Seattle/ Portland 9/19-9/21

Hello all! I suppose you'll be wanting an update of the first leg of my trip but warning first, I'm still jet lagged so forgive me the muddled thoughts.

Sunday was our first full day in Seattle and we started off the day by heading straight back to Japonessa to indulge in bacon wrapped scallops and other various goodies that we missed out on the night before...but mostly the bacon wrapped scallops. Mmmmmmmm

Following that we walked to Pioneer Square to take Bill Spiedel's underground tour which takes us into the first level of downtown Seattle's history. Down there we got to see the various refuse of generations past and the interesting methods of reconstruction while enjoying never ending puns, which I adored. The only complaint I had was that it was too short so do it if you have the opportunity.

Afterwards we took an adventure up to Smith tower which was much more afraid of heights friendly than the space needle and got some great shots of the city, of which i'll show you later. Then we meandered over to the first nordstrom's ever and looked around a little before ending our day, a little flatly, with johnny rockets in the adjacent mall. We were going to go down to the waterfront but an epic hunt for a restroom eventually led us back to our hotel before we could enjoy the water up close.

Sunday night we decided to go to Portland on Monday, despite the fact that the only public transportation available there was the Amtrak, which is more expensive then we would of liked...but rumors of voodoo donuts and delicious Bunk's sandwiches lured us there anyway and we had an awesome 6 hours exploring the tax free state of Oregon and more specifically the fare free square of Portland. My favorite would have had to been Powell's City of Books. Which is a giant maze of used and new books. Because of the overwhelming experience of trying to choose, I chose an old favorite from Freshman year that borrowed from my roomie and always wanted to own myself, Stupid and Contagious. Read half of it on the trip back to Seattle.

We had signed up for a savor Seattle tour for Monday morning and it was awesome! Basically it was the free samples guide of Pike's market...except we paid for the tour...so not exactly free. But I have favorite restaurants there now so I'm good to go!!!!

After the tour we went back and explored Pike's a little more and discovered the Gum Wall! I got gum on my pants so I was not entirely pleased with this discovery but it was pretty cool to look at and we each contributed to the expanding wall o gum. Can't wait to show you guys pictures! I'm flying back October 2nd so except them on the 3rd.

Off I go....again

Hello all....

As you may have noticed, I am not technically savvy on my new, amazing, wonderful, ipad yet, and instead of changing the whole name and domain again I think I'm just going to change the title. And instead of changing the title the way I want to i'm just going to change it the best way I can, which probably reflects my actual style better.

Also, you may have noticed that I have returned from Italy and am now back in my own U.S.of A. But to make things interesting I've decided to explore my own country a bit. I left L.A. on a jet plane yesterday morning and arrived in San Francisco to await my friend, the original pancakestacker herself so we could explore Seattle, Washington D.C., New York, and Boston before heading home so I could face up to real life.

After a series of bad experiences at sfo in the 3 hours I was there I got kind of tired out pretty quickly, not gonna lie. First there was a semi power outage as soon as I got off the plane so my hungry self couldn't get into any of the delicious fast food airport restaurants so I "decided" to make my way over to my connecting flight's gate. It took me an hour...AN HOUR to get from the gate I landed at to the gate I needed to be at and I had to go through security again. So I was starving, and because Virgin America is in the international terminal for now, I had to content myself with a salad from one of those pseudo fancy airport restaurants. If I have to eat crappy fast food I want GOOD crappy fast food. Then I got to sit and listen to the loudspeakers. From the unintelligible stewardess from Korean Air to the way too laid back stewards and stewardesses from Virgin America, I wasn't exactly inspired to fly.

But we got through it and landed in rainy Seattle around 5 pm. The airport here was very easy to get around in and pretty too, and our hotel was close by so we were able to get settled and work on hunting up a place to eat relatively quickly.

We chose a place called Japonessa sushi bar and we liked it so much we're going back one day to try out the bacon wrapped delicacies for lunch.

That's it for now... Ta ta


Oh and a warning. I won't be able to put pictures up till after I get back but I'm going to try and not let that stop me from posting at all.

