Verona and Sirmione

I am finally getting around to writing about our last week in Italy; sorry it took so long. After Corey preached at Milan Bible Church, his official internship was completed. So we went on one more trip with our own time and $ that last week. (Also, we had been warned when we choose to go to Italy that a lot of the country kind of shuts down in August and I guess we didn’t really believe it, but now we do! Almost all of the Italians that live in Milan and inland places like that head to the coast or the mountains for the month of August. The population of those cities drops considerably and a lot of the stores and restaurants close. It is pretty weird. But lucky for us, the really “tourist-y” places stay open.)

We took the train over to Verona, which is about halfway between Milan and Venice. What it is famous for in the summer is that is has a huge ancient Roman coliseum, now called the Arena and where they put on amazing operas. So we got the cheapest tickets, meaning you sit on the stone steps of this place with thousands and thousands of other people, and went to the opera “Aida”! (It was our birthday present to me It is set in Egypt so the sets are huge and amazing. It doesn’t start until about 9:00, when it is dark, and then they give everybody a little candle to light as the opera begins. It was a really cool experience.

We also hit the other main tourist spot in Verona, Juliet’s house and balcony. (Juliet of Romeo and Juliet.) It actually is totally fake and isn’t historic, but it is still fun.
Verona is a beautiful city and we enjoyed walking around before the opera and having dinner at a little restaurant. We also found the San Pietro castle, translation—the St. Peter castle!
The hotel we named at was also called San Pietro. How could we resist staying there after they named it after us?
The next day we went to the biggest of the four lakes in the “lake district”, Lake Garda. (We visited all four lakes during our trip!) There is a town way out on a point called Sirmione. You have to walk through a castle just to get into the main part of town, and then there is awesome shopping and tons of gelaterias. There is also some Roman ruins that are supposed to be really cool, but they are closed on Monday, which of course you do not find out until you reach the gate at the top of a hill. We joined the group of disappointed tourists for awhile, and then headed back to the town for a little while before we took the bus back to our hotel for the night.

Overall it was a great little trip!