Orvieto: Ceramics Capital of the World

4.4

How embarassing – apparently the website said “be sure to bring cash as B&Bs can’t take Visa” and I missed it. So now I have to send them money when I get home. They were so nice to us that this feels truly terrible. Tiziana even gave us a little striped dress for Rose, and a winter coat – “My mother got them for our daughter and she only wore them once. They’re really brand new.” Will have to get down to the post instantly Monday to send a money order.

Train to Orvieto was uneventful. We could have taken the funicular up the hill to the city and to the hotel, but I wasn’t sure where the hotel was exactly and decided to cab it. It’s about 1 kilometer from the station to the hotel via funicular. Almost 6 via cab. This is what you get for building your city on the Italian version of a mesa. The drop is very steep around 3 sides, but not as bad on the 4^th, so the long and windy road does eventually arrive.

Once settled in the hotel, we decided to go out and explore a little. We turned left on the main road and wandered all the way down to the funicular. When we passed a ceramics shop, of course we had to stop (I’m on the hunt for matching pieces for my little coffee creamer that i love so). The shop had a studio in it as well. An elderly man had just started working on a little vase, drawing in the thin black lines of the traditional leaf pattern. He had the vase on a wheel and just turned it very slowly to add more and more layers of detail to the leaves. Rose was fascinated and stood for almost 20 minutes absolutely silent watching. When he finished all the black, he put everything aside and said he was tired, so we continued on down to the funicular. Only one euro to ride it down and back up – after 12E for the cab, ouch. Nice view, but as the cliff is very steep, not a very long one!

The funicular is right next to a public park. It’s kinda cool to think that the place where Aurora and her new friend (because Aurora ALWAYS has a new friend if there’s another little girl in the place!) were running and playing is in the keep of a 13^th century castle. I walked around and read some of the signs about it. Orvieto was a papal stronghold for a long time –Pope Boniface VIII got himself in trouble for putting a statue of himself in place of the St Joseph that used to be over the gate to the city. Someone accused him of idolatry and he ended up not only having to remove the statue but not come back to Orvieto. Some amazing views of the Umbrian countryside from up there. The little girl (whose name I did not catch) wanted to come back and play again tomorrow, and I was all set to make it a date, but her grandmother reminded her she had a ballet lesson. She and Ro were both very disappointed.

As we walked back up, Ro looked in the window of the Fusari studio and saw a woman sitting at the wheel now. She immediately wanted to to watch again, which was fine with me. Signora Fusari was considerably chattier than her husband. She told us all about the shop, the kiln, how the earthquake last year had caused their old studio to be condemned and now they only had this tiny space, instead of a big studio where the “tornitori” (potters) worked and fired things in the HUGE kiln (this one was only about 3x the size of a normal big kitchen oven). She and her husband and their daughter do all the painting; she said most of the shops in the main ceramics area of town buy from artists in the nearby countryside, but few do their own work in-house. She had just finished the black on a different vase, and asked Ro what color she should paint it. (Most of their work is black and white with one color, pink, yellow, teal or cobalt blue, added.) I’m sure you’ll all be astounded to hear she picked pink. So we got to watch the vase go from mostly white to completely painted and ready to fire. They only run the oven once every week or so, since it takes them that long to fill it up. Sgra Fusari fell two months ago and broke her left wrist, so she still has a hard time balancing long enough to do a lot of painting. She was sad that her daughter isn’t crazy about doing the ceramics and her grandchildren aren’t at all interested. The craft will die soon, she told us. Aurora said she would come back someday and paint for her, which cheered her up a little.

As we were leaving, she led us over to one of the tables in the store. It had coffee sets and little ceramic bells all over it. She pointed to the bells. “You should pick one you like,” she told Rose. We found one that was the same pattern as the vase she had been working on, and pink as well! Perfect. I tried to pay for it – it was only 5E after all – but she refused. “I enjoyed having her here. It is a gift.”  I noticed some votive candle holders on a rack in the studio that were lovely – will go back tomorrow and buy a few. As I think about it, I kinda like the idea of votive holders better than candle holders – the light is every bit as pretty and not in the way! You can see some of their stuff here: https://plus.google.com/112784262776878746452/about?hl=en

For dinner we just went walking until we found something. The restaurant we chose was off the main street and empty at 8 pm, but certainly not deservedly so – we both ordered rare steak with balsamic crema sauce and garlic spinach, and I had a glass of the famous Orvieto white wine, and they were all delightful.

The room is a thousand degrees, as usual. What IS it with Italians, that they insist on keeping their hotel rooms at temperatures Bedouins couldn’t tolerate? Fortunately, the windows opened, so we left the windows open all the time. (Before you assault my lack of environmental concern, we tried turning off the heat in the room, and we asked the guy at the front desk to turn it off too. “Turning off” appears to mean, in hotel room heat terms, “reduce from surface of sun temp to merely Saharan.”)

5.4

When we first started out this morning it was raining, of course, but initially this was not too terrible, as we were going to look at the Duomo and then take the Orvieto Underground tour.

When I first saw the Cathedral years ago with its black-green and white stripes I thought it was ugly, but over time it’s really grown on me, and now I can’t imagine its looking any other way.  The mosaic work on the outside – lapis and gold and something red – is almost invisible until you get right up to it, it’s so fine. Even the pavement around the front, in pink and green marble, is impressive.

The inside is almost solid 15^th century frescoes, just amazing. For my money, it beats Sistine Chapel hands down: artwork just as impressive, cheaper to get in, no lines. The San Brizio Madonna chapel was mostly done by Fra Angelico, but finished by Coreggio. Around the bottom of the main religious frescoes there is a series of portraits of… someone (philosophers? Pagan writers? Identifications are not clear) in frames. But instead of being just static portraits, the subjects are looking at each other or at the frescoes above, totally breaking the fourth wall. One is even leaning out the “window” backwards to get a better look at the upper frescoes.

The tunnel tour was a bit of a disappointment because it was so short. Orvieto is built on a mesa of mostly tufa, a relatively soft volcanic rock (you can totally scrape it off with a bit of rock). The Etruscans who originally settled here built wells that go 200 meters down into the mesa to get water, and later built tunnels that included storage, fortifications, and temples. The city was abandoned by the Etruscans, but resettled by the Romans, and its defensibility made it a favorite haunt of Popes throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance (some Popes went so far as to live here rather than Rome, and there was more than once talk of moving Pope Central out of Rome to Orvieto). Meanwhile, there were all these caves the Etruscans had built, and the medieval residents continued to expand them. Today there are over 1200 separate tunnels; most of them are under private houses and are still used for storage, though rarely for wells, olive oil mills, and pigeon-raising as they were by the Etruscans and medievals. The tunnels we saw were an olive mill, a cement mine, a well, a pigeon columbarium, and the waiting room of the underground hospital dug during WWII (the tunnel to the hospital itself had partially collapsed, so we only got to look down in, not actually go to the hospital).

After the tunnel we had lunch, then went on a ceramics tour of Orvieto. The main ceramics district is just off the Piazza Cahen, where the Duomo is. I found the shop where I had bought my creamer 10 years ago, but they didn’t have much to match it other than more coffee service. So I was sad about that. However, I did see a peacock plate, a very traditional Renaissance design and difficult to execute, on a wall that I really wanted. I pulled it down and noticed that it had a chip on the back of it. After looking and looking for one that didn’t have a chip (there were lots of peacock design plates that size, but none in the same colors), I was about to give up. The store owner saw that I was hunting for something and asked me about it. When I told him I wasn’t going to buy a chipped plate, he offered it to me for 50% off. Ok, at 50% I can tolerate a chip that’s not visible when the plate is displayed!

Our last touristy stop of the day was the Museo Faina, a private collection of local Etruscan goodies collected by the Faina family in the late 1800s. The story of how it was collected is almost as interesting as the objects themselves! A lot of what’s here is a hodgepodge because its discovery predates both standard archeological collection practice and laws governing what you can keep of antiquities when you find them. So provenance and dating are both sketchy to completely unknown. A lot of what’s here was found within 15 miles of Orvieto, however.

We went back down to Fusari to get the votive holders, and they were all gone! When I asked, it turned out that the ones I had seen were never for sale anyway – Sgr Fusari had made them all for table decorations/prizes for their grandson Matteo’s first communion. However, Sgra Fusari said I should just call next week and remind her of the pattern and she’ll make me some more (but without Communione di Matteo 14-4-13 written on the bottom!) So I bought a little plate that’s very representative of their work, and will call later for the votives.

6.4

Naturally, since we were on the train all day (after first waiting for it for over an hour when it was delayed in Rome), this was the first uniformly gorgeous day all week. The station store had Magic Pen coloring books (the kind where you have just one pen and coloring with it changes the page to different colors), so I bought two for Rose to give her something to do while we waited and during the trip. They were a great success – will have to look for more for the next train ride. But otherwise an uneventful day. Glad to be home.

As close to Greece as frankly I'm ever likely to get

1.4

As usual, slept not at all last night for fear of oversleeping. If we were to miss the 9:15 train from Fidenza we wouldn’t be able to catch our Frecciarossa south. And we love our Frecciarossa south – direct from Bologna to Salerno. However, not only got out in plenty of time, but in time to forget something in the car and be able to go back from the station to get it (about a 5 minute walk each way).

Our B&B was a longish walk from the station, but it’s CONSIDERABLY warmer here and so it wasn’t terrible. And it hadn’t started raining yet. Beautiful little hotel. Our room is by far the nicest we’ve stayed in all this year. No view except of the interior courtyard, but a lovely room in grey and cream and beige, very soothing. I knew, but hadn’t really processed, that Salerno is a port town; we’re half a block from the sea. We walked down to have a look, but it started to rain again so we cut our walk short. Off now to explore for dinner.

