Italy: much ado about nothing

Black Beauty

2009-06-18T20:30:00.010+02:00

Hi everyone! I originally had envisioned updating this weekly… that didn’t work out and so I thought monthly. Well, now it’s down to quarterly or maybe every 6 months. Oh well…here goes another one anyway. I’ll try to just hit the high points and not make it too lengthy.

In my last blog I mentioned what a difference a good place to live made after R and I moved into our new home near ‘downtown’ Rovigo. (Yes, I’m changing from Artichoke Heart to R.) Adding to that – what a difference good weather makes. Spring here in Rovigo began in March; the temperature turned warm, the flowers, trees, and roses started to bloom, the winter wheat and corn growing, and the sunlight longer. The flowers and trees were/are simply beautiful – reminds me a lot of Shreveport in the spring. Rovigo must be somewhat of a rose capital because there are roses in everyone’s yard and all over the city and countryside. I’ll have to say if you ever come to Italy, do it in the springtime. They also have a lot of linden trees which I wasn’t familiar with before but they bloom and have a very fragrant flower on them and they’re everywhere.

At the beginning of April R & I spent 5 days in Paris. I don’t think you can do that city justice in any less time. I think we saw everything there was to see, not, and since it was springtime it was simply gorgeous. The food – in a word - oo la la. Chocolate crepes are my new favorite food, well, second to Mexican food. Thank goodness they don’t have them here. I have 2 tips regarding Paris:

1. the Musee D’Orsay is as good if not better than the Louvre. The building itself is prettier and the paintings you see there are phenomenal. Even people with no culture (R & I) were able to tell why the Monet’s, Manet’s, etc. were brilliant artists.

2. Take one or more ‘Fat Tire Bike Tours’. R found these people on the internet and since he had never been to Paris we figured it might be a good way to see the ‘big picture’ and get our bearings on the first day. We took the 3 hour guided bike tour that takes you by (not in) a lot of the main attractions. Had so much fun we did the day-long Versailles bike tour 2 days later. About 10 people schlepping our bikes on a train to Versailles (a woman hit me in the back as she was getting off the train! On purpose! It was a very crowded train.) We arrived around 10 in the morning, everyone went to the local market and bought bread, meat, cheese, wine, etc. (the wine was mandatory according to our tour guide.) Then we toured the grounds on our bikes and stopped for lunch by the Grand Canal. Afterwards we toured the palace then schlepped our bikes back on the train to return to Paris. No assaults on the return trip. Fat Tire Bike Tours is American-owned so the language was easy to understand and the tour guides were mostly kids just out of college who want to live overseas and I suppose learn the language. You Aggies will be impressed to know there was a big Texas A&M flag hanging in their office. They give these tours in Paris, London, Barcelona and Berlin. I highly recommend it if you’re ever in one of those cities. We had a blast.

Not really related but I guess a good segue from the Paris trip – I am now the proud owner of an Italian vehicle - a bicycle. Italian-designed, I don’t know where it was made. My own version of a Ferrari or Lamborghini – really more like their Fiat/Chrysler. Her name is Black Beauty. It’s the preferred method of transportation here in Rovigo and what with our new home location it’s only a short 3-5 minute commute to work. Eat your hearts out Houstonians! Picture shown – hate my hair in that picture – I got it cut the next day. And the horizontal stripes aren’t flattering so only look at the bicycle.

Let’s see…other places we’ve been. Verona - Birthplace of Romeo and Juliet (the Italians, not the Australians.) Fictitious though they are, Juliet’s balcony draws quite a crowd. Nice little city center, very touristy, souvenir stands. We went there on our way to a golf course near Lake Garda - but first had lunch at McDonalds, yum. We haven’t been many other places for 3 reasons. One is I work. Two is because we would have to board It if we went anywhere overnight and three because we’ve found golf again! We’ve finally found a decent course for a decent price within 30 minutes of the house so every weekend we’re on the course, honing our skills. We’ll be watching Tiger and Phil at the U.S. Open this weekend. Bill, Mitch, how are your games coming along?

This week we have a big trip planned. We’re boarding It and Them and taking off to Istanbul (not Constantinople) – does anyone know that song? - to see Anastasia, Randu, and Grey Bear. We’re very excited about it and I hope to bring back some cool souvenirs.

