Verona

After a quick train ride from Venice to Verona we arrived at our hotel near the railway station.  Much to our delight the hotel, Leon D’Oro, turned out to be lovely.  Such a treat after our last two pokey hotel rooms where the shower stalls were so small we could not bend down to wash our feet.  As much as we would have liked to stay in the room and luxuriate in the nice facilities, the desire to explore the city overruled. 

The fountains outside our hotel over the raging torrent of a Adige side canal

City wall

A simple supermarket on a nondescript back street in the most amazing old building

Verona seemed more of a ‘real’ city to us and less of a tourist Disneyland of the Italian cities we have visited to date.  Our first stop was the Arena, a 2000 Roman amphitheatre which is now used as a fantastic venue for opera.  Unlike the simple opera production we experienced in Firenze, the productions at the Arena are with all the trimmings and the outside of the amphitheatre was cluttered with pieces from the amazing sets.

Setting up for the opera in a 2000 year old amphitheatre

Some of the set pieces

Down the road from the Arena was Juliet’s Balcony.  Although Shakespeare set three plays in Verona (Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Taming of the Shrew), Shakespeare never visited the city.  But the city fathers were not going to let the facts get in the way of a good commercial venture; they bought the 13^th Century house of the Dal Capello family (similar name to Capulet), added a balcony and made a prime tourist attraction.  Would be Juliets can stand on the balcony and look for their Romeo in the crowds below.  Visitors rub the right breast of a bronze statue of Juliet for luck and the walls to the courtyard entrance are covered with love notes.

Juliet's balcony

Rubbing Juliet's breast for luck

The next morning we went to the Radio Museum just up the road from our hotel. It is located in a technical college and we had the place to ourselves.  Bob was in heaven with all the valves, vacuum tubes, Bakelite and tales of Marconi.

Radio Museum

We made our way to the Castel Vecchio, a Medieval castle on the banks of the Adige River.  It had wonderful Gothic architecture with M-shaped merlons running along the castle walls and the bridge.  It was a charming setting with a nice museum.

Walls of the Castel Vecchio

Medieval lances

Ponte Vecchio across the Adige

Clock tower

Looking down the Adige

The next day, while visiting the Roman theatre, we came across another great bridge, Ponte Pietra, a Roman arched bridge completed in 100 AD.  During WWII the retreating Germans troops had blown it up, leaving only one arch intact.  It was rebuilt but the different coloured stone shows the destruction done during the war.

Rebuilt Ponte Pietra

View from the Roman theatre

I liked Verona but after four big Italian cities, as beautiful as they were, I tended to look off into the distant hills and wish we could have explored more of the Italian countryside. - Next time.

 

Venice

An easy train trip from Florence to Venice.  I love traveling through Europe by train- so comfortable and so easy.  It was very exciting seeing our first views of Venice and its canals.  I remember passing by on a train in 1978 on my very first trip abroad and wishing I could have stopped in this amazing city.  Now we were here, nearly 40 years later.

Our first views of Venice

Grand Canal looking towards St Marks

Unbeknownst to us we had arrived on a big festival day, Festa del Redentore (probably why our very ordinary hotel was so expensive).  The Festa del Redentore is the oldest continuously celebrated festival in Venice.  It celebrates the end of the plague epidemic in 1576 and is an affirmation of life and survival.  The city was buzzing.  Everyone was gathering around St Marks Square and along the Giudecca canal to await the big fireworks display at midnight.  Boats of every shape and size were gathering in the lagoon as well.  It very much reminded me of the New Year’s Eve fireworks celebrations in Sydney Harbour.  We walked around until after dark taking it all in but we knew we would last past midnight to see the fireworks display and deal with the crowds so back to the hotel for a welcome sleep.

 

The crowds gathering for the fireworks

Festivities in every square

We bought a two day unlimited transport pass and hopped on and off the vaporettos (water buses) to explore the city.  There are no motor vehicles of any kind in Venice.  Everything comes and goes by boat and barge.  The canals are bustling with water traffic and just watching all this activity is full time entertainment.  When not on the water, we wandered around the narrow winding streets packed with tourists; sunlight never hitting the pavement. 

