The Hike 9: Verona (Northern Italy)

"Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
When I first saw the play, I thought this a weird question (I was 11). Obviously Juliet knew that Romeo was...Romeo, right?
But when, a couple of years later, I saw it again performed at a Shakespeare festival it hit me that there was a lot more to that question, and when I had to explain the play to my secondary school pupils, now years (it seems eons) later, Romeo and Juliet had grown to be one of my favorite Shakespeare tragedies. I made myself the promise I would visit Verona if I ever had the chance.

This is the balcony in Verona where Juliet purportedly stood during this conversation, and whether this is the actual house (as some historians claim) or whether Juliet never existed so this balcony is a clever tourist trap and fraud (as other historians equally claim, as it seems to have been added to the house in the 1930's according to Wikipedia), let me tell you that I could easily believe that the nurse was waiting in the room next to it, whilst Juliet cried "Anon, good nurse, anon!".
Mind you, so could dozens of others, milling around in the courtyard, or vying for a spot where they could touch Juliet's bronze titty.
So I aimed my camera high, in order to bypass all those overheated heads.

I ADORED Verona. In fact, I have vowed to go and live there after my retirement in 10 years time (or perhaps 15; by the time I've reached 67 and my government has by then added another 5 years to the retirement plan...growl!).
In order to take this photo I had to climb some very steep stairs, but they were worth every one of them!

We arrived in Verona after a comfortable express train ride from Firenze, and let me tell you, our first view and whiff of this city made me fall head over heel in love with it. It smelled of herbs, flowers, pines. And it was cheerfully busy but relaxed, and you could walk from the station into the city in 10 minutes along leafy streets.
We dumped our backpacks in the B&B and immediately headed into the Medeaval city centre, where this gate greeted us.

Verona is not really very large, and it has something lovely for you to see at every corner.

It boasts two Roman amphitheaters, of which this is the Arena on the Piazza Bra where the famous Operas are performed every Summer.

This is the other one, Teatro Romano, except you cannot see it, as it is hidden behing those ancient walls right in the center of this photo. 
We were unlucky: Teatro Romano was closed the entire month of May, for restoration. But we climbed the hill behind it and took a peek into it from above.

As all Tuscany cities Verona is built around a variety of piazzas. This one is the Piazza Erbe, which borders on the Piazza Dei Signori, also known locally as Piazza Dante because of its statue of the famous poet. At one time, all those buildings facing the piazza had been painted; now only some of the wall paintings remain. In order to get here, we walked along Via Mazzini, but took in Casa di Giulietta, and the closely by Casa di Romeo as well. Juliet's house is a museum, Romeo's you cannot enter as it is a private residence.

But I took a photo of a courtyard in Siena, which you will have to pretend looks like Romeo's palazzo (I did!):

The river Fiume Adige holds Verona in a motherly embrace, and we hiked both riverbank walks starting at the Ponte S. Francesco right up to the Ponte Risorgimento and it was lovely. Whilst taking in the gorgeous views we determined to walk the ramparts and hills the next day, and we did.

Verona was ruled for centuries by the same family, the della Scala family, and they resided in this castle on the river, the Castelvecchio, which houses a museum today.
The Duomo (of course Verona has one as well) is also right on the river, on the Piazza Duomo.

It has a fearsome warrior like Angel in front of it, although now I look back I must admit this could be Santa Anastasia...Sorry, I saw so many of them I get my Santas mixed up...

The next day, again with glorious weather, we started walking the ramparts starting from the same bridge again, the Ponte San Francesco (to the East of the station). Those ramparts have been built during the Austrian/Hungarian - Veneto wars, and they have been very well preserved. The park laid out on top of it is mostly green, don't expect many flower beds. We left them at the Ponte Catena and cut off by taking the Via Farina Uberti and Via dei Mille to pick up the other side of the ramparts at the corner of Viale D'Annunzio. Now we walked all the way up the hill to high above the Castel San Pietro (where the mighty Visconti family lived), where we also had the stunning view of Verona I have posted below my  paragraph about Juliet. But here is another one.