Ok, that’s all for now. Let me hear from you! And as they say here in It'ly - Ciao Ciao

Casa Dolce Casa!

2009-03-17T18:07:00.019+01:00

What a difference a nice place to live makes! We have actually moved after 5 months of living at the agriturismo. It was a nice, peaceful, small place and close to the gym but man is it good to be outta there. We will of course miss the chickens and geese but not the cold stone floors or outrageous rent. So briefly, here’s our tale of house-hunting.

The first house-hunting trip we made was in September before moving here. We found a perfect place, brand new, 3 bedrooms, 3 floors, and huge yard for the boys, very close to work, and advertised as furnished. Signed the papers and one week later the landlord backed out. Apparently he was able to rent it to someone else unfurnished (more about furnishings later). But we had the agriturismo to fall back on so ok. We kept looking during the following months but most things were 2 rooms, very small, and as Mama would say ‘you couldn’t cuss a cat without getting hair in your mouth’. Not a good thing when you have 2 cats. Then we found another almost perfect place, went to the real estate agents office to sign the papers and either the landlord or real estate agent changed their mind so that was a no go. We think it may have had something to do with us not being Italian - no lie.

So after 5 months we found it, love at first sight. A house for the same price as an apartment but not an apartment. Close to town – 3 minutes to the office. I don’t know how I’m going to cope when we get back to Houston. My commute in Spain was a whopping 20 minutes, not to mention the beautiful view of the Mediterranean & Gibraltar. One hour each way in Houston is going to drive me bonkers. Anyway, the house has a small yard/garden but enough for Frisco and not too much to take care of. Michael and Troy seem happy and haven’t spent any time cowering under the bed.

But being Italy, nothing is straightforward. The house was described as 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, fully furnished. Reality – 2 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 3 floors with something like a game room on the top floor which opens to a rooftop patio, and the only furnishings belonged to the previous tenant. Now when you rent something unfurnished in the civilized world you take for granted that the place comes with an oven, refrigerator and sink. You also assume there are closets, kitchen cabinets, countertops, etc. In Italy, you’re lucky to get light fixtures. And when I say lucky I mean we had wires hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen, dining room area, and 2 of the bathrooms. So we were lucky that the tenant left at least the light fixtures in the rest of the house.

The previous tenant was moving because his father died and he’s moving in with his mother. So he didn’t need the furnishings and said we could negotiate a pretty good price. He was willing to sell his things to us for a mere 10,000 euros or in US money $13,000! He was asking $130 for each bathroom mirror! So off to IKEA we went and luckily have been able to furnish the place for much, much, much less than his asking price. The pictures included are the real thing so you can see what you’re in for when you come to visit.

There’s no air conditioning so we’re hoping the summer isn’t too hot or humid. But there are a lot of windows and hopefully we’ll have a good breeze. Another plus, the windows all have screens which, like kitchen appliances, is not a given in Italy.

So now that we're really settled we look forward to having guests. Start searchin' those airfares!

We're still here!!

2009-03-03T10:13:00.012+01:00

Wow! It’s been well over 2 months since I blogged last so I have a lot of catching up to do. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and are looking forward to springtime.

Well, since we last spoke, Artichoke Heart and I have done some traveling. As reported in my last blog, we went to Bratislava, Slovakia before Christmas to rescue Anastasia, Randu, and Grey Bear (picture of Grey Bear just below) from their exile. A 7-hour train ride up and back (Hangar Brat – Europe by Rail has really come in handy!) Bratislava is a nice enough town but nothing to really write home about. Actually it was quite nice but Anastasia had a really bad attitude about it and I'm sure that colored my opinion a little. There was a nice Christmas market in the town square and we ate some very good Spanish tapas. We went to Vienna a couple of times – beautiful city, nice architecture, nice cathedral, good food, etc. Note: I really hope we can do some sightseeing during warm weather; this traveling in the wintertime is getting old. I can’t really get excited about relaying our adventures when most of what I remember is how cold it was. But I recommend Vienna to anyone going to Austria. The coffee was the best I’ve had in Europe, not to mention the Sacher Cake at the Hotel Sacher. Would have loved to do the Sound of Music tour but that was in Salzburg and too far away for our limited time. We wanted to visit Prague and Budapest but Prague was a 5-hour train ride and Hungary was having a transportation strike (they must be related to the Italians who strike probably once a month – nothing major, just a little disruption to let everyone know they’re there I guess). All in all a fun trip but if we ever get to Prague it will be in the summertime!

