Awake ...1.29 am in Italy

I did the crime ... an Italian espresso at 5pm in Venice.   And although it was in celebration of finding our way out of the maze that is Venice, it seems I must do the time.  It's 1.29am and I'm still awake.  Wide awake!

Today has been all about leaving Trieste, then impulsively stopping for an hour or two of wandering through Venice, and driving on afterwards, another million miles towards Milan then Lake Como.

An impulsive couple of hours in Venice that became 4 hours when we were lost for a while on our way out of that ancient city. 

And Venice ...!!!  I'm not even sure how to write up the experience.  Not yet.  But tonight, once we found our way to Bellano, Italy, there was this dinner consisting of this divine smokey cheese, provided by our lovely Air B&B hostess, and a bottle of Italian red wine we had been carrying since Budapest.

Julie made herself pasta but it felt too late for me to be eating something so serious and anyway, I was still recovering from The Most Delicious pasta dinner I had ever tasted ... the previous evening, back in Trieste.  Something to do with mushrooms, a cream sauce, and pasta at Al Barattolo.

If you find yourself in Trieste, I can only tell you that you must eat at Al Barattolo because the food is divine. The house red wine is also delicious but that's a whole other story.

That said, tonight's pasta did inspire Julie to write up a blogpost about our roadtrip so far.  But our journey is almost done and tomorrow we're off to the airport.  I'm heading back to Antwerp while she's continuing on her long journey home, with Athens as her next destination.  

I will miss that cousin of mine after almost 2 months of living and traveling together.  We do have the most excellent adventures though.  Always.  Last time we wandered all over England, wondering about speed limits and road rules as we went, occasionally phoning home to seek wise counsel on these serious matters.

We drank wine with mercenaries on that journey.  I actually went through a stage where I met 3 different groups of them socially ... by chance and yes, I found it bizarre.  We also managed to accidentally walked out of a cafe without paying, realised, then found a branch of the same chain in another town over there, confessed, felt the love ... well actually, their surprise that we were so honest.  I think they might have been stunned but anyway, they'd written it off, much to our relief.  And so much more.  It's never sedate when we get together.

Anyway ... tonight finds us in a lovely Air B&B in Bellano in Italy.  It seems to be located on one of the arms of Lake Como, not Como itself though.  Everything we've viewed online tells us it's lovely however ...spending time lost in Venice complicated our arrival here and made us some hours late, in fact, after darkness had fallen.

The light was fading fast when we began driving the 50 minutes alongside Lake Como to Bellano.  Darkness AND there were masses of tunnels, some as much as 5kms long.  And while The Homer Tunnel experience in New Zealand last year, seems to have cured me of my previously intense dislike of tunnels, I wasn't the happiest creature when I realised we had driven an extra 16kms beyond our destination exit road, due to our troublesome GPS losing its satellite connection while in those very same very long tunnels.

But arriving here, meeting Laura - our lovely B&B hostess, settling in, drinking the last bottle of red wine Julie and I will share in a while ... somehow everything took on a rosy restropective glow and voila, we were happy again.

We are fortunate, it doesn't take much to right our sometimes wonky worlds.  Well ... I could have done without the whole 'sleepless in Bellano' thing but you wouldn't have this post and nor would you have this small glimpse of a scene I spotted in Venice.

Verona, Italy

It's been a freefall into life and people and adventures lately ...

A.  Free. Fall.

Sometimes I've found myself wondering if I might hit the wall, other times it has been about 'when' I would hit that wall.

And people.  It has been a festival of folk I adore, or folk I have come to adore. And family.  And everyone else too.

But tonight ... tonight finds me, in Verona, Italy, listening to Zucchero, Pavarotti, and Bocelli singing Miserere.  Introducing Julie to the music of Zucchero actually... because we need him in the car as we roadtrip tomorrow and because she confessed that, like me, she loves Pavarotti.

We ate dinner at Locandina Cappello tonight and matched a delicious pasta with a delightful red wine ... a Valpollicella Classico Superiore Ognisanti Bertani DOC.  I wouldn't mind finding some more of that particular red wine. 

You see we had wandered through the old city centre, in search of the perfect place to have our 'first night in Italy' dinner, and realised that we are really looking forward to wandering in tomorrow morning's first light.  It seems like a pretty city ... and while Genova has my heart and soul, it seems my head could be slightly turned by Verona.

Although that turn of head might be because of the kindness of strangers here.  You see, just before we arrived at our 'tricky to find anyway' destination, and after Julie had driven 201kms, our NEW GPS died.  For some reason it wasn't receiving a charge from the car's cigarette lighter ...despite me pressing it in there when we got the low battery warning.

