Grand Adventure: Saturday: Verona

Saturday we headed out to Verona.  I was kind of excited, because I had watched a recent remake of Romeo and Juliette.  Not may favorite story because they were idiots, but I watched it because I was going to be in Italy!  And it was fun to go somewhere I saw on a movie. 

 We drove by some pretty scenery.  Some city stuff, but some really pretty stuff too.

So fun to see these spectacular castles on the hillsides.

Lots of cool buildings on hillsides that are impressive.

Yep, we're headed the right direction!  Which is impressive because between the roads and the gps's schizophrenic issues, we spent a lot of time getting unlost.

Our parking garage was under the Burger King!  We did not eat there.  But it was a great parking location.

For all my friends who enjoy a bit of wine, this is for you!

 We went to the Arena, which is Roman and looks just like a Roman Colosseum!  That is behind us and the fountain.

Yep, it is me in front of the Arena!

Look how cool it is!  Mom and Dad spent the $$ to go inside and they said it was neat, and looked just like in the movies!

Mom and Dad coming out.  I loved the Roman Soldiers there.  For a few Euros, they'd pose for photos with you.  Maybe if I weren't on a trip with Dan.....!

The cool arches that separate the old city and new city.  But all the city looks "old" and nifty.

Isn't it beautiful?! The architecture was so different and so pretty!

We found the Castle.

 Dan on the drawbridge over the moat.

There were some great sculptures inside the castle grounds.

 The art inside the castle was prolific and interesting.  Lots of carvings like this.  Mom mentioned that because people 100s of years ago didn't know how to read, so the art depicts biblical scenes and people.

Me and another cool sculpture.

If you look closely at this you can see it shows the bible stories.  How cool is this?!

There was a lot of art, and then there was the really fun stuff!

 From the top of the castle walls you could see pretty far.  And it was fabulous!

It's me!  On top of a castle!  In Italy!

 What the castle looked like from the inside courtyard.

Fun building you could see from the other side of the castle.

Well, it was so pretty, how could I help but take pictures of everything?!

I want to swoon with delight at the views.  And I'm running out of adjectives to adequately describe it all.

Yep, here I am!

Hey, this is the bathroom in the parking garage! The funny thing was, the bathroom was for men and women together.  So you walk in and may be next to a man or a woman.  Odd, and a little disconcerting.  On the plus side, there was toilet paper and a sink with running water!

After the Arena and castle, we went back to the car for lunch.  It started raining while we were noshing on our sandwiches, but we were happy, because it was suppose to have rained all day and we'd had a rain free morning!  We busted out the poncho and umbrellas and headed back out.

 It took a bit of walking, but we eventually found the church we were looking for.  We did not want to spend the euros to go inside though.  So we admired it from afar.

Me and my poncho in the rain in front of the church.

It was this church.  I don't know why it was special, but it was. Google it if you don't believe me!

Wet Verona. Did I mention we spent about 2.5 hours walking in the rain?  We got a little lost.

I might have gotten a little crabby.

 We eventually found the Duomo and there was much rejoicing.  I'm not a fan of walking around in the rain while lost, but this was worth the wait!  The outside was pretty, but everything here is.  The inside....oh!  The inside!

It was ornate and beautiful and detailed and awesome and I was impressed and humbled to be there.

A happy me, checking out all the amazing things in the Duomo.

The pictures cannot truly show how amazing it it.

Look at this glorious domed roof!

One of the endless alleys we trudged through in the rain.
It was still awesome to look at.

This is how I felt when we left the Duomo to head back to the car.

This is how I felt after wandering around lost in the rain for too long.

Aside from my grumpy ending, it was a glorious day!  Verona was so amazing!  The architecture and the buildings and the everything were so neat to see, and the mix of old buildings and new buildings was .... rats, I am all out of adjectives.  I am speechless to try to describe it all!  I'll just say it was spectacular!

Great Adventure: Friday: Luzern

Friday morning we checked out of our fabulous house.  It was time to say goodbye to Switzerland.  So sad.

Dan went for a long run- made longer by a minorly wrong turn and the consequential recalculation of how to get from where he was, to where he wanted to be.  He also stopped by the corner bakery and got this for breakfast.  He said it was yummy.

Then we packed up and drove off.  We headed to Italy, with a little stop in Luzern, Switzerland before we left the country for good.

Driving in Switzerland was always a lot of fun.  Random castles on hills and gorgeous buildings, farms and countryside everywhere. It was breathtaking.

We spent a bit over an hour wandering Luzern.  I think someone had a particular destination in mind, but I was happy to just mosey and look.  And I enjoyed it.  We came upon some carts that seemed to be left from a Carnival celebration.  One of them was covered with political cartoons, and I found it interesting that most of them were harpoons at US politics.

This was my favorite!

I liked this school zone sign as well.

And this is a beautiful street we walked up.  Only to realize it wasn't the way we wanted to go, so we walked back down it. 

This is a historical bridge.  It had old-old paintings on it and we walked across it and checked them out.  Not the sort of paintings I had expected.  Not "museum" paintings at all.

Probably the most modern looking buildings in Switzerland. I love the mountains rising in the background.

Then it was more driving.  Not horribly long.  I think our total car time was 6 hours, plus the 45 minutes we spent lost, trying to figure out how the holy heck to get inside the Vicenza base!  But there was neat scenery.  Neater had it been in focus, I suppose.

We drove through this incredibly long tunnel.  I think it was 17km long.  It went on FOREVER!

 And when we finally popped out the other side, we were in Italy, and there was lots of snow!

A lot of snow!  And it was so pretty, all frosted on the trees.

We had a quick rest stop and there was this map, which was not helpful at all.  Then we finished the drive to Vicenza and discovered it is virtually impossible to find the front gate to the base.  It took us 45 minutes.  We drove all the way around the base.  We stopped twice to ask for directions.  We thought we found it once, but they said no, it was gate 4 and we could not go on through gate 4, we had to go to gate 1.  We still couldn't find it.  It was incredibly annoying!  Obviously we did eventually stumble upon it, but sheesh!

I tell you, I am really glad only the men-folk are on the rental car agreement!  I would NOT like to drive here!  It is a royal pain to find anything.  The stupid GPS is schizophrenic and incredibly faulty.  So one person drives and the other navigates and compares notes with the rotten gps.  And eventually, we get where we need to go.  But it has been a bit hair raising and frustrating!