Italian highlights: Padua

Our next quick stop was to visit Padua. We couldn’t really see the town because it was covered in a blanket of fog. We went to St. Anthony’s Basilica where we looked at his teeth and voice box, which are considered relics. They’re behind glass in a chapel at the rear of the church. We formed a line and filed by them (they were gross). We walked around the church, looking at frescoes, sculptures and mosaics.




This statue represents the notion that death is the great equalizer: no matter how much good a person does during his lifetime, he is still going to die.



St. Anthony's teeth were in this case.



Mom and I walked around the cloister a little and then went to try to walk around Padua, which proved impossible. It was just too foggy outside. Instead, we went and got cornmeal (polenta) cookies. Mine had chocolate chips and mom’s had almonds. We ate them later on the bus as we approached Venice.

Italian highlights: Verona

We spent a few hours in the fictional setting for Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare never set foot in Verona, but tourists flock there to see Juliet’s balcony, which is in a courtyard. To enter, you first pass through a covered archway where people have written messages of love all over the walls.



Verona, much like Lugano and Como, was a maze of narrow streets filled with stores and decorated for Christmas. We went to a market in a plaza where I got a belt. We also ate lunch and then tried to walk around a little, but we ran out of time. The city was built along a river and the bridges are really picturesque, as were the hills off in the distance.

Italian highlights: Milan

I was really excited to see the Duomo in Milan. It’s the largest gothic church in Italy. Some of the stained-glass windows inside were blown out during WWII, but the it’s easy to see the old ones which remain and how they are different from the new replacement windows. The Milan duomo was really large and the outside was full of sculptures all around the building.



Mom and I actually went to the Duomo twice: once at night with some other women from the tour and again in the morning with the entire group. At night, we also went to the shopping neighborhood and window-shopped a bit. The streets were narrow and decorated for Christmas. Because Milan is such the fashion capital of Italy, we walked by places like Roberto Cavalli’s press office, which was cool to see. We could peek inside and actually see the clothing hanging on racks.




While the women we were with were much more interested in clothing. This was one of mom and my favorite windows. This Santa Claus is a cake!

The next morning, we returned to the Duomo and then went to the first mall in Italy which is open to the air, but covered by a glass domed ceiling. As we passed through we saw mosaics on the ceiling representing the continents and other ones on the floor representing Milan and Italy. Our last stop in Milan was the Teatro alla Scala, the opera house. We got to go into some boxes and see what it would look like if we were there watching a show. We also visited the museum in the opera house, which contained paintings of famous opera singers and program booklets from shows which opened at the theater.



In Milan, mom and I had one of our best meals in Italy: green gnocchi. Huge green (from spinach) potato dumplings with tomato sauce, capers and olives were delivered to our table on a large parmesan cracker. We also had a salad and some local wine.



Throughout Milan I noticed signs with speech-bubbles that said "peace" in different languages. They were stuck to billboards and advertisements. The first one I noticed was in Hebrew. It was like a public art project or mass-tagging effort. Actually you can go to this website (which was on the sticker). It's for a project on advertising causes like human rights and water scarcity. http://good50x70.org/2008/

Italian highlights: Como

Our next stop was Lake Como and the town of the same name. Here, we found another Christmas market. This time mom and I bought dried cranberries (!!!!), melon, kiwi and ginger. We also got some turrone (almond candy) for mom.



For lunch we had our first pizza in Itally. It had eggplant and zucchini on top and the crust was really thin.



We walked the narrow streets of Como stopping in a book store where mom looked at a knitting book. Then we spent some time looking at the lake and the surrounding mountains.

Italian highlights: Lugano

For the first full day of the tour, we went to Lugano, Switzerland. Yea it was pretty, but I’m still not sure why we went to Switzerland on our tour of Italy. Anyway, we got there and had a few hours to walk around this adorable town right on the banks of Lake Lugano. The streets were narrow and there was a Christmas market going on.



My mom and I shopped around a little bit, browsing at watches (for Joe) and buying soft pretzels, which I’ve been missing. Not that I really eat soft pretzels, but I love pretzels and they’re not that great in Spain (they barely exist).



mmm pretzels!

