We first went to Verona 10 years last month, back when we still lived in California. We fell in love with the city on that visit, even though we only spent a couple of days there on that first trip. We’ve lived in 4 countries in the last 10 years, and traveled to countless other places, but Verona remains one of the constants in our wanderings: even when we didn’t live a mere train ride (or two ) away, we managed to get there at least once a year.

Of course, it’s always relaxing to go to a place where you can meet up with good friends and find great food, no matter whether you’ve been to the place before or not. However, when you go back to a place you know well, you have the advantage of being able to  take in the local sights at your leisure. Since you’ve seen most of them before,  you can pick and choose among your favorites. That’s Verona for us as “tourists”: there are many fun places to see, and on each visit we pick and choose among them for what we’ll go back to.

There are many good Italian restaurants to visit — and re-visit, and we know where they are, too. And it’s that part that makes us more “locals” than the locals, in some ways. For example, the woman who we always chat with at our hotel actually asked us this time if we had any special restaurant recommendations, since she knows that we both like to eat and have visited a large number of restaurants in Verona over the years. 10 years ago, we would have asked the hotel to give us recommendations – now it seems we’re practically locals, dispensing advice not just to other tourists, but to actual locals. Fun!

Anyway, we had a wonderful week relaxing in Verona,  seeing all old friends, visiting old haunts, and enjoying a week in a place that feels almost like home, even though we have never lived there.

One literally old haunt we visited again this time is L’Arena, the Roman amphitheatre that was built about 2,000 years ago and is still in use. When possible, it’s fun to just sit on a bench outside its walls; tan/orange-color marble makes a nice backdrop for the pedestrians strolling to and fro in front of you.

L’Arena is also a tourist attraction that you can go into of course. For a fee you can walk up and down the marble steps/seats, soaking in the ambiance and trying to picture it without all the modern lighting and wires.

The modern atmosphere changes dramatically depending on the time of year: in summer, some of the original marble is covered by  metal seating they install for the opera performances. That’s why I prefer it in winter, when the whole arena is  visible and accessible, so that you can get a nice 360 degree view of the whole oval area. Whenever the weather cooperates on a visit to Verona, we always try to go in an take a few photos inside L’Arena, and this visit was no exception.

You’ll note below that most of my photos feature a serendipitous puddle in the middle of the arena. I tried a few other experimental ideas with my photos once we got back, too. So even though today’s pictures literally cover the same old territory of L’Arena in Verona, there’s also a little something new mixed in as well. Well, they do say that everything old is new again, right?

Enjoy.

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Of course, Everything Old is New Again is, of course, the title of a song. I’m not sure if it was written originally for Broadway, but it was written by Peter Allen, who was a Broadway performer, who famously performed it with the Rockettes, and it was also in a movie, All That Jazz, directed by Bob Fosse, and featuring Ann Reinking, two Broadway legends. Click on the links in this paragraph for relevant YouTube clips.