Highlight  Verona

We had a slow start to the day with Verona, and then a lakeside place, on the agenda. Nico had offered to do something with us later in the afternoon but we ended up being out until 5.30pm. We have found that 2 places tend to fill in the day.

We found a free roadside park in Verona, then found/remembered the system needed us to have a clock face ticket to record the arrival time, and we didn’t have one, so instead we went to a car park building which proved to be better as we could stay longer than 2 hours.

The system in the building was great. We drove in and found there were both arrows with numbers saying where there were free spaces and also red and green lights above the parks to clearly locate the free spaces. It was also only 1 euro per hour which seemed very cheap.

We were heading for the centre, but then were side-tracked by a sign saying Juliet’s tomb. I also knew there was a cache with that name, so starting there made sense. The area is now also a museum, which we did not want to go into, but there were a number of sculptures in the area, including Shakespeare and others representing some of his plays. There was also a large one from Japan which was nice, if rather odd. We successfully located the cache.

We got to the centre of the town to find heaps of tour groups, but the crowds were quite manageable. If we had had time, a walking tour would have been good, but we just walked it ourselves. The Arena dominates the area, and was also open for visiting but luckily we were not that keen as it would have taken too long. We joined the hordes at Juliet’s balcony and later went to Romeo’s house. The balcony area was crowded. We did get a photo with her statue, although felt no need to touch her breasts as did others. Obviously lots have, as they were much shinier than the rest of her body.

We had a light lunch of shared salad and fruit as we knew Nico had risotto on the menu for us tonight. We then headed back to the car, via Romeo’s house and an interesting looking church.

Our other stop was at Peschiera Del Garda, a place Nico had recommended as having a similar castle to Sirmione. It had been a military prison so was well positioned with water around it. It proved to be a nice seaside area with lots of people wandering, on the water or eating. We had paid for one hour and it was a good amount of time. We went around the prison fort area, saw a number of ducks, watched people in the sort of moat area kayaking, found a cache area and had delicious gelato (John and I) and Katherine had the healthier yoghurt.

We headed back via the motorway amongst bursts of heavy rain and thunder. We were so lucky it did not arrive a couple of hours earlier. The most stressful time was going into a toll lane to get a ticket and there was not one there. We had to back out and try the next lane. Luckily the vehicles behind us seemed to realise what we were doing so maybe it happens a lot.

When we talked to Nico later, he said it had rained just after we left, but had cleared enough for he and Raia to go looking for mushrooms. These featured in our evening meal where he served some on polenta for us before our asparagus risotto.

The meal ended with a glass of bubbles and a pear tart provided by Nico in honour of John‘s birthday the previous day. We told him he needed more plates so Raia, Mama and his father could also have some. It was a lovely end to the meal. We then indicated we would like breakfast at 8am for the next day, with a long drive in store.