Verona

Today we will be heading on a short train ride out of Venice for a day trip to Verona.

Recycling boat in Venice. A mechanical arm picks up the carts that guys push around the islands. The carts have a mechanical contraption where the bottom falls out and the refuse goes into the boat. Very cool.

More people airing out their dirty laundry.

Walked by a big outdoor market on the way to the train station.

They love their peppers over here. Except, I haven’t even had food that actually contained hot peppers yet over here.

Don’t lean on any walls. The entire city is weathering away, literally. Way to destroy the city AB.

Blackberries, red currants(never had it before) and raspberries for second part of breakfast.

Horrible picture, I know but this is the only one I’ve got of the butcher’s shop.

Next to the ocean, so tons of seafood here.

Interesting looking shrimps with huge claws.

More seafood stalls.

What the hell is that?

This picture explains the previous. It’s a swordfish.

This building contained all the fish market portion.

It was a 40 minute walk to the station and this being Venice, I think we got lost literally 20 times. Not exaggerating at all. Getting lost did provide for many photo opportunities though. The more we walked around Venice, the more we saw how different areas had distinct different flavors. It is not all retail shops in this city even though they do take up a great deal of it.

We are here asking for directions. Asked this nice lady about where we are at, and she said that she couldn’t pick it out on a map because Venice is so crazy confusing. She even admits that she’s a true Venetian but still doesn’t always know her way around!

Just posted out in the middle of a plaza. Americans really are conservative.

This graffiti spoke to me. No idea what it means.

Ticket kiosk for the train tickets to Verona. That was one very long walk to the station. We kept on getting lost so much that we ended up just making our train with 5 minutes to spare instead of the 30 minutes that we had estimated.

Got us some nice seats facing each other.

Corn in Italy. I don’t remember ever seeing corn once on the menu.

In a little bit over an hour, we’ve reached Verona.

The old city center is completely surrounded by bastion walls for defense. Of course, that means there are only a few entrances into the old city. Of course, that means we got lost and missed our first entrance. Of course, that meant that we ended up taking a 40 minute detour. Sigh.

Nice parking job, asshole.

We are now in the old city center.

Seriously? Blockbusters still exist? And in Europe?

There’s a fortress inside the city walls.

Our detour took so long that we all got hungry and decided to eat. No, wait, all of us were only semi hungry except for AB who was on a mission to find food. This is the about the 6th time in 3 days that AB has gone berserk when his hungry strikes.

Our cafe sat right outside the fortress and faced it. It was strange to be sitting there about to have lunch while thinking about all the battles that went on where we sat and all those people who died in the past. Yet, here we were, having an excellent day enjoying the nice weather and food. So very strange.

Lemon flavored Risotto. I call it lemon rice.

While waiting for our food I got this photo. HOLY SHIT!!! EPIC WALRUS BEARD MAN!! Thanks for ruining my trip to Verona for me. I am sure this is going to be the best picture that I’ll get all day here. Ugh, premature climax.

Lunch shows up. The food in Verona is not priced too differently from food in Venice. You do get it in better quality and quantity here at Verona though.

Tiramisu. Never seen one like this.

After lunch, we walked towards one of the main attractions here in Verona, an arena(it’s like a mini Colosseum). You can see the arena peeking out from behind the trees.

Horse’s ass.

The arena. We will be going inside for a short visit.

HOLY SHIT!!! EPIC WALRUS BEARD MAN!!!! Yup, there he is displaying his beard proudly to the busy pedestrian area. I wonder if he thinks of his up curving beard as a phallic symbol. Regardless, he is very proud of it.

Inside the arena.

The arena is now used as a stadium for concerts, operas and plays. At first, we were disappointed that this ancient arena is now used for such modern purposes. Then as we sat around and thought about it some more, we thought about how cool it would be to attend a concert here. People have been sitting here for close to 2000 years enjoying entertainment(granted, very different types) and today it is still being used for the same purpose. They don’t build them like they used to now. Can you imagine a modern stadium lasting even just two hundred years?

Great view of the plaza from top of the arena.

HOLY SHIT!!!! EPIC WALRUS BEARD MAN!!!! Look at him looking over his domain with such authority.

Verona is actually filled with mostly locals, unlike central Rome and Venice. We actually saw a bunch of younger people. In Venice, it was mostly an older crowd. In fact, there is no nightlife in Venice. By 10PM, everything shuts down completely. You can barely find a place that’s open in Venice at night.

Next destination.

For lunch, we all put in cash and everyone overpaid. We ended up solving that problem by having a communal fund that would go towards whatever food we all get as a group. In this case, we all wanted gelatos and that came out of the communal fund. I like this system.

Reached another plaza inside the city.

Juliet’s house. Shakespeare based the story of Romeo and Juliet in the city of Verona and Juliet’s house is based on this very house. There were actually two feuding families in Verona at the time that had very similar sounding names to Montague and Capulet.

Many people draw on the walls of the house leaving words of love. That and chewing gum.

Juliet’s statue and the infamous balcony.

Juliet is a solid B cup. We were told that if you touch her boobs, it would bring you luck in finding love.

This place was crawling with Asian tourists. Supposedly 16,000 Asian tour groups come here every year just to see Juliet’s house. Not sure why there’s such obsession with Romeo and Juliet because I am positive very few Asians actually have read Romeo and Juliet.

Catfish beard man. Not epic, just stupid.

I believe this is a 1600 year old fountain?

What do people do with their souvenirs after they buy them? Don’t they just take up a lot of space?

Sant’Anastasia, biggest church in Verona.

It was very peaceful inside because there were only about 8 people in it, including us.

They also had the organ playing the entire time and that was very cool. The deep bass notes would fill out the entire chamber and you were just surrounded by the music.

The church was never fully completed so there are certain sections that have incomplete murals.

How European to have these cars.

Didn’t know they were international. I’ve only seen them inside malls.

I saw these naked anatomically correct manikins with actual nipples(darkened too!). Of course I had to take a photo of them. As I walked up to the window with a big smile on my face and my camera readied, the shop girl who worked in the store walked to the window to, I assume, dress them. She turned and saw me standing there, big smile on my face and camera ready. I snapped this photo at that moment as she stood there with the mischievous innocent smile on her face looking at me. She caught me. Then the unexpected happened because the next moment she gave me a nice flirtatious wink as I walked away half laughing. Oh my fair Verona.

Back by the plaza by the arena in search of dinner.

Ohhhh, how I wish I would have gotten this photo without blur. I love the framing of this photo with the little girl in the front so much that I decided to still put it up anyway. That’s one big dog.

View from our dining table.

Nice disguise job. Much more inconspicuous than Scarlet Johansson in St. Mark’s Square.

Veal baby. Or is it baby veal?

Love how when you order mixed vegetables in this country, they actually give you mixed vegetables.

Single mother mime getting ready for work. I believe that’s Grandma looking on.

Some smoking and some drinking to get more ready. I didn’t get a photo of when she actually started performing, but she literally pulled an 180 from the moment work started. That switch turned on and she was off playing pranks on pedestrians walking on the street. EF gave her a few Euros.