I've Lost My Mojo

On our tour of northern Italy near Venice, our second stop was Verona. Verona has a long and sorted history going back to around it's first written record around 550 BC. In 300 BC, it became Roman territory. Then for about 2000 years, it was a centerpoint of battle between feuding families and battling Italian city-states. A bit later, around 1797, it was held by the French (Napolean), then Austria, then finally in 1866 the Austrians left town and it became, at last, an Italian city.

Verona is well-known for the Roman architecture and other historical buildings that still stand. For this, it is listed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Large portions of the original Roman city exist in tact a few meters below the surface of the modern day city. It's also the setting for Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet.

We spent the last hours of the day here, wandering around the cobbled streets. A storm was passing overhead -- we had to take refuge underneath the large umbrella's of a small café for about an hour at one point. Once the storms passed, we found a small restaurant just off the main square and had a good dinner (truffled mortadella to start -- fantastic!)

Our drive back from here to our hotel near Venice was a nightmare --- for some reason, most of the signs for off-ramps on their recent highway renovations are posted well after you would have already need to taken the ramp. This, combined with a very confused GPS navigation, caused me to miss the right exit over and over -- at one point forcing us to go about 20 miles before we could turn around. Finally, we got off in the right direction to get caught in a drenching down pour that, combined with a construction truck blocking a lane on a bridge for no obvious reason, brought us to a halt for over an hour. Not cool.

Salute!

There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death.
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene iii