David Grajal

In Verona I was back again in the popular Italian-touristic-traps-circuit. Verona is known as the city of love because in this city where setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julieta is. The city was full of tourists taking pictures everywhere, specially on Julietta’s balcony. The city was really crawled because an international marathon was held during the weekend I was in the city.

Verona city of love

What I most like about the city was Julietta’s house where people use chewing gum to stick love notes on a wall. I found this absolutely fascinating because the people write very profound feelings they are normally not able to express publicly. Most of them are simple, but there are amazing notes like a guy that use the note to break up with his girlfriend because he has discover his true love living with another guy, the man of his dreams. My favorite love note is this note dedicated to Bruce Willis.

Bruce Willis lover

In Verona I met some people in the hostel I will never forget, for example the scary Moldavian guy that was unable to speak anything but Moldavian. I don’t understand how can somebody like him reach Verona traveling alone!

Beautiful Verona

–

I visited Genoa on a rainy, cloudy day but I was pleasantly surprised by this city. The part of the city that embraces the sea has narrow alleys they called caruggi and the part of the city that looks to the mountains have wide boulevards as Torino. Looking at the huge number of palaces and churches built with expensive materials, it is clear that this city was really, really wealthier some centuries ago. In Genoa I visited the house where Columbus was supposed to live before going to Spain.

Colombus home

Even if there were just some ruins, I was pleasantly surprised. This must be the only relevant place in Italy you can visit for free!

I visited the city with Paulina and Gabriela, a couple of Mexican exchange students I met on the train. Together we walked over the city, explored the port an jumped all over the city.

Jumping @ Genoa

Torino is completely different to everything I’ve seen in the rest of Italy. This city is to Italy what Barcelona is to Spain. The city is not part of the typical Italian touristic tour so there are no tourists around, at least not now in rainy February. In Torino there are not red houses, small streets or Renaissance. This is a neo-classical city, with huge boulevards with porticoes and art-nouveau buildings. As Elisabetta says, the best adjective to describe this city is Imperial. And it makes sense; Torino was created from nothing during the kingdom of Savoy. Moreover Torino was the first capital of the Italian state when the reunification process started and the place where the royal family lived. The people that lived in this city got used to greatness!

I love Gremlins (Cinema museum)

Nowadays Torino is an important city of technology and industry. FIAT headquarters are here. I visited the Egyptian museum, which is supposed to be the biggest museum dedicated to Egyptian culture after Cairo’s Museum. I also visited the national museum of cinema, which is located on the Mole Antoniana, the most emblematic building in Turin. This museum is absolutely gorgeous and it’s really worth to visit. Other museum I wanted to go is FIAT museum, but its currently closed. It will open its doors again in 2011. The original Holy Shrud is also located here but its only shown in very special occasions. Apparently the next time will be in April and the cathedral is already getting ready for that event so it was closed. I couldn’t even see the copy!

In Torino I was hosted by two hosts, first by Maria Amor, a courageous Spanish 19 year old woman with 2 beautiful daughters, a lot of energy and a incredible positive spirit. She introduced me to her friends and together we had a Milanese aperitivo with lots of snacks. I was also emergency hosted by Massimiliano, Paula and Mimo.

Maria's couch

Surfing Paola & Massimiliano couch

Siena is a city that competed economically and military with Florence during Renaissance. After some struggles Florence defeated Siena and the city started to lose political importance. In my opinion Siena is a lot more beautiful that Florence!. It is located in the hills, very well preserved, and its full of very old brick buildings and churches. In Siena is held one of the most well known Italian squares: La piazza del campo where the Palio is celebrated two times per year. Nowadays the entire rhythm of Siena and the character of the people is defined by the Palio events and the spirit of competition between the Palio teams.

Jumping in Piazza del campo

Beautiful Siena

In Siena I was hosted by Giulia. She fed me with homemade tiramisú that was even better that the one that my grandmother cooks! She also introduced me to her friends and together, we went out to a cuartel (a Palio’s team) party. It was great!

Surfing Giulia's couch

Lucca is my favorite Italian city so far. It has beautiful city walls, old architecture, vivid orange and yellow buildings, narrow streets, lovely cafes, traffic closed to cars in the city center, tasty Tuscan food and incredibly relaxed people. Furthermore there weren’t hordes of tourists, only some of them and they all looked Italian. This city and its surrounding were an independent kingdom during Renaissance and until Italian reunification but it doesn’t look like that. There are no big palaces, great avenues or huge cathedrals. Everything in this city looks dry and cold, serious and melancholic.

Roman amphitheater square