"Verona: Yes, We Have Stairs with That!"

Last weekend, we decided to embark on a bold adventure to Fair Verona, Land of a Thousand Stairs. I am not being metaphorical; according to the educational pamphlets pressed into our hands three at a time by every tourist attraction we visited, I'm pretty sure that one thousand is a low-end estimate, stair-wise.

We started out on a logistical high note by successfully taking the right bus. Here is John looking disgruntled about having his photo taken at the bus stop:

We eventually made it onto the right train, too, after a trek from the wrong bus stop, and decided to take a break 90% of the way to Verona by getting off a tiny middle-of-nowhere station by accident and getting stranded for an hour. But when we finally made it all the way to Verona, we got to see one of Europe's greatest cultural icons, the Lost Bicycle Graveyard of Verona:

In all seriousness, though, Verona was absolutely gorgeous, and well worth the trip. We got to see the Colosseum, some beautiful old churches, and a traditional open-air market whose historical beauty was marred only somewhat by the fact that all of the vendors were Chinese immigrants selling Chinese-made Romeo and Juliet tourist merchandise.

We climbed to the top of the Torre di Lamberti, which is a great place to get a view of the entire city while your legs fall off your body from exhaustion:

And we visited the Giardino Giusti, which is full of beautiful gardens and another interminable climb up to the (admittedly gorgeous) viewing gazebo:

In addition to these valuable cultural experiences, we got to see some of the weirdest street performers in the history of Earth: Romans and an apparent Xena at the Colosseum, a grown man pretending to be a baby in some sort of carriage setup, a silver-painted Charlie Chaplin impersonator. My favorite, though, were the sarcophagi: men with sarcophagus masks, covered head to toe in gold spandex presumably intended to look like a sarcophagus. In reality, since these guys were not particularly svelte Pharoahs, they looked like really sweaty, oddly bulging gold sausages. Italy: full of Culture and History!