Above the Teatro Romano.

Those ramparts were so quiet you couldn't believe you were above a city teeming with tourists!

We ended the day in a great restaurant on the Piazza Erbe called Téta de Giulieta, or Juliet's tit, where I had a local speciality: Stracotto di Verona: polenta with donkey stew - 9 hours stewed, assured the charming owner. When my friend wanted to take a photo of me and my donkey, he quickly sat down next to me. The owner, not the donkey.

It was lovely food! The Spritz was nice too. Perhaps I should not have spurned to touch Giuilieta's right Téta after all...It's supposed to bring you luck in romantic love.

Right: the nitty-gritty:
We walked approx. 36 kilometers in two days in Verona. It has some steep steps, but on the whole it is great and easy to walk there.
We stayed at B&B SweetVerona, on the Via Amatore Sciesa, which is only 10 minutes walk from the city centre gate and does a great breakfast. It only has 3 rooms (with a balcony!), so book well in advance.
Another tip is  the organic restaurant "The Kitchen", on the Via Nicola Mazza 63A
which does inexpensive wonderful fresh food.
Verona has a tiny airport, only 2 gates, but many West-European airlines fly there (we flew with Transavia-KLM), which is only 10 minutes by taxi from the city centre and costs €15,00.
Although beloved by tour operators we never felt crowded by fellow tourists in Verona.
Beware that the temperatures (now a wonderful 23 degrees C in the first week of May) can be as high as 40 in high Summer!

I'll leave you with a photo I took that makes me smile: design ice cream.
Hope you've enjoyed walking alongside me on my Tuscany urban hikes, and see you soon.
The next The Hike will be about Northern-England. Arriverderci!

The Hike 8: Siena (Northern Italy)

Where we bussed from exhaust-pall covered Firenze to old Siena in a 'Rapido' bus that, in the end, took longer than the return 'Originale', in order to walk the Palio circuit.

Frankly, I thought it a blessed relief to be able to leave Firenze behind. Around 10 a.m. we boarded a creaking sky-blue local bus which would bring us to Siena - the rapido way.

In reality it took us almost half an hour at walking pace to even get out of the city. But after that the stunning landscapes of Tuscany kept me on the edge of my seat. It is leafy green, with vineyards and romantic villages, and at this time of year dotted with poppies.In short, just like the cliché Italy I liked so much when I watched "Letters to Juliet". Cliché or not, I loved it!

The weather had taken a turn for the better as well, finally the sun showed her face. We followed the other tourists into the old part of Siena, through one of the many gates. Siena is built up a steep hill, which makes hiking her streets a tiring affair for a flat  (and slightly too fat) delta dweller. But the gorgeous vistas around every corner urged me on and on.
Another difference with Firenze turned out to be the prices - Siena (her life-long rival) is slightly easier on your tourist purse, as long as you do not want to eat at the main square of Palio fame, the Piazza del Campo. 
If you want details about the Palio (the horse race) you'll have to look them up yourself - I respect the historical value but abhor the    race itself.

Siena is filled with images (mostly statues) of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus. I looked them up, not understanding why this typically Rome symbol features so dominantly in Siena.Unfortunately I couldn't find an answer; so if you know it, be sure to let me know?
Obviously Siena has her very own duomo: the Duomo di Siena, from the 12th century. It is stunning in black, white and rose colored marble- and reminded me of a wedding cake.

This corner detail shows you how lavishly decorated it is. I always try to envisage the marble-dusty stonemasons carving these decorations. I wonder how many of them were killed by the Black Death in the 13th century (when they were still building this duomo).

We walked Siena tirelessly, I swear we walked each and every inner-city street and alley. And, cat lover that I am, I found myself a cat:

Or could it be an otter, I wonder? Anyway, I wish I could teleport it to my garden.

