A mission to find a brewpub in the Italian city of Verona leads to getting very lost indeed.
Advice, a little too late
As the bleak stomp along Verona’s finest snarling dual carriageway took a more frightening turn into an unlit underpass, a message from a friend arrived on my phone. “Top tip,” it said. “As a rule of thumb, mid-sized Italian cities are pretty awful once you get outside the walls. I wouldn’t bother going outside the walls.”
I was well outside the walls, and the underpass looked like the sort of place heroin-addicted trolls would call home. It was a relief to get past it for another heady dose of dual carriageway trekking.
Verona’s elusive brewpub
My target was a brewpub, which some internet research had told me was newly opened. I wanted to go there, partly because professional pride makes me want to check out that sort of thing while researching city guides, and partly because I really fancied some decent beer after a few days in a heavily wine-slanted region.
The downside was that it involved a three kilometre walk well out of my way. I could have worked out which bus would take me there, but I’ve long-standing problems with never knowing when to get off strange foreign buses. Besides, Verona’s very pretty – so I was fairly sure it’d be an enjoyably scenic walk.
If that was an erroneous assumption, then there were plenty more to come. As I finally got to the spot where Google Maps said it was, I looked around, only to find what looked suspiciously like the headquarters for a neo-Nazi organisation.
Finally, next to it, I saw a sign of life. Or rather, of death. The brewpub’s sign was split in half, all the lights were out and a notice on the door was giving thanks to customers in a way that made it sound very much like Verona’s intrepid brewers had gone out of business. Another consultation of omniscient info-spurting device in my pocket also gave me a detail I’d not spotted earlier – even if the venture is still running, it is closed on Monday nights.
Taking the bus back to the city centre
This particular Monday night, therefore, would be the one where I took on Verona’s bus system. And technology would be my friend this time.
I plotted a route back to the centre, using Google Maps’ public transport option. I found the right bus stop, I found the right bus, and ended up in one of those wine bars I’d conspicuously tried to avoid. The evening wasn’t the roaring voyage of discovery I’d hoped for, but neither was it an embarrassing failure.
Verona’s number 11 bus
Emboldened, I decided to get the bus back to my hotel, and reached for the phone’s all-knowing wisdom again. The number 11 bus, magically, appeared to go from pretty much where I was standing to right outside my hotel. Praise the heavens for science and progress making such things so ridiculously easy.
There was only one more potential pitfall – was I standing on the right side of the road? The other pitfall of catching buses in strange cities is ending up going in completely the wrong direction. But once on board, it headed as expected towards the station, allowing me to bury my head in a book for ten minutes until my hotel came into view.
When I looked up from the book, however, said hotel was nowhere to be seen. That is, unless it had undergone a remarkable transformation during the day from anodyne slightly-out-of-centre four star into a grim, grey bus depot.
At the bus depot
The driver switched off the engine, and turned round, clearly surprised to learn he still had a passenger on board. The competition to look most bewildered was well and truly on.
“I think I’m in the wrong place,” I said.
“I think you’re in the wrong place,” he blurted at the same time.
“But this is the number 11. It stops on via Luigi Galvani, right?”
I can confirm that this is true. The number 11 does stop on via Luigi Galvani. But, apparently, only during the day. At night, it goes to the bay outside the train station, then does a swift turn and heads back to the bus depot on the opposite side of the city from via Luigi Galvani.
Seeing me on the panicked verge of tears, the driver took pity, and beckoned me to follow him. We walked past another grotty underpass and another hideous dual carriageway, arriving at a lonely-looking bus stop in what could be legally part of Albania for all I knew. The kindly driver told me which bus to catch, which bus to change to and where. Sometimes, it’s better to get your information from people rather than phones…
More Veneto travel stories
Great activities around Verona include Valpolicella and Amarone wine-tasting tours, a pasta and tiramisu cooking class and small group walking tours.
Other Veneto travel articles on Planet Whitley include:
- A guide to Treviso for first time visitors.
- A guide to Padua for first time visitors.
- The world’s oldest botanic garden in Padua.
- A guide to Vicenza for first time visitors.
- Exploring Palladian architecture in Vicenza.
- How fast are the direct Milan to Verona trains?
- Why it makes sense to do a Valpolicella wine tour from Verona.
- Venice to Verona train times and prices.
- Bologna to Verona train times and prices.
This article was originally written for National Geographic Traveller UK.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. Book through them, and I earn a small commission.
