My My My Verona - Day Two

*NOTE: this is a throwback-post! Originally posted on my "wordpress" blog and now it's been transplanted to it's rightful place here on #sisadventures - hope you enjoy!*

We were very happy to see the sun as we started our second day in Verona. We headed back to the Piazza Bra – the heart of the Old City – and quickly realized that we would be competing with a number of other tourists at the main attractions. Luckily, since we’d spent the previous evening scoping out the city, we knew our map pretty well and were able to take a few alternate streets to get to one of the most popular places in the city – Casa di Giulieta – The house of Juliet.

Every day, all day long, tourists come and go to Verona to see the places of legend made famous by good old William Shakespeare. You can take a guided “Romeo and Juliet” tour, or you can grab a map from your hotel or gift shop and follow the signs posted all over the old city to find your way to that famous balcony.

Before pushing our way to the middle of the courtyard, we went in one of the shops next door. As it turned out, the shop had a 2nd floor, and we were able to look over into the courtyard and take this picture. So – you’re looking at a courtyard, a balcony, a gate full of padlocks (people purchase locks at the nearby shop and click their locks on the gate to symbolize their everlasting love), and a statue of Juliet. If you look closely, you’ll see that the tourist posing with the statue is grabbing Juliet’s right breast. It’s one of those traditions that everyone – young and old – male and female – do for luck. Pretty funny, and if you look at a picture of the statue sans tourists, you can see that, after being embraced by millions of strangers, her right breast is now super shiny.

When we finally made our way into the courtyard to catch a closer glimpse of the balcony, we noticed a bit of commotion… a hush fell over the crowd, and 2 figures appeared on the balcony. We quickly realized it was a German teacher and her student – and the rest of her class was in the courtyard with us. As we watched, they performed the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.  It was sweet and hilarious, because even though we couldn’t understand what they were saying, we were able to follow along with the famous lines… “Oh Romeo, Romeo, warum bist du Romeo?”

You may be wondering if all this can really be the REAL home of Juliet and Romeo… I know I was. Even though Shakespeare definitely set his famous love story in Verona, according to Rick Steves, Italian guide-book guru, most of these “landmarks” were created in the 1970’s to attract tourists. Still, it made for a fun afternoon, and we had a lot of fun exploring and seeing all of the Shakespearean souvenirs.

Finally, it was time for the main event… OUR main reason for coming to Verona… The OPERA! Neither of us had ever been to an opera, so we were very excited and not really sure what to expect. The show started at 8 pm, but we were sitting in the General Admission seats, so we were there when the gates opened at 6:30.

Did I mention that the opera series is held in the outdoor Ancient Roman Arena? As we walked through the tunnels, I got chills thinking about the number of people who’d passed through those walkways and stones.

As we waited for the show to start, the sunset put on a grand “first act.”  In these pictures, you can see the different levels of seating: General Admission (where we were), were seats directly on the marble/stone stairs at the top of the arena. You are allowed to bring cushions and stadium seats for those sections. In the lower sections of the sides of the arena, they’d installed theatre seating, and in the stadium level seating, they had regular chairs.

Finally, it was time for the show to start! We saw our first opera in Italy; it was “Carmen,” which is set in Spain, and it was performed in French.  We did buy a program that had the entire opera with English, German, Italian and French translations, so we were able to follow along.

The experience was once-in-a-lifetime stuff, y’all. At one point, there were over 300 performers on stage.  Each act was about 45 minutes long, and there was a 30 minute break between each of the FIVE ACTS so they could switch out the scenery….so you can do the math. The show started at 8, so the show went on until well after 1 AM! I was really surprised that so many people stayed until the end – but they did, and as we spilled out into the piazza from the Arena, most of them scattered to the cafes for one last gelato or cappuccino before calling it a night.

The Maddox girls decided to pass on the late-night activities since we had an early-morning train ride to Venice the next morning.  We grabbed one last nighttime photo of the Arena before heading back to the hotel to continue our adventures! Ciao, Verona!