Amalfi 09/04/10

We travelled from Perugia to our apartment on the Amalfi Coast on Saturday and we stopped at Pompeii for a few hours on the way. After eating lunch by the car and having our espresso's at the cafe, we went up to the Marina gate, bought our tickets, and decided to hire a private guide for two hours which was a very good decision and you should do it if you can. Even though I spent 10 weeks studying the city I still learned a lot and was happy. If you do hire a guide though go to the desk as individual guides are not supposed to approach you directly.

We explored the area around the Forum and a few of the houses, (my particular favorite was the House of the Faun, named after the statue below, because I used it in my thesis paper for that class. It has every class of mosaic floor that you can think of and is very feng shui (as in the wall colors match the colors in the random stones in the mosaic floors for that room)

We noticed a lot of dogs on the premises, and since it was lunch time they were all lying down sleeping somewhere. They have a program on the site that allows for strays and abandoned dogs to have a safe haven on the site and they are cared for and given a vet if they need it until they can be adopted. It's like an open pound I guess. I'll tell you how to donate money and link the site as soon as I know it)

After Pompeii we drove through Naples, with the car doors locked and windows rolled up, and up to Positano on a winding, cliff side, narrow but well paved road. We were staying at a little town between Positano and Amalfi where we had to walk 64 steps down to our place (meaning 64 steps up to our car when we wanted to leave) which was worth it because of the view. That night we ate at a restaurant on the other side of the cliff that our hosts have frequented a lot so the staff recognized us which was nice. We ate outside in between two obnoxious looking men who insisted on keeping their cigar lit throughout dinner until gramma finally leaned over and suggested we should shove it up his you know what. we laughed and discussed the well tried gossip about the general rudeness of some people when all of the sudden gramma leaps up and yells "well for God's sake!" and the table thought she had finally cracked and was about to attack the man for real. Luckily for us, she had recognized people from her home town and was running to greet them instead. Given the extreme remoteness of this location, basically it was a tiny nook in the coast, this meeting was weirdly random.

Sunday, we slept in and got ready for a concert we were going to that night in Ravello (which is located above Amalfi) we arrived a few hours early so we could sit at a cafe and eat gelato while watching a wedding party in the nearby church. Afterwards we visited the Villa Cimbrone which I'm sure you'll all recognize this view from, even if you don't quite know where you've seen it before.

We then attended a concert in Villa Rufolo put on by tenor Marcello Nardis and pianist Norman Shetler performing songs from Shubert, Shumann, and Wolf and lasted about 2 hours.

The concert was supposed to be performed outside with the sea behind the performers but since it would ruin the dynamics of the music they switched it to a small intimate room inside which was nice. The music was themed around madness so it was very passionate and well played.

The next day, Monday, we went to explore Naples after taking off all of our jewelry, ditching the purses, and bringing the bare minimum of stuff. We took a ferry their but since it was a commuter ferry we were ushered inside and couldn't enjoy the view but once we got there we went to visit the church, a couple of museums, one of which was only a church with some beautiful statuary by Sanmartino. The church was called Cappella Sansevero if you ever have a chance to go. We then took a trolly that from the bottom of the hill to the top to visit another museum which also housed a complete church noted for its artwork and had a display of the various nativity scenes that are a symbol of Naples. The scenes are very intricate and focus more on the town life with a small place reserved for the actual nativity scene.

this Museum overlooked part Naples which is a very large and sprawling city, despite the massive still active Volcano next to it.

Tuesday we went to Amalfi to do some last minute shopping and eat and travelled to Positano by ferry to get a good view of the coast. (that's how I got the picture of the restaurant we ate at on Sunday). And ate at home and packed for the long plane ride back on Wednesday.

the plane ride was as miserable for me as the trip over here was but I got to see a stupid romantic comedy, Letters to Juliet, a better than expected period piece, the Young Victoria, and remade The Karate Kid which was adorable. I also introduced Gramma to Modern Family and she almost stopped watching before the best scene in the pilot. She said it was worth it for that scene but I don't think she was sold on it yet. I'll just have to make her watch the rest of the season ;).

