Home sick

Now that I'm all caught up on our trip to Italy, you can see that we didn't really do much during the week because we have all been sick - falling like dominoes. On Wednesday S wasn't feeling well. I gave her some tylenol and sent her to school anyway. The littles and I went to the farmer's market but were home by lunch time. I wanted S to have the option of staying home if she felt worse. She was better, though, and went back to school. Wednesday night L's little cold turned into horrible congestion. She woke me up several times with her snoring. She slept almost all day Thursday and was still pretty sluggish on Friday. E was sick Saturday morning but refused to stay home from Herbstmesse. R and I started feeling bad during the day. Sunday we all stayed home and close to bed. Today R is home from school, and I am just a little better. E is sick but back at work.

The girls wonder if we caught this in Italy because it was so startlingly dirty there compared to here. I think we probably did, though not because of the dirt. In the past someone has always gotten sick when we travel to other countries, no matter what we do. I was just thinking a couple of weeks ago that it was surprising and lucky that no one was sick in the transition to Switzerland.

I am missing the US a little bit. It would be nice to be able to run (drive!) out anytime for cheap decongestant and sick supplies, and it would be great to have ramen or take-out and not have to cook!

Basel Herbstmesse

This guy looks really excited about Herbstmesse! He's celebrating because it is Basel's annual two week long fall festival. There are food, rides, and games in about eight different squares around town and another street full of Christmas market style huts selling crafts. I really wanted a lambskin and an advent calendar, but I refrained.

My computer keeps trying to erase that guy. Maybe because it knows I have overruled the rest of the family by including him in the blog. But he is a perfect example of the theme of this post - the difference between American and Swiss festivals. He is painted on the side of one of the ride trailers, which means that occasionally he can be seen rolling down the highway, looking like he is riding that eagle at full speed. I don't think he'd go over so well in parts of the U.S. Things like this always make me think of the comissioned artist and how they felt about the gig.

Some foods are the same, like hotdogs, kettle corn, and cotton candy. But they are subtley different. The hot dog is just one of many sausage choices and is in a hard roll surrounding it like a tunnel. The kettle corn is in a little bag, none of the nearly trash bag sized ones we see in the U.S. And the cotton candy has a nicer texture for some reason. Other foods are just different: a crepe stand, raclette (melted cheese served with potatoes, onions, and pickles for dipping), decorated gingerbread hearts, and - most different - a stand serving tiny quiches and tarts. Notice in the picture the chef's hat on the vendor and down on the side a bowl with iced wine.

Castle

L patrolling the castle

When we woke up in the morning T wasn't feeling well. We suspected an infection, and E took him to the hospital for antibiotics. We'll see how much that ends up costing. He took L, too, since the stroller situation makes them travel as a set.

The girls and I wandered around Lugano while we waited. It isn't the prettiest city aside from the lake view, but it was still very nice to walk around together. Since it was Saturday there were lots of people around and little street stands set up. Of course, there were roasted chestnuts. Chestnuts smell so good when they are roasting! The aroma just travels the whole street, and every time I am tempted to buy some, thinking they smell so good it can't really be that none of us could choke down even one. We also saw a man who was making a marionette play a string instrument and a polenta stand. It was kind of like a chestnut stand, with a big steel drum-like cooker, except it was full of polenta. Also, in a little plaza there was a jet. I couldn't have been easy getting that in there.

The chestnut vendor was so busy S could hardly get a picture.

But he was ready - look at those huge bags of supplies.

The girls and I went to H&M to get some leggings for L. All our clothes were dirty at this point in the trip, but L had fared worst. We bought her a dress at the farmer's market in Orvieto and she needed something for her legs. While we were there we found a super cute lace dress for R for Christmas and whatever else comes up before she outgrows it. It is her first adult sized dress! We also browsed some playmobil advent calendars and decided it would be more fun to maybe get a Christmas market scene for T and L and make our own advent calendar out of it than buy a calendar with an unfestive theme like horses or museum robbery. That set off a huge discussion of our Christmas plans, Thanksgiving plans down to the menu, and lamentations that they will be in school on Thanksgiving and there is no Halloween! They cheered up when we went to a very nice cafe for some hot chocolate and pastry. It's fun to travel with the girls because they enjoy doing so many different types of things. They are up for adventure stuff, museums, sights, or just soaking up the atmosphere.

Strike!

I hope my Dad doesn't get too excited reading this headline. It's not your kind of strike, Dad.

We woke up early because E had errands to run. He had to get his glasses repaired, and he had to take T to buy a Barbapapa ball from a gumball machine. T had been coveting it for a couple of days, he was a very good boy and we told him we'd get it for him. Then when we went to get it, the machine had already been wheeled inside and locked up for the night. He was so sad. Luckily it was back out in the morning.

What will L miss most about Italy?