We spent Christmas here in Rovigo and ate pizza at the Queen Elizabeth restaurant. For a town where most restaurants are closed most of the time, there was a surprising number of places open on Christmas night. And sorry to disappoint you Italian food fans – again – the pizza here leaves much to be desired. You might as well eat it with a fork and knife because when you pick up a piece, it’s so flimsy the sparse toppings slide right off. I have begun carrying crushed red peppers in my purse to add a little flavor.

After Christmas we flew to Charlotte (famous as the birthplace of Ashley) to visit Button, Miss Ellie, W, Betty, Al & Rose, and Lois. Had a fantastic time! Betty was kind enough to take us shopping everyday. We went to Walmart, the grocery store, and a real mall. And I got my hair cut and colored by a person that spoke English. A real treat! I may come back with hair down to the middle of my back because after Artichoke’s latest haircut, I’m really scared to go back to anyone here. We had proper food every single day in Charlotte and it was sheer heaven.

We came back to Rovigo to a snow-covered ‘wonderland’ and it stayed cold for the entire month of January. But things are looking up, we’ve had sun for about 3 weeks now and the ground is drying up from the months of rain. For some reason meteorologists are wildly inaccurate here. Romeo says if the forecast is gloomy, plan a picnic because that’s when the weather turns out to be the best.

Mid-January we traveled south to Ravenna, known as the mosaic city, to see the 5th & 6th century Byzantine churches/basilicas (picture of one on right) and Dante’s tomb. It’s 2 hours away by car or train – a nice town, much bigger than Rovigo and looked to have some nice shopping. The mosaics are really a must see, except for the one that Lonely Planet says is a must see. Part of the problem with sightseeing in Italy is they nickel and dime (more like 5 or 10 euro) you to death. The ‘must see’ cost 3 euros to get in and yes, it had pretty mosaics but after seeing all the others earlier, it just felt like a rip-off. I can’t report on the food because we waited until after 2 in the afternoon to look for a restaurant. When will we learn! So we headed to Ferrara, another town between Rovigo and Bologna. I may have reported in a past blog that we toured the town castle which is very much in tact and has a moat. But this time we walked around the town, visited the cathedral, which I must say is one of the nicest in the area, and tooled around until the Indian restaurant opened at 7:30 p.m. Ferrara proved to be much more than the castle, lots of people milling around, outdoor market/souvenir stands and a fabulous chocolate drink at La Bottega del Cioccolato. It reminds me of when Mama would try to make fudge. It’s a touch thinner version of the fudge right after it comes off the stove. Muy delicioso and served with a spoon!

And last but not least, we went to Venice to experience Carnivale (aka Mardi Gras). Given that it’s in Italy, people (Italians) taut it as the best in the world. Although it’s always nice to be in Venice and if any of you do come to Italy, Venice is a definite ‘must see’, Carnivale in the daytime was pretty tame compared to New Orleans. There were a lot of people walking around in Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) dressed up in pretty fabulous costumes - colorful, ornate, creative, beautiful. But their whole purpose was to pose for tourists taking pictures (see picture of Grey Bear in his Carnivale mask with a very colorful duck!). I’m sure it would have been fun to stay for the evening festivities but after 5 or 6 hours of walking around, we decided to head back to Rovigo before nightfall. Had we stayed we would have seen the Drag Queen Parade which was really the only thing on the schedule that caught my eye. I’m sure it was something to see.

Since Christmas we’ve had the pleasure of Anastasia, Randu, and Grey Bear here to entertain us and share our Italian experience. They have now left for Ismit, Turkey, just a little south of Istanbul and we wish them the best and really miss them. We also wish them to get a seaside resort apartment for when we visit them! If you want to read more about our Italian experiences in the words of Anastasia and Grey Bear, visit http://thegreybear.blogspot.com or http://thiscatsabroad.blogspot.com
Artichoke Heart and I are Grey Bear’s god bi-pedal attendants whom (or who?) he mentions with fondness on occasion.