Once we got home we had a little adventure in San Francisco before finally getting home to sleep.

Perugia 09/01-09/04

We drove to Perugia Wednesday where we were going to stay with a friend who moved to Italy about 20 years ago. We drove through the extensive and packed city out into the farm area around it to stay with them until we all left for Amalfi on Saturday. Thursday we made a day of it and went back in to the city to get a nice long tour of the place. We saw a lot of things by Perugino (an artist nick-named after the city he painted the most in) and his school of apprentices but we didn't get to take any pictures of those things. We also went into the church and saw stained glass windows that are designed to look more like paintings with light shining through than your typical stained glass windows. Afterwards we went into an old, deep, etruscan built well which I would not recommend you do if you are at all claustrophobic. You could just feel the ancientness of the place and the walls were still dripping down moisture and it was literally thousands of years old. Took pictures here but it was so dark none of them came out. So aside from various streets I didn't get many pictures of Perugia except for this AWESOME gelato place that made awesome designs out of their ice cream and was still relatively cheap. I got a pinnochio and here's what showed up. They also have a design that looks like spaghetti but none of us got that one :(

On the way back we stopped by at the church our friend got married at. I think this was the tower to it.

On Friday we headed to Assisi which is obviously very religious oriented.

Aside from seeing various monks and nuns wandering around (even stores that sold habits and elaborate priest garments) there were many many tourist shops that we wandered through. Including ones that played up the religous theme for those of us less reverent of such things. So we get hand painted ceramics like this.

After Assisi we went to a restaurant near by and rested up for our trip to Naples the next day.

Oh and I got about 20 bug bites in Perugia so that make sure you bring your bug spray if you go. They'll ignore it but at least you'll feel like you did everything you could

OHHHHH and I blacked this out but there are also a lot of crickets here so don't leave your windows open or else you'll get to do what gramma and I did where we had to chase three out and then in the process of getting them safely out of our room we let in a HUMONGOUS bee that wouldn't leave. That one got smashed. Sorry he wouldn't leave and its not like we could ignore him make a helicopter's level of buzzing around our heads.

adafk;jga shiver shiver. I hate bugs, especially ones that fly.

Deiva Marina - Apartment 2 08/28-08/31

So we moved to our new digs in Deiva Marina Saturday Morning and spent the day getting ready for 2 more friends to arrive. We'd spend the rest of our trip with them so gramma and I waved goodbye to our nice solitary week of rest and prepared again for the equally fun adventures that come with a bigger group.

This place was a little out of the way for the city...before we were like 5 blocks from the beach and now it was about a 10 minutes drive and it was basically a little apartment alongside a farm. We got out the car to watch a shepherd herd a mama sheep and her little white lamb into the barn that was right next to our patio.

After our friends arrived we all took a little nap (I mean after a really stressful day of doing nothing I really needed to just sleep it off ;) ) and then prepared a dinner of the stuff we learned over the last week. Figs and melons wrapped in Prosecetta for an appetizer, and then pesto and trofie, and a chicken dish ( i think we wrapped proscetta on this as well). It was around 9 or 10 when we were done with dinner and we were sitting in our patio outside that is lined with a hedge on one side. I hear a rustling from the hedge and since I have know idea how big the hedge is nor how big an animal has to be to make that amount of noise I started to have visions of wolves leaping out and attacking. City girl that I am I have no perspective for these kinds of situations. So after ridiculing me for awhile I finally see a small animal come from the bushes. Its dark and I think its an overweight chipmunk kind of thing but I'm told its a toad an then of course this weird shape I saw makes sense. He just hopped out and jung out in the corner of the patio for the rest of our meal. and amidst jokes of Prince Charming coming out for his kiss and some more ridicule for my panic we went back inside for bed.

Another plus about this place is that is located between 2 or 3 other churches that chime their bells in some way at every half hour so we got to experience all that church bells have to offer at all times of the night. I actually like their little jingles at the major hours and surprisingly they don't really wake you up if you are already sleeping.

