26th August 2007

Italy

So far Italy has proved to be a land of vast extremes from the scenery to the weather to pretty much everything else. Perhaps the campsite we stayed at a few nights back illustrates this. It was set in a botanical garden on several levels of crumbling castle walls. From the top where we were pitched there were fantastic views of Verona below. It should have been paradise but this is Italy. The staff were almost uniformly rude and made every query and transaction unnecessarily long and complicated while the sanitary blocks were by far the worst we have seen so far. The phrase “Turkish style WCs” is enough to give any western traveller a case of the heebee jeebies. And that’s been our Italian experience so far- brilliant unforgettable experiences tempered with some downright strange ones. So in brief, here are the highlights.

We began in Venice which was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t dirty or smelly and the crowds were easy to avoid at all but the most obvious sites. We did have to queue to visit the basilica of St Marco but it was well worth it and as luck would have it, a free English speaking guided tour was about to begin as we reached the door. The tour was fascinating and the guide spent much of the time explaining the rich frescoes that covered the walls and ceilings of the building. After leaving the basilica we passed by the Bridge of Sighs and tried to lose ourselves, and the hordes in the narrow winding lanes and canals of the city. It wasn’t hard.

A few days later we spent a few nights in Verona which was an absolutely gorgeous little city and surprisingly quiet everywhere except at the House of Juliet where it is possible to glimpse the balcony from which the fictional lovers would have made their tryst had they been real. The real star attraction of the city is the great Roman Amphitheatre which seats 20,000 and is used as an enormous opera house during summer. With that sort of capacity it wasn’t too hard to get tickets for the cheap seats at that evening’s performance of Verdi’s Aida and we spent an enchanting evening under the stars (and a few ominous thunder clouds) enjoying Italian opera al fresco.

Verona also boasts some magnificent Romanesque churches which we spent the next day visiting. That night we were subjected to the fiercest thunderstorm we have encountered (and we’ve seen a few) We ended up sharing a gazebo for a few hours with the kiwi folks pictured below, so if that’s you, thanks.

Our next destination took us out of Italy and into the Italian speaking part of Switzerland where we spent 2 nights sleeping in a straw bed on a goat farm. This was a Swiss tourism venture where farmers are encouraged to open up barns and byres to be used by backpackers for a very reasonable rate which always includes breakfast. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It was also a very timely episode indoors as it rained for nearly the whole time we were in Switzerland.

So now we’re back in Italy, near Parma enjoying a bit of a break from all the travelling and sightseeing. The next stop is Florence and from then on, we really will be into the return journey.