2.4

Dinner was quite delicious – pappardelle with mushrooms and sausage in a cheese sauce – but the owner offered me “a taste” of a local ricotta that I think didn’t agree with me. It was delicious, but insanely rich and I ate too much of it. So I was up all crampy and miserable in the night, bleh. Seemed an inauspicious start to a day that was forecast to have thunderstorms.

However, come the morning and breakfast, things changed. The only other couple in the B&B are Florence and Henri, an elderly pair of friends from Paris. Their respective spouses died 12 years ago, and they have hung out and traveled together ever since. We got to chatting with them over breakfast, and it turned out that they were going to Paestum today! I opined that we should go together, not realizing that they had rented a car for their Italian vacation. I meant go on the bus together, but they said sure, we’ll take you down. They were going further south after Paestum so we would have to make our own way back, but one bus ride instead of two is always high on my list.

She used to teach French to American diplomatic corps folks, so her English is very good, and I got to limp along in a little French with them, which was kind of nice. I understood the majority of what they said, but of course with no practice of any kind since I left Berlitz and not a lot then, producing anything intelligent was rather labored. However, we were all able to understand each other fine in the end.

They weren’t going to be ready to go till 11, so we walked up to the Museum of the Medical School of Salerno, which is just across the piazza from here. It was kind of a bust, as it’s only a series of videos about medieval school, which was fine and interesting, but they were all in Italian and the acoustics were terrible so they were kinda hard to understand. There were no exhibits per se. The only exhibits available are all 18^th-20^th C, boo, and are at the Papi Museum of Medicine, which is in a building that was once part of the 13^th C medical school, and which sits above either the original medical school herb garden or a reproduction (not completely clear from the lady at the Med School museum which it was). If it’s not raining we’ll go up and look at the garden tomorrow. We then walked down to the shore and Ro played in the park near the sea until time to rejoin Florence and Henri.

The whole ride down to Paestum was just lovely – sunshine and blue sky directly overhead, but plenty of threatening clouds on the horizon. Florence drove. I tried to imagine Mamma driving out of Salerno and down unfamiliar Italian country roads, and failed. Henri is a bit more frail, and he argued with her the whole way about the directions. However, they seem to have been accurate enough. I probably couldn’t have gotten any pictures worth keeping on the ride down, but I totally understood looking at the countryside why the Romans were so excited about acquiring Campania, and indeed, why it’s called “Land of Fields”. With the Mediterranean on one side and lush farmland stretching into the mountains on the other, it definitely had its attractions for a nation that believed itself to be composed entirely of yeoman farmers. The poverty was pretty evident as well, which was depressing, but the cherry trees were in bloom, so  I concentrated on that. I do wonder why the Mediterranean was so intensely brown close to the shore but so very turquoise at the horizon. All churned up close to shore I guess, but why. The trees along the shore were also curious: they all bent toward the shore. I would have understood AWAY from the shore. Apparently the offshore breeze is the one that prevails here. And it’s a serious one – all the trees at the road edge of the forest, that basically functioned as the windbreak for the rest of the woods, were bent at about a 60 degree angle to the ground.

Once we got to Paestum they dropped us off, since being young and spry we would be going a lot faster than they would (they’re both in their 80s). We had to walk the length of the zona archeologica to get to the museum to buy tickets. Naturally, within seconds of our entering the actual park the clouds started to gather in earnest. We walked the length of it and looked at what we could, but by the time we were about halfway down, the rain had started. I had only brought one umbrella and Rose wanted to run around, so I stayed fairly dry and she got soaked. The rain just got fiercer and fiercer, so we gave up and headed back toward the cluster of pizzerias to get something to eat and get warm. I wasn’t actually hungry, so Rosie ate while getting colder and colder in her wet shirt. Fortunately I had on a long-sleeved tshirt and a flannel shirt on top, so when we got to the museum we took off her shirt and rolled the sleeves up high on her so she could move. It was a good enough arrangement, and she wasn’t cold anymore.

The museum was very cool, and Rose even liked it. The tomb paintings from the Greco-Lucan portion of the city were amazing. Rose got bored before I could read all the exhibition cards I wanted to, but I took pictures of some to read later. On the top floor, however, there was an exhibit of Neolithic period artifacts that she was fascinated by – the area has been continuously inhabited for sure since nearly 8000 BCE, and maybe even before then. There was a video of how someone from about 8000 BCE would have made a stone knife, a copper dagger, and a clay pitcher. She really enjoyed finding the original objects in the exhibition. Note to self: keep an eye out for similar exhibits in future.

When we left the museum, the sun was out again, so I decided to assay getting to the far end to get pictures of the second temple to Hera (I had gotten a couple of the first one before the rain got too bad). By the time I got to the second temple, yes, it had started to rain again. I snapped three pictures and headed back quick to where Aurora was waiting with the umbrella. Naturally by the time I got to her the sun was back out. Zeus clearly hates me.

We found the bus stop to get back to Salerno. The rain started up again and the temperature started to drop (I had been okay without my flannel shirt until now). Fortunately the heavens didn’t OPEN until after we were on the bus. We napped pretty much the whole way back to Salerno. Got cheap pizza and ice cream for supper and came back to the B&B. We walked the length of the zona archeologica six times in all, so I’m guessing we’ll sleep pretty well tonight!

3.4

We ran into Florence again at breakfast this morning. We seem to have done well to take the bus back – when she and Henri returned to their car in the afternoon, they discovered a flat tire – and then the heavens opened on them! They got soaked and had to wait almost 3 hours for the equivalent of AAA to show up, and by then had missed their dinner party further south. They apparently got back to the B&B about the same time they had originally planned, but with no supper!

Today was “look at Salerno” day. We went to Museo Archeologico, the Duomo, and the Giardino della Minerva. The Museo was very small, but free, and had a couple exhibits that Rosie really enjoyed. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that she’s interested in all this stuff. Most of the museum’s exhibits come from a settlement just outside of modern Salerno called Fratte, which was inhabited from about 900 BCE, first by an Italic tribe associated with the Samnites, then Greeks, then Lucanians, then finally the Romans. However, the Romans seem to have prefered the sites of Salerno and some other directly coastal towns, and by 300 CE the site was abandoned. This, of course, is good for us students of archaeology, as it is apparently the case that the whole site was pretty much left alone until the 1800s, so there were GOBS of graves and their goods still intact. (Rosie did rush me through reading all the signs, so I know I saw the number 80 at one point, but not sure if that was total graves or excavated graves or what.) We looked particularly carefully at the amber beads (red amber, very pretty), the chariot wheel and silver crown that one man had with him, and the various pots that had been crushed at some point and that someone had been able to piece back together. Having tried to put a broken cup back together, Ro understood exactly how difficult this must have been! There was also a short series of computer simulations of what the buildings and graves of the main part of site must have looked like where the bulk of the artifacts were found. Rosie has learned enough about archeology at this point that her comment was, “But it didn’t look exactly like that, did it. That’s just what we think it probably did.” So proud.

We also took a brief look at the showpiece of the museum, a bronze head of Apollo. Seems a fisherman was pulling up his net one day in May 1932, and was all excited that it was heavy. Alas, not with fish! The head is about 150% life size and in absolutely perfect condition. Just gorgeous. But frankly, we enjoyed the 8^th-3^rd c BCE stuff more.

After the museum on our way back to the hotel, we passed a kids’ clothing shop. Ro wanted to go in because she has wanted new blue jeans for a long time. This was admittedly the first place we’d found that was just kids 6-10 sized clothes. She found a few things right away that she liked. They were crazy expensive, but she’s so happy with the jeans, and she is outgrowing most of her shirts, that I just decided to deal with it.

Next we went in search of lunch, then for a nap. It had been raining all morning and we didn’t want to go to the garden in the rain. However, when we got up from naps the sun was out and it was a beautiful afternoon, so we headed for the duomo and the Giardino della Minerva. The duomo was close and, as it turned out, not terribly interesting to me. The outside was fabulous, very early with lots of Roman bits and pieces just sort of lying around in a beautiful 13^th c –looking courtyard. The inside was apparently completely redone in the early 1700s and was therefore, to me, boring. Someday maybe I’ll learn enough about all this new-fangled art to be interested, but not today.

The Giardino was a long walk. It’s close to the top of the hill where the medieval castle looked down over the town, so it was lots of up. It was a good thing we took our naps and stopped at the Duomo – the garden was closed until 5 and we got there at 4:45. Aurora was really annoyed and didn’t want to wait for them to open, but the caretaker was just inside the gate as we were talking about it and opened early for us.

It’s not the exact same garden as the one maintained by the Scuola Medica Salernitana in the 1300s,  but it’s in the same general spot and has many of the same plants. The current garden was laid out in the 1600s after earthquakes and landslides had rearranged a big chunk of the hillside, but the man who had originally planned the Scuola garden had left copious notes about what he had chosen and why, so the “new” garden is on a similar plan. It goes up the side of the hill in a series of terraces, and the modern caretakers have not only put out the Italian and Latin names of all the plants on the labels, but also whether the useful parts of the plant were hot, dry, cold, or wet, in accordance with medieval usage. The path layout on the bottom-most terrace had a sort of compass rose of fire/air/water/earth and degrees of hot/cold/wet/dry along the paths, and all the plants on that circle were arranged according to the compass. The upper terraces seem to have been more on a “these look pretty together” plan, as there was no obvious pattern to the plantings. The view from the top was magnificent. Sun didn’t hurt any either! We didn’t see the plants that were in the video from the museum, but they did have a mandrake on special display in a glass-front box only partly in dirt, so you could see the “body”. When the caretaker asked if we enjoyed our look around (we spent nearly an hour), I said we were very disappointed, as we had not heard the mandrake scream. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Well, you know how it is – if you don’t yank it out of the ground, it doesn’t scream. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.” And we all sighed. And laughed.

