Advertisement
I am afraid of bidets. There's one lurking in the corner of our bathroom. It's spattered in blood, which I hope is from one of my father's explosive midnight nosebleeds and not because the pressure tore the rectum of the previous tenant. This is an aspect of Europe I may not embrace. I'm sure readers are waiting with bated breath.
After writing my first blog entry I went back to sleep for several hours. The parents also had weird sleeps, punctuated by nosebleeds. As a result of some supermarket adventures yesterday we had ingredients for a delicious breakfast of yoghurt and fresh fruit and prunes. Raisins seem not to exist in Italy. It is written in the Italian constitution that all grapes are to be made into wine. The coffee maker is a stove-top one and rather small for my mother's surprisingly Andre the Giant like coffee requirements. The little stove has four gas elements and is covered by a sleek glass surface. Once my dad opened the gas valve it behaved very well and made us delicious coffee. Three times, for Andre the coffee giant.
As we sat in the sitting room enjoying our coffee there was an
incredibly loud smash from the kitchen of sphincter loosening intensity. My first thought was that the shelves with glasses had collapsed. My father uttered a very calm swear, and went to the teeny kitchen to investigate. It appeared that as it cooled, the glass top of the stove had exploded, probably from the strain of having to make my mother all that coffee. Our little apartment manager (I very incorrectly described our abode as a hotel yesterday) was very sweet and puzzled about it, and helped sweep up all glass, which had blown out into the rest of the apartment.
The thunderstorm last night brought cold and wet today, so we decided to go to the castlevecchio museum. The museum is in a castle in various stages of refurbishment. It was owned by someone no one liked, who had the name Big Dog, or something, and who was, based in what I saw of his statue there, a deranged midget. The museum had some great pieces and some less great ones. I got in trouble for suggesting to my mother that the reason Christ is gazing down in one of the paintings is because he wants to eat the
little peasant there. My dad and I had a great time examining various paintings and trying to figure out what was going on, as in the case of one the one with a Mr. Tumnus and mermaids and a dragon. We also quite enjoyed the very "fancy" Christ baby (see photo).
The castle also had the sort of thing you'd expect in a castle, not just prancy little Christ babies and oddly placed terriers. There were awesome armor and swords, and i took lots of photos for my brother, who needs reference photos for the medieval era comic he illustrates.
After the castle we were hungry, and got afternoon pasta (gnocchi for me) and tiramisu and wine. This was at around four thirty in the afternoon, to tide us over until the midnight dinner.
Back at our hotel for a rest and more food and wine, and my dad was very delighted that all the wine glasses were different sizes and we were assigned by age (or inverse ass size) like the three bears.
Then we went for a walk along the river and to a bar my parents love for a spritz. A spritz is
not, as I first feared, a Yiddish sponge bath, but rather a delightful drink defined thusly: a wine based drink commonly served as an
aperitif in northern Italy, especially in the
Veneto region and surrounding areas. The drink is prepared with white wine (generally a Pinot Grigio delle tre Venezie or Tocai) or
Prosecco wine, a dash of some bitter liqueur such as
Aperol,
Campari,
Gran Classico, Select or
Cynar. The glass is then topped off with sparkling mineral water. It is usually served over ice in a lowball glass (or sometimes a martini glass or wine glass) and garnished a slice of orange. They are delicious, and almost always served with the tradional Italian delicacy, the potato chip.
While drinking our spritzes, a glass at the next table broke, which confirmed to my parents the emergence of my dad's newest super power, to randomly and inconveniently shatter glass. He is now planning to attend Professor Xavier's school for the gifted to learn how better to control his ability.
We walked a short way to a lovely special occasion mothers day restaurant called Antica Torretta. They staff was so well trained that they could tell from my mother's "
buona sera, avero un tavolo per tre?" that we were from the North Shore of greater Vancouver and immediately showed us upstairs and put on my parents' neighbor Diana Krall to make us feel at ease. The food was fantastic and confirmed my mother's superpower of ordering the best thing on the menu, which was ricotta gnocchi with truffles.
It was a lovely day despite the weather, which is supposed to be beautiful once more tomorrow. Verona is a magical place, so magical in fact that my mother shrieked with delight on the way home, mistaking a swarm of bats for shooting stars.
We have a terrific day of great walks planned for tomorrow, assuming of course that neither of my parents powers intensify over night and kill us all.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 23; dbt: 0.024s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Auntie Jeanie
non-member comment
Lucky display case!
So fortunate that the glass front didn't shatter as your dad stood beside it!