Verona

29th - 31st August 2009

We arrived into Verona train station just after lunch, with really clear directions as to how to get to our hostel. It involved catching a bus for about 10 minutes. The only problem was, Dan and I didn't know where to buy tickets!! We saw the bus, but everyone already had their tickets so we wandered around in the sweltering heat with our packs for a bit trying to find a machine, no luck. We headed back into the train station for a bit more of a look, still no luck. In the end we went into the train ticketing office for some help where we were told by a nice man that we bought them from the tabacchi. Of course! Everything is sold at the tabacchi. We bought our tickets and then jumped on the bus and went to the hostel. This was 1 of the 2 dorms that we had booked for Italy, and we thought we'd just find out how much extra we had to pay to get a private room. After a short conversation with a clueless girl who worked there, I ended up on the phone to someone who seemed more in the know. He said that it would cost us an extra 60 Euro for the 3 nights, so in the end we decided to give it a miss. The hostel was in fact student accommodation, being let out over the summer months. The room was quite nice; 4 beds, no bunks thankfully, with a nice big bathroom. No one else was in our room at this point so we dumped our s*** and headed back into town before our 60-minute bus ticket expired. Our first stop when we got into town was some lunch. We found a nice little café and had some pasta. It was nice, but I could've had another 3 bowls of it. It wasn't a very big meal, but it satisfied.

After lunch we had a look at the Arena, which is in the centre of the town. It's the 3rd largest or oldest or both (??) still standing. Apparently a 13th century earthquake destroyed most of the outside of it, but it looked cool to me. There was some guys out the front dressed up as Roman Soldiers getting people to pay them for photos with them - I thought it was a neat way to make some cash, cause there was people all around them, all happy to hand over a couple of Euros. We had arrived right at the end of the Verona Opera season, which was being held in the Arena, but they were still doing the final couple of shows. We thought we'd go and see if there were any tickets available for the nights that we'd be in town. Luckily they had some cheapies right up in the stone seats available for both nights. It was a choice between Carmen and Tosca - and me being the opera expert chose Tosca. Tickets purchased and we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the shopping streets. We found a 3 store, and thought that we'd try to buy an Italian sim card for our wireless Internet dongle. It was a tough job as the guy in the shop spoke little English, and my Italian doesn't go beyond 'Good morning' and 'Thanks'.

We found a nice little piazza further along our travels, which had some nice buildings, restaurants and a big clock tower. It also had some nice little market stalls, so we had a look through them for a bit. By now, the heat and the sun had won and we decided to head back for the afternoon before having to head out again for the evening. We grabbed some gelato, my favourite one so far - lemon and white chocolate - and jumped on the bus back out to the hostel.

The Italian sim card proved to be a failure, I think our Internet dongle is sim locked to 3 in the UK, and we couldn't figure out how to get around it. It didn't help that all the instructions were in Italian! After some showers and changing into some fresh clothes it was back on the bus into town for dinner and opera. We went back to the piazza with the markets and restaurants for dinner, and after waiting for an eternity we were finally served. I ordered a drink that everyone else in the place was drinking; an orange concoction known as a spritz. It was just some orangey flavoured wine I think, although it was a little bitter. Dan ordered some weird salad type pizza - it was just a base with some raw ham and rocket and cheese on it. I had quite possibly the best calzone I've ever had. It had all sorts of good stuff in - the ricotta was best bit though. Yum - makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

After tea we walked down to the arena to find some seats for the opera. It wasn't allocated seating; you just turn up and plonk yourself down where you want. The lady at the ticket box said that if we arrived at 7:30 we should be fine as only 200 of the 1000 tickets for our section had sold. She was right. We got great seats in front of a walkway so we could lean back and not worry about any legs behind us. The opera didn't start until 9, so we had an hour and a bit of just enjoying the crowd, the scenery and the guys selling stuff. I read in the lonely planet that this arena can hold up to 30,000 people. It was massive and truly a fantastic place to see a show. I told Dan to think about how many other bums had sat on these seats, and what they would've seen back all those hundreds of years ago - Dan just thought I was being silly. There were also the guys who were selling drinks and ice creams. There was one particular man who was so loud in his "Birra, Acqua, Cola" that he could be heard from the other side of the arena. Then there were the two guys who sang "Birra, Acqua, Cola, Gelato" - the got the crowd clapping along. It was quite amusing. Then it was interesting watching those below us arrive for their reserved seats. Seats on the ground cost upwards of 150 Euros each (We'd only paid 23 each). We were told to dress casual - shorts and t-shirt, but I have no idea what the people down on the floor had been told to wear. There was a mix of ball gowns, slutty short dresses, shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and tuxedos. I was surprised when the show started that the no instruments in the orchestra were plugged into speakers - it wasn't necessary though with the amount of people in the band it was loud enough. Then I was even more surprised that none of the singers were miced up either. The men were a struggle to hear - not that it mattered anyway, we had no idea what they were singing about. Just after the opera started, the real show begun. Lightning and thunder all around the arena made it really spectacular. At the first intermission Dan and I took guesses as to what the hell was going on (as we were too cheap to spend 5 Euros on the guide). I guessed something about a gay affair and the wife was pissed. That theory went out the window when all of a sudden hundreds of kids come onto the stage and soldiers bashed them up. Then there were hundreds of priests and pope type people coming out of everywhere. It was really quite hard to figure out a storyline. We actually had to leave before the last act, which was disappointing, but 2 hours of opera was well enough for both of us. The last bus back to the hostel left at 11:15, and the show wasn't due to finish till 12, and a taxi would've cost us 20 Euros. We were happy with what we've seen, and when we finally get Internet we'll research what it was all about!

