Al and I spent our last night in Florence enjoying a fabulous salad from a great salad bar/shop near the apartment. It made a nice change for Al, who is vegan to have a wide selection of food choices! As luck would have it this Cafe was next door to a cute little gelato shop also selling a huge range of vegan options! I had Lime and mint sorbet with a mascarpone ice cream, delicious. Al had a really rich vegan dark chocolate one with Matcha sorbet, which she said was also delicious.
Al needed to be up at 4.45 to get her taxi to the bus station, bus to Bologna, flight home! I also got up with Al at 5 and then caught my taxi at 8 to the train station then my train to Verona. There is nowhere to put your cases on this train except on the overhead storage, so that was a fun time lifting a rather cumbersome, unwieldy 20kg case over passengers heads, most people just watched but the lovely young, glamorous Italian lady in the seat next to mine helped me in the end!
I love a train journey, so I was looking forward to spending a couple of hours watching the Italian countryside go by. I had been on the train for 45 mins and so far that has been virtually all through tunnels! 😳This is not helping keeping me awake! After Bologna the tunnels ended but by then the countryside had changed, lovely but much flatter, no hilltop towns or castles.
Verona is beautiful! I really had no idea what to expect, in my head it was smaller and darker in reality it’s a good size and feels very bright and airy, this may be because the buildings are not as tall as Florence and Rome. The pavements are made of light colour Marble, very fancy!
It is extremely busy here today. There is a Festival about Children and Play that has been running over the weekend, called “Festival Internazionale Dei Giochi in Strada” there are lots of families about with lots of different games and activities on in all the Piazzas for the children. It feels like a celebration and festival, such a lovely atmosphere. I walked through the town and if you just move back 1 street from the main parts it’s so quiet. The river is also very pretty a beautiful pale blue colour. I visited a few churches and the Duomo, prices and queues here are so much cheaper and shorter. I did walk past ‘The Balcony’ but it was mobbed so I’ll call in again tomorrow.
My hotel is nice, central and very old with an amazing old wooden door. The only problem is their WiFi is not working. When I spoke to the receptionist about it, she just shrugged and said her computer was ok so,it must be my iPad, when I went on to explain that it wasn’t working on my phone or my kindle I got another shrug. I was a tad irritated! I need the WiFi for this blog, my travel money card, booking trains, checking reservations etc etc. I contemplated moving hotels, but that seems a hassle, plus it would be quite costly. In the end I went back into town first I tried MacDonalds as I know they have free WiFi, but this one needs me to download an app or do it via a social media thing, which I obviously can’t do without WiFi! 😳I eventually found a nice restaurant that had decent free WiFi, they also happened to have the most gorgeous drink called ‘Hugo’ I think it’s Prosecco, some sort of syrup, but not sweet with mint and lemon!! It’s delicious and really refreshing, my new favourite closely followed by another I tried today, a Martini Bianco Spritz!!
What I’ve loved seeing today has been all the couples, old, middle aged, young and the families sitting relaxing over a meal, with drinks just talking and laughing, no mobiles, no tablets just being together.
It would seem that Sunday nights are for getting dressed up, lots of very beautifully dressed people, eating out or perhaps going to the Opera. It made for fantastic people watching.
I think Verona is a fabulous.
Ciao Bellas ❤️❤️
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