Whirlwind through Northeast Italy

We drove from Reggio Emilia to Verona, where of course we had to see the famous Arena, and the more touristy Juliet's house, with her precious balcony.

The Arena was ancient and impressive. We wished we could have stayed, as they were getting ready for a presentation of L'Aida.


From Verona we breezed our way towards Venice, making one VERY IMPORTANT stop at a rest area known as an Autogrill. As children, my sister and I used to call these restaurants which cross over the highway as "hangovers", and were puzzled why our parents thought it was so funny. Now we know better.


Ah... Venezia! La Serenissima... the most serene... city on the lagoon. We spent two nights and one full glorious day in this unique beautiful city. We truly indulged in the luxury of Venice, from our hotel which was directly across the street from the water busses (and then only 15 minutes to San Marco), to a peaceful ride in a gondola, to our afternoon high tea in a restaurant opened in 1720 in Piazza San Marco, to the Baroque and Opera concert in the evening. A beautiful, perfect day!








The next morning we took some time to see the beach, get our feet wet, so we could at least say that we had touched the Adriatic Sea. Unfortunately that's all we had time for this time around.


For this leg of the trip, our timing seemed to be perfect. We arrived at the ferry boat just as a ferry was docking, and got on. When we arrived at the hotel, we got the last of only 3 parking spots (!!!!!) at the hotel. We saw ads for the concert and were able to get tickets the next morning, and got front row seats. On the way back, however, our timing seemed to falter. We got to the ferry boat and joined the line-up. Just as we were preparing ourselves for a one sailing wait (and enjoy a granita from the bar strategically placed at the head of the line), they asked for one more car. I don't know how they did it, but they squeezed us on, with barely a few centimeters to spare! I don't think Papa' would have like this one bit!


But it all worked out, and we were on our way to Pordenone.

To be continued...

Too good for words

This post is all about Parmigiano Reggiano and Aceto Balsamico, but it was all too good to put into words, so here are some pictures with captions. Some speak for themselves.

Mixing the curdles curds :-)

Testing the curds: are they ready?

An empty cheese cone, clean and ready for the next batch

A fresh Parmigiano form, pried loose from the bottom and raised to the surface. Each big vat makes two forms

Fresh cheese, receiving its name and date by compression from a plastic stamp inside the metal band

Stamped Parmigiani, soaking in a salt bath. Not quite the Dead Sea, but a cheese sea

Beautiful!

Can I take one home, please?

The cheese stretched all the way up to the high ceiling, and all the way down the long room. Each form must be washed individually once a week!


Maurizio, owner of the B&B Bosco del Fracasso, where we've been staying, showed us around his Acetaia. He explained the whole process to us, and let us taste different ages of aceto. It was yummy!

Stage 1: cooked grape must, allowed to ferment about 2 years

Young (3 years old) fermented must at the first stage of becoming vinegar, in old wine barrels

A series of vinegar barrels made from different woods. The smallest is the oldest (12 years), and as it gets depleted, it is refilled from the next biggest barrel, and so on, until the 3-year old vinegar makes its way down the line.

After all this, we had to buy some vinegar!

A castle of a day

On (what day was it, and does it really matter when you're on holidays?) ... a couple of days ago, we ventured up into the hills of southern Emilia Romagna (borders northern Tuscany) for some hopefully cooler air, and a view of some local castles.


Our first stop was an open-air market in a little town at the feet of the hills, called Traversetolo. The market was very large, but mostly made up of clothing and shoe vendors. Still very fun to walk through. We bought fruit and some sandwich fixings, then headed up into the hills.

UP, literally, by winding switch-backs on a very narrow track. Thankfully there was very little traffic coming the other way! We found the first castle, had our picnic, then took a tour. The view from up there was stunning, and well worth the breathtaking (literally) walk up from the parking area.



This castle was built starting in the 900's, and was a fortress for Matilde di Canossa from around 1046. Matilde, we found out, is a local historical celebrity, who at one time held power over a large area from Tuscany to southern Lombardia. The castle is largely undamaged, as it was built on very solid and enduring ancient lava bedrock. Some living accommodations were added in the 1300's for a family that took over the lands from the Catholic church, to whom the heirless Matilde had left her property.


We decided we had time for one more castle, so we ventured forth on the narrow track to the principal castle in Matilde's little empire, the castle at Canossa. This one is much more in ruins, a result of both violent attack (Matilde was apparently quite the despot), and natural erosion of the much less stable sedimentary rock.

