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.