7 Hours in Verona

Verona is known as the city in love, and was thus decked out for Valentine's Day. All that aside, it’s one of my new favorite places. I’m not sure I can justify that statement because I was only there seven hours and barely scratched the surface of it; but we hit enough of the main attractions, and enough of the non-attractions, that I think it’s fair to say I got a feel for the city.

We rented a tour bus since there were enough people going to make it cheaper than taking the train. Since there were us 16 girls, 3 staffers, a few of the local missionaries, and about 15 Italians, it was a busload. All the Italians went with us because the church in Pordenone offers free ESL classes to anyone: a great opportunity to make friends with people without forcing anything on them or making them feel uncomfortable.  Another way of reaching out to them was inviting them to go to Verona with us.

For the two hour trip, I sat next to a woman from Brazil, actually. She moved to Italy four years ago, so English is her third language. She’s coming along, and definitely speaks more English than I do Italian, but....not much. It was quite challenging, and most every conversation ended in laughter because we couldn’t get our points across very well. We did get to know each other despite, which was cool. Though I had planned on using the bus ride as a time to catch up on sleep, it was worth it.

Our rockin' staffers! Jana, Garrett, Caitlin

When we got to Verona, the sleep-loss didn’t matter anyway thanks to the adrenaline of a new place and lots of things to do. The first stop was the bathroom. I mention it because I used a squatty-potty for the first time ever.

Totally rocked that squatty-potty.

Moving on. It was just a hop, skip, and a jump to the colosseum, which is basically in the center of town. It’s massive and beautiful and amazing (if I think that, I can’t wait to see the one in Rome). We climbed up a bazillion of the benches/stairs to get to the top, where we ate our lunch looking over the arena and listening to the lesbian-rights demonstration going on behind and below us in the street. Tuning out the protestors, I imagined people getting killed in the arena, people getting proposed to, and Cold Play performing like they have in the past.

The next tourist destination we hit up was Juliet’s house, and the famed balcony overlooking a courtyard that is filled with people writing notes on the walls or making out. It was cool because it’s famous, but that’s about it. What I enjoyed loads more was climbing the bell tower. It was 368 steps to the top (major quad-burner) and the view of the city and surrounding hills would have taken my breath away if it hadn’t already been gone from the climb. After that, Mikaela informed me we are climbing the Eiffel Tower when we go to Paris—which has something like a thousand stairs. My experience with the bell tower makes me want to pack running shorts for when we do Eiffel.

We hung out in the market for a while with various students and Italians, but then got separated so we (Mik and I, duh) decided to strike out on our own. We headed across town and over the river, at which point we noticed a rather grand looking house on a hill with some of those pretty classic Italian-looking trees. The kind of scene you’d see on a jar of tomato sauce.

Setting as much of a course as we could, we took any streets that headed upwards. However, as we climbed higher, through streets that wound up the residential area, we got a little distracted by what looked like a tractor path. It turned in at a church, but then went past it with high stonewalls on either side. To the left there was an olive grove. To the right, when Mik climbed up the wall, was nothing but a view of the whole city. We kept walking, though, until we saw a sign that said we were in Parco della Mura. There was another path that went between two, tiered fortress-like walls with watch towers. Since there wasn’t anyone around, except the occasional local walking their dog, we explored the towers, climbed olive trees and just generally enjoyed looking out over the city from a semi-rural vantage point. One of the walls we climbed up involved scraped elbows and knees (I wouldn’t be surprised if Mik still has thistles in her hands), but the view from there was amazing. We were in what was probably a private olive grove, but we chilled there for a while. The bells below us in Verona were ringing, and it was one of those moments of actualization: after all the working and dreaming, we made it to Italy.

Though beautiful, the ringing bells reminded us we needed to get back. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and we still needed to get gelato. And pizza. And search for the one clothing outlet that I wanted to check.

All of that was accomplished in just enough time for us to get back to the meeting-spot under the grandiose revolving red heart in the center of town.

On the bus ride back, I was very antisocial and not only sat next to Mik, but put my earbuds in a listened to music the whole time.

I was rather exceedingly tired. A lot of climbing and adventuring had gone on for a girl wearing boots and a skirt. However, during the bus ride, I still came to two conclusions. First, I am really, really not used to have so many friends my age (not to mention all girls). Everyone here is 18-21, the majority being 19-20, I think, so very close to me. More than that, though, I’m not used to being with them...all the time. There’s no such thing as alone, even in the bathroom. To someone who’s used to being alone for at least a couple hours a day...it’s weird. But good—so very good. Good to get out of my comfort zone, even if I feel claustrophobic sometimes.

Second, bus drivers are my new heros. It takes mad skill to navigate a tour bus on some of the teensy Italian roads. Sometimes, we’ll literally be 3 inches from a building on the right, and then meet a car on the left with just a few inches to spare...it’s impressive. But then, so many things are impressive here.