Italy Day 1- Verona

Last weekend, we drove to Italy!! We were so excited for this trip. Even before we left for Germany, Daphne was excited to visit Italy. She regularly plays an imaginary game where she has some inordinate amount of sisters, ranging from 10 to 100. The sisters always have very unique names, and Daphne can spend hours on end telling me all about what each of her sisters are named, what they look like, what they do well, and how Daphne does all of those things better than they do! :) Love that girl! Anyway, before we left the States, I was explaining to her why we needed passports to leave the country. I told her that they would stamp her passport when we went into Germany and when we left Germany and went to other countries, like France and Italy. Daphne was very quiet for a second and then said, "Mom. What is Italy?" I said, "Well, It's a country, like Germany or France." And, without skipping a beat- she said, "I have a sister named Italy." She makes me laugh!
Anyway, she was very excited to find out that we were visiting Italy... We loved the drive through Tirol and Northern Italy.
It was so cool, because literally every few miles or so, we saw something like this : We arrived at our hotel really late- 11 pm, I think. Matt went into the Holiday Inn of Verona while I waited in the car with the children. He came back out a few minutes later and said that they had no reservation for us. I was so distraught- we were exhausted and I didn't know what we would do. Matt ran in to talk to them again and I just kept racking my brain- going through the phone call when I made the reservation. All the sudden it hit me! I ran into the hotel room with unnecessary urgency- (I always have to make things more dramatic than necessary- it's in my genetic makeup or something!) and slid into the counter next to Matt saying, "It's Lara- the reservation is under Lara! He wrote down my first name because he couldn't understand me and my Italian was pretty pathetic (but better than my German!)!" And then the concierge said, "Of course, Mrs. Lara we have your room all ready for you." Whew. That was a close one. I have to say, with all of the hotels we have stayed in, I'm surprised something like that hasn't happened more often- we have been so blessed.

Once we got into our room , I started trying to get everyone settled in for the night. All of a sudden Isaac said, "Mom! You have to see this!" So I came over and peered into the bathroom. Daphne said, "Look! It's a little baby sink for Tori to wash her hands!" And this is what I saw:

So, we had to have a little lesson on bidets. Fortunately, we didn't have any handwashing in the bidet!

We had a nice breakfast and headed out to see Verona!

Our first stop was the Roman collosium in Verona. That was pretty incredible to see:

They must have been preparing for a parade or something, because they had these giant floats nearby:

Of course, as we have come to expect in the big cities, there was a fellow dressed up as a Roman gladiator and posing for pics with all the kids. This is the first guy who asked us for a tip, though.

We used to tip for everything and then we realized that Europeans don't tip like Americans do, so we have cooled it down quite a bit. We were just getting the hang of not having to tip when Mr. Gladiator here asked for some money! :)

Verona was very beautiful in a smaller-city sort of way. I wish we could have spent a little more time there.

This is kind of a weird pic of my unattractive, bruised legs- but we wanted to show you the sidewalks on the walkways there- it was really interesting:

Our next stop was the Casa di Giulietta, which is supposed to be the home of Juliet!

The dell Capello family owned the house on Via Capello for hundreds of years. In fact, it is the similarity of their name that spurned the popular belief that this was the house of the Capulets in Shakespeare’s play. The dell Capello’s coat-of-arms can still be seen on the keystone of the inner archway in the courtyard. The house itself was built in the 13th century.

I was really interested in this site and wanted to go inside and see everything, but it was a mad house! We seemed to come in with a huge influx of people and we waited for a long time trying to get a picture with the statue of Juliet, but it just wasn't in the cards for us. I probably could have just pushed past everyone who kept cutting in line, but I guess I just wasn't feeling the moxy like I did in France! :)

It turned out to be a good thing that we didn't get pic I guess. Apparently, it is some sort of tradition to grope the poor statue of Juliet. After the fact, we found out that it is a common belief in Italy that if you hold the breast of Juliet, you will have good luck in love. Virtually everyone did this, male and female. I think we saw two people out of thirty or so who did not grab the statue inappropriately. I was so embarrassed for them. And of course I have my children there and have to explain why they are being so disrespectful and rude. We finally just gave up and headed back out.

Here you can see people running to be the next one to get a picture with the statue:

We walked around Verona for a while longer and this is where Daphne sort of melted down. She was tired and even more volatile and obstinate than usual. And I was struggling to be patient with her (well, that's an understatement). She acutally was standing in the street while a car was trying to drive by and when I told her to get out of the street, she just stood there and stared at me. She got in pretty big trouble for that and from this point on, we walked through the streets of Verona with a screaming Five year old. :( We did get a cute shot of Matt and I near the river:

It was so beautiful there! I loved it!Then we stopped by a few other beautiful churches and buildings:

The whole episode of screaming culminated in Daphne not gettting ice cream with everyone else, which she did not like one bit!

She decided to get it in gear and be a little nicer once we hopped in the car, so Matt shared his ice cream with her! So, we licked our delicious Italian Gelato and skipped out of town on the way to Venice!! Ciao, Verona!