A spot of torrential rain on my arrival at Verona station had me wondering whether to even bother staying in the place. The thing with Italian stations is that there are seemingly never any maps (apart from in the shops!) so I had to rely on my guidebook to just get on the #73 bus and head in the direction of the hostel I intended to stay at.

I got fairly wet walking the two metres from the bus stop to the bus and it didn’t half chuck it down during the journey but thankfully it had died down a bit by the time I got off the bus and took a fairly steep walk up the hill leading to Ostello Villa Francescotti. This was a beautiful, huge hostel with dorms at a good price with breakfast thrown in to the bargain too. However, it also had some strict rules (curfew etc) but given that I wasn’t planning to paint the town red they didn’t bother me in any way.

 

With daylight time quickly running out I instantly headed out back down the hill and across the river (above) towards the old town. Even with the rain pouring down on that bus trip I could see what a beautiful city Verona was and that became more apparent as it stopped raining. I wandered the atmospheric streets leading to Piazza Bra and the impressive amphitheatre (above) known more simply as the Arena.

Verona is of course the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and so I headed back in the direction of Casa di Giulietta (house of Juliet) which I knew would be closed but I still had to see what I could see. That turned out to be a handful of tourists hanging round a gate (below) covered in graffiti. We could only see through it towards the courtyard below the famous balcony where there is a statue of Juliet.

 

   

By then it was already dark so I enjoyed a delicious pasta meal and was back at the hostel by 9.15pm but to my astonishment some of my room-mates had already turned out the lights which I think is so rude for such an early time. As a result I had to fumble round my bag in the dark looking for my toiletries which, with the bag rustling, probably caused greater disruption to their sleep anyway. I left early the next morning and saw similar views of the river albeit much more beautiful (above) in the clear, sunny morning light.