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.

Savignone...pt. 2

Hello again...

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.

Voltaggio and Libarna

Ciao again,

I'm kind of on posting spree now because I have access to wifi and a bit of free time on my hands so don't get used to frequent posts. After Caserza we moved a couple of miles on to Savignone to stay with some other cousins. If you remember to the family tree in the Caserza post (i.e. go back to that post if you don't remember) Peter 1 had two children who stayed near Genoa: Giuseppe and Maria. Maria had at least two daughters, Angela and Rosietta, who now live in Savignone and we are staying at Angela's daughter Sandra's house in the province. Aside from a couple of more family meals we actually got stuff done the last day. Sandra and her sister Valeria took us to Voltaggio, a nearby town, It's a typical ancient but still inhabited ancient town (at least to me) with 500 year old buildings right next modern recreation facilities. I think the reason we were there was to go to a castle where we could see all of Genoa and the sea (and because it's really old and why wouldn't you want to go to a castle) but we didn't end up doing it. We went to a cafe, stood in front of the church, walked around, got lost, said hello to the dogs in the big gardens, dodged the cars that drove much too fast, and then walked back to the car. The town has concerts and shows and, not movie theaters per se, but they show movies and lo and behold next weekend its Young Frankenstein. I saw the musical version of it two days before left.








After Voltaggio we drove around with apparently no destination in my mind and ended up at the archeological site of Libarna which was an ancient Etruscan city of around the 3rd to 4th century b.c., was discovered again before most of California was settled and is a tourist attraction now. The site is a Theater, an amphitheater ( first picture) and two houses ( probably more houses but the archeologists divided it up that way and who is to argue with them). One of the mosaic floors in the dining room was preserved so I got super excited as I wrote a paper on that last year. Got to run..

Caserza

Day four of Italia trip (I think...believe it or not I'm still jet lagged)



So after a horrible flight (gramma thought it was very comfortable but she was able to sleep) in which I watched How to Train Your Dragon, The Last Song, and Alice and Wonderland, tried to eat the food they gave us, and still had time to think about how much room I didn't have, we landed in Munich. There we had to go through airport security AGAIN before we got on the plane to Genoa, despite the fact that the corridor we had to go through did not have any kind of access to stowed away forbidden items and was policed heavily. We then got on a twenty person plane with actual propellers (the kind that spin and make alot of noise and look not at all safe) to go over the Alps. Luckily, I was so exhausted from the first flight that I slept right through that one. We landed in genoa around 9 PM just as the sun was setting. Yes the sun sets at 9 here, which does not help at all with the jetlag. We were met right away by a cousin, Valentina, who let us stay at her apartment in Genoa before driving us to her Zia Mariucha's house in Olim the next morning.

Quick family tree and history for those interested. Peter Marciano, my great great grandfather had 5 children: Michele, Angelo, Gian Battista, Giuseppe, and Maria. The first three moved to America in their twenties and Angelo took his 5 year old son, Peter2 (my grandfather) and his wife with him. Giuseppe stayed in Caserza and had three children: Michele2, Peter3 (Tino), and Mariucha.

So our first real meal was at Maricuha's house in Olim which has about four houses and is reached by a one lane road that looked too small for a bike, let alone a car. There is no such thing as a one way street here (well there is but not this far up in the country) so you need to honk around every corner to alert anyone coming the other way. Of course I noticed some of the men who passed don't think they need to do this but I thought it was very rude of them not to.



There we were reintroduced to the typical Italian meal which begins with antepasti (which is salami, bruchessta, and other lunch meats, bread, and cheese). Then there is a pasta, this time stuffed ravioli, followed by a meat course, in this case sausage in pasta, followed by cheese, fruit, and then a sweet pastry, apple torte, served with coffee. The coffee is an esspresso which I already am addicted to. After about two hours, which was how long it took us to eat, we went to Mariucha's daughter Silvia's house in Caserza where, after dropping off our stuff, we took a quick tour of the locale miracles in the area.

The first was a fountain where in 1534 a young girl with the plague drank and was cured. No one believed her, including the local priest, until he caught the plague too, drank from the fountain, and was likewise cured. You can still drink the water there and people come and fill up bottles to take home with them. I took lots of pictures but then deleted all of them. At least it was only half a day lost.

We then went to visit a small village called Sanerega built in 1003 that had a little museum with it. It was a short visit but it's weird to be someplace so very old. Afterwards we went to her Uncle Tino's (Peter 3's nickname) house in the Caserza and had another 6 course meal. Not knowing any Italian I was pretty quiet the whole day. We slept well after that.

The next day we went to Michele2's house for yet another six course lunch. Michele2 is Valentina's father and they had 3 other sons. They had a couple of cats and a two month old kitten, which I found adorabl,and also a small stable of few cows and two dogs so obviously I was very happy there and could keep myself entertained.