On our way back to the hotel, Ro decided that because SHE had gotten lovely new clothes, so I needed some too. I had seen a sweater in a shop window that I really liked, so we stopped there to try it. I looked VAST in it, ugh. So I was ready to leave, but Ro was determined. She made me try on just about every single thing in the “reduced” section. All either terrible or too small. I am too big for most Italian fashion. However, we finally found a long silk blouse in a bright watermelon pink that actually looked really nice, and was down to 10E. Definitely a buy signal. (I have more impetus to get super skinny now though—in the window of the next shop was a leather jacket in brilliant purple. But as is so often the case with really high fashion styles and colors, only comes in sizes up to medium.)

Pepe, the B&B owner, had told me that his favorite restaurant was close by. I asked his wife this afternoon where it was, and she gave me directions. However, when we got there at 7:40 the rather surly looking man told me to come back at 8, too early for dinner. Ok, not going there. But there were lots of restaurants in the piazza where this one was, so we started to make the rounds. The first one didn’t have much on the menu that Rose would eat. At the second one when we asked for the menu, the man said, “uh, we don’t have a menu.” Eh? “We only serve fish. Whatever is best from the fishermen in the morning, is what we serve for dinner.” Then he brought out a platter of everything that they had available that night. Aurora got very excited at the sight of the enormous shrimp (one waved at her, because of course they were still alive), so we decided to stay. We were going to split a pasta with shrimp then split a fish course, but that turned out to be not enough. She wanted more shrimp, so I ordered another plate of the pasta and figured she could have the two big shrimp and I would eat the pasta. Somewhere along the line, however, oh you pesky language barrier, we ended up with a plate of 4 grilled shrimp AND a plate of pasta with shrimp. I think I must have blanched a little – the owner assured me it wasn’t very expensive, but I was convinced we were looking at a bill of 80E when it was all over. Those things are expensive (but AWFULLY yummy). I just about fell off my chair when the bill arrived and it was only 50E for all that shrimp.

Off to bed early tonight, as we have an early train to Orvieto tomorrow!

Easter weekend

Maundy Thursday 28.3

Rose has today and tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday off for Easter. When I asked about the days off back in the fall, I was told school was off Friday through the following week. So I decided to be gone all next week. Turns out, Rosie will now miss three days of school. However, I talked to her teachers about it and they purely did not care. She’s going to be fine in math and mediocre in Italian no matter what, so the teachers were really more interested in what we were going to do than in what she was going to miss.

I had thought about leaving tomorrow and going for the whole ten days, but then I realized everything is shut over Easter weekend. And being Italy, nothing is open on Monday anyway. So we’ll go on Monday and just be gone for the actual weekdays.

It is gloomy and depressing out, raining and cold. The house is freezing because I hate running the electric heat – Michele Facchini told me it’s probably more than 10E a day to run – but the fireplace and stufa just don’t keep the upstairs warm. I built up the fire so when Rose’s friend Sofi came over it would be warm enough to play, but they don’t seem to have noticed one way or the other. They had a great time, and Laura is coming over tomorrow, and possibly Denise Saturday. So a very social weekend for Miss Rose.

Good Friday

Laura’s mom, Sonia, called early to say that Laura couldn’t come – she was sick and the last thing we need about to leave for a week is to get sick. Sonia said Laura was disappointed and insisting on a playdate next week, when of course we’ll be gone, but we’ll figure something out for after we get back. Rose was very disappointed too, of course, as was I – I was hoping Sonia would have coffee and hang out for a bit. I need to call Ida (her sister) and just invite her out for coffee – I really like her, but without kids as a touchpoint I don’t have an excuse to run into her. 90% of life is just showing up – or in this case, making phone calls.

Went over and visited Ornella for a little bit. I told her last week that I am making Easter dinner for the five of us – lamb roast, polenta, grilled zucchini and chocolate bunny cake. She seems a little stronger, but she is still on the sofa bed in their living room – still can’t make it up the stairs. Meanwhile, I felt a terrible cold coming on and so went to bed for most of the afternoon.

The weather continues gray and rainy, but the snow is all gone -- it's been about 45F every day, but the gloom and the wet make it seem colder. And it's not much warmer down south, worse luck. At least it's supposed to be sunny all week. Our hotels in both Salerno and Orvieto are smack in the middle of the historic district, so we won't have far to go to get to everything we want to see.

The church bells went crazy at 3 pm today. I couldn't figure out what on earth until I remembered that at the 9th hour he cried out with a loud voice etc. No one seems to have done anything particular for Holy Week - I asked Eleanora about it and she just said that everyone in the place goes to Mass on Sunday, but there's next to no one at the other services.

Saturday

Tried to call Denise’s mom (also Sonia; this town does not go for much in the way of original names) but got no answer. We never confirmed a time so I guess they just made other plans.

Went and picked up the lamb roast this morning at the Pellegrino butcher. They must butcher their lambs a LOT younger than I’m used to in America, or have significantly smaller sheep than in New Zealand – two lamb legs (and REALLY legs, thigh bone and hip joint and all) came to a total of 1.7kg. I’m used to a single leg of lamb, boned and rolled, being close to 2.5kg. When I asked the butcher to bone and roll them he looked at me like I was crazy. Then he charged me 35E for the privilege. Yikes. On the plus side, they’ll cook in no time!

Baked a chocolate bunny cake for dessert. Yes, the foodies among my friends will call me a heretic, but I can’t wait to get home to Betty Crocker mixes. I just have never found a cake recipe that’s as easy or consistent as Betty’s. And NONE of them taste right. David’s blondies are magnificent and cannot be duplicated by mere cake mix. But for chocolate cake, I just want Betty back. However, a springform pan lined with carta forno is not to be dissed. We all use paper cupcake cups and never think twice about it. Time to start using BIG cake cups!

Aurora was very sad that she wasn’t getting to spend Daddy’s birthday with him, so we skyped with Matthew this evening. He had gone to the tax preparer and found out that we are NOT married for 2012, so I get to file as head of household. Yay me. We’ll be splitting the girls for tax purposes this year – since he has the condo having more deductions adds up faster for him than for me. Next year my tax situation should be interesting since I’ll only have 4 months of income. But since I didn’t find all this out till today and there’s no way I’m going to get it all done tonight, it means I won’t file till after we get back, bleh. Oh well, looks like I’m only getting about $600 back anyway, so it’s not like I could have had gobs of extra money by filing earlier.

Easter Sunday

Italian time change coincided with Easter this year. Which means that I overslept and missed mass in Pellegrino. It’s not so much that I wanted to go, but everyone in the village will be there. It’s A Thing You Do. Oh well. Got up and cooked the lamb, grilled the veggies, fixed the polenta and made a lovely gastrique out of my last 2 T of blackberry jam and the tail end of the bottle of balsamic vinegar. At one o’clock Claudio appeared and helped me carry it all over to their house.

We sat down and I started to get stuff out, but Ornella said wait, we have salume and pickles first. Well, ok. So we had salume and pickles. Then she got out a lasagna. And we all ate some lasagna. And she and Claudio and Ricardo ate a LOT of lasagna. So when I got all the stuff I had made out and started serving it, they weren’t really hungry anymore. They each had a bit of the lamb, but it turns out none of them really like it, nor yet polenta, nor yet grilled zucchini. And I think I was justifiably pissed. I mean, I told her a week ago what I was planning to do. She could have at least said, golly, we don’t really like any of that stuff, so don’t spend 50E on making us a nice lunch. The whole point was to spare her having to cook when she’s so ill. And so she just cooked anyway.

I went home to frost and bring back the bunny cake, but I didn’t cream the butter well enough and it was all lumpy. Tasted ok, if you don’t mind little spurts of butter in your frosting. As I was taking it over, I encountered Francesco’s brother Alberto going into the Besozzola church (into which I had not yet been). Seems there was to be a mass at 3:30, just ten minutes away! So I took the cake over and kinda unceremoniously dumped it at their house – Ornella had also made tiramisu, so I just didn’t care anymore whether they ate it or not. I went and got a shawl and a veil and went to church.

It was relatively warm out – finally got a little sunshine! – but inside the church was FREEZING. Since it’s not used at all in the wintertime there’s no heat. Pretty place, but I’ve become such an antiquities snob – a lovely little 19^th C church doesn’t really hit my radar. There were 20 of us there, median age about 70, at a guess. Alberto’s in his late 20s, me, and then everyone else. Clearly the diocese doesn’t expect any kids or strangers to come to mass here ever – there are no prayer books and all the attendees rattled off all the responses by heart. Alberto was playing the organ for some of the chants, but it was never entirely clear what the tunes were.

The priest struck me as the sort of priest that a tiny parish like this would have had in the Middle Ages . He was ancient, unable to sit up all the way straight. He mumbled through the mass with the lectionary open, but routinely either got the words wrong or pronounced them in dialetto. He got the Pope’s name wrong. (Admittedly, Francesco is of new vintage, but still.) And of course, coming as I do from a very conservative Anglican tradition, I was a little startled that he had a regular suit on under the chasuble, instead of a cassock. (He hiked the thing all the way up at one point to get a tissue out of his pocket. It seemed oddly shocking – I mean, he showed us his SUIT PANTS! I know, I sound like an idiot.) I’m not sure if I just didn’t understand any of it or if the sermon was in dialetto, but I couldn’t follow a word. I would have been fine with the service if I’d had a prayer book, since I could tell that the prayers were all the exact same as the Anglican missal, but I only know the words fast enough to understand and recognize them, not to come up with them on my own. Then after he said, “Messa finita”, he started to talk again – apparently we got a second sermon. People kept starting to leave and he kept talking. All terribly awkward. But eventually we all escaped to the sunshine.

Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting ready to go south. We’ll start in Salerno, a town I have wanted to see since I wrote a paper on the 13^th c medical school there, and then go to Paestum for the day one day. I’ve never felt the pull of Greece that so many do. Italy has everything I’ve ever wanted: Etruscan, Roman, medieval, Renaissance history and art all crammed into one tiny peninsula. But most of southern Italy was heavy colonized by the Greeks from 800-200 BCE. Thus, much of what people are so crazy about in Greece is actually here! And Paestum has some beautiful things. So we’ll do one day of “Greece”. Then up to look at one last group of Etruscans in Orvieto. If I can find them for not HORRIBLY much money, I’m thinking about getting some new dishes in Orvieto. I love my little green and white majolica ware cream pitcher, and I would love to get actual dishes to match it. However, I’ve seen the pattern for sale on line and they’re 168E per 4-piece place setting. Uh, no. I’ll manage just fine without at that price. But if I could find FOUR 4-piece place settings for that, the temptation might be too great. We’ll see. Many Orvieto ceramics have a chicken in the middle of the decoration. Majolica chickens leave me cold.

12 mar

Snow is all gone - been raining nonstop the last few days. My neighbor Ornella is very, very sick. She can't even sit up in the bed for more than a few minutes anymore. It's very scary. She was in the hospital for nearly two weeks.

I’ve decided on Paestum, Salerno and Orvieto over the Easter break, just a day or two in each. I’d thought possibly the spa in Saturno, but they don't let little kids into the pools so we'll skip it. Not fair to Baby not to be able to go (though she couldn’t go much in any event - she sat in the hot jacuzzi at the hotel in Verona for just ten minutes and it made her very woozy).

18 mar

Aurora invited her art teacher, Patrizia, to tea for St Patrick's Day. (Ro is pretty convinced that everyone with any sort of British accent is Irish. I think this is Roisin's fault!) We had a lovely set-up of prosciutto, fresh bread, deviled eggs, and strawberries and cream, with peppermint tea to supply the green. They folded origami shapes while I did a little spinning, and we generally had a groovy time. When it came time for Pat to leave, we saw that it was starting to snow. I was disapproving, but Pat pointed out that it wasn't sticking.

Yet.

A mere 16 hours later, we have nearly 2 feet on the ground and it's still falling. So much for getting groceries today, but it's supposed to go up to 50F tomorrow so I'm sure the roads will be clear then. We have plenty to eat in the house so it's not a real issue, but we'll have to do without milk. Oh well. We have plenty of firewood and stove pellets. I am not concerned. Just bored with snow in March!

I had planned to go to the Questura tomorrow in one last vain attempt to get Rosie's paperwork regularized, but I doubt the streets will be clear early enough for it to be worth the effort (we would have to leave at 6:30 am. I anticipate the roads will be beautifully drivable by 10:30 or so. Not attempting them at 6:30). Ro is of course extra delighted to be off school today, as tomorrow is a local holiday (the feast of St Joseph, Pellegrino's patron saint), so now she has the whole 4 days off.

20 mar

It was snowing when we went to bed Sunday. It was still snowing until mid-afternoon Monday and we had over 60 cms. This morning we got up late and the sun was shining so brightly that I barely had to shovel anything, so much had melted. The plow has been by and the strada is clear and dry. It had to have been at least 15 degrees (59 F) today, probably warmer in the sun.

Aurora and I walked up to Berzieri and ran into Rosana (Farolsi) and Giancarlo, who took us to see their rabbits, gave us 4 fresh-out-of-the-chicken eggs, and let us borrow their sled for the day! (Well, we can keep it as long as we're here, but I don't think it'll be useful after today.) So when we got home, Aurora went sledding for a while, then I made us the world's most marvelous scrambled eggs. They weren't even yellow. They were orange. I fantasize about being able to keep chickens and have eggs this good all the time. I even turned the heat off during the day, as it was just too warm in the house!

Tomorrow it's back to school, and it's supposed to rain buckets, ugh, but at least it will take down the rest of the snow. Rose and I spent our snow day yesterday doing origami -- she has Elise's book, but there aren't many patterns in it and some of them are very poorly explained, so we went out to the web and found really a gazillion different things to fold. We have four different kinds of origami hearts!

Hoping to get to Parma next week for one last try at the permesso. If it doesn't go through this time, I'm giving up. Hell, it's only 4 more months at this point -- I'm only at all interested in doing it to prevent Rose's passport from getting a black mark on it, but given that Elise seems to have sailed through with no problem, it may not be worth the effort. Still considering.

22.3

I have a bad cold and am going to bed. Had to cancel my party tomorrow night -- just can't manage it.

Stopped by to visit Ornella this afternoon -- she seemed better, and was able to sit up in the bed and talk for a while. We are hoping she will continue to improve. Her cat will be having kittens soon so we may get to see that. I asked her why they don’t neuter all their animals, since they keep getting more kittens and puppies. Her horrified response: “But if we neuter them, we won’t get any more kittens or puppies!” Well, all righty then.

Beautiful days these past two -- supposed to rain and be cold again this weekend, just what my cold and I need. Was able to do laundry and hang it out instead of relying on the pellet stove.

Not much else going on -- looking forward to our trip to Magna Graecia (the Greek part of southern Italy) after Easter.

Time for Nyquil and bed!

25.3

What the hell, snow? It’s been warm out. It’s been sunny out. It’s clearly been TRYING to be, y’know, Mediterranean out. And now more snow? I mean, it’s not a ton compared to previous dumps – barely six inches – but really? Can we stop now? I want real spring! You keep freezing all my wildflowers!

Update: ok, it is now 2 pm and the snow is all gone. The plow didn’t even come all the way up the hill. But still. Feeling resentful.

27.3

Weather has continued gray and gloomy and that damp cold that feels so much colder than it really is. However, we are headed for warmer climes soon. Aurora and I will be leaving Monday early to go south to Paestum and Salerno, which are south of Naples, thence to Orvieto, just a little north of Rome. Paestum is one of the best preserved sites of Magna Graecia, the section of southern Italy that was almost completely colonized by Greeks by the 7^th c BCE and not fully taken over by the Romans until the 2^nd c BCE. It was this area of Greek culture that brought writing to the Italian peninsula. Paestum in ancient days wasn't THAT big of a deal -- places like Naples and Tarrentum were much more important -- but probably precisely because it was less important, it changed less over the years and was abandoned in the early medieval period, so it hasn't been built over/around/through like others have. It's actually in better shape than many sites on the Greek mainland, and certainly this part of Italy had more Greeks in it than Greece did -- I can nearly truthfully say I've been to Greece by going there!

After Greeks in Paestum we'll be going to visit one last group of Etruscans in Orvieto, and to see the striped cathedral. The first time I saw the striped cathedral ten years ago I thought it was ugly, but it's grown on me, so I'll have lots of pictures of that. Also, Orvieto is where I got my little Italica ware milk jug, and I really want to get a few more pieces to match it. Most of the ceramics produced in Orvieto are the “classic” bright yellow and deep blue, but the one I have is green and white. They're harder to find. We'll see.

We're having Easter dinner with Ornella and her family. She is well enough now to sit up at the table and eat, but certainly not well enough to cook dinner. I'll do everything here and then carry it over there (her oven doesn't work). I've ordered my lamb roast and will pick it up from the butcher on Friday afternoon. I'm going to do the roast with a blackberry gastrique sauce, polenta, salad, and chocolate bunny cake for dessert.

Rose has invited friends over for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Not sure yet if the Friday and Saturday friends can come, but likely to be lots of little girls running around loose for the next few days. Meanwhile I'm cleaning up and getting ready to leave -- our train goes at 9 am Monday so we have to be out of the house by 7:45 to be sure of getting it. Happily we only have to change once, in Bologna -- the Frecciarossa (fast train) goes straight from Bologna to Salerno, the closest real city to Paestum, in just 4 hours, so it'll be an easy trip. Charging up all those electronics to keep us entertained!

M-m-m-my Verona

9.3

It was pouring rain when we left Besozzola and continued to pour all the way to Verona. Fortunately it was all freeway and not busy, so a relatively easy drive. I hope it's clear on the way home, as I really want a good view of the Po River (very important in Roman geography). Our room is very nice, with a street view (ie, as much of a view as anyone in the hotel is getting!), and has a jacuzzi tub, which we intend to make good use of! (I REALLY miss having a bathtub sometimes.)

Today we did a lot more than I had really planned to, partly because the town is smaller than I anticipated and partly because the weather was surprisingly good. The forecast had said overcast in the morning, followed by rain much of the day, but we lucked out: not only was it warm enough to leave coats in the hotel, but the rain held off until nearly 6.

My Rick Steve's guide  said to be sure to get a Verona Ticket that admits you to 15 of the most popular museums and sights in town for 15E, and good for two days. This was the best advice we could have had -- just on the things we saw today I would have spent 20.50E, and we're going to 3 more places on the list tomorrow. (Well, I could have had -- Ro being under 12 years old gets in free everywhere anyway). We got out about 10 and walked from our hotel up to the old Roman toll gate and then to the ancient Arena, where they were building the stage for the opera season, which opens the first of May. From there we went up the main shopping street to Juliet's house, which was a fairly ordinary 15^th C house that certainly belonged to a family with a name very like Capulet – their coat of arms, which appears various places on the walls in the house, has a bunch of hats on it. They apparently married well, as there are also coats of arms on the walls with ladders on them – the della Scala (“of the ladder”) family ruled Verona for a long time. As a literary monument and Shakespearean “Juliet's house” it’s not really terribly interesting, but it's also a modern art display space, and Aurora really liked the paintings on exhibit. I'm afraid I confused the guards by asking which bits were original to the house and which were added to be more "Julietty." They didn’t really know.

