London Town

This weekend I was the lucky recipient of a four-day weekend with my parents in London. My mother's need to study milk close-up forced her to come all the way to my adopted continent! My parents have been in London for the past month and I caught them just at the end of their trip. As any tired, overworked daughter knows, time with parents is also known as face-stuffing time. This is something I definitely did.



Above is a photo of a "cream tea". This means, apparently, tea, a scone, a jar (!) of jam, and an entire teacup full of whipped (or as the English would have it, clotted) cream. I certainly didn't think I would eat it all, but I did. And it was great!



My parents had rented an apartment outside central London, near Hampstead Heath, and it was gorgeous. Plus, there was more fresh air and nature than I generally see on a daily basis in Bologna.



We also made sure to take in some tourist activities, like the London Eye. The London Eye is basically a ferris wheel made out of enclosed metal pods. But it's very big and very slow, and it's on the Thames, so you can look out over the river and all of London. Even though my own family members derided me for my cheesy touristy-ness, I'm glad we went. Thank you, Mom.



Of course, no big city trip would be complete without my most favorite cuisine. This weekend I had two Korean meals. This brings my grand London total to: FIVE. That is, I have eaten at five different Korean restaurants in London. I am very proud of this fact, not least because I have spent a grand total of 8 days there during the past 10 years. Below, my parents ponder the mysteries of Korean barbecue (their first).



And, especially exciting (Rosa), we went to a pub and had our very first English drinking experience together. One beer each - but being a family of lightweights, we still had to stumble out the door.



It was a really great trip. Thank you, parents.

Celebrations

Now it's Lent, but a few days ago it was carnevale time. This is actually not something that really affects Bologna, or me - especially now that I spent more time at my office than my home (including sleeping time, which is disturbing). But over the past couple weeks I've gotten a chance to see and experience some festivities, which has been nice.



Two weeks ago, Bologna had some kind of Saturday night party that involved an hour of fireworks in the main piazza. Something that I'm starting to realize in my old age is that I love fireworks. They have such a happy mood! And seeing them in Italy, in such a beautiful piazza, was just an added bonus. The show wasn't the obsessively choreographed American fireworks display that we see on the 4th of July, but it was terrific nonetheless - and it really went on for an hour with all kinds of sparkles and booms. The piazza filled up and people started spilling out into the surrounding streets - couples, people on bicycles (like me!), people on scooters (see the helmet, above), children, even buses had to stop because they couldn't get through. Everyone looked towards the sky. There was something really beautiful about the scene, as if the entire city had stopped to watch the show.



To continue with the happy times, I was reunited with two beloved (and much missed) coworkers last week for dinner. We went to a Sardinian restaurant where we were plied with wine and food, including pork stewed in milk, pickled thistles and ravioli cooked in red wine. It all sounds crazy, but everything was great. Letizia and Massimo, whom I hadn't seen since before Christmas, regaled us with tales of non-office life. Massimo then tried to set Letizia up with a friend of his who is currently embroiled in a messy relationship. There she is, talking to him on the phone. As far as I know they have not yet met. And below, me and Tiziano, absorbing our last glasses of wine.



However, all of this business pales in comparison to the real Carnevale, in Venice. Last weekend I made the trip with my roommate to join up with a group of more then ten Italians and Americans. This is basically the way it works: Venice becomes a party. The entire city. People are drinking and throwing confetti and running around in costumes - ALL OVER THE PLACE. (They're also peeing all over the place, because you can never find a bathroom when you need one.) The first photo of this post was taken in a piazza in Venice; they all looked like that. Everyone is crazy, and they're all happy to have their photo taken.



Here is a photo of Francesca and me, at the beginning of the night, around 7 pm. We are fresh and happy. Keep in mind that we spent the next NINE hours walking around a freezing city in February, facing wind and drizzle, sitting down for a total of maybe 15 minutes, and covering a total of 10 miles. Insanity. But, this photo was taken before all of that.



And here we are a bit later, with about half the group we were traveling with. I previously knew one of these people.



This is what everyone started to look like about halfway through the night.



And again.



WHO IS THE BOY ON THE RIGHT? No clue, but we saw him later on, repeatedly. Anyway, we departed from Venice at 4 am, exhausted and practically knock-kneed, to find that there were no more trains running. We had been told that there would be trains all night for the last saturday of Carnevale; like idiots, we believed this and never double-checked. Instead of crying in the station, we hopped on the last train leaving (for Mestre, a station about 10 minutes from the city of Venice). After disembarking, we continued to find, without a doubt, that there were no trains. But we had to get to Padova, to sleep at my friend Michela's house. So what did we do? We took a taxi from Venice to Padova! What a triumph. (And strangely enough, it was the same price as a train would've been. And as the Mastercard commercial says, the worth of NOT having to spend 3 hours in an open, freezing train station at the end of long night? PRICELESS.)



If only we'd had real costumes.