My visit continued with the very famous House of Juliet! I was expecting a lot of people outside of her place to sort of warn me I had reached my destination, and let me tell you that I was not disappointed: there were a lot of people just taking pictures from the outside. The thing is that you can enter the premises of her home and see a lot of things, such as the balcony (without being able to see from the balcony of course), a little staircase that leads to what his called the "Lovers' Terrace", or even write a love note on the wall, without paying for any ticket. And that is what a lot of people do, they just hang outside and take pictures from there, such as the famous picture with the statue of Juliet. Speaking of the statue of Juliet, I was trying to take a picture without someone touching her breasts, and after waiting patiently, I got the right picture (as you can see below), but it also got me wondering: why do people put their hands on her breast like that? What is the deal with that, huh? Well I looked it up and apparently, legend is that it brings luck to touch her right breast... Too bad I did not know it before, because I am not known for my legendary luck and I could have used some of that! 
So anyway, I would still advise future visitors to just go in Juliet's house, because the people that simply stay outside are missing quiet a bunch! Especially since the visit is free if you bought the VeronaCard. As Anthony said before me, Juliet's house is in fact a four stories house.. yup I guess she had money! and in there you can see her famous bed, of course stand from the balcony (the only thing is that from there, the only thing you can see is not your Romeo looking up to you, but the massive amount of people snapping pictures of every moving creatures!), and more.
What really got me wondering after visiting this straight-out-of-a-fairytale place is so weren't Romeo and Juliet fictional characters invented by Shakespeare? Well it is not known for sure whether they were real people that inspired Shakespeare or not, but most likely they were just fictional characters. In fact, the legend that Juliet lived in Verona spread around the 19th century since the house was built in the 12th century and belong to a family called Dal Capello (kind of sounds like Capulet, doesn't it? well thats where the name Capulet would come from anyway). By now, if you have read Anthony's blog, you also know that Romeo's house is supposed to be in Verona as well, a couple of streets away from Juliet, but it is not quiet as famous as Juliet's house. So why is that? Well this is because his house is actually a private house, while Juliet's house is the property of the state. The only thing of Romeo's house you can see is a little sign acknowledging that this would be his house. Once again, legend is that the house once belonged to the Montecchi family, which would be correspond to the Montagues' family.
I hope I satisfied your curiosity as much as mine was, below are some pictures of Giuletta's house.
Then, I decided to climb some more stairs to get up to the top of Torrei dei Lamberti, the famous tower that was used for warning the city in case of an invasion. Once again I decided to count the stairs and I must have missed some somewhere because I counted 365 steps to the top instead of the 368 steps, but only missing by 3 steps is pretty good I guess. Anyway, I got up to the top of this 13th century tower and remembered what Anthony had said about it ringing every half hour (in fact I saw that were was a little sign warning visitors) and looked up at my watch to see that it was already 1:52... I only had 8 minutes to enjoy the view, take a few shots and get back down before the bells would make me deaf! I took my shots very fast, anyway I already had some pretty good pictures of the view of Verona and started back down. Of course I also enjoyed looking at the mechanism used to make those huge bells ring every half hour and managed to squeeze myself in the elevator. I had been told at the entrance that to take the elevator I had to pay an extra euro, but it does not seem that anyone is really checking... I personally wanted to enjoy feeling my legs burn by climbing the stairs, but for the way down that I wanted quick to avoid the bells I did not mind the elevator ride! Below are the few pictures I took up there and of the lady pointing to the tower.
Final destination before the end of my trip, La Tomba di Giuletta! Juliet's tomb is located in the monastery of San Francesco al Corso, which is first a small museum that houses different religious painting, sculptures and other artifacts. The crypt that contains Juliet's tomb is located after seeing all of these amazing objects. Similar to the legends about Juliet's house, rumors that Juliet and Romeo got married and that the two lovers came to their unfortunate end shortly after the wedding day at the church of San Francesco al Corso started floating around. However, the tomb supposed to be Juliet's only dates back to the 1937... but this doesn't stop people from all other the world to pay their respect to Juliet and this is also apparently a famous place for lovers to get married!
Enjoy these pictures of the artifacts of the museum and La Tomba di Giuletta.
After this last visit, my camera gave up on me and the battery went dead, and my legs told me that I better be heading for the train station otherwise my arms would have to do the rest of the walk, so I headed back to Verona Porta Nueva to catch the first train back to Treviglio and then Crema, very satisfied of this last weekend trip!
The Milanese seem to have a bike system to get around: people can rent bikes in the same way they would take the bus (the bikes are located at specific locations) and they can get to wherever they need to go and leave the bikes at specific places where they can rent them to make their way back. This is a very healthy way to get around town while enjoying the weather. 
Crema is a town in the province of Cremona in the region of Londardy in northern Italy. Based on Wikipedia, it is also the seat of a Catholic Bishop who gave it the title of city. Crema's main economic activities realte to agriculture and cattle breeding, but its manufacture now include cheese, iron products and cotton and wool textiles. Inhabitants are called cremash
This is the little restaurant where we were advised to eat for lunch. The food is as most italian food delicious. Below are some pictures of a few of the meals I had there, as expected, I mostly ate pizza and pasta; however, the menu is much greater than that and changes everyday! 
On Thursday our host had organized a nice little press conference to introduce us to the local newspaper and present the PIRE program. One of the first article we saw this morning was an online article from Crema on line: 
Next, we went on a little touristic visit of the city and found another very beautiful side of Crema. The picture on the side is a picture of the cathedral located in the center of Crema right next to our appartment
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