We grabbed a little lunch and then continued on to the Church of St Anastasia, which was amazingly beautiful. Blue, white, and pink marble on the facade, incredible frescoes inside, and a collection of artwork from the 13^th -19^th centuries that was really eye-popping -- a significant art gallery completely apart from its function as a church! Then we walked to the Stone Bridge, which until WWII was almost entirely the original Roman construction (repaired extensively in the Renaissance but not actually rebuilt). The Germans blew it up in WWII, but the Veronese rescued as much of the stone from the river as they could and rebuilt it on the same plan, so it's sorta kinda an ancient Roman bridge. It leads to the Roman theater just over the river.

Across the bridge was the Roman theatre, which was just beautiful and had a really good exhibit of various Roman bits and pieces that had been excavated from the site (including a lovely lead aqueduct pipe – the people behind us did NOT understand why I was oohing and aahing over a squushed pipe). The very large and impressive theater complex used to have the theatre, a meeting hall, and a temple to Jupiter on it. After the fall of Rome later the barbarian rulers used the building for various things, but it was then deserted and gradually was built over until a Dominican got hold of the land in the 15^th C and built a monastery there over the whole thing. The monastery was sold in the 1830 to someone who was pretty sure that there were good Roman antiquities underneath, and who proceeded to excavate big chunks of it on his own dime. Most of the leftover monastery is now museum and a garden full of funerary monuments and other inscriptions. A lot of bits of decoration and statuary from the complex has been found, but only the theater itself and the front bit of the enormous portico and temple are still visible (a lot of buildings up the hill would have to come down to find anything else).

At this point it was nearly 4 and we were exhausted, so we grabbed a cab back and took our baths before going to get some dinner. (We are getting every second out of the jacuzzi tub!) By the time we were ready for dinner it was pouring rain again, but the place we wanted to go is barely a block away, and the hotel has loaner umbrellas, so not a problem.

Supposed to be sunny and even warmer tomorrow, so we're hopeful of another very good day. We're definitely enjoying Verona! And if it's nice on Monday, we'll go to Catullus' house on the way home, which is about 10 miles out of our way and said to be very worth seeing.

10.3

Well, it seems we overdid a little on Saturday. Though today was sunny and nice, we were just exhausted and only ended up going to see the main Roman street of ancient Verona and then the castle. The original builder of the castle, of the della Scala family, was so vicious a fighter that he was known as "can rabbioso," the rabid dog. He liked the name so much that he named his first son Cangrande, "big dog", and a later son Mastino, "Mastiff."  Mastino then named his sons Cangrande and Cansignorio, "Lord Dog." (Sounds like a bad dyslexia joke.) Astonishingly, their coat of arms is two dogs apparently attempting to climb a ladder (scala). The castle is mostly an art museum - the family (also known as the Scaligeri) were the patrons of people like Dante, Petrarch and Giotto, and amassed or commissioned a LOT of artwork in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. One of the most interesting was a picture of a boy of about 6 or 7 with a stick figure drawing in his hand. The child is smiling widely, which is really weird for 14^th C portraiture, and frankly a little unnerving!

The castle and its attendant bridge were quite impressive, and we climbed around on it a lot. However, we tired quickly and decided to go back to the hotel. Naturally this meant that we promptly got lost in an area where there were no cabs, so we had to figure out how to walk back, which ended up taking an hour. The jacuzzi tub was a VERY happy thing to have when we got back.

We found a sushi bar near the hotel on our walk back and decided to indulge. It was pretty good (well, divine, after a year without, though possibly not as good as I thought after such long deprivation). I'm fairly certain that the entire Japanese population of Italy worked there. Unfortunately Aurora seems to have overindulged and ended up throwing a lot of it back up over night, poor kid. But once it was out of her system she slept fine and seems to have suffered no additional ill effects. I was fine.

11.3

Today we met Farrukh at the train station. He brought us a kilo of fudge from a sweet shop in Oxford that is said to be famous for its fudge. (It was AWFULLY good.) We took him up to our favorite place in Verona, the Roman theater. It's closed on Monday mornings, but there is a stairway that goes up around the property to the top of the hill, which was a really spectacular climb and view. By the time we got to the top and took some pictures and came back down again it was lunch time. The concierge at our hotel recommended a little place near the theater called The Friar's Alcove, so we went there. Farrukh and I split their signature dish, a variety of beef tartare appetizers, then had tagliatelle with truffle sauce. REALLY yummy (though we did wimp out on the TRUE Veronese version, which is horse, not beef). Aurora as usual had spaghetti bolognese. The waiter took a very cute picture of the three of us. If we do manage to get back to Verona with Elise, I will order the horse.

We had hoped to take in Catullus' Villa outside Verona today, but of course, it's closed Mondays. We'll get up there again to see it -- it's supposed to be the best set of Roman ruins in the north of Italy. Might be better to go in the early summer anyway -- it's on Lake Garda, and we could go swimming after touring.

We dropped Farrukh at the airport and were home before 5pm. It was lovely and warm down in Verona, even though it's farther north than we are, but even up here it was 50F and the snow is nearly all gone.

Easter is coming up fast and I am working on the plan for that week. Definitely going somewhere.  As much snow as we’ve had lately, I’m thinking south. Should probably hit Magna Graecia, since I’m not going to Greece any time soon.

25.2
The snow finally ended, the sun came out a little, and so I dug the car out this afternoon. It was so warm today that the Strada Besozzola up toward the church is about 50% melted down, and the road down the mountain is even more. We have British TV again because the snow all melted off the satellite dish! I will not drive to school in the morning, but I will pick the kids up in the afternoon. When I moved my car out of its space into the street so it would be easier to move in the morning, the snow on top of the car fell off in a whoosh and totally assaulted me! But it fell because everything underneath had already melted. It's supposed to get up to 52F tomorrow, so a lot will go away then, and sunny warm weather is forecast for the rest of the week.

So it's back to school tomorrow -- Aurora is not thrilled after a 4.5 day weekend, but there it is.

26 .2

Didn't get all the way to 12C today, but 9C is enough -- the roads are clear and dry, and on my walk I could actually HEAR the snow melting in the sun. Bit of a Narnia moment, that. When I shoveled my driveway yesterday it was still snowy, but passable. This morning at 10 when I went to get groceries it was crunchy from freezing overnight; now at 4pm it's all wet gravel. I predict a distinct lack of snow in all but the shadiest and most protected spots by Friday morning.

27 feb

My mother sent me a review of After Hannibal, about various Americans coming to live in Italy, and it does sound fun. I want to get it for my Nook – a fun read, but not one that I need to have taking up 3D space.

Not as warm today, but raining. Rain is good. And not supposed to freeze overnight. We progress. Aurora is playing with her friend Laura today and they are having a blast, so she's in a happy space today.

Going to Verona next Friday (8^th). An acquaintance of mine from Hopkins, Farrukh Azfar (we knew each other mostly because we had several friends in common, so we ran into each other a lot, but were never close), will be in town on the 11^th for a conference, so we'll go for the weekend and look at things (supposed to be gloomy but mid-50s each day) and then meet him for lunch Monday and be home by late afternoon. I'm really looking forward to Verona. I had really only ever thought of it as Romeo and Juliet land, but it was an important city from about 500BC and as far as I can tell has been called Verona since that time -- not a lot of Italian cities are unchanged from their earliest Latin forms! So we're going to devote one full day to Renaissance stuff and one full day to Roman, plus part of Monday morning. I told Aurora's teachers she'd be out that day so we could see Verona, and they said that sounded lovely and for us to enjoy it. They're not too wound up about her missing a little school in exchange for Italian geography and culture!

2.3

A quiet couple days. I wasn't feeling well yesterday and nearly dropped the 30lb bag of stove pellets while refilling the stove; later on I discovered the downstairs was full of smoke! I had bumped the stovepipe and disconnected it. Soot EVERYWHERE. Fortunately Roisin was able to get our good buddies Michele and Raffaele Facchini out here today to fix it. The repair was so simple (really just a case of knowing where to look to find the correct way to reconnect it) that instead of just reconnecting it, they took the entire pipe assembly apart and cleaned it for me, then re-attached it all. What little snow remains out front is now VERY black!

Ran errands in Salso today without a coat! It was almost 60 degrees out. Remaining hopeful that this good trend will continue through next week when we go to Verona for the weekend. At this point they're predicting sunny and 60 for the whole weekend, though obviously 8 days out that's still pretty much reading chicken entrails as much as actual forecasting.

Aurora is showing an interest in chemistry and why things are the colors they are. She wants to do "experiments" in the kitchen, so we did a modest one with eggs and onion skins. We cut up an old pair of pantyhose, stretched them tight over an egg with some leaves of weeds from out front inside, and boiled them with the brown onion skins. Even though the eggs were brown, we got some very pretty results! AND they're a great snack for school! Very satisfactory.

If it's nice tomorrow we may drive down to Bologna for the day just to look around a bit. Have to check to see if the University museum is open on Sundays -- it is said to have some great medieval and early Renaissance exhibits.

This time last week we were under almost 22 inches of snow. Today there was no snow in Salso and it's down to about 4 inches here. Hoping this was a last gasp for winter!

3.3

Aurora and I had some pretty significant disagreements about the schedule for last evening in order to be ready to go adventuring this morning, to the extent that we did not, in the end, go to Bologna or Pisa. However, as it turned out it was just as well. My neighbor Ornella has been in the hospital for the past week and came home at 2 this afternoon. She can't climb stairs for at least two weeks, and her husband needed help getting her bed down the stairs to set up in the living room, so I was able to help him with that and get her situated a little. I also got a shopping list from her so I can run some errands for them while I'm out tomorrow.

