Romeo e Giulietta

And so the traveling continues! This weekend's destination: Verona! I absolutely fell in love with the city. It is so beautiful! It's only about an hour away from Padova, so I definitely will be returning. This trip was our first BU-sponsored trip, so we went as a whole group and two of the professors gave us a tour of the city. (A program-sponsored trip also means transportation and lunch is all taken care of! Sweet!)

As soon as we arrived in Verona, we all went and got coffee and brioche (first things first, you know). We then started off with a tour of the historic center of town and saw the Arena (looks like a mini Coloseum), Castelvecchio, and Piazza Erbe. Verona has a lot of Roman architecture and influence, so it was fun to hear about some of the history and see the different architecture. A few hours and about 50 pictures later, we went to a little osteria for lunch called "Giulietta e Romeo."As you may already know, Romeo and Juliet were supposed to have come from Verona. :) I realized I haven't uploaded any pictures of food that I have eaten (besides some uncooked pasta) so here we go:

Looks delicious right? It was. These are bigoli, the traditional Veronese pasta. We also had a secondo of veal and potatoes (I'm not so big on the veal...), followed by coffee, of course. A group of us then headed over to see "Juliet's balcony." People write love messages on the wall and rub Juliet's boob for good luck (don't ask me why...). 

After this Shakespearean detour, a friend and I wandered around and saw some of the other notable sights in Verona: a statue of Dante, le Scale di Ragione, Arche Scaligere, and la Chiesa di Sant'Anastasia. We saw all these things again in the afternoon part of the tour. :) We ended the day on the Ponte Romano, which has an absolutely spectacular view of Verona, especially as the sun is setting.

Let's see, what other cultural activities have I experienced? We went to an Italian movie together at the theater, wandered around the markets on Saturday, and ate lots of food. I also got to meet Anna's (my host mom's) parents yesterday! We went over to their home for lunch. They live in a condominium on the seventh floor, and they literally have a view of every historical sight in Padova (il Duomo, Santa Giustina, Sant Antonio, Galileo's tower...). Anna's father is an English professor at the University, but we spoke only in Italian and he was very interesting. I can tell he is extremely intelligent, I just wish I knew all the vocabulary so I could ask him questions about a bunch of things! I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk again.

Side note: this week is the last week of the intensive language month! So ready to start new classes! I just have to get through the final exams first... A dopo!

Learn Italian

carciofi - artichokes

francobollo - stamp

pranzo - lunch