Em in Italy...: "REBELIOUS SUBJECTS, ENEMIES OF PEACE... "

"...throw your mistempered weapons to the ground!"
It was about six years ago when I angrily yelled these words of Shakespeare "in the streets of Verona" (which was actually the mpr of Leal Elementary) as Prince-ss Escalus. Hehehe, well, you'd only know if you went to Leal with me six years ago...it was our Romeo and Juliette play! And here I am again, yet for the first time in Verona's streets, where Romeo and Juliette (which is actually spelled Guilietta) fell in love and tragically died. Well, I'm back at the farm now, but I was there yesterday and I had the best time in Verona...it was ridiculous!
Verona was only the first of the famous cities that I visited, but I have a feeling it will be up there as one of my favorites no matter what.

So basically our trip started at 10:00 am.
Lisa and I took the train from Rubiera (20 min drive from the farm) all the way to Bologna. Then we transferred to Verona. I am not going to try to explain how beautiful and cute the city was. The best I can do is show you:
We ate pizza to fuel up for our adventures...the three hour train ride had really drained us hahha.

After a whole pizza each, I think we were now super excited to discover the city!

First we went to see "La Casa de Guilietta," where Romeo climbed up her balcony to profess his love. Oh but wait, Romeo and Juilette are fictional characters! Heehehe, forgot that didn't you?! Yeah, but someone decided to to make some money off of lame romantics/tourists like myself. And that's why "La Casa de Guilletta" is in quotes, it's only a hypothesis as to which house Shakespeare might have drawn his imagination from for the famous setting of the love story. It was awesome though. Lovers and couples come from everywhere come to immortalize their love for whomever, along the walls beneath the balcony of Juiliette.

Everything is legal here...look at all this vandalism. Lisa and I took this chance
to carve our names in the walls as well!

Someone wrote a sad love letter to Juliette or his girlfriend...it was quite confusing, but it sounded quite bitter sweet. It held the key to a lock that was on the wall of a bajillion locks that couples wrote their names on together..

oh and it's apparently good luck to rub the right breast of the Guilietta statue in the courtyard...Lisa and I were already foolish enough to be here so of course we did that too.

Then we went up to the watch tower in Piazza del Urbe; there are many Piazzas in the city and they are basically square plazas.
Here's the view...we climbed all the way to the top.

Also on the way climbing down the stairway we ran straight into a pigeon. so freaky... somehow it got into the tower. hahaha

Then we went into a fountain!

Then we spent money...

We walked around a lot. saw a lot of great stuff, drank a lot of great stuff, and visited l'Arena. It's an outside arena, like the Colusseum, but now it's used for operas. And you know, we wanted to see the Opera SOOOO BADLY but there was no train line open after the opera, which finishes at 12:00AM. What to do?!?!?!?...we sat there, both of us indecisive, until we both said out loud, something along the lines of, " Shit, we're in Verona...when are we ever going to be in Verona again to watch an opera?"

We bought 9:00pm tickets for the opera that was playing: Turandot.
We called Marco and said we wouldn't be back until tomorrow. We were staying overnight in Verona, who knows where, but we were staying; we HAD to watch the opera. hehe

One of the most amazing experiences of my life must have just simply been in the Arena, watching this opera. Both of us knew nothing about Turandot by Puccini and could not understand it, even though we got a translation playbook. It was still beautiful as ever and we got the main gist of the story....which was an asian love story, all sung in Italian. I recognized one very famous song in it called "Nessun Dorma"...and I think many people would know it ...it goes like..."Vincero!!!Vincerooooo!!!!" You might have heard Pavoratti sing it before.
Ok so here are some magical pics of us in l'Arena...So Exciting!

We brought some wine and enjoyed the breeze of the night while listening to some amazing singing and very dramatic acting...it was absolutely lovely.
This picture on the right is of the arena while people were getting seated. The orchestra pit is on the very right of the picture. They are right beneath the stage!

Here is the arena right before the opera started. Some people had candles so that's why there are little lights in the seating areas.
Down where there are no lights, that's the EXPENSIVE area, and the fighting area of the arena in the past.

Then here comes the rough part....finding the hostel. It took us two hours looking around to find the "Youth Ostello." But finally, tired yet satisfied we crashed atop these shabby little bunks in the ostello!
Like we say in girls' basketball.....