Well, I’m going to finish now so you know we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Artichoke Heart is cooking hamburgers tonight and I just opened the bag of buns we found at the grocery store. We were pleasantly surprised to even find hamburger buns and unbelievably, with sesame seeds! When I opened the bag to toast the buns, I found that I had to cut them in two. It’s always something – although this was pretty minor. This week we are supposed to move into a new place. We haven’t signed anything yet so it’s not definite but 99% sure. I’ll write about the ‘finding a place to live’ experience in my next blog – remember, we will have been here 5 months and are just now able to find a suitable place to hang our hats…..

Ciao & Hasta Luego!

2008-12-15T14:10:00.009+01:00

Hi Everybody! I was hoping to write every week but I’ve discovered we don’t have an action-packed life after all - especially here in foggy Rovigo. The winter weather here is either foggy or rainy, but mostly rainy of late. We were told about the fog many times before we moved here and we’ve experienced it several times already. Today, however, was the worst we’ve seen. The visibility was less than 100 yards from morning to night. It was like a Dracula movie all day long – never saw the sun. We bumped into one of my technicians at the “mall” and he said it would be this way until March. I guess that’s why, when they don’t have very many modern conveniences here, they do have tanning salons. Go figure. And I haven’t seen a single tanned person yet. Speaking of the “mall”, we had our first McDonald’s hamburgers today. The burger was good but the French fries were just so-so. People in Italy are small, very small. Italian women are as skinny as French women. But if you want to find large ones---go to McDonalds. Funny how that works.

To update you on what we’ve been doing, we went to Venice last weekend for something other than Italian food. I may have mentioned it before but there is a Greek/Arab restaurant we love that serves tsatziki sauce, hummus, curry dishes….everything that’s not Italian. It’s our food-port-in-the-storm. If it weren’t for ruining our workout efforts, we’d probably go twice a week. Sad to say but Venice flooded the next day. I think they recover quickly, at least I hope so.

Milan was next on our travel itinerary. Milan is where the main office of Adriatic LNG is located and I had a meeting there on Thursday. (www.adriaticlng.it if you want to see why we’re here. Look at the photo gallery and you’ll see nice pictures of Spain and Gibraltar.) We took the train Wednesday afternoon for a relaxing 3 hour train ride. I tell ya’, that is the best way to travel. Texas should have passenger trains. I’d be more apt to visit Dallas, Fort Worth, or San Antonio more often if I could just hop on a train. Anyway, we went to dinner that night with 5 other Americans and 1 person from New Zealand who is also an American citizen. It was ‘America night’ at this restaurant and on ‘America night’ they serve hamburgers & french fries and show an English-speaking film. We didn’t watch the movie but thoroughly enjoyed the food. The next day Artichoke Heart hung out with Gary (married to my co-worker Debbie). It was Artichoke’s first trip to Milan so Gary showed him the Duomo, the cathedral in Milan which is very beautiful on the outside, maybe one of the prettiest we’ve seen on the outside but nothing close to the cathedrals in Spain on the inside (or maybe that’s my love for Spain coming out again.) He also saw a huge castle complete with a mote. I didn’t like Milan before we moved to Italy because it’s a big commercial city but after living in Rovigo, Milan is great. It’s the fashion capital of Italy and has tons of shopping and restaurants – exactly what Rovigo is missing. Word of warning though, it's very expensive.

On Saturday we went to Bologna for the second time. Artichoke, Romeo, Pierre, Jose, and I went for the day. Bologna is only an hour away, like Venice, so it’s a very easy day-trip. It’s a good place to shop. Advertised to have 40 km of porticos so even if it’s raining you can walk the city. It’s also good because I can find Clinique products there. It has your typical piazza (town square) with a church/cathedral. It’s also known as the culinary capital of Italy and we ate lunch – advertised as tavola calda or hot table – the meat was hot but I swear they don’t know how to keep vegetables warm in this country. For all of you who love Italian food, you’re going to be soooo disappointed if you come here. Please keep your expectations low. Back to Bologna though – many interesting things to see in a small area. Two towers that rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa as far as angle is concerned (also a must see, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that is). A small angel sitting on a Saint's sarcophogus sculpted by Michelangelo at the age of 19. A photo display, individual pictures, of the people killed in the resistance against Mussolini at the end of WWII. And the Anatomical Theater, a room from the 1700’s where medical students observed surgeons dissecting cadavers. Bologna is also home to one of the oldest universities in Europe and is well known for its gay community. Artichoke just reminded me of the Neptune fountain at the entrance of the piazza. Neptune is surrounded by 4 mermaids and guess where the water is coming from – their boobs. Something all the guys seem to appreciate. A cool looking fountain all in all.

