Ulivi, yoga, sorgenti termali, pizza e la conversazione. Tutto bene in Italia.

Alright, now that I’ve properly vented about the atrocities of the Italian train system, I can tell you all about the lovely host we’re staying with.  The property is gigantic, she has a very successful veggie garden, a few (and by that I mean about 40) olive trees, and several houses.  It apparently used to be habited by monks many a year ago.  The host herself is a very wonderful, well versed and very well-traveled woman, I would guess in her 60s or 70s.  She has two sons that I am aware of, one who I will meet this weekend when he comes up from Naples (he spends his weekends here, but works there), and the other has been here with his wife and some others for a yoga seminar.  There are also four other HelpXers here, so it’s been considerably more social than our last host.  Not that her conversation was wonderful, but you have so many people to talk to here.

Our first day of work, we started with pruning olive trees.  If you know anything about olive trees, please don’t comment to tell me that I chose the wrong time to do this, because we know.  Basically, some of the trees (mainly the ones around the edges) have been a bit neglected for a year or two, and desperately need pruning.  Unfortunately, they’ve already started flowering, and once they start doing that, you can’t prune them any longer, for risk of preventing fruit (olives).  Well, it’s of a double edged sword though, because if we don’t prune them, they don’t fruit, but if we do prune them, the trees will go into shock and definitely won’t fruit.  I guess they’ve accepted the fact that they won’t be expecting many olives this season, and would rather prune them anyways rather than having loads of work next year.  I don’t blame them, but I must admit it’s quite grueling work.  Given the nature of the olive tree, the best branches make sort of an umbrella, so if you need to get to the base of the tree to cut out all the extra branches that are sprouting from the roots, you have a lot of bending over to do.

Last night they had an inauguration for a mosaic piece done for their big marble terrace, all a bunch of yoga business that I didn’t quite understand, but regardless it was beautifully done and made for a very enjoyable evening.  There were about forty or so people there, we met a nice soon to be med-school student from Ohio working at a B&B in a castle here in Rapolano, and enjoyed some songs by two of the people in the yoga seminars.  Wonderful voices, it was very lovely.

Yesterday started a bit more slowly, but with olive pruning again.  After that though, it very much turned into a lazy relaxing day for everyone.  The yoga seminar people and some helpers who wished to join did some meditation, another helper enjoyed a massage she won for figuring out the number of triangles and petals in the mosaic, and I just enjoyed the quiet.  Afterwards, a combination of us went to a natural hot spring, which was stinky with sulfur but very enjoyable, and then out for pizza.  It was really a very pleasant evening and I really needed it.  The day started with a bit of difficulty for me; I was tired for some reason, despite what I thought was enough sleep, and I wasn’t that enthusiastic about the work.  To be honest, I think I was feeling a bit homesick.  Enjoying some swimming, some pizza and some wonderful conversation really put me back into the swing of things, and I think I’ll be better for it today.  Unfortunately the yoga seminar people invited us to join in their yoga class this morning, but when my alarm went off I stretched out to release some tension in my back, and fell right back to sleep and missed it.  I’m a bit bummed, but alas, its not like I can’t do yoga by myself.

Also, a little side note: there are a lot of accents here at the moment, but a plentiful one is English.  I’ve begun thinking with a British accent.  Seems a bit silly, but I did start dreaming in French while we were in Nice, so I guess it’s not all that unheard of.  I hope I come home with a cool accent!

A volte devi solo punto. Parte II.

Alright, sorry for the long absence between Part 1 and Part 2, I’ve been unusually exhausted and busy planning for the rest of our summer and next fall.  But I’ll update you on all that later.  For now… where did I leave off?

Oh right, architecture.

