Verona

We love Italian trains, as we've probably mentioned before. Our lovely host Jane arranged a taxi to Milano Centrale for us and we were soon speeding our way across the Italian countryside in First Class comfort toward Verona, a place we'd never been but which had been highly recommended to us. A short taxi ride from Verona station and we were at our little attic apartment just a short walk from the Arena and the main shopping areas of Via Mazzini and Corsa Porta Borsari.

The afternoon was spent settling in, checking out the local bars and being pleasantly surprised by the weather, which despite forecasts of the same deluges we'd had in Milan turned out to be sunny and beautiful.

Tara by the way has an obsession with patting dogs at the moment, and she enthusiastically approaches every dog owner we see (at least the ones that we allow her to). More than one has been startled by a sudden shrill "posso accarezzare il cane" originating from the region of their kneecaps.

I'd had intentions again of cooking that evening but the rudimentary kitchen facilities (we had one wine glass!) curbed my enthusiasm once again so we headed out to a local pizzeria that was well recommended and turned out to be very nice.

Castelvecchio Bridge over the Adige

Wednesday morning we ventured out to a nearby children's playground just across the river near the Castelvecchio. We were meeting up with Belinda, Otto and Tom for lunch later so we headed for Via Mazzini and the Arena area to scout out some prospects and check out the shopping.

Heading for the Arena

BOT wrestled with a recalcitrant GPS on their way through from Venice to Bricherassio but eventually found a park right near the playground, so we wandered back that way and met on the bridge with much hugging and strange looks from a nearby busload of tourists. We lucked out with a great little cafe right at the Porta Borsari which did awesomely fresh home made pasta and salads at very reasonable prices. Far better than the tourist traps around the Arena.

Porta Bosari, cafe at bottom left

Before BOT headed off to Bricherasio we had another short session at the playground, sought out some coffee in the back streets near our apartment, then bid them adieu for a couple of days.

Tara was not doing too well with evening outings so far so we decided after the previous evenings' efforts that we'd try Belinda's suggestion of giving her an afternoon nap before going out for dinner in future. For that night we broke one of my usual rules of not eating non-local cuisine and had Indian takeaway from down the road, which turned out to be pretty good!

Tara catching her latest obsession just before going to bed

By Thursday I figured a week was enough time to allow myself a break from exercise (although I did go to the gym briefly at the hotel in Singapore) so I decided to go for a run. Now Italians don't do running, as far as I can tell. I saw one other person out and she looked like a tourist. Most of the locals looked at me like I'd had too much grappa in my caffe correto. Still it was a pleasant 6km across the Castelvecchio bridge and along the Adige and back.


As usual we had little in the way of plans for the day, other than the obligatory visit to "Juliette's house" along with every other tourist in Verona. We followed that up with a pleasant lunch in the beautiful piazza nearby then wandered back through Via Mazzini back home for an attempted afternoon nap for Tara. That didn't really eventuate in the end so as a result we ended up looking for early-ish dinner options again.

Juliet's balcony plus crowd

The nearby piazza

As it turned out Tre Risotti which was right next to our apartment building opened at 7pm and had an interesting sounding menu a bit different from your typical pizza and pasta. I had a beautiful slow cooked beef dish in a rich red wine sauce (that I can't recall the name of for the life of me) and G had a fantastic mixed seafood dish.

So all too soon our time in Verona was over. A short taxi ride early Friday morning and in no time we were on a train to Turin on our way to a major event of the holiday, Christian and Jacqui's 7 Year Wedding Reunion.