In Love with Verona

  Verona, Italy
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

We woke up to our last morning in Italy and made the most of the fantastic breakfast included with our hotel - fresh baked croissants with a huge range of jams and fruit preserves, proscuitto ham sliced paper thin, several kinds of cheese, museli, yoghurt, fresh fruit and cafe au lait served in huge, bucket-size jugs....beautiful! The Italians definitely do appreciate good food, and we appreciated their appreciation.

Gabrielle and the Rose

The plan for today was to drive back over the border to Switzerland, but as we happened to be passing by Verona, we thought it was too good a chance to pass up and decided to stop and explore the city, especially since Gabrielle had been repeatedly quoting Romeo and Juliet and making 'In Fair Verona, where we lay our scene...' references ever since we discovered that it was on the way. From the outskirts as we drove in, the city didn't look particularly fair, just sort of smoggy and industrial, but as we got closer to the town centre, we began to see the charm that Shakespeare had talked about. The beautiful architecture and bustling street life with beautiful people blended with modern designer stores, street performers, art and sculpture to make the town centre a buzzing, intoxicating place, even in the heat of the day (high 30s Celcius).

Charging Gladiator

We made our way past the Roman era arena, surrounded by people in gladiator costumes and huge plaster roses, props for the opera to be staged there the next night, and meandered towards the main piazza. We had heard that the Torre Dei Lombardi, a several centuries old tower, was open to the public and could be climbed. We paid our student discount admission (love those student id's!!) and climbed the steep, winding stairs to the top of the tower. If we weren't already puffing from the climb, the views were breathtaking, we could see for miles across the tiled roofs, cathedrals, piazzas, towers, bridges and arena below, and we stood for ages looking out at the vistas before we reluctantly made our way back down.

View over Verona

On the way out of town, we realised we were low on gas, and needed to stop for some. Of course, at this time of the day, around lunchtime, everything in Italy shuts down for at least two hours. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, but it just wasn't our day, and it seemed the petrol pump fates were against us. The first automated pump we tried wouldn't take credit cards. Moving on, we tried one further down the road. This one ate the credit card, then, just as we were starting to panic, spat it back out on the ground and refused to give us any gas. Undeterred, but a little annoyed by this point, we tried a third station, and this time put in money. The only euro cash we had with us was our emergency 50 (about $100 New Zealand), but we decided this counted as an emergency, and put it in. The machine took it, and a balance came up on the pump. So far, so good. We tried the pump. Nothing. We wiggled it, pushed different buttons, cursed at it a little, but to no avail, the gas was not coming. We pushed the 'cancel' button. Nothing. We pushed some more buttons, and got a receipt saying in Italian what we assumed to be 'present this to the cashier for your refund'. Great. The machine had our money, we had no gas, and the store was closed for another 20 minutes. We were a bit stuck, so we opened all the windows and resigned ourselves to waiting. Time passed. The temperature continued to rise, and the gas fumes were starting to get to us. Opening time came and went. A sympathetic Italian man asked us in English what the problem was, and we explained that we were waiting for the gas station attendant to return from lunch and give us our money back. He nodded sagely, then said matter-of-factly, "It is too hot for Italians today. Maybe at 3pm he will be back".

We waited some more. Eventually, more than an hour later, the gas station attendant appeared like a green-uniformed angel and gave us our money back, helped us figure out the pump, and sent us on our way at last. Arrivederci, Italia!

Lugano at Dusk

We stayed on the autobahns and made it out of Italy without any more trouble, meeting up with Mike, Marla and Nathan in the lakeside town of Lugano, Switzerland. Being so close to the border, it had a very Italian feel to it, and we made the most of it by going out for a pasta dinner in the piazza at sunset, then getting gelatos all around and strolling along the waterfront as the heat of the day finally started to fade. Bellissimo!

All our best from Switzerland

Dan and Gabrielle