So after gazing up at the extremely tall buildings long enough to make our necks hurt, we decided it was time to find the museum we were most interested in seeing.  We’re lucky it served as a double attraction too!  The Mole Antonelliana, one of Torino’s most popular tourist attractions, was the tallest masonry structure in Europe until recent years.  Its a very neat looking building, with a large dome like roof.  Nowadays, it houses the National Cinema Museum, naturally something my movie-buff boyfriend would enjoy.  There’s also an observation deck that you can take a lift to at the top of the building, but we opted not to.  Not that we wouldn’t have thoroughly enjoyed the view of the city from its tallest point, but the wait was nearly 3 hours long, and it wasn’t worth wasting our afternoon over.  So we settled for just seeing the museum.  For general film and cinema fans, we really enjoyed it.  The most interesting part of the museum was its archeology of cinema exhibit, which displayed some of the earliest attempts at animation, like Chinese shadow puppets, and hand shadows, all the way through Edison’s Kinetoscope and so on.  It was a really interesting place, and served as a break from the sun during the hottest part of the day.  That being said though, it was very warm in the museum.  I don’t suppose they thought they would need to air condition it.

After the museum, we decided we needed a snack, and decided to walk in the general direction of the Po River, where as expected, there was another piazza.  Only this one was filled with one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen: a chocolate festival.  Yes, ladies and gents (especially you ladies), a frickin’ chocolate festival.  Why do we not have these in the United States?!  Obviously, I couldn’t buy all the chocolate I set my eyes on, but we did find a few things.  The candy I decided to try were these little chocolate balls filled with limoncello.  I was completely excited about these, given how recently I’ve found out that I like limoncello.  I bought ten of them, took the first bite and loved it.  Jon took one too and said it was great.  The next seven however, were not limoncello.  A few of them were amaretto, a flavor Jon and I don’t care too much for, one that Jon got tasted like some sort of spicy olive oil, a few tasted of other liquors that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (these weren’t bad, but they weren’t limoncello either), and then the last one I had, I finally got another limoncello.  I was a little (okay very) disappointed, and so we set off to find something for Jon to get.  We found a stand that had slabs of chocolate with all sort of things in them, and noticed one with candied orange peels.  Yes, please!  He got some, and we actually made our little hunk last until the evening, since it was very rich.  Obviously, chocolate being as rich as it is, we needed something to drink, and found a little outside bar on the river and had a few bottles of water.

While sipping on our water we were confronted by the unfortunate truth of our exhaustion.  At this point, it was four in the afternoon, and we had been doing nothing but walking around in the sun for 6 hours.  We contemplated our options and decided to walk back through the piazzas to the Duomo, and then through the shopping districts to our hotel and rest up before dinner that evening.  It was either that, or fall asleep before dinner, which we’d been saving our money for all day long so we didn’t want to do that.  On our way back through Piazza Castello, we encountered a protest of sorts.  I took pictures of the signs and translated them when we got home, and all I can tell is that they’re upset about some sort of cultural ignorance and what not.  They were entertaining to say the least, and very loud.  After they got a little boring, we headed to the Duomo.

Now, I understand the significance of the Duomo di San Giovanni Battista (St. John the Baptist); its not only the largest church in Torino, but it also houses the ever so confidential Shroud of Turin.  It was beautiful, like most large important churches.  That being said, Jon and I once again felt underwhelmed.  Having seen the Cathedral in Sevilla, Spain (the 3rd largest in the world) , the National Cathedral in Washington DC, and Jon having seen the ceiling height of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, I’m confident that I have been spoiled.  I don’t think I’ll feel overwhelmed by a Cathedral until I visit the Vatican.  Regardless though, it was still beautiful.  Next to the Duomo was a little thing that showed an archeological find underneath it, and a little further away in front of the Antiquities Museum, there’s another archeological dig.  My goodness, I wonder what’s under Torino.

On our walk back to the hotel, we came across a guy beat-boxing.  At first it sounded really annoying, until I realized he was layering each level of the song right there in the street, and once it all came together it made a lot more sense.  I bought some freshly popped popcorn and enjoyed the little show.  Then we proceed to our hotel, drained from the day and eager for a nap.

Well, the nap didn’t exactly happen, anyone that knows Jon well knows that he can’t even think about shutting his eyes more than a blink without putting a movie on.  Unfortunately, it was a great movie, which resulted is no sleep.  But at least it could be counted as rest.  When the movie was over we freshened up and set out in search of dinner.

Oh, on our way to dinner, we saw a DeLorean.  How cool!?

