one time, i spent the night on the streets of verona

The arena where we watched Rigoletto








The arena at night with all the candles lit to read programs (the lights in the middle/bottom area are the orchestra)









The park where we spent the night.




Yesterday the entire group went to Verona to see Rigoletto in the arena. The kids had class until 11:30, then we had to do some paperwork to get what's called an IMOB card (which lets you ride the vaporetto for 1 Euro instead of 6.50), then we had to leave Casa Artom around 1 to catch our train. We were all really tired already because we've been staying up late hanging out and bonding, but David was leading the walk to the train station and we practically had to run to keep up. I bought "lunch" at the little cafeteria in the station in the form of a brioche and then we all found our platform and got on probably the nicest train I've ever been on (it even had air conditioning).

Most people slept on the train but of course I couldn't, so I just rested and we got there pretty quickly (since it was a Eurostar). We decided to stick together once we got to Verona, so we headed towards Juliet's balcony and then the river that runs through town. Some of the group decided to go to the gardens, but some of us were too tired, so we just wandered around the city, made dinner reservations for later that night, and had coffee and spritzs in the main square until everyone else finished in the gardens.

Dinner was at a restaurant that Caroline's sister recommended and it was amazing. David was nice enough to pay for water, wine, and appetizers, and the main courses weren't that expensive, so we didn't have to worry about that, which was nice! I had rigatoni al ragu and it was perfect, then I had tiramisu (of course) and was promptly ready to go to bed, but we still had some time before the opera started, so we took a slightly slower pace back to the arena.

At the arena we figured out pretty quickly why people bring or rent cushions as we were sitting on hard, worn down marble for 3 1/2 hours. Despite the discomfort, it was an incredible experience. The arena is beautiful, especially at night with just the lights on the stage and from the candles that people use to read the programs. The opera itself was really well done, and while I have to admit I didn't know what was going on every single minute, it was still captivating and I didn't fall asleep even once. Eventually some of us moved seats so that we could lean back (versus not being able to because of peoples' legs being right behind you), which helped. I managed to somewhat successfully take a video of the more famous scene from the opera, but neither that nor the pictures really do it justice.

After the opera, we found an outdoor cafe that was willing to accommodate 20 loud, tired, hungry Americans at 1am and had water, coffee, snacks, etc to last us through the night. When it was time for the cafe to close, we went back to a park that we had found earlier to pass the rest of the time. We started out by playing a game called "Mafia," which is kind of a complicated strategizing sort of game and it ended up taking over an hour (because of how it played out and because of how many people played). After that, people played cards, sat around and talked, and we had a group game of "never have I ever" going on (although it was very tame). Finally we decided to head towards the train station around 4:45 to catch our 5:30 train. Most of us slept the whole way back to Venice (about 2 hours), then went back to sleep as soon as we got home and showered.

I have to admit I was really worried that we'd get pick pocketed or attract some police attention for loitering or that someone would get lost...it's my nature to constantly worry, after all. Nevertheless, it actually ended up being a lot of fun. Of course we're all still pretty exhausted and our senses of time are a little out of whack (personally it feels like about 11am to me, which is what time it is at home, but here it's 5pm), but the opera was worth it, and I really enjoyed how we passed the time between the show and our train.

I think tonight we're going to go to San Paolo, where there's a big movie screen that shows films from the Venice Film Festival (for people who can't or don't want to go to the Lido to watch the actual screening), and I'm sure we'll go out after that, but then again exhaustion may win...