Heading south, an uneventful yet scenic train ride brought us out of the Dolomites and into the city of Verona, Italy. The old Roman town notable as the setting for Romeo and Juliet and as the home to the Coliseum-esque amphitheater called Arena di Verona. It was built in the first century and is still in use today. In fact, a month long opera festival was happening in the arena while we were there.
We had a chance to grab some scalped tickets to Aida, the only show during our visit, but passed them up when it seemed like it was going to pour rain. It did pour, both rain and hail, but stopped well before the performance began. There were massive lines to get in and we heard the seats were extremely uncomfortable for the 3+ hour long show so we didn't really feel like we missed out.
This is the only section of the arena's outer wall that still stands.
There were pieces of sets sitting outside the arena for the next show. They were huge and apparently a lot of murder/battles happens in the opera.
Our Airbnb was interesting and a learning experience. We did not know until we arrived that we were actually sharing the apartment with other guests. We each had our own bedrooms and there were, thankfully, two bathrooms each with a shower. The lesson we learned is to always really check the Airbnb listing carefully. Especially read the reviews. “Private Room” does not necessarily mean a room in an owner occupied house. We’ve got a few more places booked and hopefully they all work out as well.
It all worked out fine as there was ample room in the place. The other guests were a couple from Germany, Patrick and Sophie, on a short holiday specifically to see the opera. We got a little drunk and yelled about politics one night and watched Germany vs Spain another. It was good times.
The door to our Airbnb apartment. Just kidding. It is fun though.
A typical old town Verona street. Just about anywhere you go in Europe, you will find an "old town" area. Because Europe is old.
There are a few nice, big squares in the city and plenty of shops and restaurants throughout the tight streets. Along with our usual wandering the narrow streets of an old city, we visited The Giusti Palace and Garden. This is a lovely, multi-level neo-Classical garden in the middle of the city. The garden boasts a hedge maze, a tower, and a fire breathing face sculpture. Well, unfortunately it breaths fire no more. That would have been awesome to see though.
This thing used to shoot fire out of its face!
A lovely garden space. Mozart hung out here once, so that's cool.
We also walked to a lookout not far from the gardens. That is the Adige River that wraps around the inner city.
While Verona was very nice, the highlight of this stop was actually at a lake about an hour away. We didn't know at the time we booked our stay that a massive, temporary art project by famed installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude was going to be open to the public. The Floating Piers on Lake Iseo was a $16 million dollar project that was 46 years in the making and would only be in existence for 16 days. Through sheer serendipity, we would be in the area and we would go to there.
We awoke early to maybe beat the crowd and the heat. Well, it wasn’t that hot but there sure was a crowd. Our first train from Verona was not that full. But the transfer from Bresia to Sulzano was super packed. Luckily, we were two of the last few people on the outbound train. Still, we stopped for a half-hour one station from the town because Sulzano was too small to handle all the people.
Once in the town, we shuffled with the crowd to a long, globular line. It wasn't very organized so there was a bit of pushing and shoving and angry glares but the crowd was fairly passive. We began to wonder if it would be worth the wait and hassle. What would the experience be like with thousands of our closest friends? Can we appreciate this type of work in this environment? As it turns out, it was a fantastic experience. A unique experience. Only 1.5 million other people participated in the event.
This is what a line looks like in Italy. We couldn't figure it out either. It was a little over an hour wait to get onto the piers.
The entrance and exit to the installation were also covered in the gold fabric, helping to meld the onshore and offshore pieces together.
Yup, just walk out onto the water. It felt like walking on a tight trampoline. We had our shoes off most of the time.
It was a fairly long walk around the entire project - about 4.5 kilometers. The first pier reached from Salzano out to the large island in the lake. The gold wrapping extended along the waterfront sidewalk, past shops and vendors, then continued out to wrap a small island villa before turning back to the shore a bit further along the large island. Despite the large crowd, there was ample time and space to enjoy the work of art. Oh, who's that on that boat wading by? The artist himself - Christo!
Doc Brown made one last trip into the future to bring us walk-on-water technology. Great Scott!
Speed boats zipped around the installation making sure everyone was keeping safe. They would ride the nose right up onto the pier. It was very solidly built.
People would sit or lay down on the piers and some people even had picnics. You could not dangle your feet in the water or jump in for a swim. Workers on the pier kept a sharp eye on people getting too close to the edge.
It was a long day out in the sun. I think the whole experience took 4 or 5 hours (with a stop for beer and a meat plate in the middle). We were herded back through town to get on the train back to Brescia. There was a mass of humanity trying to get tickets so we just headed straight for the train figuring no one was checking anyway. We were right and, again, we were luckily one of the last few people on the next outgoing train. If you would like to learn more about The Floating Piers project, visit their very expansive website here.
Back in Verona we had a couple notable dishes, like a fruit and chocolate covered pancake one morning and some really good deep dish pizza for dinner one night. There was a lot of delicious, cheap local fruit available at a stand directly in front of our place which we enjoyed multiple times.
Drink wise, Verona is known for the wine Amarone. We had it at dinner one night and it was OK but there was also a free bottle of it in a trunk in our Airbnb. That was excellent! Side note, the trunk contained several cases of wine, free for consumption there. That was a nice perk.
Aside from an Oasis cover band concert keeping us awake one night, our time there was quite nice. The weather was lovely and warm. We felt very lucky to be a part of a unique art experience. The Italians in Verona were neither exceptionally nice nor rude in any way. Sort of indifferent to tourists I guess. They do dress very fashionably and there were beautiful men and women everywhere. Three nights were enough to give us a nice sample and it was soon time to move East to our next country - Slovenia.
