Juliet Juliet Wherefore Art Thou?

Verona has a romantic resonance with many. People flock here to visit Casa di Giulietta (Juliet of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet). We saw this firsthand yesterday. The whole thing was tourist fairy fluff. The house was not Juliet's, the statue was not Juliet and no one really knew how the "rub the right breast for luck" originated but as we were suckers for marketing, we decided to go the whole hog. This time we bought prepaid timed tickets for the first slot at 9am and were in line by 0845. Might as well practice for our upcoming Disney trip. It was a decent amount of money just to take a photo and to rub a statue's right breast but we were not a family to be deterred! We squeezed it in right before we had to be at the meeting point for our cooking class today.

Yes! 3rd group in line

Statue of "Juliet"

Rub the right breast kids!!!

The "balcony" that was only added in the 20th century!

You have to pay to leave a message for Juliet...

Walking to our cooking class. Portoni della Bra

Piazza Bra from another angle

Didn't need to rush after all. Had time for our daily cioccolata con panna

This time around, we did something we had never done before. We hired a planner to help us with aspects of our trip, namely finding activities/tours that were good or available during the Christmas period. So far so good. Teresa, our planner, had organised both e-bike tours, as well as our cooking class. The cooking class was one of the best things we had every done as a family. The children LOVED it! Our guide/chef was so awesome. A local from Verona, Cristina was fun, funny and passionate! She not only gave handy tips, but chatted away about life, told us stories, and happily answered all our questions. We discovered that the children were actually decent at cooking. The recipes were simple (I'll be honest here and say that I was sceptical at first) but the end product was so delicious. I hate to sound cliched but it was the case of letting the ingredients shine through. We made three dishes. The first was a wine risotto that was typical Veronese. We also made our own fresh pasta from scratch as well as a tomato and rosemary sauce from scratch. The last dish was the classic tiramisu. We were so full after eating our creations. 

The kitchen, our workspace, and dining table

Jonah helping prepare the stock

Making the tiramisu "cream"

It really was that good. She gave us permission to lick the bowls after lol

Time to chop onions for both the risotto and the pasta sauce. "Not fine enough. Keep going!!" she said 😅

Making our own fresh pasta

The wine for our risotto. Had to be the right wine

Eating our risotto. Elliot said this was the only risotto that he has ever liked. 

We had to trust Jonah with our pasta

The end product. Molto bene said Cristina! Amazing taste, texture and bite

Jonah also did the cocoa dusting for tiramisu

Very light. Not too sweet, not too much coffee

The amazing Cristina!

We had a few more things to tick off our list which we did reasonably efficiently. It was nice to actually walk. We rested in the evening with the aim to venture out again for the New Year's fireworks but I strongly suspect we won't make it...yet again!

Ticking off the last things on our list. Castelvecchio and the attached bridge