We then went back to Caserza for a nap, woke up, and drove back to Olim to eat again. Instead of the typical six course meal we had six courses of various homemade pizza's cooked in their stone outdoor oven. Started off with typical cheese,then cheese with various olives on it, then cheese with whole tomatoes, then cheese with some fruits, and we ended it with a pizza dolce or a tart but made in the oven and nice and warm. All of the food has been molto buono and yes, I've cleaned my plate each time as picky alex isn't so picky when I have fresh homemade food in front of me. During these meals the cook, usually the mama but in the case of the pizza it was the mama who prepared the pizza and the oldest son who cooked it, goes back and forth from the kitchen and hardly gets to eat.

Yesterday Ceserza had an annual festival in which the church was opened up (they only have mass there twice a year) and everyone gathers at 4:30 PM to hear mass, and then go to the piazza for food, drinks, a bocce tournament, music, and a massive lottery in which they sold 1000 tickets and gave away about 50 various prizes. Of course gramma and I didn't win anything. They had been preparing for the festival all day except I noticed at around 1-3 PM everyone was in their own houses eating lunch.



Afterwards, gramma and I were very tired and just asked for something small so instead of a two hour dinner we just had a one hour dinner where the meat course was broth.
Everyone here is very hospitable and I'm picking up Italian pretty fast although I understand much more an I speak.


Ciao

Off I Go!

...and yes I was humming the Greg Laswell song when I wrote that. I mean I know that's not a good omen because of Grey's Anatomy but it's been stuck in my head and I just had to.

So you may have noticed a couple of changes to the layout and title. I'm going to have to water the blog down a little (I mean, lets be real, it wasn't that horrific to begin with) so that friends and the fambam could visit the site without judging me. If you are new and are wondering what the P and D stand for then you can go in through the archives to the first post. For everyone else..welcome back. Don't forget to change the new url in your favorites ;)

I'll try to update as often as possible to make you all jealous.

Hogwarts

Hello world,

So I haven't really posted since graduation and should probably fix that before I run off and start over somewhere else (with an awesome Italy trip in between). This summer has turned out nothing like I've expected. To begin with, right after graduation I ended up scoring a trip to Orlando, Florida to visit Universal Studio's and the new Harry Potter land in their Islands of Adventures theme park. I mean, I may have crashed my parents' 30th anniversary but hey, they asked (probably out of guilt) and you just can't say no to a free trip to Harry Potter land. or The Wizarding World of Harry Potter if you want to google it.

To begin with. that place is awesome, the only two problems were that walking outside in Florida in the summer is the equivalent of walking through a sauna, and the only lines in the park were to get into that specific land. There were even lines to get into the stores, people. The STORES. That bad. Not like it wasn't worth it though. You walk in and Hogwarts looms above you on the left. Inside the castle you have holograms, snow bubbles, talking portraits, and the Sorting Hat herself (himself?) giving you instructions for the ride located within the castle. They really went all out. The ride is appropriately scary and intriguing in its technology. Think Soaring over California at Disneyland but with about a billion more movable parts.



My bro and I exit the ride into a store that is always packed with people because the ride but we have to stay because the merchandise is more than awesome. Eventually we are pushed out to be confronted with a cart selling wands (but, I mean you can't buy your wands at the cart before you visit Ollivander's at least once, right?) so I moved on to a Hippogriff roller coaster (of the slowish non loop variety) which is still appropriately fun. Then you come to the cart selling Butterbeer.

Oh Butterbeer, how I miss you.



Butterbeer is heaven in a plastic cup, that's all I can say. I wish they sold that shit in bottles. Pumpkin Juice on the other hand they do sell in bottles but I could go without. After tasting the pure deliciousness you can walk down Hogsmeade which is fabulously and meticulously decked out. Stores line the street (unfortunately half are just mock fronts but really well designed mock fronts. And the town is decked out for winter. The fake snow mocks you the whole time. Among the various Hogwarts choir performances and Durmstrang and Beuxbaton students you have lines to get into Ollivander's, Honeydukes, and the Three Broomsticks. My parents got to eat at the Three Broomsticks but my little bro and I passed on the heavy English breakfast to ride on the dueling dragons ride. High speeds, multiple loops and another roller coaster flinging its riders' feet at you = high pitched screams and fun. Overall, except for the extreme overcrowding you should all make a trip to go. At least once in your life.



So...while we went out and did other things within Universal, it was pretty much the same things we would do at the Universal 20 minutes away from my house so I won't waste time explaining.

The plane ride home certainly provided the best kinds of douchebags though. Some beezey totally cut me off while we were trying to exit the plane, basically forcing me back into my seat with her over sized, horrifically designed purse after I was already half way into the aisle and had been standing there for a good 5 minutes. The guy she was flirting with watched it all and then cut me off too. How sweet of them.