Right, the nitty-gritty:
We walked 19.356 steps, which comes to roughly 26 km. Siena streets are STEEP, so be warned if your knees are troubling you.
Temps. were a balmy 23 degrees, but it feels hotter in the narrow streets, so take plenty of water.
We stayed in Florence, so I cannot recommend B&Bs.
The rapid bus Firenze-Siena takes 1.45 hrs, lol, and so does the slow one.
The link to a nice little video about Siena:Siena

The Hike 7: Florence (Northern Italy)

Urban hiking has its own merits and disadvantages...And when you are a delta dweller, like myself, used to flat surfaces and gras/earth, walking across cobbles and uneven marble pavements taking in the many steps and hills is quite a challenge.

We took the slow train from Bologna to Florence, taking in lots of tunnels on the way. I had looked forward to seeing something of the landscape, but most of the time I just saw darkness.
Florence main station was large and crowded, and walking outside into the overcast old city centre it stayed that way, crowded.
The first thing that hit me was the smell: Firenze has a smog problem.
The second observation was that it also has a tourist problem. And here I was...adding to that with my small backpack, Aesics and raincoat.

We had booked a B&B well outside of the city centre for monetary reasons, which meant that we had to walk over 3 kms from the station to get there and the map wasn't very accurate.The difference in walking Bologna vs Firenze is that here instead of spacey relaxed arcades there are narrow pavements, but they are taken over by restaurants, market stalls and parked mopeds. Moreover, the road we had to take to the B&B happened to be the main bus route out of the inner city. Those buses were lined up like wagons on a train, honestly. Belching out exhaust fumes so toxic that I was gasping for breath.

So: did we turn on our heel and march back to the station? No. I was there,right, so I braved the traffic and determined I was going to see the Duomo even if it meant getting a headache (and it did).

Should you visit Florence? Hm. The Uffizi and the many gorgeous monuments mean that your eyes are feasted. But it does take some stamina to battle your way through the hordes. For example, I hardly saw anything of the lovely old shops lining the Ponte Vecchio, there simply were too many people like me. So we walked along the river instead and watched the built up bridge from the next bridge over.
This photo is one I took just before we threw ourselves into the crowd crossing the Ponte.

But even there on the other side, traffic and tourists everywhere.
Still, the palazzos and piazzas are charming, and the people we met in the trattorias were friendly, and the food was more than good.

As is my habit, I try to eat the local speciality where-ever I visit, and this is the famous Florentine T-Bone with roast potatoes.
And (no fibbing here!) it was the best T-Bone I have ever tasted. It melted in my mouth. I voiced my appreciation, and I don't know if that was what did it, but the waiters promptly forgot our existence and we had to wait for over an hour for the bill. I joked that they probably loved having two damp middle-aged Dutch hikers sitting at their prime position terrace table; we sat there for 3 1/2 hours! Still, never a dull moment. We watched the people milling on the piazza, very entertaining.

The next day we planned to visit Siena, so we walked back to the station and tried to find out where to buy our bus tickets and find the right bus stop. Again, this took stamina. Florentine professional travel people are very friendly but very vague at the same time. They either give you the wrong information, or they give you the right information using the wrong English words, anyway, to cut a very long story short, we spent more than 2 hours finding those tickets and bus stop. (Skip the next paragraph if you are not interested in our bus story)

If you plan to travel by local bus, take note: the local bus station is hidden away in a courtyard opposite the main line train station, and there is NO signposting there. There is a sign at the station telling you to go left to get your bus tickets, but when you do you find a Tobacconist which only sells bus tickets to The Mall (a huge outlet centre where enormous chrome and gleaming aubergine colored luxury buses full of Chinese tourists are herded towards).He then tells you to go 600 m. right instead. If you do, you end up at another Tobacconist selling tickets to...The Mall.
After 2 hours of searching (and by then swearing in Dutch and English simultaneously - always handy to be bi-lingual)we ended up desperately throwing ourselves at a suave local businessman who looked as if he knew his way around. He did. He even stopped talking into his mobile for three seconds.In the shady concrete courtyard which he pointed out (we were standing directly opposite it and we had passed it at least 10 times already) they sold bus tickets to every city around Firenze, including Siena.

