I am an ex US Air Force crew chief, working on F-15 fighter jets. Currently, I am a stay at home da...
I am an ex US Air Force crew chief, working on F-15 fighter jets. Currently, I am a stay at home dad, and my wife is in the military. I have a degree in Aircraft Maintenance Technology and in Advertising. I like to trip little kids in the park.
Member since:19.01.2005
Reviews:12
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Having lived on the island of Sardinia, Italy for two years of my life, my family has made quite a few friends in Italy. One of my best friends that I have kept it contact with throughout the years, is my friend Paoli, who still lives in Italy. From time to time, Paoli, sends me and now my wife and I tickets to come out and visit him, and view the country he loves so much. As I have been to quite a few different cities, three weeks worth on my visit just last year with my wife, I have seen a great deal of Italy. If you wish to know where to visit and when to visit, please feel free to look at my other reviews on Italy, listed at the bottom of this review. I plan to write out reviews on the some thirty cities that I have been to throughout the country of Italy. Feel free to read them all.
Verona is one of the most famous literary cities in Italy. Made famous by William Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, Verona has become quite a bit more popular as a tourist destination throughout the years. While still fairly peaceful, Verona is an excellent travel destination.
Safety While I generally worry about my safety in the majority of European cities, Verona is somewhat different. While there are still the pick pockets that you see in virtually every European city, they are quite a bit less sophisticated and generally work alone, unlike those in Bari Italy.
Verona is a fairly upscale city, and is pretty good about crime in general, but make sure that you always go out in groups, it's just a good policy to have. And if you do go out, make sure that you don't bring watches, expensive jewelry, purses, or anything flashy with you for extra precaution.
If you are going to travel in this region, make sure that you carry your wallet strapped to your chest, arm, or leg. Pretty much anywhere that it can't be removed from without your clothes physically being moved. Professional thieves whether you want to believe it or not can steal a wallet out of your pants pocket without you even realizing it, so make sure that you take every precaution to conceal it.
What to bring Obviously you are going to want to bring your camera with lots of film. Do not bring an expensive camera, bring a disposable one. You'll find that you misplace more things traveling around, then you'd imagine. Not to mention, high price items are more flashy to thieves, which while few in the area, they do exist and will take advantage.
Make sure that you bring along sun tan lotion, some sort of a hat or visor, and that should be more than good enough to keep the sun from attacking you.
Finally, make sure that you pack your best walking shoes, because you are going to be walking so much, that you're going to want to be comfortable. I recommend replacing your insoles and breaking them in prior to arriving to make yourself that much more comfortable.
Where to eat If you are looking to just grab a snack, a place where did quite a bit of munching, was Piazza Delle Erbe. This is a great market where you can pick up
fruits and vegetables. I think we must have filled up our backpacks after coming here. I hadn't had fresh fruit in quite some time as we had been living in Alaska for a while for the end of my military tour and fruit and vegetables are never fresh there.
If you are looking for a great place to eat, then you can go to Dante's Cafe, which is in Piazza Dei Signori. Dante's Cafe is really cool, because it takes 19th century styles and traditions and goes crazy with it. All of the food is the traditional food, the decorations are original, everything about the cafe focuses on the 19th century. We had some truly amazing duck here. As we were kinda hungry while walking through, we just grabbed the duck to go. We pretty much just walked around with slices of duck flavored with some mild seasonings, and some type of salad like green stuff. I think we pretty much just had a bunch of weeds with some crazy sauce on top, because I swear I had a Dandelion in mine.
Probably the nicest place that we ate at would have to be the Ristorante Rubiani, which was located next to our hotel by the Arena. This was a much more upscale restaurant, which served standard items like Spaghetti, Ravioli, and traditional tourist kinds of Italian foods. Everything on the menu was in English, so either they have two menus or they cater to the tourists. Either way, we had to dress up to go here and the food was great. I loved the Ravioli, Paoli had some Seafood Alfredo, my wife had some sort of a pizza, and Paoli's wife had some gnocci. All of the food was excellent, and even our Italian friends had no complaints saying that it was pretty good, even though it was slightly Americanized. As if they know what Americanized is, since they've never been to America.