On Sunday , we went to the beach in Deiva Marina while our friend slept off her jet lag. Again we rented out an umbrella and chairs already staked out on the private beach and enjoyed the day doing nothing. The water on sunday was a little rougher than the last time we went which makes keeping afloat in the ocean worth the trying to get in and out of it. I wish I had brought my boogie board from Hawaii. They also never asked us for money which we thought was weird but hey...that's their perrogative, right?

On Monday all four of us took the train to Cinque Terra. We went all the way to the end to Riomaggiore and ate a nice little fish place up there that had a great view of the pier there.

After lunch we waited for a ferry to take us to Vernazza and Monterossa and while we were waiting we met a couple from Canada who made our five weeks in Italy seem like tiny little thing compared to their epic tour of Europe and we all watched the parade of people and animals walk by.

When we got to Vernazza we immediately got a gelatto and I discovered the blue flavor called Puffo designed to advertise the upcoming Smurf movie. mmmmmmm

In Monterossa we satisfied our shopping urges considerably and spend quite a bit of time going in and out of the various tourist trap like stores. After catching the train back we headed back to the apartment and slept off the long day.

Tuesday was another beach day to let people rest from the stairs and hills of Monday and packing for Wednesday

Deiva Marina- Apartment 1 - 08/22-08/27

Ok so our time in Deiva Marina was mostly spent relaxing, laying on the beach, and going on adventures related to meals. We were in this cute little apartment about a mile from the beach from Sunday to Saturday morning. Sunday we went to the beach for the whole day and I got half way through Angela's Ashes (someone had left that behind and obviously I had read my beach book on the rainy stays in the hotel). We rented chairs and an umbrella and the ocean was delightfully cool after the very hot sun.

Monday I decided to explore and find out the hikes they are advertising and how far the beach goes and where all the stores are. I got some good photos. and the church was visible from almost everywhere which was good because its literally right around the corner. Also...there are cats everywhere so obviously I like this place.



Tuesday, Gramma and I decided to head to Cinque Terra. You can take the train and about 3 stops from us is Monterosso and 5 stops from us is Riomaggiore (the first and last towns of Cinque Terra). We decided to go to Riomaggiore and work our way back and we decided to leave at 11:45...Of course the train doesn't get to the station until 12:30 and then it stops and forces everyone off in the middle town Corneglia which is one of the higher towns. In order to get to ANYTHING you need to walk 300 something steps up, take the bus, or follow the road the bus takes up. The crowd for the bus was too intimidating and we weren't even sure that was an option so we decided to walk up the bus route which is windy and what not. It would NOT have been the bad if we knew where we were going. We had a bad experience 5 years ago when we accidently decided to walk from Monterosso to Vernazza which is about a 3 hour hike but we didn't know that when we started. So any hike like thing where we can't see the end makes everything about 5 times worse that it is. But we got there and found a restaurant immediately so gramma's short term memory kicked in and everything was A OK.



Once we got recharged we explored the town a little and everything was really pretty and all the little shops were very tempting. But since I was coming back then I held out. I ended up walking the steps down to the station while gramma took the bus and we headed back to Deiva Marina to eat some more.

Wednesday morning I went back to the beach (the free beach this time) and got a place right in front. Sadly the morning mist never really cleared up so I went back to the apt. to eat and take a nice delightful nap.

Thursday we went back to Cinque Terra and made it to Riomaggiore which is a very steep and narrow city but we managed. Found another pizza place so I was happy and we explored the town. Riomaggiore is famous for their Via Del Amore but they CHARGE you to walk it so we said screw that and went up to Monterosso where we couldn't figure out how to get into the town proper but we sat at a gelato place by the beach. And then we went back to Deiva Marina



Friday we spent at the apartment. packing up and getting ready for moving up to the next apartment in the area where we would be joined by a friend of Gramma's and our American-born Italian friend who helped us arrange everything.