We’re still going to the gym regularly and enjoying Antonino and Maurizio. The other day Maurizio asked me how we liked the food here. I said ‘cosi cosi’, which means so-so, I was being generous. I told him I like spicy – picante – food. So he immediately goes to Mamma’s kitchen (the gym is attached to their house) and brings back this jar of pickled peppers stuffed with olives. OMG – muy delicious! Muy picante! So the next day I told him how much we enjoyed them and he brought us another jar of them along with 2 kinds of jam and 2 other jars of pickled veggies. Such a nice guy, my favorite person here. Artichoke Heart and Antonino are pals, Antonino is a big baseball and New York Yankee fan. That’s almost unheard of here, most Europeans live and die by soccer (which they refer to as football. American football is referred to as American football.) Anyway, Artichoke and Antonino talk smack about baseball the entire time we’re at the gym. Mainly because that’s the only English Antonino knows and Lord knows Artichoke doesn’t know much Italian. He does have an uncanny knack of understanding Italian though.

So December 16 (tomorrow) is my last day of work for the year. On the 19th we go to Bratislava, Slovakia to rescue Anastasia, Randu, and Grey Bear, our friends from Spain. They were exiled to the Eastern Bloc after failing to teach Aldo to speak English and we’re spending a few days there before bringing them back with us to Rovigo for Christmas. We’ll get to see Vienna and maybe Prague and/or Budapest while we’re there. I’ve been told Prague is the prettiest city in the world – hope that applies in the dead of winter. Then on the 27th we’re off to North Carolina, USA!!!!!! Home of Walmart, TexMex food, hair salons where people speak English, the place where stores and restaurants are open all day long, you can eat dinner before 8 p.m., go to the grocery store or drugstore before work, at 2 in the morning, or on your lunch hour if you want, serve more than oil & vinegar for salad dressing, home of Outback, IHOP, Denny’s, HEB, Sam’s, Macy’s, Dillard’s, have it your way no matter where you are, etc, etc, etc. Americans, at a minimum, be thankful that you have a choice in everything you do. That’s what freedom is all about as I’ve learned since moving to Italy. And believe you me, it is not a world-wide luxury, it’s a privilege. But off my soapbox and back to our plans…We’ll spend New Year’s with Miss Ellie and Button, their bipedal attendants and friends Al & Rose, and all those white bears on the Christmas tree. Grey Bear, you would love it, Miss Ellie’s mom decorates her entire house with white bears – hey, maybe you can go with us! Talk it over with your bipedal attendants, Lord knows you need a break from those two, especially her. And anyway, they will be busy in Rovigo with It and Them and learning how to drive a stick shift. For those of you who don’t know Grey Bear, go to http://thegreybear.blogspot.com. You are sure to be educated and entertained. You can also access his blog by looking in the left margin under My Blog List and clicking on the link there.

I probably won’t blog again until 2009 and Artichoke and I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We wish we could be with all of our family and friends but it’s difficult to be everywhere at once. We’re grateful that our nephew Ben returned home safely from Afghanistan and nephew John is doing as well as can be expected in Iraq ( I assume this to be the case, Older Brother, a report would be great to have, please keep us informed.) I can’t wait to talk to them in person and learn about their experiences. Christmas should be fun with Coy, Will, & Dante. We wish we could be there to spoil them. We’re looking forward to Kaysie and David’s visit in the spring and wedding in the fall. It looks like we might be here longer than first expected so if anyone wants to plan a trip during the summer, it might be safe to do. If nothing else, Venice and Rome are must-sees and easy to do from Rovigo. Robin, if you and Alyssa want to do Paris, let me know when because we are definitely planning to go and it would be fun to do it with you two. I don’t recommend August because Italy/Europe shuts down in August – even more so than the rest of the year when they’re ‘open’. We’re hoping to be back state-side September/October latest. We definitely don’t want to spend 3 Thanksgivings and Christmases away from home. Please write and let us know how bad the economy is, all we know is what we hear on CNN International – and I never believe half of what I hear on the news. It’s really hard to believe that the US housing crunch has caused a worldwide economic disaster. Dan, how’s the real estate market treating you? Are we the only country that spends money?? People over here say “when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold”. I guess maybe that’s true.

