My younger brother, Cole, just graduated high school this past May. To celebrate, he was able to come and visit me here in Italy for about a week. Unfortunately, I still had classes during the week (and I really couldn’t afford to skip any more than I already had) so the weekdays were somewhat anticlimactic just going to and from class. The last weekend of May, however, we were able to go on a trip across the country to the eastern part of Italy.
We got on a train after my classes ended Friday afternoon and made our way to Venice, Italy (arriving just before dinnertime). Our initial plan was to spend two days in Venice and one day in Verona in order to see the Hellas Verona vs. Juventus calcio match. Unfortunately, the game was pushed up a day so we had only Friday night and Saturday morning to explore Venice before having to catch a regional train in order to get to Verona in time for the game. Nevertheless, we made the most of our time in Venice and explored some of the city after dark. It was surprisingly nice. I had heard so many horror stories about how overcrowded and touristy the city was, but at that late hour the streets…er, canals…were nearly empty and it was quite pleasant. Based on my great experience with the free walking tours through Rome, we decided to do a free walking tour through Venice as well the next morning. Our guide Simona took us through the city explaining the rich and fascinating history of both its structure as well as its residents. We were somewhat short on time as the tour ended, however, so we never saw Piazza San Marco (probably the most well known square in Venice). I’ve been reassured since then, though, that we didn’t miss too much.
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After the tour, we gathered our bags and took a regional train to nearby Verona, Italy. We arrived and immediately made our way to the soccer/football/calcio (whatever you want to call it) stadium for the Hellas Verona vs. Juventus game. While not a champions league match, it was still really cool to see Juventus play (at the time, they were set to play Barcelona FC in the finals the following week).
We spent the rest of the weekend exploring Verona and what it had to offer before returning again to Torino before class on Monday morning.
*Just a quick note about the first image in the gallery below about the Lippa Tournament: Turns out that the Associazione Giochi Antichi (AGA) exists to support local games and sports in Italy. On this day, the AGA had arranged a Lippa tournament where players had to hit the oval-shaped lippa with a wooden stick past the other team as far as possible. I don’t understand anything else, but it was fun to watch the local sport.
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The following is a sequence of Cole jumping over the hedge maze in the Giardino Giusti. Cheater…
Cole was still in town for a couple more days so, despite our travel exhaustion, we had a good time doing things around Torino. The Torino Eqyptian Museum is the second largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world (second only to Cairo). Its several stories of mummies and statues and other historical relics. The Torino Jazz Festival had also begun that weekend and continued on into the first half of the week. The festival ended with a great performance by the Blues Brothers Band to an overcrowded Piazza San Carlo.
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