I know you want details about the food we made but I need to regroup and arrange pictures so maybe when I get back (to be real, I care more about eating foods then sharing details about preparation so we'll see)

Mantua-Deiva Marina 08/21/2010

Had breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast in a very nice private little yard in the back of her place. After spending so many days surrounded by Italian it was weird to have English spoken by everyone at the table. We then travelled to Deiva Marina, which is about a four-hour drive from Verona. We stopped in Mantua for an hour and a half (Mantova in Italian) and looked at the buildings. It was an entirely spontaneous visit so we didn’t know which buildings to go in or why the name Mantua was so familiar until we left so we didn’t see any of the spectacular artwork inside the buildings. But the buildings were constructed beautifully in themselves and there was a great view coming into the city. There was this one clock on a tower that not only told the time (in roman numerals that went all the way to XXIV on an outer ring) but an inner ring with two layers of the months around the outer end (which was used depended on the next inner ring which showed which sign we were in) and the pointer was a girlish figure with a unicorn that would open up to reveal which phase the moon was in.




Once we finally got into Deiva Marina we quickly moved into our apartment for the week. It’s so nice to have my own room (I mean tonight I’m sharing it but for the next 4 or 5 days its all mine.) And grocery shopping and cooking for ourselves and having a kitchen where I can just grab what I want without having everyone knowing about it will be just divine. The apartment is within walking distance to the beach and is very small and there are a lot of younger people here. I’ll go on a photo tour tomorrow and will keep you updated. No wifi here either but we have a tv here although I don’t think I’ll be watching much of it.

OH! And the church is right next door. I’m reminded because the bells go every half hour and a couple of times already today they’ve been joyfully ringing.

Verona 08/20/10

Got up early today to pack everything up and catch a train to Verona (actually the stop before because that’s where our bed and breakfast was). After a stressful 3- hour trip we finally got to the station, got all our luggage off and still had time to have an espresso before our friend picked us up from the station. She’s an American friend who moved to Italy about 20 years ago and has been a great help with planning the trip and we’re going to spend the last two weeks of our time here with her taking care of us.

We drove to a bed and breakfast about 20 miles from Verona and unpacked, claimed out beds, and decided to drive to a nearby sightseeing joint which was an old fortress town bordering a very very large lake between Trento and Verona, Lago de Guarda. We walked around, talked about the differences between Americans and Italians, ate, and tried not to buy those stupid touristy things. Today was the first time I was served a whole fish and I almost couldn’t it because it’s little head was looking at me. But I got over it and it was good although I think I’ll try to avoid that experience again.




Afterwards we drove back to the bed and breakfast and took a little nap before getting ready to see Turnadot in the Verona Arena, which is the only reason we made the trip to Verona. We left a few hours early so that we could explore the city but ominous thundering noises went on all during our nap (although it was dry where we were) as we got closer to the city it started to rain, and then its started to rain harder, and then we ended up stuck in the parking lot for two hours of anxiously glancing up at the sky looking for any lighting up of the rain and counting the seconds between the lighting and thunder, which was close. Finally at 8 we decided to get out of the car because it looked like there was a break in the storm and we wanted to make sure of what was going on with the opera which would start at 9. We were able to rush order a pizza from a pizzeria (which does NOT happen in Italy a lot let me tell you) and get into the Arena. It was still drizzling at 9 but the stage hands were mopping up the set and preparing to get ready so we were still hopeful. If they start the opera and play for 5 minutes they can cancel the show and not give you a refund so we were wondering if we were sitting in the cold and wet to get played. But they got everything ready and started at 9:40 and everything went beautifully from there.

Last time we came in 2005 we saw Aida and were caught in a very violent downpour about 30 minutes before the show that completely soaked us but stopped right before so we sat through the night shivering and wet so I guess this time was a much better deal. The Verona theater has a tradition of having the audience light candles while they turn off all the lights at the beginning of the show because that’s how they arena was lit hundreds of years ago. They didn’t do it this year which made me sad but I still have the memory from before.

Roncone Days 6, 7, and 8

08/17/2010-
Had lunch with one of gramma’s cousins today. She made homemade gnocchi in a buttery cream sauce and chicken and sausage and everything was delicious but much too much. I was going to go the lake and read afterwards but it started to rain again and forced me back inside (when we finally got home around 4). Then we hosted dinner at the hotel again for some more cousins and went to bed.

