Verona, the city of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet and also the name of an essential Kiwi song. I won't get into which is better, because Mercutio and his plague would rain on all of our houses, but you can't possibly be a kiwi and not sing Verona every chance you get while there. 

The first thing we did in Verona is get a little lost. Not in a lets wander round & see what we can stumble across way but in the I'm sure this is the correct bus route to our accomodation but surprise it isn't way.  Some days I do not know how I travelled pre-mobile phone. 

Emma & I were both fairly sure something wasn't quite right. Fortunately I had saved all of our accomodation as pinned locations in google maps so it was very easy to see our little blue dot was heading in the opposite direction of where our beds were.  Even more fortunately, Verona makes the list of countries with better public transport than Auckland (soz AT). So we jumped off the train, crossed the road and caught a bus heading in the right direction. 

We stayed at a pensione called Alloggio Le Casette right on the Adige River. The owner was a charming older gentleman, helpful and delightful to talk to about the local area. 

After ditching our luggage we wandered about the immediate area and then headed into the nearby Piazza Erbe for some dinner at Teta de Giulieta. 

The local delicacy of Verona is horse or donkey meat and whilst I'm notoriously fussy, I do like to try local foods wherever I am. In Tahiti I tried the poisson cru. In England, sausage chips and curry.

I was a bit reluctant given one of my friends is a horse person (not a horse person like that mental as movie where snorting lines turned people into literal horse people), but having never known a donkey owner, I ordered a donkey ragu. 

Donkey is a little bit greasy, however it was pretty good. The restaurant also had my favourite dessert, tiramisu, on the menu! Three days into our mini-trip around Italy and I finally had tiramisu. I was so full from the donkey though, that I couldn't finish it. 

After a much needed post-dinner walk, my jet leg was still pretty horrendous and we went back to the pensione so I could nana out again, but this time without Emma paparazzing me sleeping.