Getting over false hopes...

This weekend we stayed in on Friday (probably a first for me here) and then headed to Verona for the rest of a relaxing weekend. The drive was only a little over 2 hours and was relatively easy on the way there. I went with my friends Sally and Jeremy (they are married) and we met up with my friend Amy that's living in Florence. We arrived in the city about 9:30am, which gave us the entire day to check out the town. I've been there before, but I was about 13, needless to say I don't remember that much except the great company I was with at the time. We spent the day visiting the arena, Guiletta's house, and checking out the shopping. We had to have a leisurely lunch because unfortunately the cold followed us from Lugano to Verona.

The reason I decided this blog needed to be called "false hopes" was not because Verona didn't live up to our expectations, but instead because I think A. we are always hopeful that the weather will be better anytime we travel south and B. we are always hopeful that when we find something that claims to be Mexican food it is going to be what we're used to. Now neither of these things came true over the weekend. The weather was FREEZING! I said many times that my toes were as cold as they get when I am skiing. For dinner Saturday we decided and were so excited about eating at Tropico di Latino, guess we should have known from the name...it just was not Fidel's of course. It started out with really bad margaritas...tasted like they pretty much blended bad tequila, water, salt and maybe a splash of lime. We asked for limes thinking some citrus might help and they gave us two miniscule slices of limes, we quickly realized this was the major problem. Next were the nachos or what claimed to be. It was actually FOUR chips with something that ressembled guacamole and black beans. So really, we each had a nacho. It continued with the food being luke warm and just not the mexican we are used to. Note to self: when in rome...well you know the rest.

After our scrumptious dinner we walked outside only to find out it was, GUESS WHAT... SNOWING!! Something really fun for Amy to see. We headed to a bar we had tried to go in earlier, but they were closed during the awkward afternoon hours. We enjoyed the atmosphere, had a few drinks, and then headed back to our hotel that was appropriately called Romeo e Guillieta. After a great European breakfast this morning, Sally, Jeremy, and I started the drive back to Lugano and Amy took her train to Florence. It was snowing pretty much the entire way back, but the visibility was fine and it wasn't actually sticking to the ground.

We stopped at the Bennett grocery store in Italy, since silly Switzerland doesn't like anything to be open on Sundays. Since I've decided to stop eating at TASIS whenever possible, I've been trying to be more adult like and actually buy groceries to cook decent meals. It was good to be home earlier enough to prepare for another week, but it was still snowing. Next week I'm going to try to go skiing at least one day and then London is just around the bend. Can't wait!