I went for a long walk this morning down to the place where one of the streams off the mountain joins the river, about 1.5 miles from the house. When I got to the river, I thought, "I really should have worn a jacket." It was COLD by the water. But on the way back up, I began to think, "I really should have worn a tank top!" (Had on tshirt and sweater.) The sun was very warm, and only the most protected spots, and the end of the snowplow runs, still have snow. I even saw a couple dozen wildflowers out! I think we're done with winter here. Hallelujah!

A quiet week in store until we leave for Verona on Friday. I'll be checking on Ornella every day, of course. She has now had 2 major asthma attacks, requiring hospitalization, in the last 3 weeks. It's been very scary for her, and then of course it means she can't work probably for another month. I need to do what I can to help her out.

4.3

Spent part of today doing Ornella's shopping for her. She is in the bed all the time, can barely walk to go to the bathroom. I fixed her some lunch and she could just sit up long enough to eat it then back in the bed. Her husband is not much use. Not sure how much rest she’ll actually get, since he seems to think she should still cook and do dishes.

They say Boston and DC will both get a bunch of snow. We have chilly and rainy forecast here for the next three days, but never a freeze, so that's fine for early March. Supposed to be very pretty in Verona Sat and Sun and then rain again on Monday. That's fine, as long as it's pretty Sat and Sun!

They tell me that Beppo Grillo, whose 5 Star party won the majority in Parliament. Well, I suppose having an ACTUAL clown in government is a step up from people doing bad clown imitations!

17.2 Life After Elise

Well, we are safely, and a little sadly, back from Milan.

We had a nice walk through the Duomo area of Milan on Friday, got to go into La Scala and the security guard even said, "You take a picture? No flash!" So we took kind of a lot of pictures. I love that my camera can see in quite dim light. Tickets to La Scala shows start at 13E apiece (up to 250!) so Aurora and I will watch the schedule to see if there's something we'd like to see. They were building the set for The Flying Dutchman, which opens next week. Not sure Aurora would like that, but we'll watch for something she would. The Duomo was still open when we got back to it after supper. The lights made it quite creepy inside, but the windows are such that I'm sure it's very beautiful in sunlight. We'll see it again before we leave in July. VERY different architectural style from San Marco in Venice, and the mosaic floors weren't NEARLY as nice. We're such mosaic snobs at this point!

The first hotel was a Holiday Inn, and it was fine, with very good breakfast. The second, supposedly the ritzier of the two, was very nearly a complete bust: pool was FREEZING, steam room was broken, and the massage was ok but I like deep tissue and she refused to do it. She didn't even bring a blanket for the massage table! I had to pull one off the bed. And the breakfast was only so so.

However, we did have a jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, so we both got to have jacuzzi baths -- Ro put bubbles in hers, and they foamed up so high we had to keep taking them out and putting them into the sink and the bidet to get rid of them! And then this morning at breakfast we overhead the people at the next table speaking English, and she was so excited. So she went over to say hi to the little girl, who had just turned 9 last month, and they hit it off instantly. Lauren's family were just ending their holiday -- they had been in Milan a week. I chatted for a while with the mom, Kylie, and we all became fast friends. We now have an invitation to Northampthon any time we want to go! They had a friend there who arrived at 10:30 to take them to Verona for the day, and they were headed back to London tonight.

One very good thing that came out of the weekend: the 2nd hotel didn't have any English language tv. So when Ro wanted to watch, it was Italian or nothing. So she watched Italian. And when we got home, she was low and wanted to lie on the couch for a bit. "May I watch tv?" Sure, go ahead. "Can you find the Italian station I was watching? I want to watch that." I'd be delighted!

No new snow, so the ride home was uneventful.

I talked to Julian late last night and her flight (Air France) was pretty much entirely without incident, plus she said the unaccompanied minors were corralled together at Charles de Gaulle in a playroom with video games, tv, and even a nap room! I want to be an unaccompanied minor! The plane itself made no impression on her -- always good! -- but the minder service seems to have been excellent. I wasn't so much WORRIED as just wanting her not to feel abandoned in a foreign country. So, kudos to AF.

House is cold from heat being way down over the weekend, but will warm up as the stufa gets hot. And the cold is less of an issue than new snow, and since we have no new snow, all is well!

Feb 20

Anticipating snow tomorrow through the weekend, yuck. But supposed to get warm again on Monday -- going out this afternoon and hoping not to have to again before next week!

Aurora is sad without Elise but has a playdate with Sofi today, so that goes a long way to making it better. We will skype with Elise about once a week so she won't seem QUITE so far away. But we do miss her.

Not much to report since returning from Milan. It seems very quiet without Elise, but life continues.

Our neighbor, Ornella, was in the hospital last week with a near-fatal asthma attack, and has only been home since Sunday. She came by to tell me about it this afternoon, and invited us for pizza for dinner. It was a treat for her, as she has given up bread for Lent, but also a concession to the fact that the huge doses of cortisone they gave her are making her so hungry she can hardly stand it, and vegetables just don't fill the bill. Frankly, homemade pizza is a treat for us too! I just don't have the patience to make the dough very often.

The snow is supposed to start tomorrow and continue through Sunday night, but some forecasts say "maybe all snow, maybe all rain." I am hopeful of the latter, as it was about 42F out today and is not terribly cold out now (at 9:30pm). Aurora is, naturally, hoping for a day off school on Friday. She already has Monday off, as it is Election Day and all schools and many businesses are closed or have short hours. She had a playdate with her friend Sophi today and was very happy about that. She won't be having any playdates with Matilda in the immediate future -- Mati fell and sprained her ankle sufficiently badly that she's not allowed to put any weight on it, and has to have it up all the time. I have to carry her backpack in for her every morning! But the doctor apparently said in two weeks she'll be back on it 100%. I just hope she doesn't slip on the coming snow and re-injure it! (Gabriele is supposed to get the cast off his arm two weeks from Friday. Alessandra's had a lot to deal with lately!

21 Feb

Snow has arrived. Alessandra took them in, but Aurora needed more insulin at lunch so I got Claudio to take me down to give her a shot – I have snow tires, but after the adventure with David I want to go in a car with chains. Once there I decided not to deal with it again and brought her home. Unlikely to go tomorrow -- there were already 5 teachers missing today because they couldn't get out. When I got to Aurora's classroom there were a LOT of kids in there ...because the entire 4^th and 5^th grade was there as well as 1, 2 and 3. None of the 4^th and 5^th grade teachers had been able to get through. The first grade teacher was down with the kindergartners and the upper school is doing art class pretty nearly all day. Should have been 31 kids for all 5 grades -- was in fact 25. And clearly not enough upper school teachers had gotten in either, since there are more of them, but still not enough to cover the 4^th and 5^th. Maestra Nadia said that while school is not called off for tomorrow AT THIS MOMENT, if the current snowfall continues through the night she seriously doubts we'll go in tomorrow. Frankly, if it's snowing when I get up tomorrow, I'm not going to bother Aurora.

However, I continue to be Organization Girl -- we got pellets in yesterday and I bought more groceries than I really needed when I was out on Monday. We'll run out of milk before Monday but that's it. We can always walk up to Berzieri to get more! The snow is supposed to continue more or less unabated through Sunday, then warm up into the low 50s most of next week. So *maybe* a foot in the course of the weekend, but not a lot all at once.

Feb 22

Since Aurora wasn't feeling well yesterday, and has had a number of high blood sugar readings lately, I decided that, today being a short day at school and the snow being what it was, we would just skip school for today. I called our carpool buddy, Alessandra, this morning to remind her (I wasn't sure if I had actually told her) that we weren't going. She replied, "There's so much snow, and there were so few teachers and kids there yesterday, that we're not going either. It's not closed, but it's pointless. No one will be there." It continues to snow, so our decision to blow off school was clearly the right one.

I'm taking a little break from working on the book to write this; Aurora has been watching Italian cartoons and working on a necklace for a friend all morning. She has now moved so far into preferring Italian tv that when I said, "Let's watch Big Bang (her favorite sitcom)," she replied, "No thank you, my cartoon is in the middle of the story!" She says she can understand a little of what they're saying. The cartoons more expressly aimed at little kids she can understand pretty well. Progress!

I haven't so much made progress on the book as I have written some lesson plans to coordinate with it, and made some modifications/improvements/expansion/completion to material I already had. So now the first two weeks of school and the chapters and materials I need for those are nearly completely finished. Nothing to do but hand them out. I've written a total of 4 completely new and about 11 revised/completed. So that's progress. We'll probably go for a walk at some point, but not for long -- walking in the snow is tiring.

23 feb

Piu di neve as we say here in the mountains -- that's "more snow" for those of you just tuning in...

We've gotten about 2 feet in the last 48 hours. So far the power is still on, though it flickers a lot, very dull. We have plenty of firewood in the house and the flashlight is by the bed, so we'll be fine if it goes out as long as it's not out TOO long. But it's supposed to be sunny and quite warm on Tuesday. Shouldn't be an issue for very long, at any rate.

A lot of snow. We've stayed in all day. It's snowing. That's about all the news :) We're fed and warm and watching TV and writing and being mellow in the mountain winter.

24 feb

A little before and after look at the Strada Besozzola - plow arrived at about 3. It has finally stopped snowing and is relatively warm out -- I cleaned off the car and there was only water actually next to the metal. I don't think we'll have any trouble getting out on Tuesday. Aurora will be so disappointed :) Tomorrow, of course, is Election Day so there's no school. The Italians are way more into people actually participating in the electoral process than Americans are. The contrast is somewhat depressing.

