Verona

On Sunday morning, we left Venice and headed to Verona, the fabled town of where Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet took place.  We got to town, checked our bags into the train station, and headed for a caffe for a cappuccino and a lemon pine nut tart.  Suddenly, cannons shot off! The townspeople were dressed up in 1700's army uniforms and were recreating their battle for independence against Napoleon.  It was really interesting to see, and the people recreating the scenes were super serious and played their parts well.  After watching that for a while, we got some cheap gyros and walked to the fictitious "house of Juliet" and looked around there for a bit.  Then a friend and I went shopping, eventually meeting up accidentally with some people we had traveled with earlier in the weekend, and had dinner with them.  I had penne with pomodoro sauce, which was much better than I expected for being so close to a typical touristy area.  We made a quick gelato stop (gianduia, a kind of chocolate, and pistachio for me) and back to the train station for the three hour ride back to Rome.  I had a great weekend, even though we packed so much travel into three days! I plan on going back to Florence for sure later on.