Back in the Good O'le USA for a while...

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Long Trip Home
Satisfied that we had found our new temporary home we left our Torino hotel at 0630 on Thursday (Giovedì) to catch our flight back home. Not a bad trip except that ALItalia wouldn't check our bags all the way to Orlando (United did the other way) so we had to bag claim in Rome and re check and we almost missed our flight to Washington Dulles because of that. In fact, if Debi wasn't United Global Services they would not have even tried to get us on the flight. We were the last ones to board that flight. That and the flight from Dulles to Orlando was delayed a few of hours and changed gates couple of times. So we got home early in the morning on Friday (Venerdì) and since we got little sleep on the flights we slept in until early afternoon.
It is good to be home again but we have lots of work to do. Getting our physicals & shots, organizing for the packers and generally tying up all loose ends and I am sure we will miss a few. We will have two shipments of our goods, air and sea. The air shipment is being packed this Monday (18 April) and sea shipment (takes about 2 months in transit) the following Monday. So to get ready we will be separating all the stuff we are taking over there into the two piles.
That is pretty boring stuff and doesn't warrant any pictures so I will just post some more interesting shots for you that I saved until now. Debra is heading back to Torino on 26 April to continue working. I will be in Orlando until 12 May when I'm heading up to Long Island, New York to visit with my Mom and see my brother's Steve and Harry and hopefully my oldest son, Jason and his girlfriend, Alex, to say ciao for a while. Then I'll be off to our new home in Torino on 18 May. The apartment at #5 Via Bricherasio is supposed to be completed and ready to move in on 20 May. Lets hope that is the case. We always had our real estate agent, Lorenza, ask owners when a place would be available and she did, however she always told us that, in Italia, "You can always be certain when something starts but never when it will end." So we will let you all know if this is true for us. One big difference we have started to notice in our new temporary home is that schedules, like marked lanes in the autostrada, are suggestions, not mandates. At this stage in my life I find that an attractive notion that I may want to embrace for a while...
Arrivederci tutti gli nostri amici,
Gary & Debra
PS: Probably won't post again until we both get back to Italia

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Photos

Our Cross Street
Ivy covered fence denoting Via V. Vela

Varied Architectures
Lovely homes along Via Vela on the way to our apartment - looking East.

Our Building
We live in the apartments behind the balconies you see. The building actually houses 6 apartment. We have petitioned the owners to see if they will clean the porous marble covering the balconies you see. We hope they will but we don't have much clout really.

Awesome Home
This single family home on Via Vela is just down the street from #5. It's bello and Debra fell in love but alas if is not on the market.

#5 Bricherasio Courtyard
Another view of the very nice courtyard space we will share with other residents.

Raining Seeds
On our way back from #5 last Wed the winds picked up, so much so that we had to take cover under the Portico on Vittorio Emmanuele II. I tried to capture the "seed fall" in a picture here but you can at least see the road and cars covered with the stuff. It was cool to see but actually made it difficult to breath.

Gov Offices for Piemonte Region
Simply beautiful and elegant.

Facade 1
This was great on the outside but very run down inside

Facade 2
Round rooms are not so easy to furnish, lol

Staircase from heaven
Wonderful architecture! However, the apartment was not on par.

Master BR?
Like I said, beautiful staircase.... This master BR would be "interesting to live in" lets just leave it there.

Pan 1
Panorama from hotel room

Pan 2
Second Panorama