Nabbed

It was when I walked to the railway station today that it reminded me, as the environment looked very familiar, that I hadn’t put in my post yesterday that we had a run-in with the Police when we were getting to our accommodation yesterday.

There were roadworks on the route which the GPS obviously didn’t know about so not unsurprisingly she (our GPS voice is female) gave us a misdirection which had us driving headlong towards the railway station but on a road restricted for buses.

As soon as we entered this road I knew we shouldn’t be there so stopped and contemplated reversing back but feared reversing into a bus entering the station so took the only other option of driving into the station but in doing so was confronted by a police car who was checking that everything was in order at the station.

I stopped and the patrol car turned across our front and the officer 👮 put his hand out the window, wagged his finger at us and made signs that we should not be there (which we knew) and drove off - I think what saved us from something more than a finger wag was he could see from our number plate that we were definitely not locals.

He drove across a parking lot and out into the street so we just followed along behind and once away from the station he went one way and we went another!

After giving our clothes a refresh this morning we walked into the city, lunched and while Sherry was looking around the shops on the “Golden Mile” I went to the railway station to get some train tickets as tomorrow we are taking the train to Lake Garda and hopefully have a swim.

Looking at Google Maps it indicated a half hour walk so allowing for the walk both ways and another half an hour getting some tickets we agreed that we would meet back in Piazza Erbe in 90 minutes.

When I arrived at the station there was a queue of at least 50 people outside the Information & ticket office and only one staff behind one of seven counters. I didn’t need to be Einstein to realise that this was going to take far longer than the time I had allowed and a little (alright a reasonable amount) panic set in as I thought that Sherry might start worrying about me if I didn’t get back around our meeting time so I reverted to searching on the internet on my phone as I stood in the queue to see if I could buy them online. I found a site Omio which allowed me to do so easily and I was out of the queue in about 5 minutes and on my way back to our meeting place arriving 10 minutes before the agreed time. I still can’t understand why I didn’t think to do it online in the first place and save myself a reasonable walk in the hot sun!

While our impressions of Verona haven’t changed we have to confess that there are some nice areas in the city no more so than Piazza Bra which is directly in front of the Roman Arena

and near Porta Nouva part of the old city walls

The Golden Mile (but only around 400m) is a shopping strip running from Piazza Bra to Piazza Erbe and as we sat in a cafe at afternoon tea time we could look down the Mile and see the throngs doing what Sherry had done earlier in the day

An interesting day in Italy

Kms driven to date 2691

Kms walked to date 389.0

Spent on Diesel €129.66

Highest price paid to date for diesel €1.579 Würzburg 

Lowest price paid to date for diesel €1.479 Freiburg

Spent on tolls €27.60