Europe Day Eleven

Europe Day 11
Verona, Italy
and
Switzerland

Today we went to Verona, Italy. Verona is the location for the inspiration of the famous Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet’s balcony

It is said that the play was inspired from an actual occurrence in this city. Apparently it is a common thing for large families to be mad at each other here in Italy, even today. I’m not sure, but maybe that’s where the mafia got its roots. It is a beautiful city which has inspired many artists.

Here there was a Roman arena that is in better condition than the Coliseum. You can actually see what the arena must have been like. Apparently the people discovered iron in the walls of the Coliseum and began to dig it out, due to its value. However, this greatly weakened the walls, leading to its partial collapse after a large earthquake. If the iron had not been stolen, the Coliseum would probably still be in the same condition as this Roman arena in Verona

From here we began our climb into Switzerland.

Switzerland is the most amazingly beautiful country and combined with the colors of the Fall season – absolutely breathtaking.
This evening we went to a Swiss folklore program of yodeling and blowing of the alp horn. It was a fun-filled evening of music straight out of Lawrence Welk. They called people up to the platform to try their voice out for yodeling. Dale was one of the people they called. He actually did quite well – compared to everyone else, that is. Then as a reward, they brought out a huge tray of beer in mugs to see if they could drink it down in one breath. I thought, “Oh, no, what is Dale going to do?” But he just took the plunge and drank it down. He said it tasted awful. You should have seen the expressions on the faces of our people in the group when Dale told them it was his first beer -- EVER!