Verona, Venice & Bellinzona

Five hours in a car... From our home in Columbus, this will get us to Urbana, Illinois, Knoxville, Tennessee, Buffalo, New York and, for the exotic taste, somewhere in Ontario, Canada. From our abode in Zurich, however, we can get to Lyon, Dijon, Milan, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Munich, Bonn and Verona (Italy, not Wisconsin). Things are closer in Europe; so we decided to leverage this and hopped in a rental car and go to visit our friend Angelo in Verona, Italy.

Angelo was at Maryland with us in graduate school and was kind enough to host us during our visit to Italy back in 1998. He was a spectacular host once again, setting up a seminar for me at his department at the University of Verona and found a wonderful bed and breakfast in fair Verona.

The first picture is us coming up on the Gotthard tunnel in southern Switzerland, which is among the longest tunnels in the world at just over 10 miles (although it probably only took us 10-12 minutes to travel through, it seemed much longer as Elena was prevented from her outloud reading of Harry Potter during that time).

After a nasty traffic jam on the outskirts of Verona, Angelo met us with 2 of his 3 kids to provide us an escort to the bed and breakfast. The next day, I gave a seminar at the University while Elena and the boys explored Verona on a wet Friday.

The boys found a street performer who made balloon swords and belt holsters (see picture). These proved useful later in the day as we went to the famous Verona coliseum - one of the largest Roman coliseums still standing (see picture).
The next picture shows the arc of the river round the old city of Verona as we crossed it that night to accompany Angelo and his family to a really cool local agri-tourismo restaurant outside the city. Their 3 kids and our 2 boys had a rowdy time playing together during breaks in the meal (unfortunately, we both forgot cameras and have no pictures!)

The next day we took the short hour or so drive over to Venice - or at least the big parking lot that is outside of Venice since we rented a car rather than a boat. The first picture is the boys riding the water taxi into the city. Elena and I passed the monastery on San Giorgio island where we spend a few nights back in 1998 for a conference in Venice.

Lunch was the first order of business upon arrival. Elena forced the boys to pass up the touristy places off San Marcos square for a smaller place deeper into the island (technically, Venice is 118 islands, and each has at least one church). Isaac has an adventurous palate, as can be seen in the picture where he is eating his dish of cuttle fish and octopus in black squid sauce with polenta.
We then took the expensive but unforgettable gondola ride through the many canals. Our gondaleer, Pieter, was one of 450 gondolas licensed to work; his gondola was passed down from his grandfather.

We walked around the city some more and took in a beautiful basilica and got a picture of the Grand Canal from the famous Rialto bridge. At one point, the boys found confetti (perhaps left over from Carnival, which had only been a few weeks prior to our visit) and decided there was no time like the present for a celebration of their own.

Apparently, the pigeons of San Marcos square are nearly as famous as the city; vendors sell bird food and the fowl are more than happy to perch upon you in order to get a mouthful.

We went back to Verona for the night and headed back to Switzerland the next day, though we stopped at the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona for the afternoon. This strategically critical city (at least in the middle ages), located at a passage in the Alps, features 3 castles within an easy walk of each other. We walked around 2 of them, including down a long wall that extend a kilometer from the castle to the heart of the modern town. We hope to return before our time in Switzerland is up.