{"id":8976,"date":"2012-05-29T12:30:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T02:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=8976"},"modified":"2012-06-16T20:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-06-17T03:51:36","slug":"arrival-in-verona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2012\/05\/29\/arrival-in-verona\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrival in Verona"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is our first vacation in four years, and for me it’s an experiment in new technology. I’m not bringing a laptop – I have an iPhone and an iPad; I’ve set up the iPhone with international service, voice and data, and the iPad will go WiFi only. I have a bluetooth keyboard from Perixx, the camera kit for the iPad, and a USB nanoKey music keyboard from Korg. The whole kit fit in my underseat carry-on and small over the shoulder bag along with a change of underwear, tee shirt, and snacks (we were told our flight was breakfast-only – they lied).<\/p>\n

We flew in on an Air France flight on a 777 – old plane, the seats were like wood; I got to sit in business, which meant that at least I got slightly better food while enduring the torture of a hard seat (my left calf is still sore) – why can’t the leg rests be designed for someone at least 6 foot tall?<\/p>\n

After 10 hours to Paris, we switched terminals at Charles De Gaulle and got a puddle jumper to Verona – Aviva and I napped on the hop.<\/p>\n

Verona’s airport is small, only slightly bigger than the one in Florence. We got our bags, cleared customs and caught a cab to our hotel, the Best Western Hotel Armando, which is located near the Arena in the city center.<\/p>\n

The hotel is Spartan; the sleeping on the bed is like lying on a rock, and I can’t get the WiFi to work with my iPad or our iPhones. One complication of going WiFi-only – location services don’t work indoors since it can’t triangulate on the cell towers. The shower works and has a handheld; you do have to be very careful not to shoot water all over the bathroom – I’ve found that typical of hotel showers in Italy. At least we have our own bath.<\/p>\n

We walked over to a small shop that sells drinks and sandwiches – we got a couple cheese and tomato sandwiches, some Coke Zero and water for the room. The woman didn’t speak English but we managed.<\/p>\n

\"This <\/a>
This is the view from our window <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"We <\/a>
We walked right by this section of old city wall to get drinks <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Two <\/a>
Two bicycles leaning against an old wall with honeysuckle <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

We watched the one English language TV network, BBC World News, and then crashed.<\/p>\n

Location:Vicolo Pallone,Verona,Italy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\nTranslate<\/span><\/a>\"\"\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is our first vacation in four years, and for me it’s an experiment in new technology. I’m not bringing a laptop – I have an iPhone and an iPad; I’ve set up the iPhone with international service, voice and data, and the iPad will go WiFi only. I have a bluetooth keyboard from Perixx, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,143,1154],"tags":[767,1150,848,1178,2414,1179],"class_list":["post-8976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italy","category-travel-foreign","category-verona","tag-iphone","tag-italy-vacation-2012","tag-itunes","tag-multi-touch","tag-verona","tag-voice-and-data"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t