PIZZA REDENTORE is another good restaurant next to the Roman Theater, although a little expensive. The Pizzas (even the Bambini/ Child's one) are huge, and could easily be shared, making this place fairly reasonable.
Many of the top end restaurants didn't even open until 9 surprising even our hotelier. This might just be an opera season thing, but call ahead if you really want to try some of the recommended places like "Bottega Del Vino."
I highly recommend (as does RS) VERONARENTACAR, especially if you need to pick up or drop off a car on a Sunday. Although not the cheapest place (though not far from it) because VRC will deliver and pick up your car within 25k of the city for free, they saved us a trip to the airport and back, a 4.50E bus fare just for one person, one way, plus a lot of time and hassle. They were flexible, and easy to deal with, seemingly straightforward, and understanding of our not getting the receipt for filling the gas tank. To get such a receipt (required by most rent car companies to prove you did fill the tank) if the gas station is not open, you must wait a few minutes after gassing up and the printer where you paid will print a receipt. I don't know if you are asked this option after the transaction, or if it is printed automatically, as we did not know to stay to get one!
Although the guidebooks claim much of Verona is closed on Mondays, we found about 1/2 the shops open Sun (even department stores) and Mon. Apparently, school starts around now, so there were losts of "back to school" end of summer sales going on too! The stalls on the Piazza Erbe were closed Sun, but going strong on Mon.
Posted by
Myrtle Beach, USA
12315 posts
For people who have never been to Italy, one big piece of advice, "Don't skip lunch."
The earliest you are likely to see a restaurant open is 7:30pm, and 9pm isn't unheard of at all.
If you are used to early dinners, it might be best to have a big lunch and plan a picnic for your dinner.
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA
7737 posts
In the larger cities you can always find some restaurants open at "American" hours for dinner. That allows them to make money off the tourists before they make money off the Italians who often don't eat until 9 pm or later.
Other restaurants cater to locals only. We went to one non-tourist restaurant in Rome at 9 pm (when they had just opened) and we were alone for the first hour, then the local started trickling in.
Posted by
OP
Aspen, Co.
64 posts
It's nice to know people are taking the time to read my 2 cents. Sometimes you feel you've learned so many things on a tirp that others also might not know that you just have to share. Thanks for reading. I will say, that even the manager of our hotel was a bit surprised by the 9 pm. opening times. Over the weekend we went to my niece's wedding in the country just south of Verona and we were happy to eat between 9-10:30 pm. My 8 yr. old wasn't exactly pleased with it. It wasn't that he was starving, just exhausted. In both Venice and Verona we always ended up eating around 7:30-8pm, and there was always a pretty good mix of both tourists and locals in the restaurants. Of course, it could have been that even those speaking Italian were tourists too! The only night we definitely ate with the tourist crowd at 7 was our 1st, because we were pretty wiped out after flying straight in from Denver. We also made the mistake of eating at the first place which seemed not too overpriced, conveniently right across from our hotel. It was pretty bad. As my husband noted truthfully, "we have better Italian food in Aspen." DO NOT EAT AT TRATTORIA SAN PROVOLO. We had actually asked for the check and were about to leave when the waiter finally remembered my husband's second course. Oh well, after that I think we managed pretty well. Our dinners certainly cost us no more than eating out every night would have cost us here at home. Sometimes it's not so bad to live in a really expensive town. Everything else is pretty good in comparison!