I realized why I got a blister. I started wearing thicker socks with my walking shoes which made them too tight. They didn't feel too tight, but the extra thickness caused the blisters. So today I'm back to my regular socks and I put duct tape on my blister and I should be fine.
We left the hostel about 10AM to walk around the city and we didn't get back until 4:30. A lot of walking, but it was a nice day and we visited or walked by a lot of the sights in Verona. We walked by Juliet's house and saw her balcony and the courtyard with her statue in it.
Shari also called about a place to stay in Bolzano and we have what sounds like a great deal. It's an apartment in a farmhouse up in the hills above Bolzano about 1 mile from the Village of San Genesio. The farmhouse has 2 apartments each with two double rooms one bath, one eat-in kitchen and one terrace. It's supposed to have a magnificient view, and is a great starting point for hiking. We reserved it for 3 nights starting tomorrow and it cost only 44 euros (22 for each of us) per night.
After Shari made the reservations, we went inside the Roman Arena in the historic section o of Verona. It was built in the first century and is one of the best preserved Roman amphitheatres. The Arena can hold up to 22,000 people, and nowadays it is used for world famous opera performances during the summer. While we were sitting on the stoine steps high up in the amphitheatre, we heard someone call out to us and it was Anna (from the hostel in Padova). Alison had been to the amphitheatre before, so she was waiting outside. Anna talked to us for about 20 minutes and gave us an internet card we can use in some cities in Italy. They are going home on Friday, so she won't need it anymore. It will let us use the internet for 2 euros an hour,and supposedly, we can add time to the card. Even if we get to use the internet for only the hour that is currently on the card, it will still be a deal. We gave her our addresses and told her to call us of she gets to the States. She is only 20, and is starting her last year of college and she and Alison would both like to visit the States within the next few years. So you never know, we might see them again.
Next we visited the Cathedral, which was built in the 12th century and then was altered and enlarged in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is a beautiful church with numerous chapels in addition to the main alter. Lots of frescos, paintings and sculptures, with the most famous of the paintings being Titian's "Assunta" (1535). It is amazing to be surrounded by so much antiquity. I am sure I will be totally overwhelmed when we get to Rome.
We went back to the hostel about 4:30, but they have a lockout of the rooms until 5PM, so we just sat in the courtyard and read and wrote notes. When we went back to room we had a new person in the room, Angela, from Glasgow. We talked to her for a while and then went down to dinner. Dinner was pretty good for 7.50 euros - beef stew, potatoes, pasta with tuna and tomato sauce, bread, wine and grapes. Shari and I both took a short walk around the grounds of the hostel after dinner and it is quite a big place, with very pretty grounds. It used to be a private home and was owned by various wealthy families.
9/18: We got up early (6:30) and walked down to get the 7:17 bus to the train station. We got the 7:45 train to Bolzano and arrived about 9:30. We walked to the grocery store and bought stuff for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Then we got a bus at 11AM to take us to the cable car. We got on an 11:30 cable car to get up to San Genesio.
What a beautiful place! It is up in the hills, overlooking Bolzanoa and looking off to the Dolomites. It is a good sized village with a post office, a couple of small grocery stores, a bakery, a bank, and lots of houses and places to stay. Although our apartment is only about a mile from the village, it is an uphill walk the whole mile, but it is worth it. We have the whole top floor (the people who own it live downstairs) and it is lovely. You never know when you rent a place based on a description in a brochure, but this place is just as beautiful as its description. The view from the balcony is spectacular. The woman who owns the house speaks some English which is great for us, because she gave us a shorter way to walk to the village, and told us how late the stores were open. We asked if we could stay four nights, and she said okay.
I took a nap for about 1.5 hours and it is so nice to not only have my own bed, but also to have my own room. Such luxury! I was very tired because we got up early and that was a killer walk from the village, carrying full packs plus all the groceries we bought in Bolzano.
When I got up, we walked back to the village to get a few more grceries, and I bought a phone card and called Josh. I had bought some beer in Bolzano, and I bought a bottle of wine in San Genesio, and it was so nice to go back to the apartment and enjoy a glass of wine before dinner. We ate some of the food we've been carrying for awhile for dinner - noodles, canned chicken and packaged cheese sauce.
9/19: We left for a hike up into the hills about 9:30AM. We thought we would be gone about 6 hours, but we were off by 5 hours. We didn't get back until after 8:30PM. We hiked for 11 hours with only two 15 minute breaks - once for lunch about 12:30 and once at 3PM, at the high point of the hike, in an area of stone cairns called Stoaneme Mandin (Stone Men).
We started at about 3,900 feet and got up to 6,600 feet, so the elevation gain wasn't alot for the amount of miles we covered, but we did way more miles than expected. I figure we must have walked somewhat over 20 miles. We thought we would get back to the apartment by around 6PM at the latest, but it was a much longer walk back then we expected, and we got off the right trail a couple of times, and lost at least an hour because of it.
Boy, were our legs and feet (especially our feet) killing us when we got back. It was beautiful though, and the trails were nice footing for the most part. We walked through pine forrests, open meadows, on roads between villages, and beside some streams. It was hazy off in the distance but we could see the Dolomites with their jogged outlines around us. Very beautiful scenery here.
The people in this area mostly speak Swiss German and they also know Italian, but very few of them seem to speak English. We stopped a few times to ask people to show us on the map where we were, so we could figure out where we should go. It was quite an adventure!
We were going to have rice, hamburgers and salad when we got home, but we were too tired to cook much. We had cheese and crackers and I had a glass of wine. Then Shari cooked rice, and that was our dinner, with ice cream for dessert. It is so nice to have a refrigerator with a freezer,so we can have ice cubes and ice cream. Most of the refrigerators in the hostels don't have freezers.
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