Verona - My idea of Italy!

After Rome, we headed north to see Verona. I had honestly not heard much about this city, but one of Jeff's colleagues, Sylvia, is from here. She raved on and on about it, so it convinced us to make a short stop and visit. and I am so glad that we ended up coming here! The city is beautiful. If I had a picture in my head of what Italy would look like, this would be it.

Here is a view from our balcony in our hotel.

We arrived around noon, so the first stop was lunch. Sylvia gave us a great itinerary to try and see the highlights in a day, as well as some great food recommendations. This was one of them. One of the things we have also learned along our tour of Italy, is that there are certain foods local to each region. Polenta is very popular in Verona rather than pasta. (They also served horse almost everywhere we went... but no need to discuss that because we didn't eat any of it!)

 

After lunch we wondered around town some... 

Verona also has a colosseum and it actively used by the city. The most famous of the events are the operas in the summertime. They played some music that evening from it and it was gave off an awesome vibe. I can only image what it would be like when you were inside it. We have been contemplating coming back for one of them...  

We saw the famous house of Juliet. Apparently if you rub her right breast it is considered to be good luck! 

And we wrote on the wall 

Jeffrey and Callahan 

24 - 04- 14

This is the actual balcony

Sylvia recommended going up to the castle... 
so we crossed the river and headed that way next!

The next day, the weather was pretty terrible. We started out strong and were determined not to let it keep us from seeing the sights... but turned out both umbrella's had small leaks and the rain was steady coming down.


So we lasted about about an hour and then found a great little place to taste some more wine :)

They had cheap good wine. You can't get much better than 3 euro house wines! I think we tried just about all of them on the board! We eventually found a favorite and got a bottle to take home with us. 

The food was equally good. We got our first taste of true tapas. You could pick bites here and there and mix and match. 

Despite the rain, we had a great time in Verona. Big thanks to Sylvia for the recommendations and convincing us to go for a day. It was topped off with some lovely afternoon cappuccino's compliments of the hotel.  Too cute!