Abenteuer Dreiundzwanzig: Verona (Teil Zwei)

Keeping this blog up over the next month is going to be a serious challenge. I have a final next week, three term papers to write, two dances to learn, and the sadly brief remainder of my stay here to enjoy. 

Well, at least I can try to blog every now and again. 

My second morning in Verona wasn't terribly exciting and thusly shouldn't take me very long to write about. As you may recall, I spent my night in a sketchy bed a breakfast. Which, in the morning, raised the question of breakfast.

When I emerged from my room, I found it waiting on the table of the floor kitchen:  a pyramid of prepackaged snack cakes.

Fortunately, I had been told that I could also get breakfast at a cafe down the street. This turned out to be the decidedly better option. 

After breakfast, the only thing I really had time for was the walk to the train station. Off I went.

At the street corner I found another castle.

When I reached the train station I found that all the tickets for the trip I wanted to take had already been booked. I had an hour and a half to wait until my next connection. 

90 minutes really wasn't enough time to do anything particularly exciting, but fortunately there was a beautiful park across the street with some ruined sections of (Medieval? Roman? Modern-but-designed-to-look-old?) wall to explore. 

It was a beautiful day--70 and sunny. Playing outside sounded like the best idea in the world.

The wall was overgrown with vines and flowers

 The closer I got to the vines, the more loud, frantic rustling I heard among the leaves. It didn't take me long to discover the reason:

 Lizards. Tiny little lizards. They were everywhere--basking in every patch of sunshine and lurking under every cool leaf. There must have been hundreds of them.

Every lizard in Italy migrates to Verona in the spring to bask on this one particular wall. Biologists should seriously investigate this phenomenon.

At any rate, chasing the lizards through the park turned out to provide some serious fun.

 I crawled my way up the (surprisingly steep) hill to see the wall from the top.

After the wear and tear of the preceding week, a nap at the top of the wall seemed like a pretty good idea.

At the top of the hill stood a nice little memorial park to the soldiers of World War II. There were also many flowers

 After a brief session of hiking around, it was time for me to head back to the train station. On the way, I found a four leaf clover.

Verona was one of my favorite stops on my trip. I was sad to say goodbye to it, as I boarded my train.

A few hours later, however, I was thrilled to say hello to Rome.