"Verona" a Verona Travel Page by Trillian2005

Verona is the capital city of the province of Veneto in Northern Italy. It was named after Verona Valletta, the younger sister of Violetta Valletta, who donated her name to Valletta, the capital city of Malta.

Although Verona is, in my opinion, not quite as beautiful as Valletta, it is nevertheless a charming and interesting city and it definitely has a much more fascinating railway station than Valletta, since Valletta doesn't have a railway station at all. Verona's train station is called Verona Porta Nuova (Verona the New Gate), which was named after the new front gate in Verona's villa that used to be exactly opposite of the contemporary train station before the train station had been built.

It was the year 1975, in the summer to be exact, or to be even more exact during my summer holidays from high school, when my parents and I, together with our friends from Wiesbaden, took a trip from Rastatt to Viserbella (it goes without saying that our friends from Wiesbaden started the trip in Wiesbaden, which is north of Rastatt, hence they boarded the train before we did).

...we met up with our friends from Wiesbaden on the train and together we continued our journey, giddy with anticipation of sun, sand and sea to coastal Viserbella on the Adriatic sea.

...until we reached Verona Porta Nueva. Happy that the train was on time and there were only a few hours of traveling left to our vacation destination, we were, all of a sudden, in for a big shock. No sooner had the trained pulled into the beautiful Verona Porta Nuova railway station, there was an announcement that, due to a sudden railway worker strike, all trains traveling across Italy would come to an indefinite standstill - 3 hours minimum.

So we decided to make the most of it and visit those areas of Verona that were close to the train station - I remember having a picnic lunch with my parents and our friends (one of us had to take turns watching our luggage on the train) in a lovely park nearby.

And after the relatively short time of 5 hours, the Italians had decided, for whatever reason, to let the vacation trains take off on their merry way and so we did.

We arrived tired and quite late in Viserbella but very happy that we had been given a chance for a surprise visit of remarkable Verona Porta Nuova - an experience I'll never forget.