Bridge of Sighs and the crowds

St Marks from the water

The Basilica

  

 

Busy canal

Wakes everywhere

On day we decided to escape narrow crowded passageways of Venice and took a vaporetto to the Lido, the sand island on the Adriatic side of the Venetian lagoon.  This was a pretty spot catering for family holidays of sun and sea.  The long sandy beach (relatively rare in the Mediterranean) reminded me of the Jersey Shore of my childhood.  We had decided that if we return to Venice we would stay in the Lido where the hotels are cheaper and spaces more open and then ‘commute’ into the city.

Sandy beach of the Lido

On our last day in Venice we went to Murano, a small island northeast of Venice which is renowned for its glass factories.  We had a demonstration of some artisans making part of a quite ornate gold gilded chandelier and then visited the glass museum.  Glass making was moved from Venice to the island of Murano, about 1.5 km north of Venice, in the late 13^th Century due to the fire risk from the large furnaces in the foundries.

The artisans at work

Almost done

The quieter canals of Murano

 

 

Venice struck me as a grand old lady slowly decaying.  Magnificent houses and palaces were flaking away, their bottom floors closed up against the rising damp.  It was all quite fascinating but I found the streets a bit claustrophobic and a city surrounded by water but not really suitable for water sports.  The chop of the water from all the traffic made every boat mooring a nightmare of bounce and bang.  Still a very beautiful and fascinating place. 

Grand house with the bottom floor closed off

Moon rise over Dorsoduro

Sunset over St Marks

Firenze

I liked Florence.  It is one of those European cities in which around every corner is yet another awe-inspiring sight.  It is such a beautiful city sitting on the banks of the River Arno with arched bridges, cathedrals and great palaces dotting the skyline.

   

 

 

We arrived late morning from Rome.  Train travel is so easy in Italy, dropped off our bags and hit the streets.  We first came across Piazza San Giovanni with its exquisite Giotto Bell Tower and Cathedral (Campanile de Giotto) made of pink, green and white marble.

 

 

  

 

Next we made our way to Piazza della Signoria or Palazzo Vecchio, a beautiful, open 14^th Century square with an impressive crenellated fortress palace and dotted with old and new sculptures.  It is also the location for the knife scene in the movie Room With a View.  Bob had the movie on his tablet and we found quite a few of the locations from the movie (though the movie scenes were minus all the tourist).

Piazza della Signoria

 

Modern sculpture by the Dutch artist, Jan Fabre

 We returned to our hotel in late afternoon to freshen up for our visit to the Galleria dell’Academia.  We had bought advance tickets online because the queues are notoriously long for these art Galleries.  Galleria D’ Academia contains Michelangelo’s Statue of David which was a must see.  The rest of the gallery was filled mainly with 14^th Century religious paintings on wood.  

Michelangelo’s  David

Bob hamming it up

The next day we had tickets for another gallery, the Uffizi Gallery.  By this time Bob and I were getting a bit tired of endless paintings of the Madonna and Child.  We tried to appreciate them for their artistic merit but enough was enough.  There were some beautiful Botticellis though, especially Spring and Birth of Venus, and some great sculpture, mainly from the Medici collection.

Birth of Venus

Spring

‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition’

As a change from the religious art work we decided to give rationality and science some of our time.  We spent our second day at the Galileo Museum.  There were no lines or crowd at this fascinating museum.  It was filled with exquisitely tooled machines and instruments of brass, wood and marble which were works of art on their own.  There were astrolabes from the 14^th Century and maps and gloves from the 15^th – 16^th Centuries that were surprisingly accurate of North and South America.  I was struck by the instruments from the 2^nd Century BC which showed the earth as a sphere.  So much for the myth perpetrated by our primary school teachers that Columbus sailed the ocean blue thinking the world was flat!

Electricity generating machines from the early 19th Century

Microscopes from the 18th Century

The day before, we had passed St Mark’s Anglican Church.  This church was big with British ex-pats last century and now has a summer opera programme.  We decided to keep up with the Room with a View theme and enjoy some opera at an ex-pat church.  So in the evening of our second day in Firenze we went to a fantastic performance of Carmen.  We had great seats in an intimate venue.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Our final day in Firenze we went to the Leonardo Museum.  This is a museum that has made models of many of Leonardo’s designs.  It was another great science museum again sadly with relatively few visitors.

Model of Leonardo's tank design

That afternoon we made our way to Piazzale Michelangelo, a city square and park with wonderful panoramic views overlooking the city.  It is such a beautiful city!

 

 

 

So ended our visit to the beautiful city of Florence.  During our stay I made sure we went to the Mercato Nuovo and I rubbed the nose of the bronze pig to ensure we would return.