This is the continuation of "A long night at the Opera".
The next morning we got up, had a leisurely breakfast, checked out, loaded the car and started our drive back to the villa (house). I decided that we would drive the longer but quicker way back, via the pay toll road better known as the “Autostrada” past the outskirts of Milano, north to Como and then along the northwest shore to Mezzegra. But first, to be completely efficient, I decided that we would fill the tank of our diesel rental with fuel before the Autostrada. I pulled into a station close to the hotel, got out and started filling. I remarked to Joan how cheap the fuel was when she screamed out, "GENE, YOU’RE FILLING THE TANK WITH UNLEADED!" I stopped the filling immediately after putting in 22 liters of unleaded and, of course, quickly started to come up with a reason why this was not my fault. It became abundantly clear that the fault lie with Tony the engineer over at the AGIP oil company who designed the pump layout. There are four fillers side by side and I picked up the filler to the left of the “diesel” sign instead of the right. I knew it wasn’t my fault. I ran into the office screaming,” what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” Of course no one spoke English. At that point I threw myself on the floor kicking and screaming and causing a major scene. Apparently this was close to the universal language between men as a local mechanic was having coffee in the restaurant and saw the total commotion and figured out what was going on. He came over and indicated that I should give him the keys. I jumped up, brushed myself off, we all piled into the car and he drove a couple of blocks over to his repair shop. He had one of his young assistants siphon the entire tank, add an additive and sent us on our way after extracting 50 Euro for his trouble. He asked me to never grovel and hug his leg again when I thanked him. We quickly came upon another station (not a defective AGIP one) and while Joan, Francesca and Kathie hovered over my shoulder we watched the station attendant fill the tank with diesel. Oh, by the way, at a mere $9.50 a gallon you can imagine my feelings as I saw all that contaminated fuel go to waste. We made it home without incident and my letter to AGIP outlining their deficiencies will go out as soon as I find a translator. The first nine people I asked refused after reading my letter. I’m a bit confused.
Ciao,
Gino
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Stay outta my house
Gene has been writing the story of our trip to Verona to see the opera. Unfortunately half of the story was lost when we published the post. Gene will rewrite the end of that story shortly.
On Saturday when I went downstairs to bring in some washing, I was unable to lock the door behind me. I called Gene down and we determined that someone had bent the lock. He forced the door to lock and we couldn't decide who to blame. The next day before we went to Verona Gene took another look at the door and determined that someone had tried to pry open the locked door with a screwdriver. Check out the photo. We hadn't been locking the outside shutters when we left the house. We just locked all the doors. Now of course we are also locking the shutters when we leave. We called Mario from Verona, met with him when we returned and he reported it to the local police. We are lucky the intruder was not able to get in.
Yesterday when I ran the dishwasher there was a puddle of water on the kitchen floor. Gene unclogged the dishwasher drain and it seemed to then work. But no. Again we called Mario. Did you put salt in? he asked. Huh? It seems that in Italian dishwashers there is a place to pour in a kilo of salt to soften the water. Ours was empty. Mario filled up the salt receptacle and we thought we were in business. Nope. The dishwasher will only start if you pour water in the drain and gets so hot that you can't touch it. Called Mario again to get a repairman. Earlier in the week Gene had dropped a large bottle of Coke in the refrigerator and the glass shelf was broken. Again Mario to the rescue. Gene's computer is giving him fits. The last problem was losing half his blog entry. Unfortunately we can't call Mario to fix this. I don't think anything else can go wrong this week. Please!
The weather has been hot and cloudy. No thunderstorms. Just the hint of them.
Ciao,
Joan
On Saturday when I went downstairs to bring in some washing, I was unable to lock the door behind me. I called Gene down and we determined that someone had bent the lock. He forced the door to lock and we couldn't decide who to blame. The next day before we went to Verona Gene took another look at the door and determined that someone had tried to pry open the locked door with a screwdriver. Check out the photo. We hadn't been locking the outside shutters when we left the house. We just locked all the doors. Now of course we are also locking the shutters when we leave. We called Mario from Verona, met with him when we returned and he reported it to the local police. We are lucky the intruder was not able to get in.
Yesterday when I ran the dishwasher there was a puddle of water on the kitchen floor. Gene unclogged the dishwasher drain and it seemed to then work. But no. Again we called Mario. Did you put salt in? he asked. Huh? It seems that in Italian dishwashers there is a place to pour in a kilo of salt to soften the water. Ours was empty. Mario filled up the salt receptacle and we thought we were in business. Nope. The dishwasher will only start if you pour water in the drain and gets so hot that you can't touch it. Called Mario again to get a repairman. Earlier in the week Gene had dropped a large bottle of Coke in the refrigerator and the glass shelf was broken. Again Mario to the rescue. Gene's computer is giving him fits. The last problem was losing half his blog entry. Unfortunately we can't call Mario to fix this. I don't think anything else can go wrong this week. Please!
The weather has been hot and cloudy. No thunderstorms. Just the hint of them.