So there we were, in the ancient part of the city ...without directions.

I saw a man walking along the street, and stopped him to ask for directions.  He turned on his phone, pulled up his GPS, frowned, sighed a little, and gave us a couple of options on locating this difficult to find street.  He apologised for the complications we would encounter.

We set off and ended up taking the most difficult option while managing to follow his spoken directions then we saw two young men walking along the street and we stopped so I could ask them if they could help a little. They turned on their phones, turned on their GPS function ... our street didn't come up  and they admitted that while they were studying in Verona, they weren't from Verona.

We 3 stopped a woman walking by ... as you do, gently and politely, and she had no English but the young men spoke with her.  I saw some head-shaking and heard muttering.  I asked if it was complicated and yes, I was told.  Very.  She apologised and left.

We drove on.  I saw a guy walking along the street and stopped him to ask.  We had parked the car by now. He was a local and said he was in no hurry to go home and that he would walk us there.  And he did.

But, of course, we had no street number and so it was that another kind stranger, seeing us looking confused and staring at our papers while talking to our rescuer, came out and asked if he might help.  But he wasn't sure either ... and then another neighbour came over, and she offered her advice, and then another neighbour.

And suddenly, just as we were wandering off to the viccolo with the same name, The Guy arrived and we were rescued. He took up up upstairs to this cute little student flat/summer Air B&B.  And here we are, after a delicious dinner in this ancient city ... the location of a story I studied so long ago, back home in New Zealand, never imagining that one day I might wander by Juliet's balcony while searching out a place for dinner, one September evening in 2013.

From Piedmont ...

The Beautiful Truth workshop in Piedmont was intense ... I'm only beginning to unpack everything that happened and to go through the images we all took there.

Intense in that way it is when like-minded women gather together.  As always, I met some truly superb people who made me laugh so hard sometimes ... other times, well I'll post a photograph of Sara, Sandy and Julie trying on shoes at the Market in Acqui Terme - cameras dangling over their shoulders.

But no, that made me smile too.  They were delicious and we're all still in touch.  In fact, Julie and Sara arrive at my place tomorrow, flying in from a quick trip to Portugal . 

In the image that follows ... Sara made us pause while she captured herself, Diana, and I in reflection while taking aperitivo in Acqui Terme.

I Am Here, Really.

I realise it has been a while since I've posted.

I've been so empty of words.

My cousin is staying.  I adore my cousin, she's family, and I've been trying to make the most of her being here before she heads off to the Southern Hemisphere.

But before she leaves ... there will be Verona, Trieste, Lake Blad, maybe Senj, Budapest, and Vienna if there's time.  Julie wanted to go wandering and it seemed like a very good idea.

There's a party coming up at our place, with 3 favourite friends staying over at the weekend.  And there's an attendance at a Gregorian Chant performance in a couple of days.  And the new Red Star Line Museum invited me in for a sneak preview this weekend.

I've been busy with ticking off my 'to-do' list.  Catching up on long overdue emails.  And I need to talk beer with these guys.  To write a blog post for the Loving Genova people ... because I do love Genova, just in case you had missed that fact about me.

I have sent previous photography workshop photographs to the lovely baker in Genova, and an English menu off to my favourite pizzeria in the world.  Photographs to the lovely Giulia, the results of asking if I might photograph her and her puppy while doing the aperitivo thing in Acqui Terme.

In-between times, I had the most incredible luck.  I found a novel set in one of the places I lived in New Zealand.  I've been reading that on the trams, in my bed, anyplace there's is space for a book.  I wrote home to Manapouri and Te Anau, asking old friends if the book was as good as it seemed, only to discover that people I knew, or their family, were used as character inspiration for the writer.

I loved the book.  I loved being home in New Zealand for the duration of the read.

Gert returns from Genova tomorrow.  He's had a week out of the madness and chaos of here,.  Actually he has been tormenting me a little, talking of temperatures I could barely imagine back here in Belgium, where autumn has arrived and I'm wearing boots and my polar fleece ... that is after weeks of glorious Italian sunshine and warmth.

I'm deep-cleaning the house, making sure all is ready for everyone and the weekend ahead.  Stories may follow ...

I wonder if I sensed something about the road ahead of me after the workshop.  I seem wary.  This photograph, taken by Sandy during the workshop in Acqui Terme ... is me, responding with that discomfort that comes when I realise I am the 'subject' rather than the photographer.

An 'ohmygoodness' moment I think.