We saw a place the night before that looked promising, due to the fact that it was full of locals, but when we got there we realized it wasn’t really a restaurant, just a bar that served some food.  I hadn’t fought my way through the market for a cheap lunch to have bar food for dinner.  So we walked down the street a little further and found a nice restaurant on the corner.  In Europe, they usually display their menus outside, so we consulted it, noticed it was completely in Italian and basically came to the conclusion that we’ll have that problem everywhere, we may just have to cross our fingers, point, and hope for the best.  Well, to our pleasant surprise, when we were handed the menu it had an English version inside.  We consulted it, ordered a drink, two courses, and were given a free aperitif on the house.  Jon’s first second course choice wasn’t available anymore, so when he was put on the spot to pick something else, he saw a meat with some sort of blueberry sauce, pointed and said I’ll have that.  So much for taking advantage of the English menu, because we had no clue what he was getting.

The first course came out, along with our drinks, and we both ordered a cheese gnochi with a Muscato wine reduction.  The wine was in a separate little bowl and you dunked each bite in the wine before eating.  Best finishing touch ever.  We decided we have to try to recreate it when we get home.  Our main course came and we realized that Jon ordered something quite delicious.  It was a region specific beef, of which the name fails me, but it was extremely tender, and went quite nicely with blueberries.  The fact that we were in Italy meant this meal took about three hours, they move very slow there, but not in the “my service really sucks” kind of way.  They just enjoy every possible second of life to the fullest, enjoy every last bite and drop of wine like it could be their last, and every conversation as if its the only thing in the world at that moment.  Its really a nice way to live, only we were growing more tired by the second.  We had planned to take some night photography shots after dinner, but by the time we finally left, all we wanted to do was sleep.  We practically had to hold each other up on our walk home, but that didn’t stop us from getting one last thing of gelato for dessert.  When we got back to the hotel, we pretty much fell asleep before our heads even hit the pillow.

Our 6:30 alarm came a lot quicker than we’d expected.  At the time, we hadn’t realized that it was because Jon’s phone had changed times for Daylights Saving Time, and therefore we lost an hour of our precious sleep.  It wasn’t until after we checked out of the hotel and arrived to the train station that we figured this out.  However, when we did arrive we were met by the horrors of the Italian train system.  Our train’s time had changed by 30 minutes, and not the in the preferred direction.  We were supposed to have a 7:30 train out of Torino, but all the boards said 8:00.  After doing some mental math and consulting the times we had written down for a second train, we realized that this would get us to our next train station 45 minutes after the train left, because not only was it 30 minutes later, but it was taking a different route, that already took longer.  So, not really having many options, we hopped on the train, very tired, very frustrated, and at least I was very worried.

This train wasn’t as comfortable as the last, but it wasn’t awful.  I did my best to sleep the whole time, since the grey skies didn’t make for good sightseeing.  When we arrived at our next train station, it was raining, and I was worried.  After consulting the boards on the platforms, we grew quite frustrated because apparently zero trains go to France, only we knew that couldn’t be the case.  Thankfully, while walking to the information desk we saw a screen inside the station with all the French train times.  I think the could have at least had this information on the platforms, heaven forbid I had 10 minutes to transfer and missed it because I was looking for the screen to tell me where to go.  Well, our next train was about an hour away; we got some pizza, another thing of gelato, and waited ever so impatiently, dozing off every time we  sat in one position longer than a few minutes.

I don’t remember much about our last train home, or our walk to our apartment.  When we got home, our family greeted us, and Nicolas decided that he was going to bug me endlessly to play with him, despite the fact that he saw me with my hands full.  After much frustration trying to figure out what to say to a French 3 year old without upsetting him to the point of screaming, of his parents hating me, I blurted out “Je ne peux pas jouer maintenant, je suis fatiquee!” He proceed to bang on our door for a few minutes, all without his parents caring or noticing.  Not exactly my idea of a nice “welcome home”.

All and all, I’d say it was a learning experience.  I did enjoy Torino; I think its a beautiful city, the food is wonderful (and cheap!), and if I had the time or money to do any shopping, I definitely had my fair share of options.  There’s a lot of history, a lot to see, and a lot of gelato to be eaten.  Given that trains will be our main form of transportation for the second part of our trip, I’m not looking forward to getting on another one.  I hope every other countries’ train systems are better than Italy’s.

