Blogs from Verona, Veneto, Italy, Europe

Romantic Verona and lake Garda -Piprey on wheel Romantic Italy 'Un bel di Vedremo' is a famous song of Madame Butterfly opera where the Japanese wife pines for her American navy husband to come back to her in Nagasaki. Imagine, watching a spectacular opera in a 1000-year-old arena which today seats 16,000 people; from where the mighty Romans once watched bloody sports! Such song, music, food and social life is inherent in Italian culture, making it stand out rather flamboyantly against the sober character of Northern Europe. Back to present world, all London airports had an airport traffic control failure. Hence, over 1900 flights were cancelled over 2 days. Fortunately, the backlog got cleared by the time my Lufthansa flight took off to Munich. From Munich to Verona it was Air Dolomite which was turbu... read more

After a mid-morning train ride, we arrived in Verona where we had 3 nights of Opera. We found our Airbnb and settled in. Our apartment was a 1 bedroom, 1 bath with a kitchen, living room and dining room. There was a balcony outside of the living room that had a table and 2 chairs. This was on what we call the 2nd story here but level 1 in Europe. The apartment was within walking distance, maybe 10 min, to the Arena. Along the way we passed many little outdoor restaurants and lots of gelato stands. The operas are held at the Verona Arena built in 30AD. The opera starts at dark, ending sometimes after midnight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena We have found that the people who are seen, sit in the bottom front section. Women are usually in ... read more

We had a full day of staying in Verona because we had the opera in the evening. The opera, Aida, was playing at the Verona Arena. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena I don’t remember how I heard about the opera festival in Verona but I did read about it several years ago. We wanted to go 2 years ago but I don’t remember what happened, then last year it was canceled. As soon as tickets were available for this year, I bought them. And so it was that we went to the Verona Arena to hear Aida! We found the arena turned into a setting for an opera. The opera started at 9 pm just before sunset and would run until close to midnight. Our seats were in the center, front row on the 3rd level and had a clear ... read more

The breakfast at the hotel is amazing - so much food and choice that keeps being replenished. It certainly sets you up for day. The four of us decided to head across Ponte Pietra to the Castel San Pietro, a high point which offers a view across the city of Verona. We headed from the hotel to pass the Arena di Verona enroute, however we were sidetracking by buying a couple of shirts, ties and a scarf on route from a wonderful shop with its origins in Milan. The shop staff were brilliant and prepared the shirt for me to try it on - never had such service in the UK. Once purchases had been made, we continued on our journey to our original destination, we decided to stop for a pitstop, which was lucky as ... read more

Vanochtend vroeg uit de veren, want we hebben weer een lange autorit voor de boeg! Snel een deftige douche nemen (want we moeten lang met elkaar in de auto zitten J), eten, kampplaats opruimen en vertrekken richting Cavallino. Tijdens het eten werden we weer vergezelt door tientallen mussen! Nog even tanken (voor 112 euro!!!!) zodat we onderweg niet stilvallen. Ook een mooi tankstation met een groot houten beeld van Willem Tell in. De Wc kostte er wel 1 Zwitserse Frank, maar ze kwamen nog net niet uw poep afkuisen. Bij de heren toch, bij de vrouwen was het blijkbaar anders. Thomas heeft onderweg mijn fototoestel uitgetest (200 foto’s per 5 minuten). In his defence, het uitzicht was echt wel mooi met watervalletjes en bergriviertjes. Onderweg reden we ook door de Gothardtunnel, een tunnel van 17 km ... read more