When the earth quaked in Verona

Among the places I have seen in Italy(Venice, Verona, Rome and Naples), Verona is probably the one I would want to live in. Unlike Venice where people seemed to be tired of the crowd for which I don't blame them, Verona has a lot of happy looking people that would want to stop and chat. Although the area around the Arena and the squares was crowded, the moment you stepped out of it, it had a calm vibe to it. I am not sure exactly where we went but I think it was in between the Roman Theatre and the St. Peter's Castle or could be on the terraces of the St. Peter's Castle. Anyway, the view from there at night was breathtaking. There was some event going on in the Arena and it looked steam coming out of a boiling cauldron in the middle of the yellowish city lights.

Naturally, we visited the Juliet's balcony groped the statue for luck. The colourful locks covering every inch of the gate was interesting as was the graffiti covering every inch of every wall as high as one could reach and beyond not to mention all the chewing gum even a band-aid. Some of the graffiti was so high that it made us wonder how they had managed to do it without a step ladder.

We then went along to the Castelvecchio and other piazzas. After a nice calm evening, we retired to our lovely B&B at The Lions and were asleep as soon as we hit the bed only to be woken up at 4 am to what seemed like someone turning around in my bed without any creaking. It wasn't until my friend yelled out it's an earthquake that we realised that it was one. It lasted for a long time and we didn't really have much we could do as we were on the third floor and running down the stairs would just be silly. So we just off to sleep in a half and hour to be woken up by a second smaller tremor for which we didn't even get off the bed. So the next day started with a lot of talk about the earthquake. On the Day 2 at Verona, we visited the Lamberti Tower and the Arena.

The Arena is actually being used for events. although that takes away the look of an old building, it is nice that it is still safe enough to be used.

After a nice lunch, we thought we will relax at the B&B for a bit before we had to head out to the train station. It was while we were discussing the earthquake with the others in the house that we felt another tremor and that got us out of the house faster than anything else could.