Europe 2012 Day 14, Italy - Verona

Verona is a beautiful.  We arrived by train and took the bus to piazza bra.  The 2000 year old Roman Arena dominates the square.  It was built in the 1st century BC, the arena holds 25,000 spectators. It is the third largest amphitheater in Italy (after the Roman Colosseum and the arena in Capua) and is mostly intact. The outer wall was damaged in an earthquake in 1117, but still one section remains. It is built of square marble blocks of tiered seats. In the center is where the gladiator games, fights with beasts and other events were held. Its elliptical shape gives it perfect acoustics.  It is a beauty to behold. 

During most evenings in the summer, they still have performances at the arena.  Operas are performed withough additional speakers due to the near perfect acoustics.  Tthis picture shows some of the props from Aida outside of the Arena.

 As luck would have it, the day we visited Verona, the opera playing was Romeo and Juliette!  The stage before the performance began:

We explored the city visiting piazza erbe.  The centre of the square contains the monuments that symbolise the different rulers of Verona: the most famous is the fountain, built using a Roman statue during Scaligeri rule and later known as the Madonna Verona dating to 380 AD.  Yep, I reached out and touched it.

From the Piazza erbe you can see the Torre dei Lamberti. The medieval bell tower was started in the 12th century and was raised a few times after that until it reached its final height of 84 meters.

We walked over to the Piazza dei Signori, a small square surrounded by monumental buildings. In the center is a statue of Dante (who resided in Verona after he was kicked out of Florence for the writing of The Divine Comedy).

Being ever so the romantic, I had to stop by the house that is claimed to be Juliette's (since the story is supposedly based on a real family).  

There you can see her balcony and a bronze statue of Juliette.  

Legend has it that if you rub the breast of Juliette, you will find true love... So I did.

What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks....

And, like in other places where lovers visit....Locks...symbolizing eternal love:

So this is where I'll end my story of my 2012 trip to Europe....ending in the most romantic country in the world, (where I fell in love with the land) in Juliette's courtyard...with hopes of finding true love.  And wishes of true love to all those who placed locks here.

Europe 2012 Day 12, Italy - The Cinque Terre (part 2)

We got up this morning, had our cappuccino and headed to the harbor.  We were thrilled to find the ferry was  running and bought a ticket to Monterosso.

We weren't exactly sure where the ferry boarded. And as with all things Italian, the directions didn't quite give us the best idea of where to wait.  So of course we were in the wrong location.   But we scoped out the situation and were able to make the ferry no problem.

The views of the five towns were, as we expected, amazing from the sea.
 
Rio Maggiore and Manarola from Ferry (Rio Maggiore is on the right):

Corniglia from the Ferry.  Note the location of the train station at the bottom right.

 Vernazza from Ferry:

Monterosso from Ferry:

The ferry dropped us off in Monterossa.  From what we had read, there wasn't much to see there- as it was mostly (these days) a tourist town.  So we immediately hit the trail. 

This is the trail marking.  I often touched it as we went by.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps in hope of returning again and again to this trail.

First look back on Monterossa:

Close up of the beautiful blue of the water:

Hiking higher up...pass through vineyards:

Last look at Monterossa:

Looking ahead to Vernazza (see it peaking out on bottom?)

Over looking Vernazza:

Getting closer:

We went into town.  Vernazza was a very beautiful place.  We ate our snacks (peach and plum that we bought in town) along the path by the beach.  Then we hiked onward toward Cornilla.

Looking back at Vernazza:

Back on the trail from Vernazza to Corniglia:

View of Corniglia and Manarola (in the distance) from the trail:

Looking back toward Monterossa:

Overlooking Corniglia:

We hiked into town and stopped to take a rest at the courtyard near the church just as we entered town:

Because the trail was closed between Corniglia and Manarola, we decided to take the train.  Remember the picture of Corniglia with the train station at the bottom.  Well, we had 12 minutes to get to the bottom, buy our ticket and catch the train.  Trains usually run late in the Cinque Terre.  But today, the train ran on time and we ran into the station just as the train pulled away!  We had to wait for the next train.  So, we walked down to the beach, found some shade and just chilled. 

We took the train to Manarola, and grabbed a late lunch/early dinner there. The food was fabulous.  Then we walked back to Rio Maggiore.  