08/18/2010 –

We went to an agritur (a restaurant or hotel that grows or raises all their own food) and had polenta but their portions were much too large and honestly not very good. (too salty we think) We did, however, learn about a problem the bees in Italy have been having though so it was pretty educational I guess. Got home late, stuffed, so we went to have a light (ha) dinner at the hotel, which was still too much.

08/19/2010 –

Kidnapped by family again. Went to a small town near Tione and had coffee and bought touristy things before going back to Tione and eating proper homemade polenta with family. Got back around 2, packed a little, and went into town to say goodbyes to various cousins. Met some awesome cuddly dogs and came back and finished packing as we have an early start tomorrow.

Also I decided to explore the U.S. with a friend when I go back in September. Our plans were thwarted at first when the Jet Blue “all you can fly” deal sold out literally minutes before we were able to get in touch with each other, but it looks like we’re going to try and do something like that anyway. I’m excited but worried that the permanent move to Seattle might have to be postponed (although it’s not like there’s anything waiting for me there anyway). Maybe a mysterious job will just fall into my lap. Hmmmm…

Roncone -Days 4 and 5 08/15, 08/16

Sunday was a holiday in Italy (celebrating the Ascension of Mary I think) and Roncone celebrated by a special mass followed by a procession in which they take out all the church regalia and lead the attendees around the town while going through “Hail Marys” (again I think this is what was going on as they did this all in Italian). There was another lottery in the square and we won a skateboard, a child’s play pen, and a whole array of useless gadgets (I think Gramma got a pack of straws). We benevolently passed on these goodies to kids in the family because we’re good cousins. We then ate at Diana’s pizza place again and I moved on from just artichoke to artichoke, mushrooms, and ham. Aww aren’t I growing up.

The day started off pretty and that lasted until about lunch. After a nap at the hotel we walked about a block of the mile to the piazza before we realized the rain was just getting worse and we trudged back to the hotel. That night we had cancelled dinner plans at the hotel because they were making special town-made polenta (a heated ground corn meal with various spices and specks of meat thrown in). With the rain though we were out of luck and ended up huddled in a friends living room with about 6 other friends and family, showing old family pictures and making fun of each other. If I understood just a bit more Italian I might have come away with a blind date with her “best” grandson. As it was, when the rain let up we all went out to hear the town band play (in which he played) and see the status of polenta- making (which was postponed until Monday.) After being devoted fans for about a half hour we all split up with our goodies and went home. Gramma and I contented ourselves on a dinner of fries, which, after all the food we’ve had to eat in the past week, was pretty awesome.





Monday all we did was hang out with family in Tione. Got to meet two large (came up to my hip large) German Shepherds; and then we all watched Flipper in Italian. It’s been raining off and on every day since we got here which makes sitting by the lake and reading while working on my tan kind of impossible. Instead there’s a lot of eating, sleeping, and gossiping with the Italian fambam. Which is just as fun as I’m learning a lot about my family.

Roncone -Day 3 08/14/2010

Walked to the lake this morning and read for about an hour and took pictures. It rained all of yesterday and was semi-nice this morning but another downpour moved in.



Luckily for me, I had enough sense to walk back beforehand where I met Gramma outside and we decided to eat lunch at the hotel instead of wander the streets looking for cousins to feed us. Here’s another menu of what they fed us. There were two different versions of the second course and gramma got one and I got the other so we didn’t eat ALL of this.






The food as always was good and cheesey and delightfully easy to eat and afterwards we got some pretty spectacular thunderstorms to wake us up at night.

Roncone -Day 2 08/13/2010

Aside from sleeping in till 10:30 because it was raining and we accidently left the shutters closed which made the room pitch black, we had a pretty productive day here. (Although, in all fairness, I probably would have slept until noon if I had the chance so I suppose I shouldn’t be making excuses about shutters).