This was a beautiful ruin, and we thoroughly enjoyed our little walk through time and history.

According to some very old documents, it was Matilde who gave the first recorded gift of balsamic vinegar to the visiting emperor Henry IV. Fitting, since this is the land of balsamic vinegar. More on that later, but it involves a visit to the balsamic production facility right here we're staying, and a surprisingly good taste test.

Back for more

Italy, that is! Kendra and I landed in Milano yesterday, after a long but very smooth trip. We just got back to our hotel from a busy but wonderful day in Milano, visiting the Duomo, the Castello Sforzesco, and four (count 'em - four) different bookstores. Or was it five? (Mondadori x 2, Ricordi MediaStore, FNAC - yep, 4. Oh, and the book fair just off the Piazza del Duomo). Our priorities are clear. Of course we also had to do a bit of a quality test on the gelato and granite available to tourists.

We also apparently were called out here to test their thunderstorm system. Let me tell you, it works great! At least we were already in the tram on our way home.

Tomorrow we're heading back into the city for a bit more Sforza stuff: castle tour and museums. Then off to Reggio Emilia for the next stage.

Elyssa and Amy, if you see this blog post, please let me know if your kitties have special names. I also have to tell you that they made a couple of friends today, who will be keeping them company for the rest of the trip. They may also make their way back to Canada with me. AND I made the acquaintance of two cats inside the Sforza castle today. I wonder what their story is, and if they know the Warrior code?

More later, and don't forget to check out Kendra's blog for more news along the way. Just follow the link on the sidebar.

Tears for Italy

L'Aquila and towns nearby, Abruzzo, Italy. I know, with the partial memory of a traumatized 4-year old, what this feels like. I pray for comfort and help for the survivors and the families of those who have been lost. I pray for wise decisions for support and rebuilding. And I cry for the tragedy that has once again rocked this little country, so dear to my heart.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, and yet I find myself coming back with a sad post. Sometimes these things are necessary.

Magic Kingdom or Disneyland?

Saturday... Magic Kingdom! Probably the park we've been the least excited about, only because we've both been to Disneyland, and expectations were high. We took it a bit easy in the morning, being the first morning in our non-Disney resort, with separate bedrooms, full kitchen, and even two sinks in the bathroom! Luxury indeed.





Ok, back to the park. First, it's huge. Even the parking is so far away from the park entrance that we had to take the Monorail to get there. We headed straight for Tomorrowland, towards our favourite (we thought) ride, Space Mountain. With Fastpass in hand, we looked around for other stuff to do. So we tried a Stitch ride (missable), a train ride around Tomorrowland (cool), and the Buzz Lightyear ride. This was a fun, interactive, video-game type ride, much like the Toy Story ride at Hollywood (hmm, could they be related?). I was losing big time (I guess the gun wasn't working), but then I must have hit something big because I jumped ahead of Kendra's already impressive score! I love these rides!

And the rain arrived. Oh well, by now we were resigned. And when it rains, it pours. Within a couple of minutes there was a river where there had been a walkway. We stayed dry as best we could, but c'est la vie!

Across the park to Pirates of the Caribbean, and here's where the comparison with Disneyland really took off. We were a little disappointed. Sure, Jack Sparrow is believable and makes the ride, but mostly because the rest was a little... boring. Not at all as we remembered it from Disneyland.

Time to use our Fastpass for Space Mountain, so back we trekked. And... another disappointment! No music on the ride? No dizzying, rotating tunnel to launch us into space? At this point I'm willing to entertain discussion on the relative merits of the two parks, at least with regards to these two rides. Any opinions out there?

We decided to drown our disappointment (not too difficult in this rain) in Fantasyland. Peter Pan, Snow White, and It's a Small World soon restored our park-hopping enthusiasm. Then it was back to Main Street for some shopping, and a ferry ride back to the parking lot.

To be continued... on Kendra's blog.

WDW 2008 - The rest of the week

Ok, where were we? If you've been reading both my blog and Kendra's, you'll know that our week so far was: Monday - Epcot; Tuesday - Downtown Disney; Wednesday - Hollywood Studios; Thursday - Epcot; and Friday - Epcot. Thursday and Friday we had been hoping for better weather, but Fay had other plans, turning herself into a depression, which basically meant lots of rain and not much else. So Epcot seemed the best plan. At least we had fun supper plans on Thursday. We were at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at a restaurant called Boma. In keeping with the African theme of the resort, the restaurant was a buffet extravaganza. Yummy, and again we ate too much.