Right: the nitty-gritty:
This day in Firenze we hiked 20.507 steps, which boils down to approx. 27 kms (of which at least 5 up & down along the same street searching for that bus terminal).
We stayed at B&B Casa Toselli, 3 km out of the old city centre, with clean comfortable rooms and bathrooms and a basic breakfast of weak cafe Americano, toast,cakes and jam. Added bonus: the next door neighbors keep a parrot in their garden, which keeps up a friendly Italian banter.
Temp. 18 to 20 degrees, overcast.
Road surfaces: uneven ancient marble and uneven modern cement.Most Firenze dog owners carry a pooper scooper, but beware all the same.
The link to an honest tourist board video about Florence: Firenze
We were advised not to drink the water from the fountains, but to buy bottled water instead, so we did.In most small shops a bottle will cost you 50 Eurocent.

The Hike 6: Bologna (Northern Italy)

As promised, a new installment of my hiking efforts, this time an urban one through the ancient city of Bologna in Northern Italy.

Hi, there, this is me in one of those typical Bologna streets.

From the first time (exactly a year ago this month) I set foot in Italy, I adored this country. So, planning a new hiking trip there was no hardship. I wanted to see more of Toscana (Tuscany), as that is the region I have read a lot about, and obviously because of Shakespeare's plays (English teacher forever, right?).

Nowadays planning your own trips is easy as pie through the Internet, so my friend Rina and I booked a cheap plane ticket from Eindhoven to Bologna, not quite knowing what to expect. I had read up on the city, and learnt it has a University and a music college, so a lot of students, and also learnt of its numerous arcades, but that was it.

So did I get a pleasant surprise or what?!

The above church on the Piazza Maggiore by the way is one of the oldest and the second largest church of Italy. I was told that it came too close to being larger than St. Peter in Rome, and the then Pope stopped all building works thereafter, so it is unfinished to this day.

I thought it was interesting, marble and beauty at ground level and then austere bricks on top.

The weather was atrocious though...11 degrees and raining off and on. Not quite what us delta dwellers had expected (last year May in Rome it was a blistering 29 degrees - also not what we had expected, but great).

So one of the first things I did when in Bologna was race into OVS, a wonderful store, and buy a sweatshirt. 

We walked those arcades with pleasure, as the busy motor traffic was banned to the middle of the road, which was often congested, but us pedestrians had it easy.

My reading had told me there is a 3.8 km long 666 arches arcade leading right up the side of a 300 m high hill, which takes you to the Basilica of St. Luca, and I definitely wanted to hike up that hill, for the view of the Medeaval city . But we were told by a nice waiter that it being the week of the Madonna di San Luca, there would be a procession going up that hill that day, and it would be terribly crowded and not advisable to try it.

We stuck to the inner city arcades instead.

This tower is the Torre dell'Arengo, and on both sides of the street you have a good example of the arcades.

The tower is one of the 24 remaining (out of an original 100!)high narrow towers of the city, built to defend the palazzos.

All in all we walked for hours and hours, soaking up the relaxed atmosphere (and rain...)and ending up in a wonderful restaurant run by twin ladies, where I had aubergine-filled tortellini with gorgonzola-cream sauce (yummy!)and the best-tasting beer ever (that could have something to do with the fact that I was extremely thirsty and tired at the time). And I love the Italian habit of presenting their guests with free bread, olive oil and salt and pepper as a starter! Our Dutch Italian restaurants do the same - but at a price...

Right: down to the nitty-gritty.

We stayed at B&B Alle Torri (see the view from our window above) with clean rooms and amenities, good breakfast and (for me very important) all the free espresso and free Wi-Fi I needed.

Walking distance from the B&B to the centre of town: 10 minutes. The only downside I can mention is that the students at the corner bar right underneath our window kept up their lively shouting until 3 am.

Number of steps walked in Bologna: 15.303, which amounts to approx. 20 kms.