The following day, Sunday, we decided that we'd head back into town to have a proper look around. It was much cooler today than it had been the last couple of days. I think when I looked up on the temperature thing at the train station around 1 it was only 31 degrees. We spent the day just more wondering around looking at bits and pieces, and we also had a look in a few of the more expensive clothes shops just for a bit of fun. We checked out Juliet's house, and the Verona city walls, which Willy Shakespeare also wrote about. We had a look at a few churches, but didn't bother going inside. We also planned our train travel for the next couple of days and caught up on the world (Mainly the footy scores -Some gloating for me. As if the Demons would've beaten St Kilda anyway!!) in an expensive Internet café.

Mid afternoon we headed back to the sweatbox hostel and sweltered in the non air-conditioned heat and watched Braveheart. Dan downloaded a few Scottish themed movies whilst we were there and we're finally watching them now. I didn't realise that it was over 3 hours long. We'd planned to cook for ourselves tonight, but when we got to the supermarket it was shut. We took a break from the movie and went and purchased dinner and the only nearby place - a takeaway pizza place. Oh well, more Italian food for us. They sold pizza by the slice, priced on weight. We got a salami one, a mushroom one and a potato one. It worked out to be quite cheap. We walked across the road to the massive park and sat and enjoyed our dinner. We did an entire lap of the park to try and work off some of the cheese, and had a good laugh at the kids playing rounder's poorly. They just didn't seem to have any coordination at all.

After we got back to the hostel we watched the end of the movie, and Dan fell asleep. It was too hot for me to sleep so I just sat up and read until the early hours of the morning.

8am the next morning we were on a bus to take us to the train station. I'd only had 3 or 4 hours sleep so my eyes were hanging out of my head, but it was going to be worth it. We were taking a 15-minute train to Lake Garda - but we weren't going to see lake. Gardaland, which claims to be Italy's number 1 theme park, is also on the banks of the massive lake. We grabbed some breakfast at a local café (as well as picking up a packet of "Fonzies" - Italy's version of Twisties), and then jumped on the free shuttle bus to the park. We bought tickets and walked straight it. We had ridden 2 rides before the official park opening time of 10am. We were a bit excited, as it didn't seem that there was many people around, and that we mightn't have to spend half the day in queues. We got our bearings and found everything in the park. There was a ridiculous rollercoaster type thing, which was shaped like a big E, and it was slowly roll you across then under then across then under, 3 times - you'll have to see the photos to get the point. We only did that one once, as it was very s***. The water rides were the most popular of the day considering the heat. The log ride was fun (made even better by the guy behind us buying a coke from the machine in the queue to have it dispense 3 bottles - so he gave us one!), but not as good as the one at Thorpe Park, and the Atlantis ride won the award for the best looking ride, but overall was fairly disappointing. The queue for the Atlantis one was probably the longest one we stood in all day, about 25 minutes, but was refreshing by having the palm trees squirting a watery mist onto you as you waited. Dan wanted to catch the "Basketball on Air" show that was on at various times throughout the day. 4 guys doing acrobatics whilst slam-dunking basketballs. It only lasted 10 minutes, but it was quite entertaining. I think by the end of the day we'd done nearly every ride in the park at least once - with the exception of the kids rides and the big drop one - and we'd done the 2 big rollercoaster's about 4 times each!We really are big kids and had a blast, not leaving the park until about 10pm.

So that brings us to now, eventually sitting on a train, which I hope, is taking us to Bologna. It was due to leave at 11.47, but at 12ish when we were still sitting in the station an announcement was made and everyone started getting up and leaving. Some woman told us that the train was now leaving from platform 11. So we packed up our things and headed over there. We found seats, got settled, and then another announcement. Now the train would be back to leaving from platform 10, where we started at. So we packed up our things and headed back to the seats we were originally in. So not only was the train delayed by 30 minutes, we had to change trains twice!!! I read somewhere that although Italian trains are the cheapest in Europe, they are also the least reliable! That's been proven today! Dan's looking forward to eating spaghetti bolognaise - he's been holding off until we get to Bologna, I hope it lives up to his expectations!