Well, you know what comes next.  Pictures!

The National Cinema Museum

And the top since its too tall to fit in one picture.

Oh you know, just some masks.

And just a lion.

The ceiling in the NCM

Just some film physics.

These are very popular in Europe. I think it needs to catch on in the US

Mmmm… Chocolate.

Po River

Us by the Po River

One of the better statue men of the day.

Protest

Protest

Protest

Protest

The Duomo

Inside the Duomo

Inside the Duomo

Candles in the Duomo

The Last Supper above the entrance

Flowers left in the Duomo

Pretty light

Some archeological find under the Duomo

An archeological dig outside of the Antiquities Museum

Beatboxer.

The DeLorean

I wonder if it can still hit 88 miles per hour.

La mozzarella è migliore in Italia: Parta Prima

Since I know very little Italian, I hope Google Translate doesn’t fail me this time! But hey! Look to the right! I finally got to use a different category!

I’ve been some what dreading this post, simply due to the magnitude of information and experiences I feel the need to share with you.  I learned a lot in a very fast three-day period of time, some good and some not so good.  Regardless, it must be said, so I’ll do so in parts.  Here goes nothing…

First let me say, I don’t think trains will become my preferred method of travel any time soon.  Especially in Italy.  This was my first time riding a train, and I found the whole process to be extremely unorganized.  I can’t exactly figure out why a more efficient and organized system can’t be implemented, because I thought of several things that would help just waiting for our first train.  I think it just boils down to the Southern European mentality.  Why bother?  It works just fine.  Except when it doesn’t.  I’ll get to that later though.

I will say that riding a train through the mountains in Italy had its ups.  Literally, my ears were popping like crazy.  Haha.  But in all seriousness, the views were spectacular.  At one point we were high enough that we got to a little mountain town just covered in snow.  It was beautiful, and for a few moments I seriously wished we had gotten off the train there.  Also, unlike in a car, I was able to read comfortably without feeling sick to my stomach after a few paragraphs, which made the nearly 5 hour train ride a little less annoying.

Once we arrived in Torino, we found that our hotel was much closer to the train station than we had originally anticipated.  We also found out that 3 stars must not have the same meaning in Europe that it does  in the United States.  The reviews we read promised that someone at the desk always spoke English, which we found to be untrue, that there was a good continental breakfast, which their wasn’t, and that the rooms were nice.  The room really wasn’t bad, just extremely small.  Not a huge deal, since our plans didn’t include staying in the hotel all day anyway, but we definitely didn’t feel like it was worth what we spent on it.  But alas, in Torino, all lodging is expensive, especially in the center of town.  If we wanted cheaper, we would have had to stay 10 miles or so out of the city’s center, which is quite difficult when you don’t have a car.

After we settled in and relaxed for a few minutes, we set out to try and find some pizza.  I’ve decided, after visiting Italy, that there is just no justifiable reason for Chicago style pizza.  Italians eat it like the New Yorkers do, and it will always be my favorite.  It was simple, and delicious.  We followed this with some real Italian gelato (which tastes pretty much just like any other gelato, but thats not to say it wasn’t delicious) and a walk to do some exploring.  We found a lot of what we planned on further investigating the next day, and bought a map of the city with all the popular tourist attractions marked on it.  It was actually kind of cool- they had those “You are here” maps in a few places, and on the side of the case it was in had a thing where you put 50 cents in and you get the same map that was displayed.  50 cents well spent, because it had everything, and in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German.  We headed back to the hotel a little earlier than we probably would have normally so we could get some proper sleep for the following day.

I have to gloat a little, because I’m proud of the fact that not only did I manage to get up and out of the hotel by 10 AM, but I also managed to shower, put make up on and straighten my hair.  Usually when I try to leave the house that early, I only manage to get the first done.  But the Italians are quite fashionable, I couldn’t let a lazy appearance scream “I’m a tourist” any more than my freckles already were.  I even remembered to bring and wear my contacts so I could actually wear my sunglasses, that I actually remembered to bring.  I was feeling quite organized.

