Ahhhh I wish I could go back to Hotel Olimpia and have breakfast there!
Remember how I mentioned that I was easily entertained by vaporetto trips? Turns out that I was also entertained by trains. I was so excited to see trains that my boyfriend thought I was nuts. It reminded me of the Hogwarts Express and I exclaimed, "No wonder Sheldon (from The Big Bang Theory, of course) likes trains!"
This is the face of an excited human. The excited human later hung her coat on a hook and relaxed. On the way, she took pictures of the scenery as the train zoomed past the countryside.
Anyway, I boarded a bus with my boyfriend and we passed this pretty castle.
According to my boyfriend's plan, we were supposed to go there later or something, so we did not alight right in front of the castle. But we should have because we ended up backtracking to the castle!
This is my "世界那么大" (the world is so big) pose. We didn't check out the museum at Castelvecchio but we admired the red bricks and crossed the bridge.
It was really bright and sunny that day, which was a welcome change from the gloomy skies we had seen in Venice!
Strolled over to Verona Cathedral just to check out how pretty it looked.
We were walking down the street when we decided to had lunch at a random restaurant. Since I had not tried the pizza in Italy yet, I decided to do so. However, I looked around the restaurant and realised that people were sitting alone and having an entire pizza to themselves. I knew that I could not finish one whole pizza by myself, but as the saying goes, "When in Rome (or in this case, Verona) do as the Romans do." So I did my best. In the end, my boyfriend grabbed a couple of slices for himself.
Later, I searched the Internet about this and found a hilarious article about how not to order pizza in Italy on Huffpost.
Well, anyway, Piazza dei Signori (city square) was decorated for Christmas!
And also Hanukkah! Of course, the purpose of these pictures is actually to get a nice shot of the Lamberti Tower.
There was a Christmas Market and there were plenty of different stalls! We found a crowded makeshift German store, Käthe Wohlfahrt, and it sold Christmas decorations of all sorts. I bought some aromatherapy candles for my mother. There were interesting scents like fir and roasted almonds, but since we aren't fluent in German we had to guess what the they were from the pictures!
After shopping, we headed up the Lamberti tower for the amazing view.
Since it was included in the price of the ticket, we visited the art gallery too.
I guess the highlight of this day trip should have been Casa di Giulietta. However, it was too crowded and actually quite a disappointment.
There were notes, scribbles and love locks all over the place! People were constantly taking pictures. There was a souvenir shop nearby and of course, you could pay to enter Juliet's house and get a glimpse of her balcony.
It was so difficult to get a shot of Juliet on her own!
Everyone wanted a piece of the bronze statue. I'm sure it would be a lot more crowded in summer, so at least I really have to queue up for an extremely long time to take a picture with Juliet. In fact, there wasn't a queue at all! We just waited and took turns with other tourists.
I know that you're supposed to touch her right breast for luck, but obviously I don't believe in such nonsense. And I don't think Juliet would have liked strangers fondling her right boob. Besides, to quote Mulan's grandmother, "How lucky can they [Romeo and Juliet] be? They're dead!"
Even more love locks! I bought a magnet of Romeo and Juliet as cats from a shop elsewhere. Much cuter than the souvenirs that depicted actual people, but that's just my opinion.
Our last stop before dinner was Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheatre! We didn't enter but we enjoyed the Christmas market in the square. The white structure in the background is also known as the Christmas star.
I think that December is truly the best time of the year. Oh, I forgot to mention that I visited Venice on the 13th of December, on my birthday. Apparently, the Christmas market at Piazza Bra also ends on the 13th. The market was so huge! We tried a nutella frittella, which basically looks like roti prata except that nutella was inside and it was folded in two.
We didn't buy anything else but it was nice to walk around and just check out what people were selling.
What a gorgeous tree!
There was a highly rated Chinese restaurant in the vicinity called Capitol Chinese Restaurant, so we headed there for dinner and had no regrets. I mean, okay, the restaurant was plain-looking and there were barely any customers in sight, but the noodles were extremely tasty. And Asian food in Europe usually means cheap food. I also don't feel as terrible because I won't be wasting as much food as compared to dining at a Western restaurant.
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