More Visitors From Home and Verona Italy

It has been a busy few weeks. I suppose it is time to do some catching up on the blog. Cindy's dad flew in to Munich on October 20th for the start of a whirlwind trip for him. He had a lot of fun trying to get adjusted and caught up on the time zone change. That week the kids were still in school and Cindy was having to work a lot due to TI visitors in town from the mother ship. Hutch and I hung out and managed to see a few sites while everyone was away for the day. We dropped by the local Schleissheim Palace and ate lunch close by at the forest restaurant near the house. He went with me each day to drop off and pick up the kids from school too.

David was in his last week of outdoor baseball practice so Paw Paw got to go sit outside with me and watch. We had our comfy portable chairs set up and had a cold Bavarian beer while practice was going on. This practice was a special one too. A German all sports station was doing a piece about American sports in Germany. The timing was coinciding with the start of the MLB World Series. There was a producer and a reporter at practice filming various aspects of baseball. The reporter was hands-on: learning how to throw a baseball, swing a bat, and even put on catching gear. They mounted a Go Pro camera on the catcher's mask and he played catcher during a live scrimmage by David's team. It was fun to hang out with Hutch drinking a beer watching baseball and television magic come together. This is a candid shot while they were about to shoot the introduction for the fifth time. That is the reporter in the Atomics jersey with the lapel microphone.

Later in the week Hutch and I checked out the BMW World and BMW Museum around the Olympic Park area in Munich. We also spent another day in central Munich to see the sites and to tour the Residenz Palace. I think that he wanted to spend a little time going to Salzburg or Neuschwanstein. The problem was the weather. After having weeks of mild temperatures and sun this week was rainy every day. South of Munich it was snowing for a couple of days. Overall we stayed busy and saw some sights and Hutch was adjusted to the time zone and ready to head with the Ferguson Four to Italy.

Saturday October 25th:
This was just a travel day. We scheduled a midday train from Munich so we had time to pack up and get down to the Hauptbahnhof central train station. We did our new normal thing of dropping the passengers and luggage off at the local train stop, me driving the car back home, then riding a bicycle back to the station to be locked up until we returned. Today was really a pretty easy day compared to what we had to do to get back home. Since we had to change trains in Verona anyway, we just planned to stay there and tour the city the next day.

Our apartment in Verona was down the street from the train station. We dragged our luggage down the road, probably not the best neighborhood, but we survived. The rental unit was inside a residential apartment complex. We had a nice three bedroom apartment on the fourth floor. Since this was a short stay I did not want to get too far from the train station. The problem with that was that we were nowhere near any restaurants. It was already dark and we had been on the train for most of the day without food. We ventured out into the streets walking towards the city center in search of food. Eventually we navigated our way to the main road leading into the city center. The very first restaurant that we saw we stopped and sat down. I bet you can't guess what the menu said they had on tap! The house red wine was described on the English menu as on tap. This is Italy, I love it. It was actually a little colder than you would normally drink red, but I loved it. The food was good, especially for a starving group that was travel weary. The dinner time entertainment was the waitress that we had serving us, and everyone else. This poor girl was the busiest person I have ever seen. The restaurant was one big room where you could see all of the tables. As far as we could tell she was serving all of them. She really had a good attitude too considering how many people were there. I know I was impressed. After dinner we made it back to the apartment to rest up for the long tour day planned in the morning.

Sunday October 26th:

I had a private guide set up to take us on a walking tour of Verona then drive us out to Lake Garda near the city. The tour was set up through email. I was a little concerned how good it was going to be since it took her a few days to get back to me each time I wrote. The plan was to meet her in a major city square Piazza Bra at 8:30 am. This was the fall back Sunday so it was like 9:30, plenty of time to get there, right? Well, none of us wanted to start out a three hour walking tour with a 2km walk to the meeting point. Early that morning I found some bus tickets and a route to get us to the square. We left the apartment and tried to find the bus stop. We walked and walked literally in circles around this area looking at the signs for the bus numbers. We never saw a bus pull up to any of them. One bus did finally stop so we ran up to it and tried to get it.....as it drove away. Turns out the bus was at a red light, not a stop. Stupid tourists. Now we were going to be late for our tour, what to do? Initially I started walking towards the main street to the city center resigned to walking at this point. That route took us close to the main bus station next to the train station with all sorts of buses. Verona is not that big and most of the routes take that main road past Piazza Bra. We jumped on a bus and hoped for the best. Sure enough it was going the right direction. We got close to our stop so I hit the little button to tell the driver to stop. He kept driving right by, then Cindy tried hitting her button, nothing. Finally a local guy saw what was happening and pushed his button. We were now way passed our stop, but closer than when we started. Five minutes later we were walking into the square about 15 minutes late. At this point I fully expected the guide to have left and considered us a no show. Then I saw Silvia sitting there trying to call us, genuinely concerned about where we were. She greeted the adults them immediately started talking to the kids about what they wanted out of the tour today. She was good and we were off to a wonderful day in Verona.  

