Verona just popped out at me on the map when I was looking at the route to Mandello, only two hours from Parma, so I thought I'd go by and take a look at the city where Shakespeare set the famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

Verona, built in the crook of a winding river and filled with cobblestones and castle walls, is the most beautiful city I've ever seen.

Never mind Juliet's house, which is filled with tourists and love graffiti. Some people disapprove of the graffiti, but I think it's sweet. Imagine this statue pictured left, in a small square just filled with the kind of stuff in the photo below, from floor to about 10 feet up the wall.

I was sitting near a sweet young Italian couple, both blond and she with the greenest eyes I've ever seen, watching the tourists take photos with the statue of Juliet, and watched them scratch vows into the wall. It was a serious process, a turning point to their relationship. Imagine such romance! I hoped they would get married, and some day, in a few years, return and find their inscriptions miraculously intact.

In the afternoon I walked from the central square, lively with a marketplace that was fun but that really ruins the asthetics of the old city center, past the Roman ampitheater to the castle of Romeo and Juliet fame. Now it's filled with art, but some of the frescoes are intact.

By evening the whole world was out strutting about the streets of Verona in their finest or coolest or sexiest look. Women of 20 flitted about in tight jeans and more makeup than a runway model. Middle-aged women were generally more subtle, but still quite elegant, as were the elderly, who favored furs.

It makes a traveler feel downright frumpy.

 

 

 

.

Verona downtown, the Roman Ampitheater.

Yum.

Piazza Bra: View from the top of the ampitheater.

The frescoed apartments belonged Romeo's family.

Riverside.

Inside the ampitheater.

So... on my way back to the hostel I heard some churchbells ringing, looked into the churchyard and there were these guys, plus three more, pulling on the ropes. Turns out they're professional church bell ringers, an art form that originated in Verona. I got out my video camera and started taping. The man on the far right is the teacher of Verona bell ringing school and he let me give it a try. I can't wait to figure out how to put digital video on the site because this is really fantastic.

< previous | next >