May 27th, 2017 – Venice, Italy
Having spent a beautiful day and evening in Bellagio on Lake Como, we must now say goodbye. Our itinerary takes us today to beautiful Verona and then on to Venice. The drive from Bellagio directly to Venice would take us about 4 hours, so we decide to break the drive up with a quick stop in the beautiful city of Verona.
Before we can get our trip underway, we must first have breakfast in the beautiful little dining room at the hotel. A breakfast is provided with our room. The offering is quite nice. There is the traditional yogurt, pastries, breads, fresh fruit, juices and cured meats, but we are also treated to soft or hard boiled eggs. Trent, Elisa and I join each other for breakfast while Carolyn packs her “small” bag to get ready for the trip to Venice. When Trent, Elisa and I finish we go to check-out and load the car up while Carolyn has breakfast.
With our bodies now fully refueled, we set off on our European road trip. To get to Verona, we must first navigate our way out of Bellagio by going back down the narrow mountain road. This time we are leaving fairly early in the morning at a little past 9:00 am and fortunately for us traffic is sparse. However, there are more bicyclists on the road at this hour than there are automobiles. The Giro Di Italia bicycle race is going on right now, and it it passing near here. This seems to have inspired every amateur cyclist to hit the road. To bad for us they had to do it on this narrow mountain road. We in turn must dodge the cars that are dodging the cyclists. Once again, we make our way down into the town of Lecco without incident. As we reach Lecco, we change direction heading toward the larger city of Bergamo where we will pick up the Autostrada that will take us to Verona. After about 2-½ we are pulling into Verona. Both Carolyn and Trent have slept most of the way and as they awaken as we are pulling into Verona, the both say, “gee that didn’t take too long”. I say in my head, “of course not, you were both snoring”.
Verona is a very large city that has sprawled well beyond the walls and monuments within the ancient part of the city. We make our way through this sprawl with the ancient Roman amphitheater as our targeted destination. It is now about 11:40 AM and it is clear that many tourists have made the ancient part of Verona a key destination. It is crowded. As we drive, we pass near a McDonalds with its Golden arches blazing. Although none of us really care for McDonalds food when we are back home, we find ourselves yearning for some of this classic American comfort food. We pull in and immediately, we find that this McDonalds is not like the ones we have at home. This one has a McCafe in the front half of the store that has an Espresso machine that is huge. Also, the selection of pastries and cakes and tortes is huge. We struggle to make our way past it to the counter where we can order some burger and fries. Here the ordering process is different than we are accustomed to. We must first place our orders at computerized kiosks. The menu is mostly similar to what we see at home – with the usual suspects – Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, Fries, etc. We place our orders on the kiosks and are then issued a receipt with a number on it and we go to pick up our food at a counter that is more reminiscent of what we see at home. As we collect our food, we are are chuckling at the sight of us eating burgers and fries while we are traveling in one the the worlds best countries that is noted for its cuisine. Instead, we much on these burgers amongst the locals. Except for the language we could be sitting any any other McDonalds restaurant back home.
Once again being refueled, we are back in the car and quickly find covered public parking near the Coliseum. The space available is like the streets leading to Bellagio – narrow. I wedge the mini-van into the space and somehow contract my body so that I can get out of the car. We make the short walk to the ancient monument and stand i awe. Verona is home to one of the best preserved ancient amphitheater. This theater was built in 39AD.
It is rumored that it was constructed for the people of Verona when the nearby Bergamo Spartans – a gladiatorial team became dissatisfied with their ancient amphitheater in Bergamo. They had requested that the city of Bergamo build them a new one, but when the people declined, the team up and moved to nearby Verona, whose citizens were willing to take on the tax burden of building this lovely Roman amphitheater.
Perhaps I’ve taken some literary liberties here to highlight the point that there really is no future – it is simply the past repeated. What is the most stunning fact about this amphitheater that seats up to 35,000 attendees is that it is still in use today. It has been lovingly preserved – not restored. On this day, workers are preparing for a major performance inside of the arena. Think about this. This structure is almost 2000 years old and it is still serving the people of Verona just as it did in 39AD. In the states, we declare stadiums obsolete and demolish them after 50 or 60 years. It really is a crazy thought.
We could go into the amphitheater, but the line for tickets is long and we are short on time as we must arrive in Venice as a prescribed time to pick up the keys to our Air B and B apartment. When we were last here in 2009, there was no admission to the key sites such as the amphitheater and the cathedrals. Now the cities are searching for all forms of revenue. Residents and tourists alike must now pay for access – even for the public and many private restrooms. It is unfortunate.