Temp: a chilly rainy 11 degrees to 18 degrees when it was dry.

Travelled from Bologna to Florence by slow train (1 hr and 45 mins), costing €16.
Link to official Tourist Office video:Bologna

Val di Sole - How Soon Can I Move There? (Road Trip Part 2)

The crossing into Italy at Nauders is uneventful. Not a border guard in sight. Only sky, a few food/souvenir shops and plenty of cyclists. When you drive to Italy, prepare yourself for bicycle racers sweating their way up or hurtling their way down the mountain passes! Most of them seem to have a death wish, or at least that's how it looked to me.

We had no stomach for a terribly far ride, so looked on the map and decided to stop at twin lakes near S. Valentino (1470 m). The campsite we chose was on the bank of the second, somewhat smaller lake, the Haidersee (or Lago della Muta in Italian) and yet again it was a nice, quiet, clean spot with wonderful bathrooms and a tennis court (the 6 tennis enthusiasts in our company of 7 were chuffed I can tell you!).
S. Valentino turned out to be a nice cross between Austrian efficiency and Italian joy for life. Its people are bilingual, which comes in handy when your Italian is limited to 'pronto',  'pizza Napolitano' and 'chiao, bello!'.

But another great thing about S. Valentino is that only 500 meters from the campsite it has a cable car going up the mountain; up up up you go to 3100 something meters. From there you can choose between going even further up (on foot) to a little lake and eternal snow, or down via varied paths, ranging from a fast 1 hour downhill one to leisurely 5 hours ones snaking down the mountain through flower dotted meadows filled with sweet brown cows and through leafy woods.

Needless to say we took the long way down, checking in at a dairy-cum-eatery around noon halfway down, where the entire family worked their lederhosen off to keep everyone in huge beers and platters of homemade cheese and speck (bacon).

The views are breathtaking, but at the same time it is absolutely doable, even for such a handicapped walker like myself (my frame has issues I will spare you the details about).
We met plenty of other hikers; entire families with young kids, but old folk as well, and (as usual) plenty of mountain bikers who had trails especially for themselves.
The last leg of the hike was along the lake, which looked ever so inviting by that time, but is not suited for swimming due to the many rocks and the icy cold water.

We left S. Valentino after two days. Our aim was the Val di Sole simply because someone had told us that the three passes we needed to cross to get there were rated as the most beautiful passes of Italy (according to Top Gear the Passo dello Stelvio 2757 m. is  the best scenic mountain pass of Europe).
Uhm...my family and friends assured me they were. I was totally freaked out by the narrowness, the sheer hundreds of meters drops without any railings and the fact that other  cars could not pass our Volkswagen Transporter, but had to anyway (necessitating them to reverse to a point where they could - madness). Those eight hours driving (we took the Passo di Gavia 2621 m. as well) were not my favorite part of this road trip!
But I braved the road a couple of times when we stopped and I took the photos. I hope you'll appreciate them!

Just when my holiday mood had sunk to an all-time low, we entered the most gorgeous valley I have ever seen, with small villages dotted on both sides as far as the eye could see. The mountain range we crossed is called the Cevedale and from our campsite  (aptly called Cevedale) in Ossana (pop. 863) we saw both this range and the Presanella, both capped with snow.

For hikers, this must be Paradise. For me, struggling stumbling wanna-be hiker, it was stunning. But I was very happy to simply enjoy a leisurely walk from Ossana to the next village along Pellizzano, where there was a biological farmers market, and back along the fast river Noce, waving at the rafters along the way.

Those villages stole my heart. In fact, the entire valley stole my heart. Every village has its own Municipale, its own school and its own post office and a wonderful bakery, butcher and cheese shop cum wine shop. What else does a person need to grow old gracefully?
No discos, no nightclubs, no high-rises, a few restaurants. Almost every house its own vegetable and herb garden. Cows. A few horses. A bleating goat here and there.
Bliss.

I'm going to be saving up! This is where I want to spend my last years, after I've retired from my school when I'm 70 or so. The villager's English was atrocious to nonexistent, so I'll have a golden future there.

