Jeff & Stacey, along with her sister, Erin and husband, Justin Bryant, arrived at Malpensa on Friday 11 March. Justin served a mission here about 10 years ago and they took the train for Milano, and we took Jeff & Stacey in our car, first to Sirmione, on the way to Verona and then Venice.
Stacey had her first Italian pizza at a restaurant facing the medieval castle that defines Sirmione, which is on a spit out on Lake Garda. She had a Margherita, named for a beloved Italian queen, FERT's wife, but not lover.
The castle is impressive.
.We toured ye olde castle, which had never been open when we have been here before.
One of the drawbridges leading into the fortress.
A view from the top of one of the towers. The weather was beautiful.
Looking down at the common area and public well, the only source of drinking water, although the lake all around is fresh water, and has lots of fish, which we have seen.
Then we went to "aah, Verona," and to get in we had to drive around one of the ancient Roman gates to the city.
We parked and walked to the colosseum (they built many of these ampitheaters), constructed by the Romans, where today they have productions, like Romeo and Juliet, alla Shakespeare.
Myrna, Jeff & Stacey went in. I chose to bask in the sun near the gate and watch people, which was fascinating. They said the inside was interesting. We hope to go to a production there someday.
Then we walked over to Juliet's (Giulietta in Italian) house, where love was definitely in the air.
And all over the walls (people write love notes everywhere)
And hang little paddle locks, with their names written on them, as this Muslim woman was doing.
And have their picture taken with this bronze of Juliet, located just below her famous balcony.
Where, you can go up to Juliet's house (for a fee) and hang out the very balcony, where Romeo called to her.
Nearby is an open market, with an ancient public well, where Juliet must have drawn her water.
The bells in this tower certainly awakened Juliet from her slumber.
There were frescoes, which have not been restored, on the tops of the houses around the market area.
And this guy was out walking his horse, no, it was a dog, one of the biggest I have ever seen. Then we drove to Mestre, a town on the land side of Venice, where we spent the night in a nice little hotel, where we are also staying with Mark this week. The next morning we went to Venice on the train, a €1.50, seven minute ride to the Santa Lucia Station.
From where we took a city bus (really a boat) down the Grand Canal, under the Rialto Bridge
To St. Mark's Square. The large structure to the right is the belltower.
You couldn't take back packs into St. Mark's, so I chose to sit with them outside on the risers they use for sidewalks when high tide floods the piazza, while they went inside the duomo and upon the roof. I enjoyed watching this ancient clock, as well as the tourists with their guides, speaking many languages.
I tried to take a pix right as the time changed, every 5 minutes. It was 11 am exactly, the 0 changed to 5, but quicker than I could take a pix of it.
I did take two pictures of this part of the clock, one right after the other.
But didn't notice until I got home and looked on the monitor that a pigeon flew by just as the shutter took the second picture. On the top of the clock the two very large bronze men bong the bell, and I did get excellent videos of that but, I don't know how to post videos. Myrna said that when they went into the duomo, the organ was playing, so, of course, I wish I had been inside at that time.
They did go up to the roof, and I got a good pix of them with the telephoto of my little camera.
Here they are up there, and I think they took a pix of me down below, but I haven't seen it yet.
Then we went to a little hole in the wall (literally) establishment where they were making fresh pasta and selling it in a box with your choice of sauces (sugo), a fork and napkin.
Here is the guy putting sugo, and a basil leaf, on mine and Myrna's. They didn't have anyplace to sit, so we sat on the steps of a bridge and had lunch with the two p's that Venezia has in abundance, people and pigeons.
We saw the gondola services and decided we needed a ride.
Actually €80 for six persons divides out to only 13.13 each, and we have paid more for other touristy things which didn't last a half hour, so we enjoyed listening to our gondolier, who said he didn't know how to sing, but didn't charge extra if we did, tell us about what we were seeing.
He was charming, and could steer the gondola with 6 people (not all featherweights) in it all at the same time. Those narrow, flat bottomed boats can tip over and dump people in the water, ask Brother Te Maari.
How would you like it if your house had barnacles? It was low tide during our ride.
