Monday – an Expedition to the other side of the river.

The school has a canteen with good value lunches, sometimes a little boring, but fast. Helen, M and I decided to have lunches at the school this week because we felt we were wasting too much time most afternoons having a nice long relaxing lunch and not spending enough time seeing the sights. How boring are we?

The main old part of Verona is built in a bend of a river – like an upside down U. Today, after classes and lunch, we caught a bus which took a round about route to the other side of the river.

Our first stop was Chiesa di Santo Stefano – not open. Not important , plenty more to see. Next stop Teatro Romano. Built 1st Century BCE. This has been much restored. Still has stone steps and a loggia and some walls. Up the hill is a museum with different Greek, Roman and Etruscan old plates, jars, etc and some mosaic floors. By far the best part was the magnificent views of Verona. We thought a gelato would be nice but walked on to the next place – the highlight for me – without finding a gelato shop.

Santa Maria in Organo was amazing. One commentator has said that the wooden choir stalls are the best in Italy. Dating from the 1490’s , the marquetry was the work of Fra Giovanni, a Benedictine monk. He worked for 25 years cutting and assembling complex, coloured images of animals, birds, landscapes, buildings, religious scenes, musical and scientific instruments in many panels. The use of perspective was really suprising.

We continued our walk to look at some gardens, still looking for a gelato shop. The gardens looked interesting, but we decided we did not want to spend the 5 euro entry fee, but would come back on another day for a picnic. We then decided that, given that is was after 5pm by that stage, that we would stop at either a gelato shop or a bar, whichever came first. – a bit of a no-brainer – gelato shops are in touristy areas, bars are everywhere and we were in a residential area, so we had a spritz and some chips and water and revived enough to continue. The next church we came to , San Tomaso, was dedicated to St Thomas a Becket ( why?) but there was a sort of service going on so we just sat at the back for a bit.

We wandered home , had dinner at a self-service place we had been to before, then had our gelato as we walked the rest of the way.