So a couple of corrections first. I saw four movies on the plane, not three (I mention it because its been bugging me for a week now and since I think its important then you must too.) The one I forgot was Fantastic Mr. Fox and I know this because dinner conversation has become something like "how do you call this animal in America" and "do you like this actor" and we talked about foxes and George Clooney and then it clicked.
Also, when I wrote about the family history I said that Angelo brought my grandfather with him on the ship to America and that was wrong. He came in 1906 and grandpa was born in 1931 so oops...my bad.
OK now on to yesterday's activities. Because my travelling partner is my wonderful but forgetful gramma, I usually only find out about the next days activities by listening very carefully to our hosts talking about what we are going to do and hoping I translate right. If I'm tired of focussing so hard on conversation then I just end up following everyone into the car and wait until we get there, which is what happened yesterday. So after we drove up and up and up I deduced that we were going somewhere where we could see the whole city and it was probably going to be a church or a castle. It ended up being the Church of the Gaurdian Mary (roughly translated, in Italian it's Santuario Basilica N.S. della Guardia). In the post before I think I mentioned the little niches in the streets of the towns that had images of Mary, Jesus and a suppliant, and that gramma had to stop and take pictures of each one. Well this is the church where that image stems from and there are a few life sized statues of the supplicant around the alters. Inside the church it's like all the other fabulously constructed churches but it has add-ons on both sides for special works of art.
The first is a nativity village scene made entirely out of nut shells and you press a button and it moves and lights up in the houses. It was pretty awesome and I took a lot of pictures of it.
The second was a couple of rooms devoted to momento's and letters sent by the family and friends of people who died. At first I thought they were all thanking the guardian for a recovery of some sort but after I saw a framed momento of a child's t-shirt with dried blood stains on it I clued in and looked up 'grazie per riceverato' which means 'thank you for recieving' so and so. It was very morbid and they had stuff going back a few centuries up on the walls all focused on how these people died. Pictures and paintings of ship wrecks, falls from wagons, automobile accidents, people surrounding a bedside etc. There were also artifacts like motorcycle helmets, gloves, clothes, cigarette cartons, alcohol bottles and the like. I definitely didn't like that room and it took me awhile to get out of the funk that put me in.
We got back, ate some more, and then went to bed. It's five already today and all we've done is get up and eat. We're going to tour a church later as it's basically midday for us here and then early tomorrow morning (like 4ish) we will leave to catch a bus from Genova to Tione.
Ciao ciao.
Fox and George Clooney. I definatley get the conection. Amazing descriptors. I could tell the nativity scene was made of walnuts but could not get the gist of why.
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