Tuscany Trip 2012! Vescovado Last Days, San Zenone Degli Ezzelini, Sermione, Verona
Mike and I had just finished putting every photo we took on to two separate hard drives and began singing the theme music to Jurassic Park with our hands in the air. The director of the program Tony Tuck gave us hugs and then took a group of us up to Il Libridinoso to celebrate.
The total count was around 2,950 photographs, and the reason we sang Jurassic Park was because every time the trench masters finished transcribing their trench books, they would start singing Jurassic Park and celebrating. One of the people on the dig supposedly recited the entire script of Jurassic Park from start to finish a couple years ago, and the theme song stuck around.
There were some fun events that happened on the last weekend that people were around in Vescovado. On Thursday night, there was student dinner where all of the staff cooked for the students. There was pork, chicken, pasta, salad, wine and a slideshow of pictures recapping the year.
Then there was the staff dinner at Il Libridinoso, where we had a set menu of many appetizers and pastas and wines. Our waitress Donatella is trying to become a wine sommelier, so she brought out wines that she thought were especially good.
On Saturday morning after the staff dinner there was the official "epic breakfast", also for the staff. Basically the entire summer we never had a great breakfast. It was the same croissant, tuscan bread with nutella, yogurt, apples and bananas, so epic breakfast was going to be a lot of very typical and delicious breakfast foods. There was a casserole, two cobblers with ice cream, some sort of filled french toast, fruit, cheese, eggs and more. Everyone ate a ton of food and was happy and tired.
The rest of my time in Vescovado was spent playing my guitar, hanging out at the bar, or taking the bikes that were left by the staff around the town. My longest trip was from Vescovado to the Crevole castle.
The gates ended up being closed, but it was a nice ride anyways.
Here's what the castle looks like from the bottom of the road.
And here is a nice view of Vescovado on the ride back.
A group that was still hanging around Vescovado were heading to Bologna for a couple days and offered to give me a ride up to the Siena train station. We all said goodbye and I was off to San Zenone Degli Ezzelini.
It was nice watching the change in the landscape from Tuscany to the north. There were hundreds of sunflower, wheat and corn fields and many little towns along the way.
I got to the Bassano del Grappa train station on time and Liz Berzins was in the lobby waiting for me. It was about a ten minute drive to her house and it gave us a good chance to get to know each other, because we had never met before.
I got to their house and saw their view from the backyard. Across the street from their backyard you can see a few corn fields and then just a few miles past, these giant Dolomite mountains all across the horizon.
I got a tour of the house from Liz where I saw Ben's (her husband) collection of guitars! I met Andre who is an awesome 8 year old kid who is already smarter than me and can do some cool magic tricks. Then I met Ben's french parents and sister who are also visiting the house. Luckily his sister Rachel and his father can speak a little english, but I basically have to have a translator for his mom. All I've learned about Rachel is that she lives in French Guiana, South America and studies the behavior of jaguars through GPS. She works with animal conservation and is trying to create a new study to help protect the jaguars. Liz told me she is basically the typical "cool aunt".
Ben came back from his work later that day and he introduced me to a couple of new drinks. The first was a Spritz, which is Prosecco, tonic and Amerol. It is a bright orange drink that's good. Chloe, who is Andre's older sister, then came home from a theme park and I learned quickly that she is just as smart. They both can easily switch off from French, English and Italian and Chloe is studying Spanish now too.
We all had dinner and then Ben brought out some Cuban rum, because he knew American's were fascinated with anything from Cuba (which I was). That was about the end of the night and we had to get to bed for our trip the next day.
We got in the car around 9 and began our drive, where I realized Ben has great taste in music. We listened to the Civil Wars , Gark Clark Junior, John Mayer Trio and J.J. Cale. He also introduced me to two new artists Seasick Steve and Xavier Rudd. It was about an hour and half ride until we got to Sermione.
Throughout the city there were animal sculptures with numbers on the side of their bodies correlating to how many there are in the world. There are a lot of elephants but there are only about 730 gorillas, which seemed low.
Ben knew where he was headed when we all sat down to have lunch. This was probably one of my favorite seafood meals. I also got a Spritz here where you can see the bright orange color.
Then we got huge gelatos, Menta and Caffé this time for me.
This gives a good idea of what most of Sirmione streets looked like.
This is a good idea of what every view point of Sirmione was like.
As we were walking down the path we passed by Maria Callas's old house. She was a famous Italian singer.
Here is a picture of Lake Garda. At the bottom there is that strip of land that comes up with the little white dot at the end.
We were headed down up that strip and at the end was the ruins of an ancient Roman estate. We went through the museum of artifacts and then got to the ruins.
These pictures can't describe this place, I've never seen anywhere like it.
Here are the Berzins, the French family I was traveling with for the day.
We walked back down along the coast where I felt the warm water, and then we hopped in the car and were off to Verona. Here is the entrance to the city.
Right as you enter there is the Verona Colosseum, where there are many plays, operas and concerts held now.
We walked through the main shopping road of the town
past the bridge over the river
and made it to the old Roman Theater, where there are still Operas held. There was a showing of Aida that night.
It was a long way up, and there were some great views of Verona.
Here's one Roman sculpture in the Archaeological museum.
We walked back down the the main city and turned down a little alley that was packed with people and had a ton of graffiti.
We were at Juliet's balcony.
Just like touching the boar's nose in Florence, this is Verona's version.
Ben had been telling me all day about this red wine risotto, the only reason he needs to come to Verona. We arrived here and I had no choice but to order it too. It was definitely the best risotto.
Here is the view from our table.
