From my apartment in Vicenza, Padua and Venice were short train trips to the east. To the west, the same train takes me to Lake Garda and Verona. This is quite a line to be on. Trains are, obviously, the best form of transport ever invented: from the Japanese bullet train to the Andean Explorer in Peru, from Amtraks in Arizona to sleeper trains in Serbia, some of my best travel experiences have involved simply sitting back and watching the world rattle by outside my first-class compartment window. Let me take a brief moment to acknowledge and promote The Man In Seat 61, the absolute bible of international train information for me and for many other travel nerds like me. It's always worth a read.
Lake Garda, much loved by the Roman poet Catullus, is Italy's biggest lake. I took a long walk along the south shore from Peschiera to Desenzano. There was also a detour north into the Sirmione peninsula, for sightseeing and chips. In the summer the lakeside resorts are hot and crowded, but right now they're pleasantly warm and fairly quiet.
Verona, meanwhile, boasts a Roman amphitheatre built in the year 30AD that continues to host live concerts to this day. I didn't manage to get to La Scala in Milan, and I would have gone to the opera in Verona if they'd been showing anything I'd at least heard of, but they weren't. (Verdi's 'Stiffelio', anyone?)
From a tourist point of view the main cultural attraction of Verona is that it's the location for a novel by Luigi da Porto (1485-1529), based on a story called 'Mariotto e Ganozza', in which he moved the location from Siena to Verona and changed the names of the protagonists so that the title became 'Giulietta e Romeo', which as we all know was later made famous in a song by Dire Straits.
Today two of Verona's main tourist attractions are 'Juliet's balcony' and 'Juliet's tomb', two locations that have absolutely sod-all to do with 'Romeo & Juliet' but which have nonetheless been leveraging money from gullible tourists for decades (in the case of the balcony) and even centuries (in the case of the tomb). I am a gullible tourist and I did pay to see the tomb, because it's in a quiet little museum with plenty of other things on offer. But the queue for the balcony was huge - I had inadvertently arrived on All Saints' Day, which is a public holiday in Italy - so I didn't bother with that.
Shakespeare never came here, indeed he never left England, but still he chose Italy as the location for more of his plays than any other country, including the British Isles. (That's if you don't count the history plays, where the locations weren't really a choice.) In part this reflects the deserved dominance of Italian culture at that period of history, although of course Italy didn't become a unified country until 1861. I suppose the Italians are like us Brits, in that their days of dominance are very much behind them now. But there is, as Adam Smith said, a great deal of ruin in a nation. It's still a good place to be.
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| Nearing sunset on the south shore of Lake Garda |
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| Desenzano del Garda, after sunset |
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| 'Juliet's tomb' in Verona |
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| Roman amphitheatre in Verona |
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| Edd vs Food #139 'Dolce Vita' focaccia sandwich from La Figaccia in Verona. Prosciutto, Gorgonzola blue cheese (you can't see it but it's there), rocket. I think I need more focaccia in my life. Sourdough and ciabatta are history. |
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| In Verona: the Castel San Pietro, from across the Adige river |
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| Reverse view of the picture above. This blog is dedicated to the memory of my dear aunt Dianne, who passed away late last year. She was a faithful follower of my blog and she herself travelled extensively with my uncle David. Many thanks to David for Italy hints & tips. |