Feliz Navidad!

Toasted slices of French bread

2008-11-12T16:02:00.010+01:00

I thought my first blog might have been a touch negative so I figure I should take the time to tell you the good things about Rovigo. Since most of my time is spent working, I’ll start there.

The Office: At any given time there are around 6 of us in the office. Me, Snap (my Italian sidekick), Romeo from Australia (comes by his name because he’s married to Juliet from Australia), Pierre from Canada, Jose the Carnivore from England (he lives in Mexico), Tex from Houston, Bugsy from Las Vegas, and Sophia from Italy. A fairly diverse group wouldn’t you say? Pierre, Jose, Tex, and Bugsy are really supposed to work offshore but because things aren’t running very smoothly out there yet, they have the pleasure of working here in Rovigo for a while. We never lack for conversation and have a great time learning about our cultural similarities and differences. I’d say the common theme among anyone not from North America is American Football….they don’t get it. Yet they do get soccer, and actually like it - go figure. And you should know they were all very interested in our recent election. Anyway, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with.

On top of that, the company pays for lunch! Yea, it’s an Italian thing, and I’m not complaining. Artichoke comes into town every day and has lunch with us (not paid by the company and that's him in the picture in the office.) So we’re one big happy family. Except Jose the Carnivore. But that’s a whole other blog about the food which won’t be included in this one since it doesn’t fall in the ‘good things about Rovigo’ category. I have purposely not used the more general description ‘good things about Italy’ for those of you who are sensitive about anything Italian. We did find good food in Bologna but so far, that’s it.

The Weather: We were fortunate for the month of October, before the end of daylight savings. The temperatures were warm, no wind, and we would frequently meet at the corner bar (coffee / pastry / sandwich shop – they are called bars here) after work for beer and potato chips. Comments on the beer also don’t fit in ‘good things about Rovigo’ (or Italy for that matter.) Once you’ve had beer in Spain………

The Train Station: Rovigo happens to be on a train line that can take you directly to Venice or Bologna in just under an hour. Fairly inexpensive, too. Rome is just 3½ hours away on the high speed train. We’ve been to both Venice and Bologna, well to Rome and Florence too but not by taking the train from Rovigo. So when all of you come to visit, you’ll have easy transport to any place you want to see in Italy and beyond.

The Wine: They sell it from the tap! In bottles also of course but it’s more fun to buy it this way. In Italian it's called Vino Sfuso or its plural form, Vini Sfusi. You bring in your own bottle, plastic water bottle or whatever, and they fill it up on the spot. If you don’t have your own bottle, they will provide one for free or you can pay up to 2 euros for a 5 liter glass jug. The wine is cheap, too, maximum price we’ve seen is 2.10 euros/liter. There are lots of wineries in this area but I must say, Tuscany wine is my favorite. If you ever see a Brunello di Montalcino, try it. A little pricey but good. I’m told the grapes for this wine are grown on only one hill in Italy. It was an Italian who told me that so I’m guessing one hill really means one region. Muy delicious. Also Nobile di Montepulciano. I think it's the oldest wine from Italy, dating back to the 700's.

Plants and Trees: The trees here are really beautiful. There is a wide variety of colors and types and now with the leaves changing, they are very pretty. Everyone puts flowers in their windows and yards and I do love flowers. Persimmon and pomegranate trees abound. And by the way, some of the farmers have planted what Artichoke says is winter wheat so there isn’t as much dirt anymore.

And last but definitely not least – The Gym: Artichoke and I have been trying to fight old age by going to the gym for cardio work and lifting weights. We started in Houston before we moved to Spain and kept it up in Spain. This doesn’t mean we look any better but we definitely feel better. And it gave us justification for all the beer, potato chips, and olives we ate in Spain. Not to mention the pizza and Thai food. But I digress; this isn’t about Spain is it? I miss Spain. Spain was almost perfect. It had good pizza, Thai, Indian, La Cabaña (my favorite restaurant), Mexican (believe it or not and luckily we didn’t find it until about 2 months before we moved), the place in the square that had good beer, olives, and garlic, the golf course that had good beer, potato chips, and olives. Again, I digress.

