Our group outside the villa front door just before we set off on our separate ways.
A horribly early start as checkout time was 9am. Finished packing and grabbed breakfast from the mountain of food up for grabs laid out on the table. Snaffled some chilli flakes, herbs and focaccia to take with us.
A late afternoon flight so Anna, Dave, Mike and I spent the morning in Verona, driving to one of the central car parks. We walked 20 mins out of the centre to the beautiful Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore - dedicated to Verona's patron saint Saint Zeno, allegedly from Mauretania in Africa. Gorgeous Romanesque architecture inside and out, with incredible frescos on the inside walls, sculptural reliefs outside, and the most beautiful bronze doors with biblical reliefs.
Found a table on a restaurant terrace in the square for lunch - cheese platter antipasto and tuna ceviche for Dave (I wasn't risking raw tuna after my stomach upset earlier in the week), followed by tomato and burrata maccherone and salmon gnocchi primi. We were plagued by wasps for a while when said insects discovered the delicious honey mustard and raspberry jam that came with the cheese.
And the rest of the day was getting home - always a trial when you fly. And doubly stressful as I'd somehow missed the dire warnings of severe disruption on Stansted Express - I'd known about the strike, but not the engineering works that meant there were no through trains from the airport to London and according to the website there would be replacement buses but that they'd be really busy.
Verona airport, considering it's a small place, was heaving and chaotic. Queues for security (where my melodeon was stopped and examined - turned out to be the whistles that were the problem) and queues for the couple of eateries. We did manage to get some bottles of water and chocolates from the Verona food shop. We waited as instructed to go through passport control but this ended up being chaotic also - probably because their were too many people already at the gates, they wouldn't let people through till just before our plane started boarding.
So we rushed like mad things once we were through to join the priority queue as Anna was worried that if there were too many people ahead of us she might be forced to put her instrument in the hold. And we also had to wait a good 30 mins on the tarmac (thankfully shaded) before finally being allowed on the plane.
After that it was more or less plain sailing (or flying/training) - plane was just about on time, passport queues at Stansted were negligible, our luggage was delivered promptly. We said our goodbyes to Anna and Mike and dashed to the station - which was suspiciously deserted. But importantly, there was a train in the platform. Turned out I might have missed the disruption warnings, but everyone else had paid heed. So we were one of the few passengers as it left the airport - no problems with the replacement bus or getting the onward train.
Home to a very hot house and the odd dead plant.
The original graffiti
https://365project.org/boxplayer/extras/2022-08-13
London Olympics 2012 memory lane -
https://365project.org/boxplayer/365/2022-08-13
13 August 2022
Near Verona, Italy