Goodbye Elise

15.2
Spent the day in Milan today before putting Elise on the plane home tomorrow. Found the hotel (FINALLY – the directions were less than ideal) and caught the hotel shuttle to the airport, airport shuttle to the Duomo, then walked around the Duomo neighborhood for a few hours. Got in to see La Scala, where the signs all said “No photos!” but the guards all said “No flash!” So the pictures are mostly kinda on the yellow side, but some are pretty good. Hopeful of getting to see something here before we leave – the tickets range in price from 15E to 250E. Have to have a look at the schedule when we get home.

When we had finished dinner and were on our way back to the bus stop, we saw that the Duomo was still open, so we had to have a look. I want to see it in daylight – it was impressive but spooky in the half-light of early evening.

We retraced our steps toward the shuttle stop through the mall section of the Piazza del Duomo, and stopped at H&M to get some earrings and hairclips at their sale, but discovered shortly thereafter that we were well and truly lost. When I asked a bus driver where the shuttle was, he told us to get on, he was going by there. I said I didn’t have tickets for us yet. He shrugged and said, “eh, it’s only two stops.” Then when we got to the correct stop, two gentlemen who were getting off said, “Come with us, we’ll show you where the ticket window is.” This was useful because while it was less than 2 blocks away, it was in a non-obvious corner of the piazzale where we stopped. Tickets acquired, bus arrived about 15 minutes later, all good.

The girls are quite excited about having their own hotel room (the hotel didn’t have any triples, but the 2 doubles were not, in fact, terribly expensive). They may or may not sleep tonight. I’m not going to worry about it. It’s their last night together for quite some time. Sleep is not that necessary tonight.

16.2
Got Elise to the airport in plenty of time this morning, and sat with her for about 90 minutes before her personal stewardess arrived. The woman assured me that she was assigned to Elise’s flight and so would be the one with her until they got to Charles de Gaulle Airport, at which point another Air France person would pick her up at the gate and take her to the next plane. And away they went.

I had booked a different hotel for the second night for Rose and me – a little flashier, with an indoor pool and in-room massage so we could be a little pampered while we were sad. We’d have done better to stay at the Holiday Inn. The pool was too cold to swim in, the in-room massage was not expensive but was also not very good, and the wifi kept going out. However, I went for a walk to find us some dinner, and found a little Sicilian takeout place where the owner was so excited that an American who spoke ok Italian was in her shop that she gave me bread and dessert for free. We had spent 70E on dinner the night before and it wasn’t that great. This was 12E and was awesome. Live and learn.

17.2
While at breakfast this morning, Aurora pointed out to me that the people at the table in the corner spoke English, and had a little girl who seemed to be roughly Aurora’s age. I said, so go talk to her. It took a while, but Ro finally screwed her courage to the sticking place and did not fail! And in fact, ended up talking to Lauren, who had just turned 9, for over an hour, while I eventually got to chatting with Lauren’s mother, Kylie. The girls got along so well that we exchanged email addresses and will try to keep in touch. I want to go to England next year if we can POSSIBLY manage it, to show the girls London and to visit Steffi and Karen and Farrukh, and yes, Lauren. That would be a really lovely couple weeks. Great, saving now for London and for Dubai. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to buy a house any time soon!

Easy drive home. House seems quiet without Elise. Trying to remember that this is better for her, even if it’s sadder for us.

In which Aurora’s godfather departs the desert sands for the mountain snows

8.2 Rosie and I drove up to Linate to collect David. His plane was supposed to arrive at 2.05, but I toldhim we’d never make it: it’s just under a 90 minute drive, and she doesn’t get out of school till 1. Even leaving directly from school he’d have a bit of a wait, and she has to have lunch. Fortunately, his plane was delayed just enough, and I was on task just enough, that when we arrived at 2.55 he had just moments before arrived from customs. Yay for timing!

The freeway coming home was pretty empty, so we made it back considerably faster than I thought we would, and were most of the way home by 4:30. (I had told Elise we would definitely be home by 6:30 and possibly 5:30, but to start dinner at 6 if we weren’t in evidence yet.) So we stopped at Vigoleno, our local castle (we wave to it as we pass every time we go to Salso), and had a short look around. After all, this is the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, with 26 castles within a 40 km radius! Gotta see at least a few! So we had a nice march around and stretch and look at the scenery (everyone who comes to visit says, “WHAT a beautiful place you live in!” And they are right), then motored on home. We actually arrived home just before 5:30 (Vigoleno is only 15 minutes from here).

Aurora was very excited to have David come visit. The last time she saw him she was about 55 days old, so he didn’t make a big impression.  He always sends her money at Christmas, however, so she knows he is Bearer of Gifts. And gifts indeed: when we got home, he distributed all KINDS of largesse! Silver earrings for Elise, rainbow butterfly hair clips and jewelry for Rose, and a Samsung smartphone, stuffed dates, and a tin of fois gras for me, plus Chinese wish lanterns! Christmas in February was a very happy occasion. We’ll launch the lanterns from Vitale’s patio Tuesday night.

He lives in a camp in the desert working on the UAE electrical grid, so “home-cooked” is not a word that enters his vocabulary often. So I decided to do a full-on Italian country dinner.  Some local salume and fresh bread to start. Agnelotti in brodo for primo. Pork cutlets (very rare in the UAE as you might imagine!) and bietole (silver beet greens) for secondo, and chiacchere (Mardi Gras cookies) for dessert. (Thank you my beloved Cavallo Panificio for all the baked goods and pasta. They’re all easy to make, but so time consuming!) None of it complicated or elaborate, in its way an ordinary dinner, but very typical of this part of the country. We had a lovely evening chatting and he was so impressed with the dinner. The food where he works he describes as "strictly middle school cafeteria fare", so a home-cooked meal was already a treat, let alone all these traditional Emilia-Romagnese goodies. He declared it a very satisfactory first day in Italy.

9.2 The Form of the Salami

Today’s excursion was to see the castle at Fontanellato, which I had heard was very lovely and worthwhile, then a tour of the curing facility where Massimo Spigarolo makes what is said to be the finest culatello in the world, capped off by dinner at Il Cavallino Bianco, his restaurant (naturally, in order to TASTE the finest culatello in the world). His culatello is supposed to be a form of prosciutto in the same way that fois gras is a form of chopped chicken liver.

Fontanellato was preparing for its Carnevale parade, so we got a bit of silly string and shaving cream on us as the parade loaded up, then we headed off to the castle. (Aurora ended up getting a prime seat to the parade from one of the castle windows.) The tour was in Italian so I was having to do the simultaneous translation thing, which I hate and I’m bad at, but I managed to convey the most interesting bits to our audience. My two favorite bits were the hall of portraits of the Pallavicino counts who had held the castle since the 1200s, and the Stufetta di Diana e Atteone (probably where the Countess had her bathtub, as stufetta means “little heated room”). The portraits were hilarious, because, though they were DATED starting 1200, they had all been PAINTED in the late 1600s, and the artist, at a loss for how to paint people he’d never seen, just found some examples of earlier-period dress and painted the same guy in 25 different outfits with different amounts of beard. “My, the family resemblance is striking!” Yeah, it would be.

The Stufetta di Diana e Atteone gets its name from the frescoes telling the story of Diana and Acteon. For those of you just joining us, Ovid’s version is that Acteon is hunting in the woods, accidentally stumbles upon Diana bathing in a protected woodland pond, and instead of instantly falling to the ground, covering his eyes and moaning “I am not worthy,” he just stares. Well, she is a goddess, after all. But she’s not having any of it, and turns him into a stag, which is promptly brought down and killed by his own dogs. The castle’s version, however, has kind of a cool twist to it. Countess Paola had just lost her firstborn baby boy when the room was being decorated (it’s not clear if the decoration happened because the baby died, or the baby died and the already-planned decoration was reworked) and was apparently absolutely devastated. So instead of Acteon turning into the stag, a nympth that he is apparently chasing in the first 2 panels is turned into the stag and devoured, symbolizing how Paola was destroyed by her grief for the baby, having gotten a glimpse of his beauty and perfection for only a very little while. A baby wearing a coral necklace appears in the space between two of the later panels; the necklace is iconographic info that the wearer is dead. A mirror in the ceiling with the legend “respice finem” (look to the end) would remind the bathing countess that faith in the reward of heaven is the only way to deal with the tragedy. The fresco is in the style of Correggio, and was painted by Parmagiannino, who was Correggio’s student. The Latin around the bottom is a quote from Ovid, basically saying life is majorly unfair.

After the castle, we drove up to Polesine Parmense to have dinner at Il Cavallino Bianco. I had first heard about this place on a latenight BBC travel show about the Emilia-Romagna, and upon seeing on the map that it wasn’t that far from here, determined to find an occasion to have dinner there. David’s visit seemed to fit the bill. When I made the reservation, I asked if we could see the farm where the culatello is made, so we also got a reservation for a tour.

Polesine Parmense is in the middle of NOWHERE. Had to drive through farmers’ fields on what was certainly PAVED but I’m not convinced was actually PUBLIC road (thank you Anna the GPS, AGAIN). We arrived just at sunset, quite magnificent behind a small palazzo in the middle of a field, barely 100 feet from the Po River. Apparently the Po flooded about 10 years ago and the whole place was under 15 feet of water.  A true tragedy, as I’ll explain.