Ok, back to the gym. This place is probably less than 2 km from our casa as the crow flies. It takes less than 5 minutes to get there and we’re having so much fun! We’ve definitely raised the average age of gym-goers and we’re quite the novelty, not speaking Italian and all. But the best part-----we have a Personal Trainer for FREE! The first night we went, I swear he was afraid we would have a heart attack or something. He kept a close watch on our heart rate and wouldn’t let us do too much of anything. But we’re on our 3rd week and I think now we’re his personal challenge. He's trying to build up Artichoke's chest and reduce my butt. Good luck! I’ll call him Antonino. Anyway, Antonino and his brother Maurizio own the place. Maurizio speaks absolutely no English and Antonino speaks enough to get by so he’s teaching me us Italian and we’re helping him with his English. (Note: Artichoke’s Italian is better than his Spanish, bless his heart, he tries.) We're taking kick-boxing also and the Italian translation for it is feet-box. We're not very good at it so it may not last. We met Antonino and Maurizio’s mother the other night. She came in around 8:30 p.m. to workout – gotta be younger than us. They own a bakery where the boys work in the mornings and then they run the gym the rest of the day. They have even invited us to a ‘gym dinner’ in a couple of weeks and we’re definitely looking forward to it.

Well, I hope you’ve learned a little about our life here. I’m a firm believer that if you concentrate on the good, it will multiply. And if you concentrate on the bad, it will multiply. So I’m not going to concentrate on the fact that we don’t have an icemaker in our fridge and they don’t sell ice here; no caffeine-free diet cokes; no diet tonic; no internet at the casa; no decent malls (nothing even close to Dillards or Macys); no Bloody Mary Mix (like Spain) – and it’s not that I drink Bloody Mary’s, it’s just that we can't get it; no menus in English; no restaurants other than Italian (however I’m told Venice & Bologna do); no limes; no fritos; no hamburger buns; and they serve cold bread. We asked for warm bread last weekend and the waitress brought us toasted slices of French bread – cold toasted slices of French bread.

Ciao,

Snowflake

P.S. Coming soon... an account of the worst haircut experience in my entire life.....Linda, can you come to Italy?

Rovigo My Home

2008-11-06T13:56:00.003+01:00

I find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm when sharing our adventures in Rovigo. I hope that changes soon or else this blog will dwindle away to nothing before it even gets started. We've been here for 37 days and it looks like we'll be here for another 206 (if my math is correct that's until the end of May 2009. And when I put it that way, it really doesn't seem so long.)

Rovigo is located about 90 km (56 miles) southwest of Venice and about 50 km (31 miles) inland from the Adriatic Sea. It sits smack dab in the middle of flat farmland. Of course there is nothing planted this time of year so what you see is dirt, miles and miles of dirt. I'm not sure of the population but it's probably between 20 or 30,000.

Artichoke Heart and I wanted to find an apartment near the city center so we could jump right in to the bustling city life. Almost everyone here rides a bicycle so we were looking forward to filling our tires up and hitting the road (we shipped our bicycles from Houston but haven't ridden them yet - that's over a year.) Anyway, as luck would have it, we're living about 10 km (6 miles) from Rovigo. It's about a 20 minute drive to work instead of a 5 minute walk or bicycle ride. It's really ok for me because I'm at least in civilization M-F but Artichoke Heart finds it a tad bit isolated.

It and Them love it. ('It' is how some people (not people we like) refer to Frisco. 'Them' are the cats, Michael and Troy.) Anyway they do love it and since their happiness is of ultimate importance, that's where we will stay unless something better appears. The place is called an 'agriturismo' in Italy and is really just a very old estate with lots of trees and pretty surroundings. It is surrounded by empty corn fields and Artichoke Heart is teaching It how to chase pheasants and rabbits. I'm not happy about that but they don't do it in front of me. It also has a chicken coop with roosters, chickens, ducks, a big turkey, and 2 huge geese. It now has a new nickname, Chicken Chaser or CC for short, after we found him inside the chicken coop chasing the chickens. He is no longer allowed out without a leash.

I'm going to close for now and will resume at a later time. I'm new to blogging but I think it will be a great way to keep everyone informed. Keep this link in your Favorites so you can check back from time to time to see how our adventure in Rovigo is progressing......ciao