Thursday, July 19, 2007

Juliet's right breast.

We got more and more enchanted by the glorious camping in the mountains so we asked politely if we could stay one more day. That was not a problem. The place is awesome and people have their built in caravans that never are going to move again. The clientele is, without exception, elderly people, mostly couples, who spend the time up in the mountain. The spot is supposedly teaming with mushrooms of different colors and shapes and it is apparently very popular to get out in the woods with a basket and relate to what nature has to give. People are very friendly and greets us, stop for a chat and even lent us chairs to sit on. It is lovely here.
Lars-Inge and I was determined to go to Verona and see the sights. Miles decided to stay at the camp and nurse his leg, that has shown a great deal of improvement lately. So, we set off, leaving Miles behind. We had planned to go down a closer route to Verona than the one we came up by, but slipped back into the same route we went up by. Going down you could clearly see how incredibly steep and tortuous it really was. Poor rides that went up with all that gear yesterday.

We went down, however, letting the engines do the breaking for us. Down in the valley we went out on the Autostrada trying to find the airport, in the vain hope that they would have WiFi internet there, since I needed to get in contact with Adobe to fix a license problem. But! We could not find it either so we gave up and went to the city center of Verona. Even THAT was pretty hard to find, as a matter of fact...
Well there, we parked in an underground, and guarded, garage, found an Internet point so that we could do the transmission for what happened the day before, and went to the old parts of Verona. We strolled around, soaking up the atmosphere and went to the alleged residence of Juliet from Shakespeare's famous drama. Lars-Inge went high tech and managed to program in his little portable GPS and strutted away like a shaman in search of an underground spring. Sure enough, he found it. The map in the book about Verona I bought was thoroughly useless so it WAS good to have it. The house of Juliet is conceptually interesting as it is dedicated to love. The portal that leads in to the premises is covered with declarations of love, stuck to the walls and even the ceiling, several meters up. The method of adhesion is usually chewing gum, which is practical but not THAT romantic. We found the statue of Juliet and there is a tradition going that if you touch her right breast, it will bring luck in love. She stood there, head shyly bent and I felt like the terrible rapist, stepping up and grabbing a firm hold. It WAS an opportunity not to miss though, so I just had to, silly at is is. Lars-Inge followed suit and we left for a market area close by where I did some shopping and we had lunch. We took a little detour throughout the old city before getting back to the garage to get our bikes.



We decided to try to negotiate the central parts of Verona with the help of my old Magellan navigator. It is a trusty device, bullet proof and all but it does not have any city maps or other thrills. It can only point out the direction to something, about like a compass. So, we set it on the camp site and went away through Verona, and something amazing happened. All of a sudden we were on strait roads that coincided totally with the direction the Magellan pointed out and it COULD be that we were on old roads that went to the mountains long ago and that had remained as city streets. Eventually some city planner had decided to put a housing complex with a cul-de-sac, so the illusion was shattered. We turned a little hither and twisted a little dither and soon found ourself going up a small mountain when my bike stopped. We had forgot to fill up on gas. Now things begun to get interesting. Narrow narrow curvy roads, low on fuel and no gas station in sight. Eventually the road begun to go down again and we ended up in a suburb to Verona not that far from the road to camp. We filled up and went home.
In the mean time, Miles had eaten ALL the biscuits we did not want to have the day before, drank a lot of water and kept his foot high. He was in a cheerful spirit so we went out to eat at the neighbor village where there was a little plaza all surrounded by restaurants. The bikes got their traditional tribute of interest by the locals and we sat down for a great Italian meal.
We had different Gnocci with smoked cheese, a bottle of Preseco, Lars-Inge had a giant beer (Miles and Lars opinion) or was it fairly small one? (Lars-Inge thinks so..). Then Miles and I had Polenta with melted cheese and various mushrooms while Lars-Inge had Polenta with beef. Lars-Inge and I had dessert consisting of chocolate and various pastries and fruit. We bought a bottle of wine and went home to sit around the side car and tell stories at the camp. Pretty good day.

1 comment:

Patootzie said...

Poor Juliet, standing there thinking,"Ewww" that's not Romeo!"
You know Fellas, the last guy who touched her (actual) breast didn't fare so well.
(And Lars!, you are already married to the beautiful, fun, and talented Kerstin; how much luckier could you be?)

MEN! (Sigh...)