On our handy little map, we saw a market just past the Duomo.  It being a Saturday, we figured that would be the perfect place to start.  After frequent stopping to take pictures of things (we were easily distracted), we arrived around lunch time and the market was thriving.  I’ve nicknamed it “The War Zone” because it is serious there.  Crazy even, but totally exhilarating.  Since we did arrive later than we’d hoped, we decided to buy some bread, some cured sausage (closer to a salami maybe, or those summer sausages that are popular around the holidays, but obviously much better), some fresh mozzarella di buffalo, a bottle of Sprite, an orange, and some beautiful little tomatoes.  We ended up with (on accident of course) about 4 people’s worth of food, all for under 12€.  Food is really pretty inexpensive in Italy, and since a small town close to Torino serves as the home office to the Slow Food Movement, it was all incredibly delicious.  We found a nice little place to sit down and enjoy “the goods” and then ended up giving the rest away to a homeless lady we saw with a baby on our way to the market.  It would have gone bad on such a warm day in my purse, or been smushed.   Good food, and good karma.  Yes, please.

Everything in Torino just seemed huge.  The plazas (called piazzas in Italian) were much bigger than any I’ve seen in France, and flanked by gigantic, ancient buildings on all sides.  This I found a little overwhelming, but in a good way.  I also wasn’t all that surprised (and neither was Jon) by the sights simply because of how over-taught Roman architecture is in most European history courses.  This didn’t make it any less beautiful of course, but I felt like I wasn’t seeing it for the first time.  I did enjoy seeing the sort of buildings that modern architecture was based on though.  I find architecture extremely interesting, and if I had any talent with a pencil I may have considered majoring in it, but alas, my Uncle Jay will have to remain the family architect for now.  All that being said, Torino really was beautiful, and considerably cleaner than France.  It had the same little silly trash (like cigarette butts and small pieces of paper and such) that most big cities have, but not in excess, and they didn’t leave their dogs poo in the streets.  It was nice to look up while I walked for a change.  I’ve always known the Italians to be proud (proven by the abundance of Italian flags, even though this may have been because they’re currently celebrating their 150th birthday), so the fact that it was cleaner than France didn’t surprise me.  It was refreshing, to say the least.

To be continued… (but not without some pictures!)

Torino Porta Nuova. The biggest train station I’ve ever seen.

My first gelato

Jon’s first gelato

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The goods.

The yummy little sandwiches we made.

This is what we ate next to. Where else?

And the view just behind us.

The Civic Museum of Ancient Art in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture. & See, a bunch of Italian flags!

Roman Architecture.

Royal Palace in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture.

Roman Architecture.

Us in Piazza San Carlo

Bienvenue à Monaco

So after a somewhat rough start this morning, complete with minor bickering about the time, I forfeited sleeping in for a windy bus along the coast to Monaco.  Okay, I wouldn’t say forfeit, though the bus ride wasn’t entirely pleasant.  I can deal with bus rides, I can deal with car rides through windy roads, however I cannot deal with bus rides through windy roads.  At least not well.  So after finally getting off the bus and breathing in the cool, clean beautiful air of Monaco, and a quick lunch of Margarita pizza and tomato mozzarella salad on the beautiful Rue Princesse Caroline (thats right, I knew I was a princess!) I was feeling much better.

Now, let me answer the obvious questions: No, I didn’t see any of the Royal Family, or where they lived, and I did not set foot in the Monte Carlo Casino (but I did find it).  However, I did walk the ENTIRE route of the Monaco Grand Prix.  For all my car crazed buddies, be jealous.  Jon was really quite fun to watch.  His face would light up like he’s driven this course a thousand times, and got so excited every time we got to a particularly crazy turn, and just had to take the time to explain how the race would go through each of them.  Okay, I don’t mean that like I wasn’t enjoying it, because I was.  Of all the crazy obsession this boy could have, cars and races is a pretty good one.  That is essentially the whole reason for this trip to Monaco.  There will definitely be more though.