Then we had to hurry to catch the funicular down to the train station to catch the 10:15 train. There wouldn't be another train for hours. But the funicular station was closed. No funicular, no bus until 12:30, and no explanation. We asked if it was possible to walk down to the station but were told there were too many stairs on the trail. E decided to go anyway, which was good since although it was very very steep there were no stairs at all. Halfway down we were met by a very agitated man coming up the hill. He was waving his arms and yelling like he was warning us. He didn't speak any English, but I understood enough to get that he was telling us it was impossible to go and we should turn around. I thought he meant the trail wasn't passable. E decided to go on rather than push the stroller back up, which was good since the road got better and better. We even made it to the station and got our ticket with one minute to spare. We wouldn't have caught a Swiss train, but the Italian train was a few minutes late. It was a wicked old train. It had smoking compartments. I wouldn't be surprised if Trenitalia got it on sale when East Germany went out of business. I wish I had taken a picture.

Orvieto - morning to night

There were way too many pictures of Orvieto for one post, so here are a few showing the scenery of Orvieto over the course of the day. (I couldn't resist putting this sunset shot of the Duomo (again)  first, though!)

Orvieto

Any guesses what this is?

This is R writing!

We woke up in Orvieto to the first real breakfast we've had in a while. They had a small assortment of fruit, pastry, jam and butter to go with that, and yogurt.  They also had the choice of cappuccino or latte. Everyone got a latte, even S after she rejected the cappuccino. 

We went out and headed straight for the duomo. We could barely see it because there was so much fog.  All of us except for E and the littles headed inside. (E was buying tickets for the underground tour.) Inside was beautiful, though the beginning was not as impressive as the outside. The side walls were striped just like the outside of them and there was a beautiful rose window above the door. Then you get to the back and there are some beautiful side chapels. Apparently they are the show stoppers because there is a sign on the one on the right saying you can't visit for more than fifteen minutes. It had a scene of the Apocalypse, which seems like a very popular theme for the Italian churches. It was very colorful and there were some illusions which were impressive.

Then we all headed down to the underground tour.  It was an English guided tour, so no radios or phones or anything. It started with an explanation of how the mountain of Orvieto was formed. The rock was so soft that people dug out caves and that's what we headed down into. Some caves were used for making olive oils. They would have donkeys turn a wheel to smash the olives then they smashed them and strained them through what looks like a tiny dusty old rug. The temperature was perfect for storing wine, too, so they had a wine cellar. We saw an old well that was a perfect rectangle with holes they would us to climb up and down. It was dug by the ancient Etruscans. 

Then we headed to a different section of the caves which were personal caves for families with tunnels leading up to their houses. Some of the tunnels were filled with rubble from cave ins. Cave ins were a problem and we were shown some of the pillars that were built to hold up the caves. Each of the personal caves had holes in the walls to hold pigeons. It seemed like each family would have had about fifty pigeons. There was a little window the pigeons could fly out of. The caves were also used for stables and a bomb shelter. Very useful.

Rome's greatest hits

Hey, look! Bus 40 is only half full! Really.

We asked the girls what they wanted to do on our last day in Rome. They definitely did not want to see churches or museums or even more ruins. They just wanted to enjoy the city a little bit and redo some of their favorite parts. So we started the day at the bakery where we had gotten the perfect pizza and got a few pastries for breakfast. The bakers gave T and L some plain focaccia and T finally felt like he'd had some good pizza on this trip. No sauce, no cheese, no "stuff." So it turns out he does like pizza, as long as it is just bread. 

S's friend the dried fruit man.

After that we went back to the farmer's market. The girls wanted to stock up on dried fruit. The dried fruit man remembered S, and even remembered her name. He gave the girls tons of samples and gave all the kids long pink and white striped marshmallows from the stand next door. It was very nice.

By the time we finished with the market it was time for lunch. Back to the pizza place, of course, then a good walk to the Pantheon for some gelato. From there we went to T and L's favorite place in Rome - the carousel and playground behind Castel St Angelo. More walking, more gelato, and one last ride on bus 40 back to the main train station.

Lucky number twelve

St Peter's Basilica dome

Years ago I told R about an article I read in the New York times about a woman who wanted to visit one country for every year of her age. Ever since, R has wanted to meet that goal, too. Today, if you count Vatican City as a country, she made it!*

We started the day at St Peter's Basilica. It was overwhelmingly ornate. R enjoyed it because she really likes marble work. She spent as much time looking at the floor as up. S's favorite part was the huge bronze canopy. Actually, bronze caught her attention in other places we visited, too. It's funny how the kids are attracted to different materials regardless of how they are used. T and L were a little restless in the Basilica, so E played eye spy with them. Suddenly, T called out, "I see a naked flying baby!" There were naked flying babies everywhere!

Michaelangelo's Pieta

A little dome

Giant naked flying babies or naked flying baby giants?

Extra pictures

I was afraid to put too many pictures in my previous post. They can take a while to load. Here are the extras, if anyone is interested. Also, on the subject of pictures, I am working on a flickr account, but it is slow going because I need E's computer to do it. I will let everyone know when it is ready.

A typical alley from our walks.

