We took at little weekend trip to the city of Romeo and Juliet, Verona, with Derrick's mom and our friends Fabiana and Augusto. Apparently some sort of tornado had gone through Verona Friday night, but when we arrived on Saturday morning the weather was gorgeous.
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| See what I'm talking about with the gorgeous weather. |
One of the reasons we went to Verona, is that they have an old Roman stadium, very much like a mini Colosseum, and during the summer they still perform shows there. Of course we thought it would be perfect to watch a performance of Romeo and Juliet in the city where it all took place (well theoretically took place)! |
| The mini Colosseum =-) |
The even had an old house where you could see what might have been Juliet's balcony.
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| "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" |
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| People attach locks to this gate as a promise of eternal love |
You are also suppose to rub the right boob on this statue for good luck. We did not participate in this particular tradition.
They had a beautiful piazza with restaurants, shops, and vendors with booths selling souvenirs.
Derrick immediately noticed something else going on in this square....
That's right, even in Italy they're sawing those horns off, lol
They also had a very nice cathedral in Verona where we poked our heads in for a little bit, and listened to a few minutes of an Italian mass.
We also paid a visit to the "Tomb of Juliet". Again this is theoretical, in Verona you just have to go along with the fun and let your imagination guide a bit.
The Adige river runs through Verona. Across the river there is a castle and also ruins of a roman theater where they still do live performances. Verona is an excellent town to visit if you enjoy live shows. It also has good shopping, interesting architecture, nice restaurants.... overall its probably one of my favorite places we've visited so far.
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| Roman Theater |
In the evening we headed back to the stadium for our show, Romeo e Julietta!
The show we were seeing was an opera, and it ending up being a bit more modern than we expected. It also ending up being in French! So unfortunately our Italian friends couldn't help translate for us.
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| I don't remember the bat mobile being in Romeo & Juliet.... |
Since the stadium is outdoors you can run into some complications with the weather. Unfortunately about halfway through the show it started raining. We waited around for a while hoping it would clear up, but they ending up having to cancel the rest of the performance. Hopefully we'll be able to go back next summer, and actually see a whole show!
