Verona

Looking down the river with old centre on right

Looking further around the bend in the river

Ponte Pietra

Ponte Pietra from out the front of the Roman Theatre

Sorry about the delay - but I had to get an assignment finished and submitted yesterday - so I ran out of time to get the post done. Anyway, we went to Verona on Wednesday. It is the destination that was furthest away and the train schedules meant that it was an early start. We left the house at 0630 to catch a train at 0655 which got us into Verona at 0920, with a nice 1/2hr change in Bologna train station, time enough to grab cafe & brioche! Unfortunately the next possible train would have got us into Verona until 1140! After arriving we had only about 1/2hr to wait for the open topped hop on/off bus - so we had morning tea.

Jacob on the river walk with St Anastasia in the bground

Church of St Anastasia

View of Ponte Pietra and Duomo bell tower from the Convent of St Jerome (looking right)

From same place but looking left

Now Verona, the city of those famous lovers Romeo & Juliet, is a very beautiful city - there is also a lot to see - and with the bus only stopping every hour a few priorities had to be made. The boys are both sort of over looking at churches and as we had gone thru the Uffizi Gallery the night before I didn't really want to spend too much time with them looking at art and they are boys, so the thought of a love story and love letters didn't seem right either on the account of "girl germs" and all. So our first stop was the Roman Theatre.

Bronze figure

View from the gardens to the side of the chapel - showing the Theatre in front.

The theatre with the Church of St. Siro & Libera on the left

The chapel of Convent

Convent cloister

The convent with the old seats of the theatre in front

During the summer in Verona there are two different festivals, at the Roman Theatre there is a series of plays, Shakespeare as well as modern dramas and at the Arena it is Opera season. As a consequence the Roman Theatre was all decked out with staging, seating, lights, cables.... it would have been good to be able to attend it in the evening, the boys even wanted to stay to see the play. The theatre was built on the river sometime towards the end of the 1st century, with the stage at the river end and the seating going back into a rather substantial hill (Again - European hill, not Australian hill). Over time it was built upon and houses/churches completely covered the seating area in the 10th century. It was "discovered" by a wealthy merchant in the 1800's who bought all the land, demolished most of the houses and excavated the theatre, which was continued by the city of Verona who purchased it in 1904. At the back, built on the tallest part of the theatre at the end of the 15th century, is the Gesuati Convent of St Jerome, which has excavation work through to the old roman theatre throughout it.

View up towards the Sanctuary on the top of the hill

The city wall and one of its gates.

Excavation in the middle of the street, near where we got lunch

The priests that lived in the convent cared for the infirm, producing and distributing free medicine as well as making perfume and liquor! The Convent houses the Archeological Museum which collects and houses monuments from Verona's Roman past. Housed there are ancient pavements, Roman sculptures, Roman & Etruscan bronzes, glass ceramics. In the cloister area and to the side of the chapel are a number of funeral/grave inscriptions. The Convent's chapel was frescoed by Giovanni Caroto in 1508. In addition, another church (of St Siro and St Libera) sits in front of the convent.

By the time we climbed like mountain goats up and down stairs, around ruined pillars etc the hour was almost up. We had just enough time to walk down the road a little to the Ponte Pietra and take some photographs of the area. Our next stop was on the other side of the river in 'old Verona' at a stop where we could change to the other bus line. We took the opportunity to grab some lunch (yes, thats right the boys had pizza - again!) as there was a 20 min wait and sat eating it while looking at the San Fermo Maggiore Church.

Church of San Fermo Maggiore

When the bus for the other line arrived the boys were beside themselves in laughing at it - it was a "convertible bus"! This took us on a meandering tour through the east and west parts of Verona - like Berlin, Verona was once split in two - with Napoleon on the east side and Austria on the west. We went past the monastery of San Francesco al Corso, where the final scenes of Romeo & Juliet's story are said to have occurred and where her grave is located. The story of Romeo & Juliet had been told and written many times before Shakespeare finally got hold of it and made it famous. It is first credited to a soldier who wrote a sad story of lovers from warring families as a novella during a lull in some fighting. He apparently showed this to an archer who was from Verona - who told him the even sadder tale of young lovers in Verona; he then amended his novella! We didn't stop, but continued on up into the hills to Santuario Madonna di Lourdes - the Sanctuary. Where we stayed for about 5-10min for the fantastic views back across the city. Photography was a bit limited due to the 10 foot wire fence and all the shrubbery!