Where to stay There are quite a few hotels in the area, and finding them definitely isn't all that hard. We stayed at Hotel Bologna, because we need a hotel that had a garage, as Paoli is paranoid about his vehicle getting wrecked. It was a pretty impressive hotel, but somewhat expensive as it located right across from the Arena, which is a major area within Verona. You can see the Arena and several other major attractions from the beautiful balcony attached to the hotel. Very nice accommodations with lots of room and history.
Where to shop Probably the best shopping that we found in the Verona area, was actually right across from the Arena, in the Piazza Bra. There are quite a few local shops here, as well as restaurants, and bars. One of the shops that we walked into, actually had stone carvings of some of the great gladiators that have appeared here. They had everything from the gladiators by themselves, so the gladiators killing each other or lions or whatever. We really liked some of these trinkets, so we made sure to grab a few. Since I really liked the arena itself, I got a replica of the arena carved out of balsa wood. It's extremely light, and I'm not really sure how it survived the flight back, because it's very fragile. My wife, really wanted to get another carving of a lion leaping at a gladiator as he plunged a spear at it and bent backwards to avoid the impact. She really wanted it in stone, but because I already got the balsa area and she wanted something to go with it, she decided to get hers in balsa as well.
Another shop that we went to, had authentic leather outfits, that were leather replicas of what the gladiators may have worn. Some of the items here were pretty cool and they would personalize them for you as well, if you wanted. I was going to get some leather underwear, with these fuzzy liners, but I thought about how uncomfortable those would be. However, I guess I never really planned on wearing them anyway.
Down the road, is a smaller shop that carries some of the coolest little miniature soldiers, weapons, and replicas of pretty much anything the city and country of Italy has to offer. I really liked the war replicas, which featured miniature soldiers fighting in some of Italy's most famous battles. If it wasn't for the $2,000 and up pricetag, I probably would have instantly purchased a couple of these, for conversation pieces.
Another great place to shop is Via Mazzini, which is a street in Verona, that allows only pedestrian traffic. Down this street are some of the fanciest shops in all of the world. Here you can find some of the highest fashion clothes around. While it's extremely expensive to shop here, it's actually pretty interesting to look around and see what they have to offer. Some of the clothing here is absolutely amazing, while other items are extremely odd. Either way, we couldn't afford anything in those stores, nor would we ever want to.
Romeo and Juliet While the play about Romeo and Juliet is for the most part made up, many of the locations and the names are not. Juliet's house is an actual house, with an actual balcony, just like you imagined while reading the play. The background is perfect with ivy growing off of the neighboring walls, and the balcony is the perfect height for any Romeo to try and romance a Juliet. I of course, thought it would be funny to send my wife up and try to woo her, but apparently you can't go up to the balcony. Oh well, probably for the better, because this area was extremely crowded and I would have made a fool of myself.
Romeo's house is only a short walk down the road, but it's nowhere near as impressive as Juliets. The homes, the Montegues and the Capulets were the actual families who owned these homes as well. In modern times, that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Either way, it really makes the story, come to life that much more, and is a really cool place to visit. I'd say a must see while in Vernona.
Lamberti Tower This is the highest tower that is in Verona. My wife and I tried to find a way to get into the tower, however, it didn't appear that we could. My friend Paoli said that they used to allow tourist traffic, but apparently not at this time. But that didn't stop Paoli from banging on the entrance persistently. I was just waiting for the caribonari (police) to show up. Still, regardless, the tower is pretty impressive to look it.
The Arena If you are anywhere in Italy, you can pretty much expect to find some of the most amazing architecture and monuments around. One of the best pieces of early roman architecture, is the Roman Amphitheater, better known as the Arena. This Arena, which was being reconstructed while I was there, is made entirely out of stone, and is absolutely massive. The best thing about the Arena, would have to be the view. Everywhere you walk inside the Arena, you can see outside. That's because it was built, with massive archways, all of the way around it. This is where some of the greatest gladiators came to do battle. And definitely a cool picture stop.
This is probably my favorite destination, and apparently a great place to get hit by cars, as some lady unfortunately did while we were here. So, apparently the action continues on at the Arena. We were pretty lucky as there was an opera that was being performed while we were here. While the arena can hold around 22,000 people, it didn't need anywhere near that many to hold the maybe 4,000 people that had come to see the opera. While I hated the opera, it was pretty interesting to see performed.