Ciao,
Joan
The last week
The attempted break in
Boat in Lenno
At a market
The view with the crane turned away
Francesca and Kathie waiting for dinner
The car ferry Menaggio to Varenna
Motorcyle for three
Peppers at the weekly market
A long night at the Opera
It has been a week since I have contributed to the blog so I better get moving! I think I have been taking this vacation thing a little too seriously. One must remember one has responsibilities even while one vacation.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry my sisters Kathie and Francesca are visiting us and while talking to Kathie way back in April she said a great experience would be to attend the world famous Opera in Verona. She looked into the possibility of securing tickets. It was a delightful surprise when she told us that indeed tickets were available and that she requested that we be her guests at this historical (for us) event. So on Sunday we left Msgr and headed for Verona. It was a leisurely journey as we had plenty of time to get ther, get into our hotel, have dinner and then make the 9:15PM performance. We chose to take the short cut and ferried the car across the lake to Verenna, had lunch in this delightful historic town and then headed out on the rest of the journey. It was about 180 kilometers and with the in car GPS system we went straight to the hotel. As we were approaching the hotel we decided that it would be best to go to the "will call" desk and get the tickets to avoid a rush later. This necessitated driving into "old town" Verona on a late Sunday afternoon and we began to share the streets and sidewalks with about 100,000 pedestrians and a myriad of one way very narrow streets. It was a complete maze as we got deeper and deeper into the bowels of Verona. Whoever said you couldn't get there from here was almost right! Here we are looking for this gigantic famous arena, we were literally yards from it, the GPS is completely confused, and we're ready to back to mezzegra and start all over. I finally take some aggressive action and go the wrong way on a one way street and then there right in front of us is the Arena and the doorway for the will call tickets. Of course by now we are the only car with. in a 1000 yards of any other vehicles and are being swarmed by about 25,0000 people. No problem! Kathie and Nani get the tickets and we slowly drive away without running over anyone. 15 minutes later we are at the hotel. Actually we see the hotel but are going the wrong way on an incredibly wide street with five lanes in both directions. I pull far right and proceed to pull a ten lane u-turn. After what we had just been through this almost seemed like a legal maneuver!
As I said the Opera started at 9:15PM and we heard that it was about three hours long. I won't go into the story of "Aida", I will leave it to the reader to check it out on the Internet but I do have a few comments. First of all to just be in the Verona Arena and to contemplate it's historical significance is quite moving. The night was a little too warm but not overly oppressive. A totally clear sky. When we sat down in our seats and looked around it was breathtaking! Kathie broke the bank with fantastic seats, slightly elevated, to the left side about 60 feet from the massive stage. Part of the spectacle is the incredible sets. You really felt like you were in ancient Egypt. The production spared no expense. Multiple extras as soldiers, slaves, dancers, etc. I, of course, knew none of the performers but they all were incredibly talented. You really never knew what they were specifically singing but as long as you knew the story it did make sense. Finally the fat lady sung indicating the end of this 4 hour opera. After much cheering and bravos we headed back to the hotel and finally got to bed about 2AM. Thanks, Kathie for a memorable evening.
To be continued....
As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry my sisters Kathie and Francesca are visiting us and while talking to Kathie way back in April she said a great experience would be to attend the world famous Opera in Verona. She looked into the possibility of securing tickets. It was a delightful surprise when she told us that indeed tickets were available and that she requested that we be her guests at this historical (for us) event. So on Sunday we left Msgr and headed for Verona. It was a leisurely journey as we had plenty of time to get ther, get into our hotel, have dinner and then make the 9:15PM performance. We chose to take the short cut and ferried the car across the lake to Verenna, had lunch in this delightful historic town and then headed out on the rest of the journey. It was about 180 kilometers and with the in car GPS system we went straight to the hotel. As we were approaching the hotel we decided that it would be best to go to the "will call" desk and get the tickets to avoid a rush later. This necessitated driving into "old town" Verona on a late Sunday afternoon and we began to share the streets and sidewalks with about 100,000 pedestrians and a myriad of one way very narrow streets. It was a complete maze as we got deeper and deeper into the bowels of Verona. Whoever said you couldn't get there from here was almost right! Here we are looking for this gigantic famous arena, we were literally yards from it, the GPS is completely confused, and we're ready to back to mezzegra and start all over. I finally take some aggressive action and go the wrong way on a one way street and then there right in front of us is the Arena and the doorway for the will call tickets. Of course by now we are the only car with. in a 1000 yards of any other vehicles and are being swarmed by about 25,0000 people. No problem! Kathie and Nani get the tickets and we slowly drive away without running over anyone. 15 minutes later we are at the hotel. Actually we see the hotel but are going the wrong way on an incredibly wide street with five lanes in both directions. I pull far right and proceed to pull a ten lane u-turn. After what we had just been through this almost seemed like a legal maneuver!
As I said the Opera started at 9:15PM and we heard that it was about three hours long. I won't go into the story of "Aida", I will leave it to the reader to check it out on the Internet but I do have a few comments. First of all to just be in the Verona Arena and to contemplate it's historical significance is quite moving. The night was a little too warm but not overly oppressive. A totally clear sky. When we sat down in our seats and looked around it was breathtaking! Kathie broke the bank with fantastic seats, slightly elevated, to the left side about 60 feet from the massive stage. Part of the spectacle is the incredible sets. You really felt like you were in ancient Egypt. The production spared no expense. Multiple extras as soldiers, slaves, dancers, etc. I, of course, knew none of the performers but they all were incredibly talented. You really never knew what they were specifically singing but as long as you knew the story it did make sense. Finally the fat lady sung indicating the end of this 4 hour opera. After much cheering and bravos we headed back to the hotel and finally got to bed about 2AM. Thanks, Kathie for a memorable evening.
To be continued....
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