Day 5-From Ancona to Verona

We started out the morning in Ancona. We got up and headed downtown to Cafe Roma to have breakfast and meet Matt and Angie's friend Yuri. His family owns the cafe. Jason introduced us to him and told him all about how we are heading to Verona with Matt and Angie. He spoke English...which we have found to be helpful in making new friends. For breakfast, we had the typical Italian breakfast. This consist of some sort of coffee...espresso, cappuccino or latte and a pastry. Below is a picture of what I had:



The pastry I had was filled with chocolate and was so delicious. I also had a cappuccino that was pretty amazing. Let me tell you, I could really get used to the Italian breakfast!

After breakfast, Jason went to work and we had a few hours before we had to catch our next train. Brandon and I wondered around downtown Ancona. We found a book store, a market with stands selling all sorts of fruit, vegetables, meat, candies, flowers, pastas and other things we weren't quite sure what they were. It was nice to just walk around and watch the Italian people going through the motions of daily life. It was a beautiful day. While sitting on a bench waiting for Jason to meet us, we got to talking about how everywhere we go is so pretty and sometimes it's even prettier when you stop and look up at buildings. We took a picture of what we saw when we looked up from where we were sitting:



Around noon we headed to the train station to catch our train to Verona. Realizing we were going to be on our own in Verona, I wanted to prepare myself...so I did quite a bit of reading...



Our train pulled into the station a little after 5. I got out my Italian phrase cheat sheet to prepare myself for communicating with the Taxi driver. Turns out, he knew some English, and it was real easy getting to the hotel. We are staying at Hotel Maxim. We really like it. It's location is not quite in the center of Verona, so we get to experience real neighborhoods and real people as we walk through town. Here's a view from the window of our room:



After we freshened up a bit, we headed out on our first adventure. We had a little map given to us at the hotel and that was it. We just started walking towards the center of Verona with no idea what we were going to do. We just knew food was a necessity. After probably an hour of walking, we were pretty sure we had no clue where we were. Now, this normally wouldn't be so stressful but it was nighttime and we were hungry. It took us a good twenty minutes to get our bearings. When we did though, we emerged to see the most beautiful city we've ever laid eyes on. Since the moment we entered the center of the city my camera shutter has been buzzing non-stop. We crossed the Adige river over the Ponte Pietra. It is a foot bridge that was built by the Romans...like the real Romans, from Rome, like in Roman times. From there, we headed into Piazza del Erbe and found a nice ristorante to eat dinner at. We ate a place called Mezzaparte and had a candle lit dinner on the sidewalk. It was pretty amazing.