombs of the Della Scala family, who were in power in the city for many years. They have raised carved sarcophagi and you can see that they loved dogs. Let it be said that Italians seem to really love their dogs and take them everywhere.
The end of our tour was in the supposed garden of Romeo and Juliet. There are parts of Shakespeare’s story that ring true with evidently feuding families of Montague and Capulet(Capeletti?). And the town was certainly full of lovers.
We had lunch in the open air on the Piazza del Erbe. Then we walked back to the meeting point to walk to the bus, where we gratefully sat down for a beautiful drive into the Dolomites to Bolzano, arriving in time for some local red wine, Vernatch, before dinner.

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Comments

[Darla]

Can’t wait to hear about the Dolomites
That is one of the areas of Italy that I would love to have seen but have not. Enjoying your trip vicariously.

[Darla]

Can’t wait to hear about the Dolomites
That is one of the areas of Italy that I would love to have seen but have not. Enjoying your trip vicariously.