Verona and Vicenza

We had wanted to visit Verona for a long time; like everyone we'd heard a lot about it but then, for one reason or another, we never managed to set off. When Giancarlo tells me that this weekend will be all for me, I organise our escape in no time at all. At these times my most trusted ally is the internet; I really wouldn't know how to manage without it. I immediately ruled out the idea of staying in Verona because the hotels are really expensive and our budget is limited, so I considered the idea of staying outside the city, and that's how we found accommodation in Vicenza, which is cheaper and has the advantage of being half an hour by car from Verona: hotel Aries, a stone's throw from the Palladio shopping centre and a quarter of an hour by car from the centre of Vicenza.

We arrive in Verona around lunchtime and immediately the need arises to find a place to eat; the choice was completely random, we stopped along the road at a Tex/Mex chain restaurant and ordered 2 steaks with a side. I must say that, despite the very McDonald's atmosphere, the steaks were tasty and the bill affordable. We park the car comfortably near the Verona Arena, Arena Parking, and plunge immediately into visiting the historic centre. The first impact with the city is with the arena, an ancient amphitheatre dating back to the age of the emperor Augustus; it's really very beautiful, many tourists are queuing to be able to admire it from inside; we don't linger too long because we've promised ourselves to return this summer to attend one of the many opera concerts. The historic centre is very tidy and clean, packed with shops including famous designer names.

Our visit continues with a visit to Juliet's house; I must say I liked it a lot, not so much for the house as for all the couples of lovers I saw visiting it Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza dei Signori are also very beautiful, the Scaliger arches and the Torre dei Lamberti from the top of which you can see a beautiful panorama of the city. Because of the little time available we visited only two of the city's beautiful churches, namely the Cathedral and the church of Santa Anastasia; having come out of these we enjoyed an unmissable romantic stroll at sunset along the banks of the Adige. By now it's dark, we head back to the car and set off for Vicenza; without difficulty we find our hotel and, since it's still early, we walk towards the Palladio shopping centre, truly very imposing, which, although Christmas is still 2 months away, is already all decorated for the festivities.

We return to the hotel tired and hungry, just time to freshen up and here we are ready for dinner. The hotel has a restaurant but we don't like eating in the hotel, so we take the car in search of a typical venue: We don't have to drive far, we find straight away a restaurant where we had a wonderful time http//. The next morning, an early alarm; Vicenza awaits us..!!! I must say that if, at first, we thought of Vicenza as a secondary destination, we had to think again. The first appointment is with the tourist information point, just outside the gate of the Olympic Theatre; here they give us a nice map of the city and we buy the Vicenza card that lets us visit many museums at an advantageous price. Naturally the first visit is the Olympic Theatre, a valuable work by Andrea Palladio.

Palladio was a great architect and set designer, he designed numerous villas and works and above all left an indelible mark on this city such as the Basilica Palladiana, the Palazzo Chiericati and the Rotonda Rotonda. After admiring the theatre we head to the nearby Palazzo Chiericati, mentioned as a UNESCO asset, home to an important and valuable picture gallery. Having finished these first 2 visits we take the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful palaces I remember ever visiting, Palazzo Montanari q_idsch=2, it's truly beautiful, we would have been very sorry to miss it and we recommend the visit to everyone. Visiting Vicenza is very demanding, there are so many beautiful things to see and we don't want to miss a single one.

In these days the Palladio exhibition is being held and we visit it; the exhibition is really well done and explained in such a linear way that even we laypeople manage to understand the genius of a man who marked, with intuitions of a staggering simplicity, an entire era and who affixed his own name as a synonym for architecture; imagine that Andrea Palladio, whose real name was Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, designed and built an infinity of villas scattered around Veneto and some bridges including the famous Bassano bridge, and all this starting around the age of 25; before that he was a stonemason, that is, at an age at which, at the time, artists were established and some already in decline.

Having finished the exhibition we go to Piazza dei Signori to be able to admire the basilica and the Loggia del Capitano; unfortunately there's scaffolding but it's not hard to guess the beauty of this work of which the people of Vicenza are so proud. In the afternoon instead we allow ourselves, for lack of time, the visit of only 2 of the very prestigious villas of which the area is full; we choose the most famous of Palladio's, namely the Rotonda, and Villa Valmarana, known as dei Nani. The entrance ticket of the Rotonda is honestly a bit expensive, 10 euros each with no kind of discount, but the villa is unique and undoubtedly deserves the visit; having come out we take a signposted detour, right by the entrance of the Rotonda, and after a pleasant walk of about a quarter of an hour we arrive at the villa of the dwarfs.

The villa is famous for the frescoes of the Tiepolos: Gianbattista and Giandomenico, father and son; it's beautiful but not as beautiful as the Rotonda, perhaps it's that this painting isn't among our favourites, we prefer the Renaissance more, but it was still nice to take a walk in these gardens at sunset and to see up close the dwarfs, a series of little statues arranged along the entire perimeter above the boundary wall, and to learn their legend: it's said that in past times a princess had been confined in the villa, this time ugly but so ugly that, so as not to make her feel different and suffer, she was assigned a court of deformed dwarfs. It happened one day that a very handsome knight introduced himself, without being stopped by the dwarfs; this time the knight didn't kiss the princess, he just let himself be seen by her, and she, realising her own ugliness, took her own life.

As a punishment the dwarfs were turned to stone. The day has been long but we still don't want to go home, so we decide to conclude this short holiday with a quick visit to Bassano del Grappa. We arrive in the late afternoon, there's a lot of life in the streets despite the cold, everywhere shops of grappa and distilleries; we buy the famous, they tell us, Tagliatella, a liqueur typical of the place. Unfortunately for reasons of time we allow ourselves only a walk in the historic centre and the only thing we see is the famous covered bridge of the Alpini, by Palladio. We conclude the evening with a nice dinner in a trattoria in Bassano, a very nice place where we ate really well (trattoria el Piron, via B. Zaccaria 12). By now our escape has come to an end; having left the venue we pick up the...