Hey!
We spent 24 hours in Verona and here is what we got up to!
We arrived by train into Verona Porta Nuova Station, which was a 10 minute walk from our accommodation. We stayed at Hotel Piccolo, which I would not recommend unless you are happy with something extremely basic. It was cheap and in a great location, but let's just say I'm glad I wanted to spend more time exploring the city than I did in my hotel room...it's unfortunate we were not put into one of their newly refurbished rooms, as on 'Booking.com' these looked great, although I think all rooms were tiny!
The hotel was saved a little due to its location, being only a 15-20 minute walk to the main centre of Verona. We headed to the Arena Di Verona first and had a bite to eat at one of the restaurants overlooking the arena. When I'm heading to a popular city I try to find a form of tourist map from somewhere. As Verona has a 'CitySightseeing' hop on hop of bus, I screen-shotted its map to use for getting around.
The link for the map is here >>> Verona CitySightseeing map
Emanuel Cafe at the Arena Di Verona:
Considering the views, the price for our food and drink was reasonable. We then headed for a walk through the streets amongst the shops, to the left hand side of the Arena and its entrances. If you follow along the streets from there you will eventually reach Piazza Erbe. This is square with beautiful buildings and a market in the middle. It is also just round the corner from Juliets Balcony. Juliets House has become a huge tourist attraction in Verona, even though it has no direct link to Shakespear's 'Romeo and Juliet'. If you're a fan of love or a good literature story then this may be worth a visit for you. Access to Juilets house and balcony have to be booked in advance, however there is a line where you can gain free access to the courtyard to view the balcony and Juliets statue. This line can appear quite long, but did move very fast, we were only in the queue for a maximum of 20 minutes. However what this line would be like in peak season I cannot say.
We then headed towards the river and the 'Ponte Pietra Bridge'. This bridge offers great views of the river and the edges of the central city of Verona. If you cross over the road on the other side of the bridge and head up the steps you will reach 'Castell San Pietro', a castle boasting a beautiful viewpoint overlooking Verona and all the red rooftops. At the top there is also a restaurant that offers food and drink overlooking the views.
After taking in the views and snapping some pics, we headed back down into the middle of Verona and ventured the streets all the way back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner and an evening out.
The only place we then hadn't seen that the guides say you should is inside the Arena Di Verona. You can buy tickets to visit inside during the day, or a nice alternative is to book tickets to a concert that is being held within the Arena, then you get to tick two boxes at once. Although the weather was forecast on the day we visited was 100% chance of rain, we chose to book tickets for the 'Il Volo- Tutti Per Uno' concert that was on at the Arena in the evening. They’re an Italian group of singers, who I had never heard of but were so good. We took plastic bags to sit onto of on the arena steps and fortunately were allowed to keep our umbrella's up. As our seats were so high at the back of the arena, there was plenty of space to spread out and not be hindering someone else's view with an umbrella. We managed to stay mostly dry through the concert, snuggled together under one umbrella, how cute!
I would highly recommend checking if there is anything on if you visit and it's a great way to see the Arena and I'm sure it will be even better when the sun is shining!! For reference, it costs (atm) €16 per adult to enter the Arena in the day and see the grounds...our tickets to the concert were €35 per adult for top tier seats, which still enabled us to see the grounds. The Arena calendar is linked here >>> events
As we were only in Verona for 24 hours, we had one dinner here. Most of Italy’s restaurants are based outside, so if you’re visiting outside peak summer, be sure to bring a light jacket you can wear when eating, incase the outdoor heaters don’t work in taking the edge off. We ate at 'Caffe al Teatro', which is just round the corner from the Arena. It's a smaller sized restaurant, so even though it was full, it did not seem too busy. The food here was delicious!...
There you go...Verona in a nutshell!
It's streets are so pretty to walk through and I'm sure there's a few more things to see but we did the main bits and had great food, so no complaining over here.
If you have any questions about anything then please reach out and message me!
Zoe <3
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