Today we departed Milan again, this time for the City of Love, Verona. Again, I slept on the train ride, but I woke up just in time to see the beautiful countryside. There were fields of green as far as the eye can see, and after being in Milan and Florence for over a week, it was refreshing to see nature like that again.
When we got to Verona, we dropped our bags off at our hotel and went out to get lunch. I went to a tiny cafe near the hotel, where I got something similar to a puff pastry but with spinach inside instead of a dessert filling. After lunch, we went on a walking tour of Verona. Despite being one of the biggest tourist destinations in Italy, Verona is a very small city. It is protected by water on two sides and by a fort on the other two. I think its most impressive feature is the arena, which is like the Colosseum in Rome, but smaller and more in tact. It is a popular concert venue, which I thought was really cool. Many of the streets of the city, including the street with all the shops, had different colored marble, which our tour guide pointed out a little too many times.
It wouldn't be a trip to Verona without seeing the houses of Romeo and Juliet, so of course, we had to visit them. Romeo's home was tucked away in one of the quietest streets of the city, but Juliet's home, our last stop on the tour, was the real attraction and was packed with people. To get to Juliet's balcony, we walked through a little tunnel where the walls were covered with the names of couples that would immortalize their love by writing their name on the wall. I couldn't help but wonder if they were all still in love. Past the tunnel, we could see Juliet's balcony. On the walls were the letters to Juliet and locks with more couples' names. There was also a statue of Juliet that gives you good luck if you touch her right breast, so we obviously all jumped at the opportunity.
After the tour ended, we walked around on our own for a bit, where I got the most amazing gelato. They let me get as many flavors as I wanted, and then they shaped the gelato to look like a rose in my cone and it was so beautiful that I almost didn't want to eat it. After walking around and shopping, we found a place for dinner, where I had carbonara.
A few hours later, a few friends and I wanted to explore Verona at night, so we all met up and walked around the city some more. We ended up finding a bar to just chill at and talk. The bar had a big chalkboard so we wrote "Plus 3" on it. We also had a few encounters with the most persistent street vendors; they actually came inside the bar to try and sell us stuff. We ended up staying at the bar for only an hour or so, because the guy at the hotel front desk told us that he would be locking the doors at 1AM (he basically gave us a curfew), so we had to head back so we could get back to the hotel.
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