The 'convertible bus'

View of Verona from the Sanctuary

We came back down the hill and through the old medieval section of the town past the Duomo, through Piazzas Erbe and Signori and stopped at Piazza Bra where the Arena and Palazzo Municipale (Town Hall) were. The area is ringed with cafes and has a nice garden with fountain in the middle - so we found some granitas and sat in the park for awhile. The boys wanted to go into the Arena, but the line was a bit long and moving very slowly - so I promised the Colosseum in Rome instead (at least I can pre-book tickets for that!).

Piazza Erbe

Torre dei Lamberti - they took awhile to finish it and didn't even notice that the Venetians were invading!

The Arena

Arena and Town Hall with garden on left

The garden/park where we sat to eat our granitas

When the bus arrived we went off for our last stop of the day as we needed to be back at the station a bit after 4pm for our train. So, the boys decided they wanted to go and see inside the Castle - Castelvecchio. It was built in the 1350's to guard the river and was badly damaged by Napoleon and his cannonballs, followed by WWII bombings. It was refurbished in the 1960's with glass panels put over cannonball and bomb damage and bridges built over exposed foundations. It houses the main Verona museum - so we took a look. There was once again plenty of art, but there were also a number of church bells, and the *best* thing of the day (according to the boys) a display of armour, swords and other assorted weapons. We were able to go right up to the top of the castle walls and across to one of the other towers, where there was a lovely little garden hiding.

Ponte Scaligero - a part of Castelvecchio

Castelvecchio and Ponte Scaligero

Main courtyard of the castle

A walk along one of the walls

Just outside the Keep door onto the walls - with Ponte Vittoria in the background

The prerequisite gelato followed the castle and the bus out to the train station. But, the adventure did not end there - NO - we got caught up in a problem with the train to Bologna. It was supposed to leave at 1626hr but that time came and went and although there were announcements in Italian about it, all I could glean with my very very limited Italian was that it was 'late'. Eventually they pulled up an empty train and loaded us all on - and we sat there - some poor conductor lady came along and was being yelled at by people left and right. I asked if it was the train to Bologna as that was my prime concern! So eventually we left at 1708 - which was when the next train had been due to leave. We chugged along and then suddenly we stopped in a small little town (can't even remember its name) where they turned off the train air conditioning, but not the lights..... and there we sat for about 15-20min!!! No announcements, no information..... from what I could see out the window it looked like they were shunting the engine at the front. Anyway - we suddenly started moving again - but with no aircon! Luckily the heat of the day had disappeared and it was not too uncomfortable with the windows open - just noisy. The people in the carriage with me were pretty concerned by this stage as we were almost an hour late - we'd already missed our connection to Florence, but I knew that there were trains I could catch every 1/2 hr or so from Bologna, but most of them needed to be in Bologna to get the only evening fast train to Naples! The blessing was that Jacob was SO tired, that he fell aslep on my arm after we left Verona and didn't wake up until I woke him as we came into Bologna - Ethan also slept some of the way - so at least I didn't have to deal with a fractious 4 year old! Anyway, we arrived an hour late and transferred our ticket to a later train with no problems, putting us back into Florence at 8pm.

A fresco dating to the 1300's

One of the many pieces of art in the Castle

and another - we didn't really get to see the later works as we needed to catch the bus.

So, Mother, apparently the "Solomon Curse" of transportation coming into Bologna from the north continues! (In 1981 it was just north of Bologna, heading south that our rental car was filled up with Diesel instead of Petrol and Dad had to siphon it all out of the tank!) Hopefully this will not happen tomorrow on our return from Parma or on Friday when we come back from Milan!!!

Just so that you get an idea of the size of these swords - Jacob is over 110 cm tall