My route:
180 Nauders (Austria) to SS40 S. Valentino (Italy)
SS40 S. Valentino to Spondigna
SS38 to Bórmio
SS300 to Ponte di Legno
SS42 to Ossana - last campsite

All photos ©RenéeKoopman

Val di Sole - How Soon Can I Move There? (Road Trip Part 1)

Last May I treated myself to a holiday in Rome. For some unfathomed reason Italy had always escaped and resisted my travel bug...But Rome has changed that for good.
So it was with great anticipation that we let our noses lead us through Bavaria and Austria to the border crossing at Nauders.
But first things first.
Now, you should understand something about me: I am not a natural car traveller. Me being behind the wheel, okay, I can handle that. But someone else...mwah. Let's say I tend to get a little nervous. Especially when speeds exceed 120 kms (and in Germany on the Autobahn they usually do! - except when there is a Stau)
But the landscape provided plenty of diversion. Germany is absolutely very pleasant to look at. Even when your son is doing 190.
Being used to French and Greek campsites (read: either huge, crowded, relatively clean and expensive or small, not expensive, uncrowded and relatively dirty) the ones we stayed at in Germany and Austria were a revelation. 

Our first one was the Sportcamping Schwarzwald near Calw. You leave the autobahn at Pforzheim and instant relaxation is your due. If you are not fussy about there being absolutely nothing in the village, this is a wonderful spot to unwind. There is a huge, beautiful pool next door, and on the campsite itself an unpretentious cafe served us the best salad I've had in ages. The population was either grey and quiet or very sporty and quiet. We met a fellow Dutch family who were cycling to Northern Italy with two kids under 6 in front on their bicycles and their tent on the back. Jeez, respect!

The second campsite was Camping Elbsee, near Aitrach direction of Kempten  in Bavaria.
As the name tells you, it is situated on the banks of a lake, the Elbsee, an ancient moorsee dating from the time Germany was covered by ice. Nowadays it is protected nature, and is surrounded by farmland. On an early morning walk around this lake (2 hours) we met deer, foxes, and overhead saw numerous birds of prey. Do bring your mosquito repellant though, all that water and bogland  and the many domesticated cows around breed a lot of creepy crawlies with wings and sharp stingers.

It is a lovely campsite, with clean, luxury bathrooms and a lot of funny art all around the site. It also boasts a great restaurant right at the lakeside.

The last campsite I will point out to you in this first part of my travels is the one outside Nauders, Austria.
We landed there by mistake; another site we wanted to stay at was fully booked, so we drove on towards the Italian border and saw a gas station cum campsite 500 meters before the border crossing. It looked very basic, but beggars cannot be choosers, right? To our amazement the shower rooms were great, clean and with as much free hot water as we desired. As the weather had taken a turn for the worse, this was lovely.
Baking our sausages in the drizzle somehow has no appeal to us, so we walked back to Nauders, a very pleasant downhill walk towards a 12th century castle-cum-restaurant. The only creatures we met during this one hour walk were a couple of cyclists (every present in this part of Europe!), some shy cows and a cuddly Berner Senner dog who did his best to pretent to guard his farm, but who flopped down on my feet to be petted.

Ah...what goes down must be trotted back up as well...One and a half hours hiking back in the drizzle gave us a very wholesome feeling; all that great food we ate surely had been well digested!

In Part 2 I'll tell you about our journey into Italy.

My route:
 Hellevoetsluis - A67 Venlo
61 to Koblenz
E44 to join the E35/3 to Frankfurt
E35/5 to Pforzheim
463 to Calw - 1st campsite
295 to Stuttgart
E52/8 to Ulm
E43/7 to Kempten
but after Memmingen the 11 to Aitrach - Elbsee - 2nd campsite
7 to Füssen
179 to Nassereith
189 to Imst
A12/E60 to Landeck
180 to Nauders (1394 m) - 3rd campsite

All photos ©RenéeKoopman