Romeo & Juliet's Castle's in Monteccio, Italy

Monteccio was a cute little town. My favorite part was the homes of the Montagues and the Capulets!

We went up the mountain to see their REAL LIFE CASTLES!!

It was really interesting. They were really neighboring castles with a chapel in the middle!

Here are some pics...

This is the town of Monteccio

This is the chapel that lies between the Montague's and the Capulet's Castles!

This is Romeo's Castle.

It is now a theater and it has a hiking trail around it!

Alyssa and Sophia on the hiking trail. We went over the entire trail. It was VERY HILLY (because it is on the side of a mountain) but it was very fun!

Alysa was trying to get down the hill!

THE CHAPEL

The Chapel is always kept locked. It is not available for tourists to go in, so I took a picture throught the front door.

Me and Sophia!

I'm waiting for "MY ROMEO"! (I love you Detto)

This is the view from the chapel.

Some of us "hiked" up to Juliet's Castel. Not because we necessarily wanted to, but Sheldon took off and wouldn't let us get in the van! LOL

Hiking up to Juliet's Castel.

The View from the trail up the side of the mountain!

This is Juliet's Castle! It is now a restaurant!

This is the courtyard

Stephen checking out the "Juliet's Real" Balcony!

For me it was like living in a "fairy tale" to see their castel's up close! I love that we were able to walk around them. One day I hope to come back and eat at the restaurant with Detto! That would be the most romantic date "EVER"!

The OPERA AIDA, Verona, Italy

Angela and I enjoyed a lovely girls night out together. We got tickets to go to the Opera in Verona.

We went to see Aida! Aida is a Egyptian opera about a slave girl and a military hero who fall in love. The biggest problem with their relationship is that Aida is the servant to the princess who is also in love with ???.

It is a beautiful LOVE STORY!

The opera was held at the Verona Coloseum. It is an outdoor coloseum and is one of the oldest complete coloseum in the world! The arena was once used for gladiator fights among other things, but it is now most frequently used as an opera venue. It can hold 22,000 spectators for the summer opera performances.

 Boy was I in for a big surprise... The stone "steps" were almost to my waist. The romans must have been 7-8 ft tall if these were "steps" for them!

Before we went to the Opera we went out to dinner at a small restaurant in Verona. All of the restaurants are called bars, even though they are not what we Americans consider a bar. The "bars" in Italy are more like small cafe's or small family run restaurants.

I had lasagna. It isnt like American Lasagna. It has barely any sauce on it!

The opera was all in Italian so I bought a book in order to follow along. I read the script as they performed. It was magical!

I really enjoyed it! The costume's, music, scenery, singers and actors were all AMAZING!

Something funny happend while we were there.... It started to lightly rain!!!! When that happened the orchestra grabbed their instruments and refused to play. Who can blame them? If I had a $1700 violin I would want to protect it too! The Italians pulled coats, scarves, umbrella's, etc out of thin air and started immediately bundling up and covering their heads. Angela told me that they believe you will get sick and die if your kidneys aren't covered in the cold or rain. LOL I thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious! It was barely raining, in Florida we wouldn't even turn on the windshield wippers yet, but the Italians jumped up to head for the hills!

After about 45 minutes of waiting for the opera to start again, a group of what must have been Americans, started the wave! It took a couple of trys for it to catch on, and let me tell you Angela and I tried our hardest to get it going too!

Soon we saw THOUSANDS of Italians jumping up to do the wave! You could spot the Americans in the crowd. We were the noisy ones! I guess in Italy you dont yell as you do the wave! But we DO!!!! LOL

I will have to post the video separately. It is too big of a file for this post!

It took a total of about an hour for the forcast to come back saying that was all of the sprinkle and the opera resumed. When it did Angela and I had much better seats because we took the seats of the people who had hightailed it home!!!

After the opera we decided to go out for cappuccino's and .... you guessed it - GELATO!!! It was WONDERFUL!

We enjoyed our treats while the Italians fought to get out of the parking garage and down the tiny streets, racing to get home! We had a WONDERFUL evening! I will NEVER forget my first opera!

Verona, Italy - Juliet's Balcony

Juliet’s house was very interesting. Alyssa and I climbed the stairs and looked around all at all of the period furniture and paintings.

 Each room was set up different.

One room was the dining room, one was the sitting room, and the bedroom, etc.  

They had the original costumes from one of the movies.

They had her bed and her room how it was set up in the movie.

They also had his and her dishes.

 It was all very exciting. The house was very historic and the stairs were really cool. I liked the ceiling, the walls, the floors, it was all very romantic.

They also had a huge picture that had been hanging in the courtyard below. It had written notes to lovers, names, and poems stuck to it.

Alyssa and I liked the room with the computers where you could write a letter to Juliet. It was very fun.

The whole museum was dedicated to LOVE…

This is her orginal door!

This is the entrance into her courtyard.

This is her balcony from the inside!