We were all able to make it out of the gondola gracefully, thankfully.
The many shops sell many interesting things, like these green pistacchio cookies.
Jeffrey was pleased with this black licorice whip he bought, and we all ate. Italians actually like licorice and have lots of things made with it.
Jeffrey also, using his phone GPS, found this used book store, which was an adventure.
We bought a couple of aprons and enjoyed watching the girl sew, quickly and without a template, the names and sayings we wanted on them.
Venezia has lots of bell towers and clocks.
And people still hang their laundry out to dry.
Jeffrey was oogling the sausages, and especially the mortadella (bologna) in the window. It is the large round one with pieces of white fat, which Myrna dearly loves and reminds people it's name starts with morta (dead).
This is just a neighborhood street, taken from the little bridge, on the way back to the train station.
This is the Gesù church, the closest one to the train station, where I oogled the organ, which must work because I didn't see an electronic.
We drove home on Saturday night, after having dinner at the same Indian food, also kbop, restaurant in Mestre where we had dinner the night before (It was convenient, good and cheap--what more could you ask for.) On Sunday morning we went to stake conference, where the visiting authority was from Scotland and gave his talk in English, sort of. The stake president, in his Italian talk, said the food in his fridge calls to him. The seventy talked about the chocolate in his larder that calls to him (the translator didn't know the word for larder). Then we came home to our apartment, where we quickly fixed risotto alla Milanese (with saffron and Parmegano) and a Milanese (thin chicken breast dipped in egg and bread crumbs fried in butter, with lemon) for lunch, while Jeff and Stacey prepared their dinner (panini with sausages and cheese) to eat on the train ride (Freccia Rosa) to Rome later that evening.
We took the metro to the Duomo in Milano, where Jeff enjoyed feeding the pigeons some bread he left over from his panini.
We admired the immensity of the duomo. Jeff and Stacey also went on the roof, while Myrna and I watched the backpacks. (Jeff shocked Myrna by stealing his backpack she was guarding.)
We were able to go down under the altar to the crypt, to see the bones of St. Ambrose.
The very large stained glass windows behind the high altar are fascinating to me. I wish I could get up close enough to take pictures of each scene.
Samson sort of reminded me of Nephi
Baby Moses being pulled from the Niger (river)
The flight to Egypt by the holy family.
It is hard to hold my camera steady enough to get good pictures of the stained glass, the pictures are so high and are not really very bright.
From the outside one can see the roof, where Jeff and Stacey were walking around.
I could see people on the roof, from the ground level, but I didn't see Jeff and Stacey.
You could also see the Madonna on the highest spire of the duomo.
And they have a spare Madonna (same size as on the spire), in case she gets hit by lightening.
Walking through the world's oldest shopping center, to the other side, we saw the Opera Scala, the building to the left of the statue of Leonardo in the middle of the piazza.
Jeff and Stacey posed in front of the Scala.
In the middle of the mall there was a bride and groom posing for their wedding pix. Jeff said he didn't need good luck by planting his heel in the toro (Torino).
Out on the street, on the way to the Sforza Castle, was a guy (in the middle) dancing with two dummies.
And a spray painter, whose art reminded me of Dallin's paintings.
Inside the castle Jeff wanted to get a picture from the ground level.
I never saw his pictures, but I did take this one of him.
This is looking up.
I don't know whether they were doing ye olde castle jig or what. We then took them to the Centrale FS, the huge train station in Milano where Musolini is said to have lined up the engineers and conductors whose train was late and had them machine gunned down in front of everyone, which made future trains run on time in Italy.
Jeff & Stacey have gone to Rome and, on Monday, we made lunch for 30 missionaries at new missionary training at Cimiano, where I also gave my training on finance.
This is a pix of going back for thirds. Myrna made pulled chicken in barbecue sauce (Mormon kebap), with cheese, potato salad, carrot sticks, chips, brownies and ice cream, which they enjoy. We came home and caught up on our normal work because we are going to Florence tomorrow to get Jeff and Stacey. There is never a dull moment here.
Ciao for now.
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