We had a fabulous "last night" in Rio Maggiore.  I'll write about that later.....

Europe 2012 Day 11, Italy - The Cinque Terre

July 23:

Cinque Terre- my heart belongs here.  There is something about this area that draws me in.  Every part of me screams that it is where I belong.  Beauty here permeates everything - the people, the language, the buildings,  and the landscaspe. The food is perfecto.

We will visit each of the five villages.  Riomaggiore is my favorite and luckily, where we stayed.  It has the proper mix of old and tourists. It is easy enough to get by with my terrible Italian but also it has a wonderful Italian village feel about it.

Today we explored Riomaggiore. We climbed to the highest point in town, looked over the village and the sea. 

From top of hill looking toward train station and water:

From top of hill looking down on village:

We went through the (rail) tunnel that connect the village with the train station and the path onto the next villages.  The tunnel is covered in murals (very hard to capture):

We then went onto via dell amore.  It is the path that connects Riomaggiore to Manarola.  It is named because when it was built, the young lovers who lived in Riomaggiore and Manarola would meet along the path to see each other and to court.  These days it is the place for lovers- symbols of love include etchings, locks and items tied to commemorate love.   As I walked through it, the emotion overwhelmed me.  I thought if I were to ever fall in love again, this is the place where I would come.

Manarola as viewed from via dell amore:

We wandered throughout it and admired the beauty of the village:

The cinque terre trail from Manarola to Cornilia was shut down.  But we managed to walk out for a bit and look back on the town:

We walked until the trail was closed - due to heavy rains and flooding of the mountain, obscuring the trail.  We came to the point which allows you to look back and see a fabulous view of Manarola:

  Afterwards we returned to Rio Maggiore and spent some time down by the docks:

I couldn't wait to explore the rest of the trail tomorrow.

Europe 2012 Day 10, Italy - Siena

July 22:
We decided to take the train to Siena. My supplier in Turkey had told me it was a wonderful place to visit. Bev had also heard from many people what a wonderful place it was to visit.  It is a walled Medieval city on top of a hill.

When we got off the train, we looked at the map in the tourist information office.  Since it was Sunday, the office was closed.  Per the map, we should take a winding road up the hill to the city.  Again, we saw no tourists hearing the same way we were.  View from the top of the hill looking out:

But after the twenty minute walk (as described in my book) we found the city.  As we walked about, both of us found it difficult to understand what all the fuss was about.

We entered il Campo, (the square) we saw the civic building and tower (picture) We both thought the square in Florence was nicer. 

We decided to see if we could climb the tower but the line was extremely long.  So, we went in search of il duomo (the church).  It is a beautiful church. The church was supposed to be built as the largest cathedral in Italy.  But then the bubonic plague struck and killed off one third of the population of Siena.  There was various works of art inside the church but we chose not to go in. We were pretty sure we weren't dressed appropriately per Italian church standards.

We made our way back to il campo.  When we got there we saw the line had been cut in half, so we got in it.  We asked the guy in front of us how the line had been moving and he indicated not at all. Since we had seen all we wanted to see in Siena, we decided to wait.  We talked to Aldo as we waited. He was born in Italy of Italian parents but they moved to Mexico when he was young.  He was an Italian instructor at University in Mexico.  He was in Italy taking a six week course for instructors.Every weekend he picked a different place to travel to.

Eventually, the line moved. What we realized is the opened it up to several people at once.  We climbed several flights of stairs to the ticket office.  There we were told to put our bags in lockers and pay the 8 euro fee.

We began to ascend the stairs.  The stairway was totally enclosed and no more than 40 inches wide.  By the time I made it to the first level, I was panicked.  I knew there were about 300+ stairs to ascend and there was no way i'd be able to make it all that way in the cave like stairs.  Bev felt the same way. Because I had paid Aldo's fee for him, he was reluctant to go on without us because he wanted to pay me back (he needed change).  We told him to go on and we would just rest for a bit and try to work up the nerve to go on.  He reluctantly began to climb- then came back down to tell us the rest of the steps, while as narrow were open.  So we began to climb.  Luckily we didn't need to use this:

When we reached the top, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of Siena and beyond.
In Bev and my opinion, a trip to Siena, without a climb in the tower, is a waste of time.  The view from the tower was breathtaking, though.

see the section of the old city wall at the bottom of this picture?