We tried to buy chocolates, but there was only one place in town and nothing really appealed to us. We walked along by the river for a while and took some pictures. We also stopped into a small church which had little carvings (they were one square foot each) on the wall representing the 14 stations of the cross.

....Internet!

blog hiatus will soon be over because today we got internet installed. we're not entirely sure how/why the guy figured it out today as opposed to before christmas or in november or october....but somehow he figured out a way to connect us to a hook-up box (ours is inside a construction site) and now we have internet.

so, the blog will soon be updated. pictures will soon be available. it's going to take me sometime because i took 2000 photos in italy and 375 in morocco. i'm also currently on internet overload. i have the new york times and bbc whenever i want them!!! i just downloaded bbc podcasts (and the washington post and npr)!! i'm so excited.

ok, back to pictures

What to do at 6am in a Milanese hostel

So, I woke u at 6am, got dressed inside my bed, brushed my teeth and decided to check my email before leaving the hostel. What I found was that my mother's plane was just off the coast of Greenland (or somewhere over there) and wouldn't land until 11am.

Rather than going back to sleep, I thought I would share my journal entry from last night...

After four hours of sleep (I was at a friend's apartment using the internet, then I showered and did laundry), I woke up, cleaned the apartment and walked to the bus station (via the snake path). The ride to Granada was uneventful; thankfully the screaming kid (seated directly behind me, of course) got off in Almedinilla, 10 km from Priego.

Once in Granada, I wandered around the Plaza Nueva area, where my roommates I and I had stayed in October. I wanted tea, but none of the teterias were open yet. While sitting in the sun, a friend called to say that he could have lunch (he was originally going to be home at his parent's house, but he stayed in Granada because he had things to finish up). We met at the Plaza and went for sushi. For lunch we shared spicy tuna rolls, Japanese pumpkin rolls, and a combo roll which contained eel, avocado, cucumber, and another kind of fish. Lunch was good, but I miss really good sushi that I eat at home.

After lunch, we walked around Granada's dead streets. Saturday before Christmas and no one was out. This may be partially because we were walking around during siesta hours. Then we went to his apartment so he could get his car. We drove to a shopping center because he needed a computer cable to hook up wifi at is parent's house. Then he took me to the tiny Granada-Jaen airport.

Luckily my bag only weighed 12.5kg because Ryanair has really strictluggage policies and many people had to open their bags, take stuff out and layer up. I am not joking.

My flight left late, which was unfortunate because that meant I got to the hostel late. Ryanair doesn't assign seats. You get in line inside the terminal, then walk to the plane where it's a free-for-all. Being me, I was first in the line (after the people who pay extra for priority boarding). I took the window seat of an exit row, which was more of a hassle than what it was worth. I was not allowed to have my bag under the seat in front of me, nor was I able to hold my jacket: it had to be on or in the overhead.

When we got to Bergamo (40km from Milan), I went straight to the bathroom in the baggage area. I walked out (2 minutes later) and my bag was already coming around the carousel (EXCITING!). I grabbed it and jumped on a bus headed for the central train station in Milan. I walked to my hostel at 11:30 at night with a pink floral LLBean duffel bag - not the smartest looking travel gear, left over from my late-high school/early-college years.

I had never seen a hostel room like this one. I booked a "four person mixed (gender) dorm." What I found was a room with two twin beds (thankfully one was mine) and a European double bed - two twins under the same big bedspread. It had a TV and private bathroom. I had to share the room with a Russian guy and two Greek guys (they got the cozy bed).

The hostel is also located right next to a sushi restaurant. I haven't seen sushi since I ate it in Sevilla in September. Today I've seen two sushi restaurants....Dorothy is definitely not in Priego (I mean Kansas) anymore.

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Ok, It's now 7:45am, maybe I'll head to the airport. I figure, I'm not going back to sleep, I've read the New York Times, parts of the Economist and BBC. I've typed my journal/blog entry and check both my email and facebook 10 times each.

Sure, my mom won't get in for another 3 hours, but the bus will take at least an hour and if I get tired, I'll just sleep at the airport - not like I haven't done that before....