Just like we’ve been doing in Nice, we did a TON of walking.  Only the streets of Monaco are so much nicer than Nice.  I feel its unfair to compare the two though.  Nice is a very old resort town of France, right on the Mediterranean that has history dating back to the Greek Empire.  Monaco, on the other hand, is a microstate that I would describe as the European Las Vegas; a beautiful, expensive, constitutional monarchy that has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi for the past 7+ centuries, and could cost you nearly $2,000 a night just in hotel costs should you decide to vacation there.  You see why these two are incomparable- two completely separate and unique sorts of beautiful.  All that being said, I did thoroughly enjoy not having to watch my every step for dog doo.

Just as entertaining as seeing Jon describe the race was when he would see a particularly bad ass car.  I think in order to live in Monaco, you have to spend at least $250,000 on your car.  Amongst all the rather impressive Maserati’s, Porsche’s, Lamborghini’s, and a few of the new bagillion dollar Rolls Royce’s, we did see two rather impressive Ferrari’s.  These would have to be impressive to get Jon’s attention, since he generally doesn’t like Ferrari on principle, and boy were they.  The one I got pictures of was the Ferrari 599 GTO.  Apparently called the 599 because thats how many they made, and has a 5.99 liter engine, but other than that, I don’t know why its so impressive.  I keep up with his car obsession enough to know when something is impressive, but not enough to know why.  The other one, I failed to get pictures of, but was the Ferrari 458 Italia, which is apparently their new hyper car.  It was pretty, nevertheless.

Just as impressive as the cars were the yachts.  I’ve decided that my new goal in life is to own a yacht.  I WILL!  Okay, maybe not, since these were the types of yachts you only owned because you’ve grown up in that sort of wealth, but I will damn sure try!

Oh, and I got to feed some ducks.  I bought a bottle of wine for €4,35 (or $5.88) and some bread to go with it (that I’m currently enjoying, yum).  And I realized that I need a different coat.  Its just warm enough here that its too hot with my coat on, but too cold without it.  Its sort of frustrating, so I’ll be scoping the mall on Monday when everything opens back up (because it closes down on Sunday). C’est la vie.

I fell asleep on the bus ride home, which is probably for the best.  Came home and passed out until dinnertime.

And there you have it.  Monaco.  We’re definitely going back with a better itinerary.  I want to check out the museums and find the Prince’s Palace.  I saw what I thought might be it, but whether it is or isn’t, I still want to see what it was.  I think I know what our Saturdays from here on out will consist of: bus trips out of Nice.

Alright, here’s the pictures I took today.  I felt like such a tourist, I don’t find them all that aesthetically pleasing, but everyone who knew we were going to Monaco insisted I take a ton of pictures, so here you are!

See! I knew I was a princess! :)

This tasted just like the Cola Cao I would have in Spain! Nostalgia-gasm!

Tomato mozzarella salad.

Margarita pizza!

The view of Rue Princesse Caroline, where we dined.

Beautiful Monaco

I thought the blue tiled roof was really neat.

Bridge, church, and some Grand Prix statue.

Jon’s “My New Haircut” pose.

This is Sea Force One. I want it.

Mountain view

I don’t know what this building is, but I liked it.

I don’t know what kind of car this is, but I thought it was awesome too.

I had to find out what this building was.

So I got right up next to it and still couldn’t figure it out.

Then after deciding we weren’t going to bother figuring it out anymore, we found the sign!

Oh hi, random cliff hanging apartment building!

Jon said they valeted these cars out front on purpose. Gee, maybe because its the hotel across from the casino?

Ferrari 599 GTO from the front.

Ferrari 599 GTO from the rear.

The famous Monte Carlo Casino

Coolest entrance ever.

DUCKIES!

Awful, blurry picture, but the GP has a tunnel in its circuit that goes right under this hotel.

Beautiful blue water.

I’m determined to go sailing in the Med while I’m here.

Even the rocks are pretty in Monaco.

This was docked a few boats away from Sea Force One. I want it too.

Buildings, building, OH HIYA CLIFF!

View of the harbour.

This is possibly the Prince’s Palace, or just an old castle sort of thing. Either way, I’ll figure it out.

I had to get a picture of us together, no matter how awful and tired we look.