Giannetta a Venizia

The post i worked on this AM  - flew off the computer so now i will send some photos and not spend time writing something that could just disappear - I preface the photos by saying that I'm trying hard - and it IS hard to take photos that are not cliches - however, in the evening when I look through the photos I've taken all i see are photos that I've already seen!   I'll keep at it -

Pete is in Boston. Janet is is Venice

This will be a test as there is no point in spending time writing if the blog does not go out to the people I'm sending it to!!      Whomever receives this test, I'd appreciate your sending me an email letting me know.  You don't need to respond to the blog.

Venice Sept - Oct 2011

We've now been here 5.5 whole days and they are just about now crowding each other out of my memory!
But - I can start with this very minute and work backwards:   I'm sitting on our little balcony enjoying a cool breeze after a hot hot day.  We bought sandwiches and with beer and wine we enjoyed a fine dinner here on our balcony - the 1stt time we've done this as all other nights we've been happy eating "out."   Today was a wandering day ending up at sunset at the Dogana - the point of the island just across from San Marco on one side and the island of San Georgio on the other.   It was the 1st time I took my good camera out.   I'll post some photos when i figure out how to do that - can't remember from the Rome blog!

Yesterday we took the train - 1.5 hours to Trieste.  It's a beautiful city set into a hllside with the main square - huge - a bit like Torino's Piazza San Carlo,  but overlooking the bay.   Again, it was VERY hot but be walked up a steep hill to visit a special church - through residential streets.  There is also an ancient Roman amphitheatre just at the base of the hill  - I have photos of it to post.   Trained back to Venice in time for dinner at 9.

Oh - yes, our apartment:   I'm adjusting to the funky parts and find it quite comfortable.  One enters from a narrow dark sort of alley-way just off a bustling square.  Up one flight to the door of the apt and then inside up another flight to the 1st floor which consists of bathroom tiled in RED and white with RED plastic toilet paper holder, soaps dishes, faucets, etc.  but it's a good size bathroom not only with places to put your "stuff" but a little clothes washing machine - we bought a packet of soap in a laundromat so Pete can wash his clotthes!  OK - bathroom and one VERY small BR with double bed and another comfortably sized BR which had twin beds before P and I made the twins be a double.  NOW up the next flight of stairs - totally open on one side w/o wall or railing (!) to the main room and little kitchen  - the balcony is off the kitchen...there is another balcony..smaller off the lower floor just outside the bathroom where one can pretend to be Italian and hang out laundry to dry!   Each floor has large windows that on on either side of the room so the place has a nice open feeling a lots of light.    The bathroom has a small tub with a hand- held shower thingy but...on the wall  right next to the toilet is a shower head - and as there is a drain in the floor I decided to try it out  - it's fine, but the next time I use it I'll put a plastic bag over the toilet so the seat doesn't get all wet...Yes, I closed the top but that didn't seem to do much to prevent the water from wetting the seat.       It's interesting:   our Rome apartment was dark and there was no place we could sit comfortable to eat so we rarely ate there.  On the other hand the owner was friendly and welcoming.   This apartment is far more comfortable in every way but I was handed a print-out telling me all things NOT to do and there are little sticky notes on at least 4 cupboard in the kitchen basically telling us not to open them..."private."   Of course I DID open all of them and discovered that there were NO treasures!   So other than the woman who owns the rental company and the young man who showed us to the apartment - both of whom are very nice and helpful, the feeling is that the owner is NOT friendly.   I'm not particularly bothered about it as I'm ignoring most of what is on the "don't do"  list.   One of the "don't do"  is "don't move the furniture."   SO with the young man's advice we moved the beds!   I also put a sheet for a tablecloth on the table outside where we ate as the table is dirty white plastic  - I'm very sure that would have been on the "don't do" list had she thought of it!

Venice is CROWDED with tourists - many German and French and  - Italian.

Day before yesterday - Sunday:

We went to the Arsenale portion of the Biennale. (there's another part we'll visit another day.   Most of the art is either incomprehensible or ugly huge constructions - also incomprehensible.   However, I got entranced watching a movie that was a series of fantastic movie clips, each with a reference to the time of day - and after a short while I realized that the time of day was exactly what time it actually was and that the referenced times in the movie clips were moving along at the same rate of time as my watch!  The movie clips were from old and newer movies - what mattered was that the time was either mentioned or one saw it on a clock that was part of the scene.   It turned out that this exhibit  won 1st prize for the most creative exhibit in the Bianniale.   When the prize was awarded the exhibit stayed open 24 hours for 3 days and one could reserve a block of time to watch it at any time, day or night.   It took 8 months to make the movie.

One of the reasons I enjoy the Bianniale is that being inside the enormous ship building structures and imagining what the Venetian naval fleet was like as they sailed the seas hundreds of years ago - bringing back booty from places like Constantinople - is exciting and those building where the ships were built is where the Bianniale is held.

