To the Land of Tragic Lovers

Okay so this one is also a little late but hey? Shoot us.

To The Tragic Land Of Lovers

One of the joys of cut-price airlines is the crazy feats you have to perform in order to get the most out of your four-day weekend. First of all you have to take a four-day weekend to actually get any use out of the fares. The no-frills airlines of this world are great. Hey, flying to Italy and back for £40 gets a definite tick in my book of bargains. But what you don’t realize is that there are much more complex issues you have to take into consideration. Mel and I decided to take a long weekend to Italy to check out Verona, Shakespeare’s favourite Italian town. We picked up our cheap airfare and we were sorted. Well let me explain how a relaxing weekend away turns out to be something otherwise.

We rolled out of bed on the day of our departure at a fresh 4:00am, showered and packed our small bags. We stepped outside to hail a cab to take us to Liverpool Street Station, but at 4:30am there aren’t too many cabs rolling past so we decide to walk it as its only 30 minutes by foot anyway. This is a nice way to wake up especially when the previous night we had both gotten trashed in Leister Square and didn’t get home until midnight. Halfway there a night pass comes down the street so we decide to jump on it. We caught the number 8 night bus which was the same bus I normally took to work and the surprising thing was that there were three times as many people on the bus at 5:00am than there is normally in rush hour traffic. There is a side to London we just don’t know about apparently. Anyway we pull up to the station at ten minutes to five and we get off and wait for the first train to Stanstead which leaves at 5:00. We get on the train and ride for an hour in the early morning darkness. The train goes right through to the airport which is great. All we had to do was step off the train and onto an escalator and we are in the airport. We check in for our flight then try and find some breakfast but in traditional London style there was a queue out the door of Burger King and we only had a few minutes free before we had to make for the plane. We scrubbed the breakfast idea and headed for the gates. Through security and after dealing with the most helpful man I have ever met in London who was friendly and funny and polite (London, Airport security, nice… bizarre!) we boarded a monorail type thing, which whooshed us to out plane for our 7:00am departure.

We left on time and after 2 hours we touched down in Brescia, Italy. Now this is where these budget airlines get you. Brescia is in the province of Verona but is not anywhere near the city of Verona. It is 80 miles or so away from Verona. Brescia itself is dull flat and farmland. So our travelling time is so far 5 hours non-stop. A bus a train a monorail and a plane later we are finally there. Well almost. We are in a boring airport in not so exciting Brescia. Luckily, as I like to indulge in such things, we had a hire car waiting. So we were sorted, sort of. Now for some excitement. Italy like the majority of the world drives on the right hand side. We climbed in to the hire car and I sat in the drivers seat for quarter of an hour just to get acquainted with the gear stick being on my right, the wipers on the left and the indicator on the right, I think. The windows was on my left and Mel was son my right. The rear vision mirror is… on the right and so on and so on. It was all highly complicated. “Screw it” I said and we were off. It was just like when I first learnt how to drive. It was great. Bizarre to have giant trucks speeding past you on the wrong side and trying to reverse your brain whilst keeping the speed down in the pore little 1.5 litre car. But the strange thing is after 20 minutes your brain just flips. Which is good for keeping on the right side of the road and changing gears but unfortunately your brain also flips the order of the pedals also so you find yourself accelerating to change gears and flooring the clutch to take off. Anyway let me tell you a bit about Brescia, nice roads and quaint little farm houses. Everything else was just like anywhere else in the world. Everyone else was driving faster than you in the latest Alpha’s or Mercs. There are Mc Donald’s and BP petrol stations. Blue skies and green grass. There is something about travelling to a new country that makes you think that its going to be a different world but sadly the world is all very much similar. It’s only the language that changes. But I digress, we are now into our sixth hour of travelling and both Mel and I are feeling a little bit stressed and tired. We follow the road signs to Verona and then as we are approaching we realise we don’t actually know where our hotel is and we left the address at home. So now begins the fun bit. I remembered from the map that the hotel was on the other side of Verona on one of the main roads that continues on to Venice so all we had to do was to drive into Verona and find that road. We must have done two complete circuits of central Verona. We both had our theories about which direction was which and which road looks like the big road we need to head for. We were zipping up one-lane streets and getting stuck in the middle of four lane intersections without traffic lights. We quickly realised Verona was a lot bigger than we anticipated and we had lost all sense of direction. Also we learnt that you lose all concept of space when your driving a left hand drive and Mel was screaming every time we drove past a parked car as our wing mirrors almost got ripped off. So we established a little system of communication. Mel would say “Left more” if I was driving too close to inanimate objects on her side of the car and would say “keep right” if I found myself drifting over onto to more familiar side of the road. This system was a total success as our previous system of Mel screaming “LOOK OUT” just plain confused me as it could be applied to a car coming the other way, a chicken crossing the road, a red light or an Italian Police officer trying to keep up. Unbeknownst to us we actually got to see a lot of Verona and we were actually getting the map of the roads clear in out heads and we turned left onto a busy looking road. We pulled up to a gas station and Mel hopped out to ask a friendly looking Italian man which way to our hotel. Of course he didn’t speak English so Mel mentioned the name of the Hotel and the street it was on and we had to translate the directions given to us. That was really fun, I find there is nothing more satisfying than engaging in dialogue with someone who speaks a foreign language and figuring out what the hell they just said. Our little knowledge of Italian told us that the hotel was further down the road we were travelling down on another road approximately 5 kilometres on the right. So we reset our trip meter and we were off and sure enough there it was. We checked in and went back to bed, the first day totally written off.

