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Verona
Driving to Verona was no problem whatsoever. We did have to pay a few tolls, and the automatic ones were fun. I just had to put in my credit card, the machine spit it back with a receipt, and said Arrivederci!
It was when we were approaching town that I got nervous. I wasn't real fired up about driving down narrow European City streets, much less with directions like this from our online European directions:
turn right onto: Corso Porta Nuova for 0.6 km
turn left onto: Piazza Pradaval for 90 m
turn right onto: Via Di Sant'Antonio for 200 m
turn left onto: Via Guglielmo Marconi for 80 m
and...
continue for 150m. Turn left.
So, none of these streets were labeled, and, as the last example shows, sometimes even the Internet had no idea which street was which! So we rolled into town, and proceeded to look for Corso Porta Nuova, Piazza Pradaval, or Via Di whatever. We went through a gate that might have said Porta Nuova, so we thought we were on the right track. On our left was a bunch of tents, probably from a festival. We continued along...and ended up right in the middle of the town square!
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Do you see any cars in this picture?
Yeah, me neither. |
"This doesn't seem right...." I thought. Lin-Wei concurred. So we pulled over, and looked at the map. It looked like we were close, so we decided to go around and try again. Unfortunately we must have gotten caught in the 10min rush hour there, because we crawled at 2miles/hr (sorry, 3.2km/hr), and eventually...we were heading right back for the square! Panic set in, and I saw a bunch of cars turning left, so I followed. We were now thoroughly, and completely, lost. And tired from no sleep. And hungry. And what a wonderful set of circumstances for a couple on their honeymoon. Would this marriage last past day 1? It seemed doubtful, as Lin-Wei tried to decipher the map, and I tried to not crash, and keep the car moving, and also decipher the map.
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| Hell yeah! Just like we planned it |
And then this is exactly what happened: After we turned left, we started down a very narrow street. This dead-ended, but an even smaller alley led off to the left, and all the cars were going that way. Luckily we had the worlds smallest SUV, so we were able to fit. This alley led to a small parking lot. "Nice..." I thought. The cars then all turned right, to exit the parking lot and go left on a one-way street. I kept following them, all the while trying to not crash and look at the map. It was when I looked up that I knew that our honeymoon was going to be awesome. There, one block ahead of me, written in reverse letters, was "Alberco Sienna". Smiling, I pointed out the sight to Lin-Wei, and there was much rejoicing. I pulled over, and Lin-Wei ran in to talk to the guy about parking. They both came out, and the proprietor pointed to a spot a little behind me, about 25ft (sorry, 7.62 meters). And we were done driving! As simple as that... We later realized that our left turn didn't happen because the road was blocked off by the festival tents!
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 Prior to our departure to Europe, I got directions to all our hotels via the Michelin site (based on a friend’s recommendation). It gave good long drive directions but it is not good at city directions. The reason was that we wanted to turn “right, and turn left” but Europe has a lot of roundabouts and the directions did not mentioned the hundreds of roundabouts. And like the other time I visited Europe, there is never street any signs handy when you need them. Driving on the highway (autostrade) was easy, but the city, we got lost often. |
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| I was very happy we found the hotel. Finally, we can start being tourist and get some FOOD!!!!! |
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