Verona

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.” 
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, set in Verona, Italy

Today, we are in Verona. We left the gutteral speaking Austrian's in Graz and have arrived in the house of the beautiful speaking Italians in this ancient city of Verona. I do not jest when I say this as the clear and contrasting differences between the sound of these 2 languages is profoundly evident - first noticed when my Austrian radio station changed to an Italian one as we drove into Italy.

We left the cold of Graz (8 degrees when we left) for the warmth of Italy (18 degrees now at 11.12pm) at about 10am. As mentioned yesterday, the drive was a mere 550 odd km's or about 5 hours. Easy peasy. As we left Austria, we went higher in the mountains and the temp dropped to 4 degrees then as we went down towards Italy, it rose to about 12 degrees. Cool. We stopped once on the way for an espresso and a sandwich at a truck stop off the motorway, in Italy. Screeds of Italians get off the motorway, grab an espresso up at the bar (picture lots of Italians standing up at the coffee bar, no one sitting) and are gone in 10 mins flat. Pretty cool. Not a milky coffee in sight. We arrived at our hotel at about 3.30pm

Espresso

After faffing around for an hour or two (checking Facebook, doing washing, having a cheeky whiskey, checking Facebook and checking Facebook again) we followed the hotel managers instructions to find a great place for dinner in the centre of Verona. We were about 10 mins out of town, so the plan was to park outside town and walk in. 

We wandered in on a balmy Autumnal evening. Verona is a lovely ancient city with a Roman arena smack bang in the middle of town. Its full of typical Italian style and class. And typical yummy Italian food.

Roman arena in Verona - its quite old

Ben encountered some resistance along the way

but managed to kick his centurion arse

For dinner, we had pizza, pasta, tiramisu and pinot griggio. Yummy. Not a bad price either. On the way back to the car, we also managed to squeeze in a gelato :)

Tortellini with sage and butter 

Our kiddies takings a stroll together in Verona

All in all, an uncomplicated and groovy day. We only have one day here as we are using it as a stop over on our journey to Cannes, where we are staying for a few days with a friend of ours. Its a shame its only a day but we cant do everything we want and go everywhere we would like to on this trip. We will just have to come back!

Cant wait to be back in France tomorrow - love that place. Its our favourite :)