Verona - shiny breast and a Coliseum

Made it back from our vacation late Tuesday. It was really a wonderful trip, even though I got sick just before we left London and have been feeling pretty lousy ever since we got home. Thought I'd share a few highlights over the next couple of days.

Our first stop was Verona, Italy, which we picked this at random because we wanted some place between the Milan airport and Venice since we were arriving in Milan late. Turned out to be a great pick! As I wrote previously, Verona is best known as the home of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's balcony and statue is a major tourist attraction and we had to dodge several tour bus groups and school field trips to get some photos. The tradition is to rub Juliet's right breast for good luck. The school boys loved it. When there was a break between tour groups, I made Ed get up there for a picture. Due to bad timing there was still a stray tourist by the statue. Oh, and that's more of a for-gods-sake-hurry-up grimace than a smile. But we had to go for it because a busload of senior citizens were rushing (ok, that may too strong a word) in to the patio.

When we arrived in Verona it was around 10pm. We had directions to the hotel, but Italy is not big on signage so we weren't quite sure where to go. Frankly, I get a bit nervous being in an unknown place, not sure which direction to head, late at night, not speaking the language. I'm just strange that way. We headed down one main street that looked like it might be the right one. I saw a woman also heading down that street, to I said, "Scuzzi, es Corso Porto Nuova?" summoning up my pitiful attempt at Italian. She smiled every so sweetly and said in a lovely British accent, "Oh, I do hope so!"

Well, it was and we did find the hotel. Managed to dump our bags and head down the block to a little restaurant and had the best spaghetti pomodoro of the trip.

This is a view from our room that we discovered the next morning.

Verona is really lovely - I highly recommend it as a stop if you go to Italy. There's even a coliseum! Turned out to be a great place for our first night.

Next stop - Venice!