The next day we walked into the centre of old Verona. Now Verona is famous for a couple of things, there is its old amphitheatre, a couple of castles and of course Romeo and Juliet. That is the strangest thing in Verona, you can visit Juliet’s tomb and see the balcony where Romeo would call up to her. I don’t think anyone ever told the Veronian’s that they were all make believe. We checked out Juliet’s balcony and a memorial statue of her in the courtyard. The balcony looked like it was a relatively recent addition onto the side of this old house and the bronze statue of Juliet had a very shiny right breast. Hoards of people would have their photo taken next to the statue and in every case the bloke would have his photo taken with his hand on her breast. The rest of the statue looked very old indeed but this extremely polished breast looked kind off odd. But the coolest and most beautiful part of Juliet’s Balcony was the arched tunnel through you walked through to get to the courtyard. Every square inch of the tunnel was covered in lover’s graffiti. In Every color and language you could imagine there were words of love painted over the wall, ceiling and even the payphone. It was just beautiful. It must have been a centimetre think on the wall, just layer upon layer of people devoting themselves in words to a significant other.

We wandered around the small lanes of Verona, we climbed the amphitheatre and imagined there was a gladiatorial fight going on below us between Maximus Gluteus and Odipus Purrs. We walked across the beautiful stone bridges spanning the river and soaked it all in. We ascended the clock tower in the centre of the town (all 368 steps, we counted) and gazed out across the roofs of the old town. We spent an entire day walking and taking it all in. And as evening approached we decided to find a great place to eat and indulge in one of the things the Italians are great at. Food! We stumbled upon this quaint little restaurant, and if only I could remember its name I would tell you it urging you that if you ever needed an excuse to go to Italy, this place could be that excuse. The food was fabulous, the service efficient and friendly and the coffee just out of this world. Not to mention the wine, the desert and the olive oil. We had a four-course meal including coffee, a liqueur and olives and bread for what we would pay for a standard nothing-special meal out in London. The waiter was friendly to us even though we were in tee shirts and trainers whist everyone else seemed to have dressed up for the occasion, and was very happy to translate the menu for us, but unfortunately for him he didn’t know the word for beans. We left a very hefty tip and donned our jackets once more and wobbled out to a waiting taxi. Again we slept very well that night.

The next day we decided we had seen enough of Verona and decided to make good use of our rental car. We headed off West towards Lake Garda. The lake was picturesque. Small downs were dotted all the way up its coastline each with its own castle. We drove up and down the lakefront checking out all the towns and keeping an eye out for a hotel that looked open. Unfortunately for us the lake is very much a popular Summer destination but as it was the middle of winder most of the hotels were closed up. In the end we found a nice place next to an old castle. We had a huge room with a kitchen and Italian Cable TV. There is nothing quite like watching Hercules in Italian. We decided to wander out around the lake and check out the old castle next door. The streets were deserted and we felt like we were the only people left in town. We wondered if you could walk around the inside of the castle and tried to find an entrance. We walked down a dusty road beside the castle and followed a cobble path into the heart of the castle and in fact the heart of the town. One of my biggest surprises about Italy was the fact that even though there are all these old castles crumbling down in the small towns, they are still very functional and enclose the very centre of the town. There were restaurants, and shops and houses. It seemed the whole population of the town was inside the castle walls walking around eating gelato and drinking coffee. It was magical. We wandered around and sat by the water. Listening to all the foreign conversations around us. This was a typical Sunday just like everywhere else in the world. Mum and Dad were dragging the kids out and everyone was happy and talking in the streets. Again we kicked back and relaxed and found a nice place to eat and be merry in. We dined in a pizzeria and had good food and great wine. Mel and I were fortunate to have in our possession a pocket translator, which Mel’s Mum and Day were very kind to have bought me for my birthday. This was invaluable. We would sit and memorise each phrase before we needed it and we were quite convincing. Everywhere we went the waiters would assume I was Italian and Mel was just some foreign girl. Perhaps it was my pronunciation or perhaps my dark hair and stubble. But surprisingly enough I managed to keep up with most of what was being said to me and I even found myself at random being able to rattle off something convincing to keep up the illusion. It also helps to drink a lot. You find you are a natural in any language when you are pissed. Mel and I ate up and decided we liked the wine so much we ordered a bottle to go and took it back to the balcony of our room and enjoyed a mild Italian night with a bottle on vino and good company.

The next day was our last so we threw our stuff into the back seat of the car and were off to explore the other side of the lake. Right at the base of Lake Garda is a peninsula that extends in a straight line into the middle of the lake. We put the map down and decided that’s where we wanted to go. At the very tip of the peninsula we found another castle and another town. This castle was built on the end of the peninsula and had been cut off from the rest of the land by a huge man made moat that sliced right through the peninsula. We walked across the drawbridge and wandered through the grounds of the castle. We walked down by the water and up though the centre of town. We bought a gelato and decided we had better head back for the airport as we had no idea where it was and our map was in Italian. We managed to translate enough of the road signs to find our way back, just in time to check into our flight home. I dropped the car back scratch free and we boarded our plane home in plenty of time. We did a reverse performance of plane, monorail, train, bus home and put our feet up feeling we had a good, but very small piece of Italy behind us now and we were even more excited now about the rest of Europe to come.

Well Mel and I are sitting quiet for a while as we are saving all our coins for our big trip around Europe September-November and our big trip around India in December. So expect more bulk emails then. In the mean-time don’t forget to visit the website http://www.somerock.com for all the pics etc. I would email them to you but they are a little large.

Speak to you all soon,

V