The Madonna Verona This is actually nothing more than a really cool, really old fountain with a massive statue on top of it. Apparently it has a pretty cool history behind it, all that I know is it is pretty old and is great for some pictures. It is located in the Piazza Delle Erbe.
Roman Theater This is a really great place to visit. While it took us quite some time to find it, even though it's quite obvious, sitting on top of a decent sized hill, we eventually made our way up. It was quite a ways to walk, so I would recommend taking some fort of alternative transportation to save time. However, the walk is quite interesting. The theater itself is where many famous plays took place in Verona. Now the Shakespeare festival takes place here, along with some other smaller events. When we were there, a young play group was practicing their lines for an upcoming school play. As it was in Italian it was somewhat hard to understand, but brought a lot of life to the theater. Very beautiful monument to visit.
Archaelogical Museum Another one of my favorite spots within Verona would have to be the Archaelogical Museum. This museum is home to some of the most famous pieces of art by Romans. Here you'll find different sculptures, paintings, stained glass art, and quite a bit more. Pretty impressive pieces of work here, unfortunately you can't take any home with you. But there is a gift shop, with some great replicas of some of the work.
Cathedral Verona I found this Cathedral to be quite impressive from an architectural standpoint. The cathedral to this day is very well preserved, even though it was built in like the 1100-1200 time period. The only problem is that one of the bell towers on the right hand side, is sort of tilted. Oh well, I guess that didn't hurt the leaning tower. Maybe we could turn this into a worldwide landmark as well.
Paoli in his wonderfully stupid Italian fashion, made us take pictures of him posing in front of the cathedral about a thousand times. I will never understand why he has a fetish with anything that has to do with religion. I understand religion, but he is just out there.
Porta Borsari This is just a really cool gate, that I like a lot. It's one of the actual remaining gates dating back to sometime around the first century. While it doesn't really do anything for the city anymore, it's still really cool to look at. It sort of just connects between two buildings now, but really interesting if you are into history, like I am.
Castelvecchio This is the original castle back from the 1300-1400 time period. It looks pretty beat up, due to several wars that took place throughout the years. Even Napoleon had his hands on this castle for a period of time. It is constructed entirely of stone and features a massive clock, which wasn't working while we were there, but I'm sure it works when it wants to. Still really great picture opportunity, and a lot of history, which is printed near the walls.
Inside of the castle, I was really surprised to see a massive museum. You can find all sorts of artifacts from it's original time period. My favorite part of the castle has to be the different war relics. There are even some chariots, while beat up, are in pretty decent shape considering how they were used. There's also a great display on war through the years and how armor and weapons advanced and changed throughout time.
Final Thoughts Verona has a lot of items that I didn't even get a chance to cover, including some amazing bridges, excellent historic walls and monuments, and not to mention some great statues that are all over the city. I just don't have enough space to really include everything, nor do I really want to. The city just has so much history and culture, that it would take me forever to actually list it all here.
My wife and I personally found Verona to be quite romantic and would be a great place to take a honeymoon or just to hang out like we did with our Italian friends. The food in the city seems to be pretty impressive, however, a lot of the food is made somewhat different in order to impress the tourists. I think that's probably the only downside.
The shopping here is absolutely wonderful, except it's quite expensive. This area is know for it's elegance and expensive designer clothing and it shows. The shops here are for the most part quite expensive, however, if you're lucky like we were, you can find some great gift items that are much lesser in value, but still great gifts in general.
Overall, this is probably one of the most interesting places that I have visited, in Italy and in the world. It's a great mix of history, culture, and beauty all in one.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
A very detailed helpful review as Verona is on the List of where to go. Although I think the Juliet Balcony the Tourists take photos of was actually added in the 1930's.
dreamscancometrue 17.01.2006 16:08
A superb review,I spent half my life living in Italy, and I was pleased to see you warned people about the dangers of crime,while people's heads are in the clouds, full of romance,the lightning fast thieves will take libertys
mark1961 16.06.2005 22:05
Sounds great - hope to visit within the nest month. MARK
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