After we see the coliseum we then make our way towards the home of Juliet – of Romeo and Juliet fame. You see, the old tale of Romeo and Juliet that is so cleverly told by William Shakespeare in the late 1500’s was actually influenced by tale of tragic love that was based on a true story here in Verona. The story of the feuding Montague and Capulet families actually took place. Juliet had been betrothed by her parents to another, but alas, she was in love with young Romeo. Like me, Shakespeare took some literary license with the original tale and his rebelling was a much bigger seller than the original tale – it is still read by virtually every high-school student in the world. When we last here, a visit to the ancient home of Juliet and its fabled balcony was somewhat of a side trip that was not on the key list of sights to see in this town. Once again, Rick Steves has ruined it (just kidding) this little alcove is now swarmed with tourists of all nationalities. Also, now for a few Euro’s tourists can pay for the opportunity to stand on the very balcony where Juliet sought out her forbidden lover chanting those immortal words, “Romeo, Romeo, where forth art thou…”. now today we get to see those words uttered in every possible language by shabbily dressed tourists. Somehow this particular site has lost a lot of its past charm – I feel like I"m in Disneyland.
Another interesting thing about the city of Verona is that they have done a very clever job of merging the new with the old. To get to the home of Juliet and many of the other ancient sites, you now navigate a wide pedestrian mall that is lined with high-end shops. It is sort of like a “Rodeo drive” of Beverly Hills fame has been transported to Italy. We make a quick stroll to some of Verona’s other key sites, its Duomo, the Ancient Roman stone bridge build in about 100BC – again it is still in use today. Those romans really built things to last back then. After getting about 15000 steps in with our walking tour of Verona we make our way back to the car so we can head on into Venice. This led will be about 1-½ hours to get us to where we will park outside of Venice. We will then need to take a couple of different modes of transportation to actually get to our apartment in Venice. Our host has suggested we consider parking in Piazzale Roma as that will be nearer to where we will need to catch a boat that will take us to the St Marks area where our Apartment is. Trent is driving us there on this leg and he does a great job getting us there. As we are a seeking parking, the place is a madhouse of cars everywhere. Clearly it will be crowded in Venice. We are promptly advised that there is no long term parking available here and we must head back to the Tronchetto area to park. So Trent manages to maneuver us through all the traffic so we can make a u-turn and get back to Tronchetto. We quickly find parking but getting out of the garage with all our luggage is a bit tricky. There is no signage anywhere directing tourists like us how to get to transportation that will take us into Venice. We finally figure out that we must buy a ticket for a people mover that will take us back to Piazzale Roma, which is were we just were. From there we can either take a private water taxi or the Vaporetto (public water bus) to our location. We opt for the charm and relatively in expensive Vaporetto. We must go to the Arsenale stop where our hostess Marta will be meeting us to take us to our apartment. It takes us about an hour but we finally get there. Marta is a young girl that works for a company that has about 100 different B&B apartments here in Venice. Our apartment is modest but located very near to St Marks square. We get settled and decide to head out to take is some of the sights. We stroll along canals and through different squares and then make our way out to the Grand Canal. We stroll past the Doges Palace and into St. Marks where we see the beautiful Cathedral.
Surprisingly, the crowds in Venice seem to have thinned a bit. It looks like some of the tourists from the 4 cruise ships that are in port have headed back to their berths for the evening. We welcome the relative calm that has begun to fall over the city of enchantment. Eventually, we find a restaurant – Vecio Canton that our hostess had recommended. We all cool down with some beverages. It seems that coldest beverage one can order in Italy is Birra ala Spina – or beer on tap. We all partake and welcome the refreshment. This evening, Trent and Carolyn both order the sautéed scallops as their starters, and for their mains Trent orders a steak with creamy green peppercorn sauce and Carolyn has the Spaghetti in meat sauce. Elisa has a salad as a starter and Spaghetti (gluten free) Carabonarra, a egg and cheese sauce with pancetta or smoked ham. I have a small pizza with spicy salami. The food is good, the water charming and the beers nice and cold. You can’t ask for more. We decide to skip desert in the restaurant and opt instead to head back St. Marks Square where we can sit and have a gelato.
We make our way back to the square that is modestly occupied by tourists and locals. Everyone is sitting at a cafe table outdoors. There are many that have live musicians playing contemporary and classical Italian favorites. It is interesting, the bands are positioned all along the square and each takes turns playing for the guest sitting before them. We hear Andrea Bocellis’s classic Conte Partiro about 4 times, each played by a different band somewhere along the large square. It is thrilling each time.
With desert finished we take inventory of our step count for the day – we are well over 20,000 steps as we call it a night. We are weary but happy. We did and saw a lot on a day that was punctuated with 4 hours of driving. No wonder we are tired.
That’s all for now. More later. Ciao!
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