Friday was the end of our stay at the Pop! Century. Which presented the opportunity to take pictures of all the fun stuff around the resort (between raindrops). I'll attach some pictures below. It also meant that we had one last day to: 1) finish 2 meals and 4 snacks each on the Dining Plan, 2) play a free round of minigolf, and 3) take advantage of Extra Magic Hours at Epcot. Which we proceeded to do. The minigolf was fun, even though we (of course) got rained on, and I managed to kill my umbrella (the saga of the umbrellas is worthy of its own post, so I won't get into that now). The food was abundant, even though we finished our last meal in the rain (huh!). And the Extra Magic Hours was fun. Epcot was open an extra 3 hours (till midnight) for all resort guests. We stayed and went on the Nemo ride for a second time, and Spaceship Earth (see Kendra's blog) for a 3rd time. That one may just end up being our favourite of all.


Ok, let's get to pictures.

Our building at the Pop! was fronted by a giant Baloo and Mowgli.

Also on the property, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head decided to stop for a chat with us, and were obliging enough to pause for a picture.

Fantasia Mini-golf. Very fun, good theme, but very very wet!

Back at Epcot, somewhere around Germany, we found Eeyore and Pooh! I think Pooh was a little jealous because I hugged Eeyore first, and told him he was my favourite. Eeyore is looking a little smug, isn't he?

These were our bracelets for extra hours on Friday night. We had to take the picture this way, because we couldn't get the bracelets off!

We're back!

On the internet, that is. One thing that WDW resorts have not caught up with in this century is free access to computers with internet. So we haven't been able to blog until we moved away from our lovely Pop Century resort.

We only have a few minutes left in our current session, so here are some pictures from our first two days in Orlando. We'll write more later, and give you all the lovely details of living with Fay.

Here's us leaving on the plane to Orlando! Ok, we're really not on this plane, but ours should have looked like this.


Vive le holiday! We just had to celebrate once we got to France. In Epcot's World Showcase, that is.

Our first supper on the Disney Dining Plan was at Restaurant Marrakesh in Morocco (Epcot version). Sorry the picture is upside down. We are quite a way down south, you know. And the computer we're working with doesn't have a lot of the modern conveniences. We'll fix it later.


Here's proof we were at Epcot! It's amazing! We are going to have a blast.

Speaking of blasting, Fay came blowing through here on Tuesday, so no parks and no pictures. What is a girl to do when it rains buckets and rivers? Go shopping, of course. Downtown Disney was only a short bus ride away, so away we went. And no, we can't tell you what we bought.

Here's a sneak preview of Wednesday at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We'll write more later.


The famous hat that Mickey wore as the Sorcerer's Apprentice sits near the entrance to Disney's Hollywood Studios.


The Hollywood Tower of Terror! A very good ride, a little scary, a lot of fun. Better than the Rockin' Rollercoaster, anyway.

Just before catching Fanstasmic (the fortunately NOT cancelled evening light show), we relived Beauty and the Beast on stage. Very fun!

And we ended the day with some fun! A walk through Andy's playroom on our way to the Toy Story Extravaganza! Basically a giant video game, where you shoot targets as the ride progresses. Who scored the most points? You'll just have to wonder about that one.

Never too many books

I love picture books! My collection is bursting out of its bookshelf, but I can always use more. I came across a website today, lookybook.com (thanks, Kris Abel), that may just satisfy my urge to collect more of these wonderful books. Maybe for a little while.

The site is worth a look, as it lets you take a look into each book. And not just a look! You can read through the whole book, save your favourites, and of course buy the books you really need to hold in your hands (Amazon is a dangerous invention!).

I've used my favourite from this site (so far) to showcase the website. Click on the pair of eyes to open this book on the lookybook site, or simply read it here in my blog.

Hmmm... I may just need to buy this book and its sequel, Poor Puppy.

Happy in Heaven

Dear Auntie MaryAnn,

I am so happy to know that you are now happy in heaven. No more pain, no more sadness, no more suffering, no more tears. No more sickness, no more death.
I will miss your warm welcome, your patience and permission for anything we wanted to do at your house. I will miss the addictive games on your computer. I will miss the always ready cup of tea and the yummy waffles with pudding. And I will miss your hugs.
One day we will be able to pick up again where we left off. I look forward to that day.