Wednesday -  my computer will NOT read my card reader so until I  understand why I cannot send photos-

bye bye for today----

Pietro e Giannetta a San Francisco

March 10, 2010 -  San Francisco

Here we are and here we have been for 3 whole weeks - hardly seems possible.   I've put a calendar on the kitchen counter so that we can keep track of our busy schedule.  
This AM I bought tickets for Pete, my brother, my niece and me to a documentary we'll go to next week - "Playland at the Beach."    There must be hundreds of San Franciscans who grew up at Playland and are as excited as I am to see this film as the 7:00 showing is sold out.   On Sunday afternoons my father, arriving home 3 hours later than he'd promised asked "where would you like to go this afternoon?"   I always chose Playland  - the best cotton candy, the laughing lady, the l-o-n-g slides in the fun house...we sat on gunny sacks to gather more speed as we flew down the slide which ran from the top floor of the funhouse to the 1st level at a very steep pitch.   When I was too little to go on the "real" rides my mother put me in a little car that was attached to a track.  The cars moved very slowly around a small circle.  I FELL out of the car and cut my lip on the track...so much for safe rides designed for small children.
We've had some good times with our family:   a late dinner (9:00) at a terrific up-scale SF hip restaurant on Market St. last Saturday night to celebrate the birthdays of Charlotte (14!) and her close friend, Bianca, also 14.  Both families and Pete and I made 10 of us...Rosie was at a friend's.  
On March 3rd Pete and I joined in for pizza at Alison and Matt's house in Oakland where 8 small people (2 and 3 year olds) and their mommys and some daddys and a few baby brothers and baby sister sang happy birthday to Max.  It was great.  Max,  slightly overwhelmed by all those kids playing with HIS toys,  took himself into his room and closed his door and stayed there for about 5 minutes...then he emerged re-energized happy to be the birthday boy again.    I was impressed that there were no grown-ups involved in this...he's a sturdy little guy.
I'm worried I will loose the Italian I gained in Rome so I am taking 1 group class/week and another class with 1 other woman.  My teacher, Pia, is good.  I met her a number of years ago and have kept in touch.   One nice advantage is that both classes are very close to Suzie - I can walk to both classes  which are in the homes of her students here in Noe Valley.     
Re. Italian:  I'm making pasta!   I started a few weeks ago making it completely by hand and it was not very good...I'd made a spinach/ricotta ravioli.  I was talking about making pasta in my Italian class and Pia sent me an email offering me her pasta maker that her x-husband had purchased before he bought the BIG industrial one!    Now I have a wonderful Italian pasta maker...I make the dough and run it through the pasta maker..  The pasta I made 2 nights ago was perfect - thin and tasty.    Charlotte helped by running the sheets through the various cutting slots making a kind of angel hair pasta and a tagliatelli.  I'll send it home to myself when we leave SF in 3 weeks.
Time to get ready for another day in SF.  It's sunny but not very warm.

More photos - some Campo Dei Fiori which in Spring, Summer, Fall is filled with flowers.  At this time of year it becomes more of a clothes, veggies, and specialties - like packaged pastas, different kinds of pestos, etc.  open market.  It's open every day except Sunday from early AM until 2:00 - at 2:00 they pack up into motorized carts and off they go leaving a mess of pieces of foods and wrappers and such  that the clean-up truck takes care of - so by 4:00 the campo is clean and I think there might still be flower vendors at one end but for the most part one would never be aware of the early activity!

We can't keep up!  However, here are a few photos.  We decided to take the train (45 min) from the main train station, Termini, to Castel Gondolfo where Suzie's friend's brother owns an apartment and I'd been toying with the idea of renting the apartment.   I understand that Castel Gondolfo is lovely and I can see that it would have been if it were not SO cold and rainy I was frozen and actually surprised it wasn't snowing!  That's lake Albano behind the flower pot.  Castel Gondolfo is where the Pope hangs out in the summer.  The other two photos taken in Rome; rather typical scenes.

Off to Lucia's for dinner.  She makes a fantastic involtini - rolled beef.
Maybe we'll have time to write more.   We're gearing up for leaving on Tuesday.   I'll be sad to leave Rome but very happy to be in our house with WINDOWS.

Version da Pietro

We've seen a lot but the highpoint is the Italian people - when they aren't in their cars. Their interest in what you're saying, their facial expressions and genuine affection total up into substantial pleasure.

The view from the steep hill a short distance to the west of us - looking out over the center of Rome to the east and St. Peters to the north - is wonderful. We have inched our way along the Roman Forum, guide book in hand - with translucent pages showing both the original scene and the modern ruins - to the extent that we could visualize the old for ourselves. We also saw the ruins from the high up perspective of the museum on top of the hill just above. We visited a friend of Gretchen's in his attic apartment, stepping over diagonal beams to get into his tiny rooms. He's a historian, originally from Indiana, who's been in Rome for many years.

We had quite an experience in a restaurant in what was once the Jewish ghetto - we call it Gretchen in carcere, i.e., Gretchen in prison. At about 3:30, after lunch, the three of us, Janet, Jill and I, filed out leaving Gretchen to go to the bathroom, telling her we would meet her in the Portico d' Ottavia immediately outside. The solitary restaurant employee dutifully turned out the lights and rolled down the metal door cover since we were the last people in the restaurant. Gretchen stumbled around in a sort of rabbit warren of passageway in the dark. Finding the light by a window looking out at us she telephoned Janet. It took 40 minutes for a neighboring store owner to locate the employee during which we talked and made gestures to Gretchen through the glass. Very funny.

Art grows on you. The saints and popes become familiar people. I've never before seen a statue where the hand print of the man is left in the woman's waist.

We visited the Jewish synagogue and museum. The history is sad. The Jewish population of Rome, including Libyans, is only 14,000. It is, however, now an active and hopeful community. The visit a week ago of Pope Benedict to the synagogue won't make much difference. We heard that Pope Pius XII will still be sanctified. The Vatican is reportedly anxious about the Islamic movement and not about to antagonize groups they see as allies.

Pietro.