There are lots of great things about living in Cairo, and one of them is that we have easy access to many other great places. Cheap non-stop flights are available to (for example) Turkey and Greece and France. We carefully examined the bargain airline offerings before finally deciding to spend our four-day Easter holiday in Verona, Italy.
Before last weekend, I honestly didn’t know anything about Verona except as the setting for Romeo and Juliet and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shakespeare probably never visited Italy (though it is possible) so maybe he isn’t a reliable source anyway. Some friends told us they’d had a great time there, though, and it’s fun to explore new territory without researching too much in advance. We knew for sure the food would be wonderful, because it always is in Italy.
Except on the airplane. Note to self: next time bring your own meal when flying cheapo Meridiana Air.
Seriously?
We landed in Milan and took the train the next morning to Verona. It was a beautiful day to walk from the station to our Airbnb, a cute second-floor studio apartment in the old medieval part of the city.
A family enjoys gelato on our street corner
Verona is small, and we spent the weekend wandering around the old cobblestone piazzas, streets, bridges, and alleys, many of which are pedestrianized.
We followed a paper tourist map that our host gave us, stopping in at the medieval and Renaissance churches,
museums (I have a special fondness for creepy old religious art),
Roman ruins,
and Romeo and Juliet landmarks.
We skipped the tall Lamberti tower because the queue was huge on this holiday weekend, but we had lovely panoramic views from the top of the castle and also from the Roman amphitheatre across the river.
And, as predicted, the food was wonderful (and yes, we brought our own food on the flight home).
Lorna of Arabia 
It looks beautiful, I’m very tempted to book up.