JULY 8 - No time to do any more in Venice, as we have to be out of the Mestre apartment at 10:00. Down to the train station for the train to Verona. Despite being really crowded, I am impressed at how clearly the departures are displayed and how efficient things seem to be. The ticket does not specify seat number or even train number, but it is good for any train to our destination within four hours. I already know which I want, so we find the platform and hang out. I am prepared for our typical experience of not having seats, that is, scrambling around to find non-reserved places, but the train is almost empty and there are no seat numbers anyway. It is one of the most relaxing train rides we’ve had yet. We leave the flat grape and corn fields and head into a slightly hilly terrain.
It is a hot, windless day in Verona. Sun beats down and the cicadas shill loudly in the trees. It takes a while to figure out which bus really goes to our B&B, since the destination stops on the map do not match those provided by Google maps. We eventually get there. It is out of town, up a quiet road, and is fairly upscale compared with many places we’ve stayed.
Verona’s known history goes back a long ways, having been founded in the 1st Century BCE. Over the centuries, the city walls expanded several times. It was occupied (as were most cities) by the Ostrogoth and Lombard invaders when the western Roman Empire went through its long and torturous dissolution. Charlemagne took the city in 774, and it became an independent commune (a title it still uses today) by the 12th Century.
It was conquered by the Venetians in 1405, and from 1797, like with Villach (Austria), it was assimilated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It only became part of what we know today as Italy in 1866.
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