05/30/2026 - 06/07/2026

After Trieste, we took a train to Verona Italy. It was under 3 hours, so it was a super easy travel day! Verona is our last “long” stay of the trip with eight nights.

Verona is a medium size city with a population of about 250,000. It was founded in the 1st century BC and has the highest concentration of Roman ruins in northern Italy. The town is surrounded by a river and has a great vibe with some really cool squares, buildings with old frescos still visible, and fantastic restaurants. It’s a really cool town!

Verona is also known worldwide as the setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Tourists from all over come to see Juliet’s balcony and rub her breast (on a statue of her). Seriously… it’s a thing! People actually pay a fee and stand in a really long line to snap a photo of a balcony and violate a statue. Shakespear’s play was indeed set in Verona, but only because he re-made some Italian guy’s story which happened to be set in Verona. And that’s about where the reality ends! Romeo and Juliet weren’t real people, Shakespeare never set foot in Verona, a balcony was never even mentioned in Shakespeare’s original script, and the balcony everyone stands in line to see was actually added to the building in the 1930’s.

There is, however, a bust of Shakespeare since he was responsible for making Verona famous. We took a photo of him rather than the fake balcony!

Verona is especially known for its Roman Amphitheatre, which was built in 30 AD, and is the third largest in Italy. This particular Amphitheatre is still in use for performances and hosts an annual opera festival from June to September which attracts music lovers from all over the world. We were there just prior to the opera season starting and were lucky to have the opportunity to go to a show that was basically a kick off concert for the season. Being inside the arena and seeing it during an event was pretty incredible, but admittedly kind of wasted on us. We just aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate Italian opera! But we were still glad we went!

One evening we did our final cooking class of the trip. This one was home made pasta and tiramisu and like all the others we have done, it was really fun (except maybe the one in Istanbul!). It was just us and 2 other women, so a very small group and the chef kept our wine glasses full the entire time.

Some of the pasta was formed by sliding small pieces over the back of a cheese grater which I thought was so cool! When forming the spaghetti shaped noodles, we used a “pasta guitar” to cut it. It is a wooden frame strung with tight metal wires that you roll the pasta on to. As you remove the pasta, it actually makes something of a musical sound. Grady loved this (of course!)

We rented e-bikes one day to ride through the Valpolicella wine region and visited a couple wineries. We ended up on busy roads more than we would have liked, but it still turned out much better than our last e-bike attempt back in Rovinj! We had lunch at a really cute family run restaurant and hit 2 wineries.

Our final day we did a day trip about an hour west to the town of Bardolino for a wine festival! Bardolino is on Lake Garda which is absolutely amazing! I had visited another town on Lake Garda way back in 2008 and wanted to return some day. Well, after this visit to this town, we have decided we are definitely returning some day… next time we want to stay in a town right on the lake so we have time to really appreciate it! Lake Garda has cool little towns all around the lake that can be reached by ferry and the lake is stunning … surrounded by mountains and vineyards. Our kind of place!!

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VERONA