Verona

Nick here posting…
This weekend’s Lloyd family trip was to the city of Verona. Most people have only heard of Verona because it is the setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliette. What a lot of people don’t know is how incredibly beautiful the city is.

We took a train from Vicenza to Verona. There are two kinds of trains here, Eurostar and Regionale. Eurostar trains are direct, fast and expensive. Two one way tickets to Verona would have cost us about $40. On the other hand, Regionale trains are slow, stop at every small station along the way and are very inexpensive. Two one way Regionale tickets cost us only $12. The Eurostar train would have taken a little over a half hour. The Regionale got us there in about an hour and fifteen minutes. It wasn’t that bad though, and frankly we just couldn’t imagine spending $80 for a day trips transportation to a city that’s not even very far away.

Verona, as viewed immediately outside the train station, isn’t much to look at. After a fifteen minute walk into the city centre though, the scene changes dramatically. Beautiful, centuries old houses and buildings line the streets; painted pastel yellows, and reds. As you enter the heart of the city you pass through an archway into Piazza Del Erbe, where street vendors sold everything from lemon trees to pottery. In the Piazza is the Arena di Verona which resembles the coliseum in Rome but is a bit smaller. Later in the day we stopped at a pasticceria vendor, who sold us a cannoli worth dying for.

Next we saw the famous “Juliette’s Balcony.” The entryway into it had the names of thousands of couples graffitied on the walls.

We stopped next to a fountain:

We saw several cool churches:

Then we crossed the river by bridge, yielding the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen. It was incredible.

And here’s a picture of a cool museum:

And lastly here’s a photo from the streets of Verona:

Overall Verona was the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I may make this claim again down the road since I haven’t seen all of Italy or Europe yet, but for now Verona is the city to beat. There were a LOT of tourists about, which was a bit of a downer, and the stores were upscale boutiques that obviously catered to rich foreigners, but the beauty of just walking down the streets of the city totally made up for those small shortcomings.