We arrived for our tour and were promptly escorted to the very cavern I had seen on the BBC show. The man explained a little about the process of curing the hams, how they are rotated through the cavern depending on age, and how the newest ones stay close to the window which the master culatello maker uses to control the temp and humidity in the cavern. There is no climate control down there, no instruments, just this one window and Massimo’s feel for what is the right amount of humidity. The weather outside determines how quickly a ham moves from AT the window to NEAR the window to AWAY FROM the window. The hams gradually mold over, and stay in the cellar for one to five years. The floor was also covered with grape leavings from their wine presses – the ferment gases make a difference too. Then he showed us the REALLY special, REALLY expensive culatelli, complete with their name tags – Armani, Principe Alberto di Monaco, Principe Carlo di Inghilterra, just to name a few. These culatelli are so intense that our princes won’t be able to pick theirs up for another year, as they are the black pig five-year kind. The black pigs are an ancient breed that was almost extinct; too fatty, take too long to mature, picky about what they eat. They make AMAZING culatelli. Massimo found the last few of the breed in Italy and started his own breeding program to be able to use them again. The expensive culatelli that they sold in the shop, which were NOT the black pig 5-year kind, were 90E per kilo. So you can imagine what the GOOD ones cost. They also had cheeses ageing in the cellar. Our guide said they didn’t make their own cheeses, but they needed different ones for different uses so they bought them fresh and aged them here. People who know can taste the difference between mountain cows, meadow cows that live in the really foggy areas, and meadow cows that don’t. So it’s necessary to have samples of all of these handy. (Aurora wanted to see the pigs, but our guide said the pigs are VERY stinky and live about 3 miles away. There were a few sheep out back, and they were stinky enough.) The year the Po flooded, the entire contents of the cave were ruined. We would find out at dinner just how sad this was.

We had nearly 40 minutes before our dinner reservation when the tour ended, so our guide suggested an aperitif while we waited. Presently there appeared a tray of parmesan, foccacia, and salami, and two glasses of fizzy red wine. I forgot to ask what the wine was. Need to do that.  I had a bite of the cheese (though I do not know from which geographical type of cow it came), yum, of the foccacia, yum, and then actually looked at the salami. I had planned to ignore it. I don’t like salami. I’ll eat it if it’s on offer, but it’s never my first choice.

Until now.

This stuff was arresting just to LOOK at – deep ruby red, beautifully marbled, and I could see that it wasn’t the dry, slightly leathery texture I associate with salami. I had a bite. Everyone else reached for a bite. And our collective eyes rolled up in our heads.

It was more the consistency of a perfectly rare steak than salami, and the flavor was rich and buttery and meaty and out of this world. We nearly came to blows over the last piece. The salami totally upstaged the also amazing bread and parmesan cheese. I retreated and had a sip of my red wine (which I also don’t generally care for all that much), and it was perfect with the salami. Must find out what it was.

When we headed over to the restaurant finally, we saw that we HAD to order the culatello platter. It didn’t include the black pig stuff, but several slices of one-year-old, two-year-old, and three-year-old culatello, the three-year-old with its pat of butter. Because buttering a piece of ham is the first thing we think of. And is amazing. We also ordered the cheese sampler, with one- and two-year-old mountain and meadow parmesans (they did taste slightly different, but they all looked exactly the same, so I lost track of which was which. Clearly, have to go back and get it right this time!), a goat cheese, and two wildly different gorgonzolas. By this time we really didn’t want entrees, so we girls got appetizers or soup and David got the Giuseppi Verde capon, which was indeed divine, but I couldn’t have eaten it all. We ordered crème brulee and chocolate mousse for dessert. Both yummy, but the crème brulee definitely won. And we got a lovely parting gift! They have handpainted plates with pictures to match what you had for dinner, so we got the Verdi capon plate.

There’s a salumeria attached to the restaurant (I know, a shocker), so we stopped on our way out and got 2 salamis to take home. One is for Elise to take back with her next Saturday; the other is so we can continue to indulge in what we have now dubbed crack salami for a little longer!

10.2  Carnevale in Pellegrino

We had thought about going to Busseto to see their Carnevale parade, but after seeing Fontanellato’s I think we’ve seen what we’re going to see. So we decided to stay local and go to the Pellegrino celebration of Carnevale. Aurora got to be one of the magician's assistants (sadly, I didn't realize this since I was out dancing with a friend and so got no pictures, sorry), and we ate lots of torta fritta and chiacchere (mardi gras cookies).

11.2 Snow and a hike

It was snowing just lightly when we got up this morning, roads still clear, so the girls got ready and we went to school. (The Ajroldi kids were still out of town so it was just us.) David and I then went on to Salso to do the shopping. We were hoping to go to Castell’Arquato in the afternoon, but the snow got worse and worse in Salso as we shopped, so that looked to be off. We headed home after less than an hour in Salso, but by 10 am it was already too late: the snow was so deep on the Strada Besozzola that I couldn’t get up the hill. We decided to go get chocolate at the Bar Sport and see if the snow would stop and the plow come out.

Thus it was that David was introduced to what the Italians think of when they say hot chocolate. The TV was on in the bar. I was watching it sorta while we talked, and there was Benedict XVI over and over on the screen. What’s he up to now, I thought. Then I read the crawl at the bottom. Blinked. Squinted. “Il Papa lascera’ il pontificato 28 feb”. Now, my Italian is pretty good, but this seemingly simple sentence did not make any sense to me. Finally I got up to go ask Fabio, the barkeep. “Um, I’m not sure, but does that TV really say ‘The Pope will abandon the Pontificate on 28 February’?” Why yes, yes it does. The story had broken about 10 minutes before I noticed it. David and I are fundamentally not in favor of this Pope, so we were compelled to get a glass of wine to toast his very happy retirement. First time in 600 years that a Pope has retired rather than die in harness.

By now it was noon. Girls get out of school at 1, but the snow was increasingly bad. I decided to go pick them up early and pray the plow had come. We popped them out of school (school was already announced to be closed for Tuesday) and headed for the hills, so to speak. No luck. Couldn’t get as far up the sharp grade at the bottom as I had 2 hours earlier. Fortunately it’s only a little over half a mile up. We would walk. As we were trying to decide where to leave the car, the plow came by, but he had to do the main roads first and couldn’t do the Strada yet. He was doing the main roads, not little side roads like our Strada. That’s low priority, which I understand. He did, however, plow me my own private parking space so I would be out of the road and away from the wake of the next plow to come through. And so we parked and headed out into the storm.

It was swirling snow with a constant breeze (not WIND so much as just nonstop air movement), so it was hard to see and it gets in your collar. None of us were truly dressed for it – coats were fine, but I had no hat or scarf, Aurora no gloves or scarf, Elise no gloves – and it got miserable in a hurry.Plus we’re carrying the groceries. The girls were miserable to say the least (and Elise doesn’t have boots). After a couple minutes I took all the groceries and David carried Aurora. We were little more than halfway up when Claudio came by (he has chains) and was able to take the girls and the groceries the rest of the way up. Praise the Lord. It was heavy enough going when it was just me. David had already carried Aurora a chunk of the way, but he was grateful to let her ride.

We ate crack salami and huddled around the fire the rest of the afternoon. Amazing how just 20 minutes of hard hiking in snow can chill you through, even though we were all sweating when we first came in.  David also taught us how to make “darned near instant blondies” with either amaretto flavoring or chocolate chips, using the cuisinart (about which I am bitter. I tried and tried to make it work and nothing.  He puts it together and whoosh! It hates me). And there was much rejoicing.

12.2 no school. retrieved the car. castell’arquato

Today started gray and horrible looking, but the clouds parted by about 10 and the sun came out full force. It wasn’t even THAT cold (about 4C). I went out with garbage at about noon and found the road not only clear but mostly dry, and so toddled to the bottom to collect my car, snoozing happily in its custom parking spot with no issues. I brought it back up, but couldn’t get all the way to the house, so had to camp in Francesco’s spot for the day.

Dave and I had hoped to go to Roncole Verdi today, since it’s a long school day for the girls, so we’d have till about 3pm to look around Verdi’s birthplace. We’re interested in opera and Verdi and the girls aren’t, so it seemed like a plan until school was cancelled. Rather than hear them complain about boring old Verdi, and since the roads were clear and the day pretty, we decided to take in one last castle, naturally, our favorite, Arquato. We didn’t take the mountain route over there – no telling what the road would be like, and we wouldn’t be able to see the vertical vineyards anyway in the snow, which is the main reason for going that way. So we went the flat way, and while there was considerable snow on the ground, the road was completely dry from end to end. It was warm enough in Arquato that the trees were all dripping, and periodically huge lumps of snow would just give up and come crashing to the ground.

We walked around the castle grounds, took some pictures of the hills, and then gathered up all the 50c pieces we could accumulate and went into the little church. We were able to keep the lights on in the 15^th C chapel long enough to see the frescoes for real this time, and get some good pictures. I hadn’t realized that one whole wall was nothing but very lovely saints being tortured to death in very lovely settings. Yeesh. A few more pictures and back down the hill to get some pastry at the pasticceria (it’s not worth driving all the way over there for pastry, but it sure is worth stopping if we’re already there!), and home. Elise made us curried chicken, roast potates, and braised spinach/arugula for dinner. I will miss her making dinner periodically. She’s a pretty good cook, and enjoys doing it. I hope she’ll keep it up in Del Mar.

13.2 

How convenient: there was a strike today until 10:30, and Dave’s train left at 9, so the girls would be able to come to the station with us to say goodbye. We headed down the hill into the classic Parma winter fog – there were times when I wasn’t sure we’d be able to go the 25km to Fidenza in under an hour, but we made it in plenty of time and saw him off. After groceries and gas we turned back toward Pellegrino. (Dave gave me 50E for a tank of gas. I filled up, and it came to 50.10E. Way to estimate the gas consumption!) In the valley the fog stayed intense, but as we came higher into the hills it disappeared into bright sun and we made it to school with five minutes to spare.

We've really enjoyed having David here, and he's invited us to come to the UAE sometime. It's an expensive flight, but cheap to stay, so maybe in two years we'll have saved up enough to go. Sounds like a lot of fun (though a VERY long flight, ugh).

We spent much of this afternoon straightening the house and doing laundry to make sure Elise has everything before she goes. Tomorrow is her last day of school. We leave for Milan Friday morning, and her plane is at 10 on Saturday. Trying not to be sad.