Piazza Bra area. Large square next to one of the largest Roman Arenas ever built. The arena and the square were outside of the original city walls. It was common for the Romans to build the arena outside of the city, but close by. You can see a part of the remains of the arena behind the tree on the right side.

The kids went for the idea to go see a medieval castle to the west of the square. Castelvecchio. The area where the moat once existed and the draw bridge are still there. After entering the castle there is a bridge across this section of the Adige River.

It is a massive bridge with great views of the river and city. Below you can tell how high some of the sections are. The kids had fun climbing up and looking out from the top. The platforms were pretty wide and they were careful. 

Above looking towards the northeast, below the northwest. How can you have north as part of the direction on opposite sides of the bridge? The bridge is built on a bend of the river that makes a U shape on the west side of Verona. Then curls back around to the south to make the northern barrier of the old part of the city. 

By the way we had beautiful weather all week. We left the rain behind in Germany and had sunny skies for our Italian getaway.

Here is a view of the Castelvecchio Bridge below after we left the castle and walked down the river. You can see the bend in the river.

We made our way back to the arena and stopped for a picture. Now we were headed into the old Roman part of the town.

All of the streets and pathways were literally marble or travertine. We did have to make a stop to see what is thought to be the Juliet balcony. Silvia told us that Shakespeare never saw Verona for himself even though several of his plays were set in the city. The Juliet balcony has only been a tourist attraction for the last few decades, before that nobody cared. It is a modern day tourist trap I guess. I am glad we saw it anyway.

Above and below is another piazza in the city center. Verona once had buildings that were all decorated with paintings on the exterior. Most of them are faded or gone, but some buildings you can still see and imagine what was once there.

There is a whole bunch of history here, more than I expected to hear about. For the blog purposes I am going to stick to our story.

We eventually made it to the outer bend of the river where we found the Ponte Pietra bridge and the Roman hill with the theater. The bridge was originally built in 100 BC, wow.

From the Ponte Pietra bridge. We crossed it to find our van and driver waiting for us.

Instead of walking up the hill across the bridge like the peasant tourists, our driver drove us up to get a great view of Verona.

Next we set off towards Lake Garda, about 30km west of Verona. This is where a private tour and a good guide really pay off. Our apartment bed and "breakfast" was really prepackaged crappy pastries, milk, and cheap yogurt. After the morning tour we were ready for lunch.

Now this is a vacation! Silvia brought us to a restaurant/winery off of the beaten path. She had a reserved table with a view of the vineyard waiting for us. We tasted the local wine and had a wonderful lunch. The tricky thing about eating in Italy during a paid tour is that you can burn most of your day. Italians and most European places that we have visited make lunch out a long event. Not so this time. Silvia was all over this guy to keep us on track. It was perfect. Anytime we needed something she got up and got it, or went and told the waiter. At one point she was hounding him to bring the food and he fired back at her in Italian. We asked her what he said. She told us that she asked him to bring the main course, he replied, "you do want it cooked first, right?" She laughed it off and knew that he got the message. 

Our next stop was the town of Garda on the lake. We strolled along the water front than made our way through the small town. We stopped for some gelato along the way. Getting into the town we drove along a picturesque road with views of the lake. This is a popular summer destination for Germans. Our next door neighbors visited here earlier in the year.

It was starting to get late and this time of year, especially after DST ended, it gets dark early. We left the lake to make it to a near by winery for a wine tasting.

This was a beautiful place and great wine. We started with a tour of the vineyards and wine making process. Do you know why they put rose bushes at the edge of the vineyards? It is because the rose bush will show signs of disease or infestation before the grape vines. If the rose bush starts looking ill the wine producers know they might have a problem with the vines soon and are able to take action.

This place had a great setting for the wine tasting. It was fun to hear about the process and how the varieties of wines they have here got their name. We left there with six bottles of wine. We kind of liked it. The sun set during our stay here, it was a long day but well worth it.

We were dropped off at the apartment and we said our goodbyes to Silvia and our driver Happy, He was from India with a long name that sounds like Happy, so he just goes with it.

Cindy and I left Hutch and the kids in the apartment to rest. We walked back in to the city to find dinner. We ended up eating some sushi. This often happens on the rare occasion that the kids are not with us. We found a pizza place and brought home sushi and pizza for the rest of the group. At this point it was late enough that I don't think Paw Paw cared to think about that combination of food. We got to bed to rest up for another travel day the next morning. It was time to leave Verona and get down to Tuscany.