An Update and a Promise

Left: just over 14 years ago Mom and Dad are standing on the Ponte Pietra . Right: On September 24, 2026 all 3 of us are back and I am once again taking their photo on this most-ancient bridge in Verona.

--September 25, 2026 at 2:53 PM.

Maps are centered on the photo: Google map, Apple map, CalTopo mapOpenTopoMap map We have been in Verona for the past couple of days. Mom and I have been ill for the past couple of days. Perhaps we are well on our way to recovery as we wait for our car service to arrive and drive us to Lake Garda and the town Gargnano. I do have a bit more I can say about Verona but it is going to wait until I have settled down there and am feeling more properly myself. That is when I will also write about our final walk on the island of Gozo which had a bit more adventure than we wanted.

For now I will share these two photos of us on the Ponte Pietra. We managed to use the bus system to get from our Best Western CTC Verona outside the city to Castelvecchio in Verona and from there did a tiny bit of exploring (very slowly as I certainly wasn’t well) and in time we found our way to the bridge. Getting back to the hotel took a bit more effort and we had a period of doubt when we thought we had made an error. It all worked out. However, if we were staying for any appreciable length of time I would figure out how to purchase bus passes via the mobile app. One final very much in passing note. We initially had not planned to stay at this hotel but at an AirB&B in central Verona. Had we done that we would not have disovered the grand shopping mall about one-half mile away from our hotel. Perhaps I should have taken photos of some of the stores. What really impressed us was the staggering large grocery and-a-bit-of-everything-else store. From vast amounts of fresh veggies, to a active bakery, plenty of clearly fresh fish, and swaths of all sorts of meats being prepared as you watched, and more. Impressive. Then we found a nice clothing store where I bought two pair of pants. They required some alterations and, lo and behold,there was a seamstress booth just a few shops down. She took my measurements and had the two pants altered in less than an hour. I doubt that there is a shopping mall in the USA which has a tailor/seamstress.

Photos

Dad and Ken on the Ponte Pietra. The bridge was built around 100BCE but all but the leftmost arch was destroyed in 1945.

--September 25, 2026 at 2:54 PM.

Maps are centered on the photo: Google map, Apple map, CalTopo mapOpenTopoMap map

This was a lovely little park to sit in and watch people go by. Well that’s what Mom and Dad did. I rested. We looked at Ponte Puetra. We wondered about the trees high on a bluff beyond the bridge.

--September 25, 2026 at 3:29 PM.

Maps are centered on the photo: Google map, Apple map, CalTopo mapOpenTopoMap map