Page 25 of 39

Romantic Verona & Juliet’s House

30 October 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Verona is a beautiful city with a medieval old town built between the meandering Adige River, making it seem like the city is an island. The architecturally fascinating bridges over the Adige abut the Museo di Castelvecchio were built in the 1350s by Cangrande II. Severely damaged by Napoleon and WWII bombings, the fortress was reinvented by architect Carlo Scarpa, who reconstructed bridges and created a home to a collection of statues, frescoes, jewellery, medieval artefacts and paintings.

It’s probably more famous for being the setting of Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet” and a 14th-century residence with a tiny balcony overlooking a courtyard is said be “Juliet’s House.” We could not visit Verona without visiting this place.

Juliet’s house is truly a spectacle, as you enter a tiny courtyard, the first thing you see is a wall covered in graffitti (names and dates of visitors), the courtyard is full of tourists shouldering each other in the tiny space trying to take selfies with the well-rubbed bronze of Juliet. It seems it’s tradition to rub her breasts!!! Above you is the famous balcony, tourists taking their turn to have pics taken against the ‘romantic background’. The tour of the house was a guided one with a waiting list of over 1.5 hours – despite there being any actual evidence of this being “her house”.

The Verona Arena is a huge Roman amphitheater, which currently hosts concerts and large-scale opera performances with seating for 30,000 people. Built of pink-tinged marble in the 1st century AD, it survived a 12th-century earthquake to become the city’s legendary open-air opera house, remaining external supports have been retained and are extremely well preserved.

The buildings of the city are in narrow chequered streets and tiny plazas, full of old external decorative artwork and surrounded by Roman walls. It is a bustling city, market stalls aimed at tourists, antique shops aimed at antiquarians and designer shops aimed at those with large wallets!!

Fortress Walls

The City’s Buildings The Ampitheatre

Juliet’s House

And finally, the most wonderful cake shop ever……….

Criss Crossing Lake Gard – Part 2 – Malcesine and return

29 October 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Malcesine Port

The ferry landed at Malcesine in time for our picnic lunch, where we were joined by a fairly inquisitive and friendly duck. We then walked up though the old town the 10 minutes towards the first cable car station, just a short few minutes. We transferred to a second cable car that rotated as we travelled up. We finally reached the top after 20 minutes in total, and what a view! Monte Baldo is used for skiing in the winter and hikers in the spring, and by paragliders all year round. The views were spectacular as you will see.

Monte Baldo – Cable Car and Views

At the Top! Evening Return Journey

Criss Crossing Lake Garda – Part 1 – Going north

24 October 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Our ferry journey up the Lake to Malcesine.

One easy way of seeing all the villages that are Lake side is to take the ferry…. which we did one day. We left Peschiera at 9am, stopped at Malcesine at the top of the lake at 12.30pm and after a picnic lunch took a cable car to the top of Monte Baldo, we returned to the boat for 3.45pm and were back in Peschiera for 7.15pm! A long day but so worth it. Monte Baldo was 1800m above sea level; we looked down on the lake, birds and paragliders as well as the odd cloud. This is the view of the northern end of the lake.

On the way up the Lake we sat on the top deck of the ferry but coming back we sat downstairs on the water level and got a totally different perspective. You will see that the Lake is blue, calm and clean and the properties alongside the lake are simply stunning. This blog will mainly be images of each village or town that we stopped at or things we saw along the lake side. Hope you enjoy them!

Leaving Peschiera

Lazise

Bardolino

Garda on Market Day

Portese

Salò

Gardone Riviera (home to one of the largest hotels we have ever seen!!)

Not this one or the next……….

But this one…..……simply called “The Grand Hotel”

Maderno

Gargnano Brenzone – last stop before Malcesine

Night at The Opera in Bardolino

23 October 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

One evening we went to an Italian Opera concert, just two singers and a pianist and a selection of well known songs from operas; it was held in a decommissioned church where the sounds were fabulous. The selection included arias from La Boheme, Romeo & Juliet; Marriage of Figaro; La Traviata; Rigoletto and Don Pasquale.

It was a relaxed evening, the Soprano (Elisabetta Dambrouso) was elegant and had a beautifully crisp high voice; the Tenor (Eduardo Rampoldi) was complimentary in duets and fabulous on his own and the pianist (Nicolas Dal Cero) was brilliant and amusing with his animated manner and movements. The two singers were as emotional, both vocally and physically, as you would expect. The evening was a brilliant introduction to famous songs you would recognise but meant you didn’t have to sit for hours to hear them!

We also spent a few hours wandering around Bardolino again before the event, this particular day it was a little cloudy, but the views were just as spectacular.