We walked around the town and even though I ‘know’ that everywhere closes from 12-3 in Italy so people can have lunch, I was still caught by surprise when everywhere was closed. Fortunately, because it’s a big tourist month here the bars were still open and we went to Diana’s Bar/Pizzeria in the center of the town and had my first real ristorante-made Italian pizza since we got here. Last time I was here in 2004 all I ate was Margherita pizza (cheese pizza) but this time I branched out a little and got Carcoffi pizza (artichoke and cheese pizza). Here’s a pic of what you get and yes I ate all of it in one go. Oops.

After lunch we were supposed to just go back to the hotel but Gramma decided to visit a cousin (forgetting that they would be in the middle of lunch) and the host quickly deduced that if she didn’t like the answer Gramma gave she would look at me and nod and I would automatically say “Si.” We almost had to eat another 5- course lunch. We escaped (literally) and took a nap back at the hotel and walked around again at 4 when everything was open. We visited the cousin again at a more appropriate time and spent about a half hour drinking coffee, eating desert, and arranging for an actual lunch this time (despite the fact that we spent 10 minutes trying to say no. I kept my mouth shut this time but I probably would have saved time by just saying yes because resistance was futile. I’m now looking forward to gnocchi for lunch on Tuesday. The lunch instead of dinner was probably the only concession we got.)

After walking around a little more in the rain we got back to the hotel and waited for dinner. Now that I’m not eating at a person’s home I feel ok taking pictures of the meals so you’ll get to see what we ate. The menu was in Italian and I’m tired so you can translate it yourself ;). The food is in the order that we got it and I ate everything except a side of mushrooms. The first item, the apertif, was a green fizzy drink that I didn’t think to take a picture of. But it was bright green and fizzy and served in a champagne glass.

Roncone 08/12/10

Last time I wrote it was 08/11/10 in Savignone….we didn’t do much the rest of that night except visit the local church which was also having a festival. Gramma and I won three things at the lottery the church was holding after mass (one of them was a toddler’s pink scunchie so I don’t know if we should count that…but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?). It looked like everyone in the town came out for the event and to gossip after mass, which I found refreshing after my lonesome city-life where you were lucky if you knew your neighbor.

(as a side note…The only reason I knew my neighbors were because of the earthquake that shut our power off for three days when I was 6.)

Anyway, Savignone is a bit bigger than the other places we’ve been to so far. One family, our host derisively told us, even designed their house to look like a medieval castle but she wanted to make it very clear it wasn’t actually a medieval castle.

After the lottery, we got home, ate, slept and got up at 4:30 AM so we could catch the 5:55 bus from Genoa to Tione. Of course the bus was late so I had an extra 15 minutes to be Mama Alex and worry but it all worked out in the end. If you call a 6-hour bus ride when it should have been 4 ‘working-out’. The family who picked us up lived just a block away and saved lunch for us so it wasn’t that bad. The food, as always, was delicious and they had tiramasu gelato to follow so I’m basically in heaven here.

After assuring each other that everyone in out respective families was well and happy and then staring off into the distance (look at the view of their backyard and you’ll see why that wasn’t as awkward as it needed to be)

we started talking a little about politics and all the terrible stories in the world which led to a 5 hour long discussion of all the bad things that have happened to our ‘tanti bene familias’ and a deliciously good gossip fest ensued. I understood enough to get the gist of everything but not enough to join in a lot.

Afterwards we had dinner, which was minestrone (the Italian word for all soups) followed by potatoes, proscetta, cheese, and desert.

Also, I ATE ALL THE MINESTRONE EVERYONE! This was a big deal for me as it had onions, celery, carrots, parsley, zucchini, and probably some other vegetables I didn’t dare ask about. I liked it. I mean I actually could have bragged about my improved eating habits a few meals earlier when I ate another version of minestrone but since all I did today was sit on a bus and eat I felt I’d save it for now.

2 espressos later we went to our hotel in Roncone, which is about two small towns away from Tione. It’s very pretty and attracts the dedicated tourists but it’s also generally quiet and the tourists aren’t the annoying, Hawaii shirt, fanny-pack kind so I expect we’ll have fun.