Some more shots from the Forum

Forum view of the Vatican

Rome - closing down the Colloseum

This morning we went to the campo de fiori farmer's market. We stopped at a bakery we had seen on youtube and grabbed some pizza for lunch and then checked out the market stalls. It was different than the Swiss farmer's market. Each type of vegetable or fruit was less composed in its bin, but the stands tended to have seasonal arrangements decorating the entire stand. Also, there was a wider variety of stuff - oils, liquor, spices, clothes, etc. At one stand a very old man was demonstrating knives and peelers for cutting vegetables into novelty shapes like spirals and curls. Another stand had signs on everything in several languages saying "don't touch!" but as soon as you got close enough a woman who looked like a fairy tale witch would chuck plastic bags at you and motion that you'd better start filling them. One woman told her she was only looking and an argument ensued. The girls' favorite stand was a self serve dried fruit and nut stand with tons of interesting things: dried whole cherry tomatoes which almost tasted like dates, candied limes, dried guava, spiced fava beans, a whole candied citron, etc.

S saw this picture and said, "My friend the fruit guy!" 

The guy running the stand really did seem to take a special liking to S.

After the farmer's market we continued through the neighborhood and stopped at another pizza place I had heard of and ate the best pizza any of us have ever had. I don't think we will ever have pizza that good again. It was perfect in every way. It was a tomato, basil, mozzarella pizza. The crust was thick and soft, full of holes, and the bottom of it was crisp and snapped when we bit through. The mozzarella was better than any I've ever had. The tomatoes were fresh and perfectly salted. It was perfect. I guess there isn't much more I can say.

Perfect pizza.

Rome

View of ruins from our bus.

We took an overnight train from Milan to Rome. It was an interesting trip. The train reminded us of the old East German trains we rode on our honeymoon. They don't make them like that anymore! It was a four bunk cabin, which meant the littles were doubled up with E and me. That was okay, though we might be getting a little old for that kind of thing. The bigger annoyance was the train itself which slowed and accelerated, whistled, clanged, clattered, and jerked all night long. When we arrived in Rome it was to a minor station and we had to take the metro into town. Like in Milan, there were no elevators or escaltors in the subway. It's too bad, since our decision to stick to busses caused trouble later.

We left our luggage at the hostel and headed out. Our first impressions of Rome were not great. The area around the station is pretty rough and filthy and there are lots of aggressive vendors and beggars around. But once we got to a nice bakery and picked up some breakfast to eat in a nearby park with palm trees and ruins we felt better.

The bakery, which specialized in everything cream filled.

Then what did we do? We went back to the station, of course, but only so we could catch an on and off sight seeing bus with an audio tour. It was a good thing to do, even though I'm not sure it saved us very much walking, because it gave us our bearings and taught us about places we might not have bothered with otherwise like the Vittorio Monument.

Steps to Santa Maria d`Aracoel from our tour bus.

Milan

We are finally home, so I will be writing and back-dating the blog again. I have also changed the setting on the comments section so they should show up immediately when they are written.

S checks out the flying buttresses

We woke up very early on Saturday morning and caught a very crowded train to Milan. We passed through a snowstorm! We knew that hiking season ends on October 20, and it has seemed like fall here with the leaves changing and roasted chestnuts being sold on the street corners, but we were a little surprised to see snow several inches deep. It was enough of a storm that we saw a car being towed.

When we arrived in Milan we decided to walk to the Duomo (cathedral) and passed through a very pretty public garden. At the Duomo the first thing we did was take the elevator up to the terraces for a view. The other option would be to take the stairs to the roof. Luckily, I found a hole in a wall that lead to the stairs and the girls and I climbed up to the roof, too. E and the littles went back down since we had the stroller with us.

On the left is the view down from the terrace level.

On the right is the view down to the terrace from the roof.

About a third of the roof was closed off due to construction, but it was still impressive. It is slanted, not surprisingly, so it was slightly nerve wracking for me to make it to the edge to check out the view. I'm finding that my combination of no depth perception and vertigo ear make it hard to get around the narrow ledges, uneven steps, sloping roofs, etc that seem to be everywhere. S loved the roof, though, since she could be as tall as R.

We're legal!

Today we all had to go in to Zurich and have photos, fingerprints, and finger scans taken for our residence permits. We also had to present our passports and visas and match the signatures. So now we should be all done with paperwork. No more worries that something may have slipped by us and we'll be deported. I felt pretty confident once we'd paid all the fees, but now it's official.

T and L didn't have to be fingerprinted or any of that - they just had their photos taken. I don't know how much use or protection that is to anyone. T's passport picture was taken when he was only a couple of weeks old.

One thing I wanted to do today - rent our skis for the winter. I totally forgot. That's really a pain because it means that E will have to leave work early someday soon or we will have to set aside a hunk of some Saturday, seriously limiting where we can go that day. All the shops close around 6 here. The ski shop closes at 4 on Saturdays. Nothing is open on Sundays.




Because the post needs pictures, here are some we took on the infamous mountain hut hike. Switzerland is known for its often hidden shelter and defense bunkers - barns that aren't barns, and that sort of thing. We even have our suitcases stored in a bomb shelter in the basement since until not so long ago apartments were required to have one. Still, we were surprised to see these in what seemed to be not so strategic places.