Bergamo

Rome

Polish christmas song Wśród Nocnej Ciszy by italian choir

My friend sings in the choir of Collegio Cairoli in Pavia and I went to see their christmas concert yesterday. It was better than I expected and I liked the polish song Wśród Nocnej Ciszy because italian singers had little difficulties with pronunciation of some polish words, watch the video:

Under the Juliet’s balcony in Verona

My girlfriend from Prague came to visit me in Italy. We decided to visit Verona to see the balcony of Juliet and the old town. The weather was really bad, however, the town was lovely.

When we got off the train, it was raining in Verona. Every Italian who got off that train waited for bus, however, we were walking under the umbrella into the town centre. After a while we saw Porta Nuova ("the new gate").



Afterwards we came to Verona's Roman Arena. In front of the ancient amphitheatre the guy in the costume of Roman soldier was waiting. I asked him for one photo because my girlfriend wanted it. Later on, he asked for "a small tip" for that photo :)





Verona is a small city (it has around 260000 inhabitants) which is the great advantage when someone likes to walk because everything is near. It took us not more than 10 minutes to go from Roman Arena to Piazza delle Erbe with the statue of Madonna Verona.





When we crossed very old gate (it dates to the 1st century AD) called Porta Borsari it was just another 5 minutes to reach the Adige river. We saw Castelvecchio bridge in the distance so we decided to look at it closer.



Castelvecchio bridge (Ponte di Castelvecchio) or Skaliger bridge (Ponte Scaligero) is fortified bridge which was built 1354-1356.





We crossed the bridge and entered the old town again and were quite tired because of walking in bad weather. It was still raining so that we wanted to see just two more things: the Verona's Cathedral and Juliet's balcony.



The entrance fee for the cathedral was something around 3 EURO which is not much, however, I think it is stupid to pay for the entering the church.



It was a little bit tricky to find Juliet's balcony. I didn't realise we'd passed it before. It is close to Piazza delle Erbe. Yes, we saw the Juliet's balcony, but to be honest, it wasn't anything special. I liked the spontaneous slips of paper with writings of lovers in the passageway leading to the balcony much more.

The first snow in Pavia!

When I got up in the morning I saw the snow. Of course, it is nothing unusual for someone from Slovakia. However, it was the first time when I saw the snow in Pavia and I was delighted.

During the day the temperature was around 3°C so that the most of the snow melted. I hope that there will be as much snow as in year 2006 in Pavia. Watch the next video from that year.