I Am Lion, Hear Me Roar

The other day when I rode the bike into Sacile, I noticed that the best shoe store in town had practically everything on sale.  In Europe they don't do the whole clearance rack/sale rack thing.  They generally have sales twice a year, and EVERYTHING goes on sale.  Kind of like Victora's Secret's semi-annual sale.  As a seasoned rider/runner, I know never to leave the house without some money, so I was prepared to buy myself some shoes right then and there.  My Italian isn't good enough to decipher the hour signs, which usually have multiple sets of hours on them because of the odd hours stores are open here.  I hung around until 4, and then decided the store probably was just closed because it was Sunday, so I headed home.  I asked Christine if we could go back in town so I could get some shoes (there were several pairs in the window I had my eye on), so Christer got a ride to work today so we could have the car.  It turned out that they didn't have any of the shoes I wanted in my size anymore, so I left empty handed.  I STILL don't have a single pair of Italian shoes!  I'm striking out everywhere we go.  Christine and Jameson got gelato, and a bunch of kayakers were practicing on the course on the river that runs right through the middle of the town.  It was super cool to watch.  I would compare it to the precision of downhill skiing, and maneuvering through the poles, but you're in a kayak and have the flow of the water to mess you up.  It takes some serious upper body/core strength to turn these boats on a dime, like they were doing.

Whoopsie Daisies!

In the haze/fog/heat of last night, both literally and mentally, I failed to include a few important pieces of our trip to Parma.


First off, Parma is the home of the extremely popular parma or proscuitto ham, and the origination of Parmigiano-Reggiano (which is also produced in the Reggio Emilia), the "true" parmesean cheese.  It is also home to 2 global brands, Parmalat, and Barilla pasta.  Yes, the Barilla you find in your nearby grocery store really is produced in Italy.


After we left the city of Parma and headed back to the hotel, we all decided it was time for a nap.  Jameson was falling in and out of consciousness the whole ride back, so we thought a solid nap for him was a done deal.  We put him back in the crib in the bathroom, and all was well, until about 10 minutes later when I heard the exact same noises as the night before.  Sleeping just wasn't happening.  Christine and Christer tried for a bit in their room, but they soon came to the realization that he just wasn't going to sleep, so they headed down to the pool while I napped.  At about 6 we moved his crib and all his stuff up to their room so they could put him down for the night.  At about 7 I got a knock on my door.  Christer: "We're just going to go home.  Jameson won't sleep for anything, and this just isn't worth it."  Hallelujah!  Let the angels rejoice!  As I said yesterday, I didn't really have any idea of what to expect out of Parma, so leaving early was no big loss for me.


So here we are, it's 7pm and we're loading up the car for the drive home.  Jameson still didn't sleep a wink during the entire drive, but he was 'lights out meatball' as soon as he hit his crib at home.  On a side note:  We stopped at McDonald's on the way home because we were all starving and it was the easiest and quickest thing around.  The McDonald's didn't have an intercom to give your order.  You just drive up to the window and give your order, pay, and then get your food at the same place.  I got my usual, hamburger and a small fries, and some things just never change.  McDonald's in Italy is exactly the same as McDonald's in Oviedo, and let me tell you something.  After 2+ months of zero fast food and reasonably healthy/fresh meals, that McDonald's meal was terrible.  I literally felt like I was clogging all of my insides with grease and fat, and I felt what I can only assume is a percentage of what the guy in 'SuperSize Me' felt a portion of the way through his experiment.

Some People Call Me the Space Cowboy

Err...I used my good Parma title for yesterday's post, and I'm fresh out of ideas.


So let's pick up where we left off, shall we?  Jameson had been awake since 3 am, and some combination of the 3 of us had been awake with him since then, so, needless to say, we were all exhausted.  Our first full day in Parma wasn't going to go to waste though, so we all piled into the car and drove about 45 minutes to the city of Parma.  Of course, as fate would have it, Jameson fell asleep about 10 minutes outside the city, and promptly woke up as soon as we parked.  First stop?  COFFEE.


I don't think any of us really knew what to expect from the city of Parma except good food, so it was a completely new and foreign place as far as the city goes.  The city itself kind of reminded me of downtown Knoxville or Macon.  The way the streets were set up and the shopping and restaurants just really made me feel like I was walking through downtown Macon in the middle of the summer.  

Parma Parma Parma Parma, Parma-Chameleon

It's a terrible title, I know.  I should be shunned from the blogging universe for that, but I just can't help it.  I love myself some George Michael, and that song always pops into my head when I hear Parma.  


Christer was able to take Friday and Monday off, so we headed about 3 hours southwest for a long weekend in the Parma region of Italy.  Famous for the popular Parma ham, and known for having the best food in all of Italy.  Despite the scorching heat (compares with Florida weather in both heat and humidity) and general lack of air conditioning in most public places, it is high tourist season in much of Europe, so we were somewhat limited on what was available.  Christine managed to find us an old castle converted into a hotel a little bit outside of Parma, but there was no apartment available so we just had to book 2 separate rooms.  The castle and the views of the rolling hills and farmland were quite impressive.

Hard Ridge

We've had a bit of a hairy day with the internet and downloading videos, but everything seems to be running smoothly now.  We leave for Parma tomorrow morning so I figured I'd better attempt to finish up with the pictures from Venice last weekend.


We switched hotels for our second night to a hotel in the Dorsoduro region as opposed to the San Marco region.  We hadn't yet stayed in the Dorsoduro area, and we wanted to be able to explore around  Accademia and see a side of Venice that was still fairly new to us.  The hotel we stayed at was previously a house (as opposed to the common apartments, like our palace apartment), and it was located right on a canal, about half a block from the campo where we saw the bird eat the other bird.  Sergio actually knew the people who owned the house, and he said they had originally tried to sell it but couldn't get anything near their asking price, so they just decided to turn it into a hotel.  Because of this, the hotel was set up more like a bed and breakfast, and it even had a garden and a yard out back.  This was super cool because A. It's very uncommon to have a yard or garden in a hotel in Venice. And B. It was really lovely to sit outside and eat our breakfast and talk with the other people staying in the hotel (of whom we met a family from Canada who had 2 girls who sang in the Calgary Girls Choir, and were touring all of Italy singing in the big basilicas.  They had sung during mass in Saint Mark's Cathedral the previous night, and they sang for the Dalai Lama before they embarked on this adventure.)

Tickle Monster

Sorry folks. I've been trying to upload a video for HOURS now, and it seems that with all this crazy technology, some things still move as slow as molasses. Jameson, on the other hand, is faster than a speeding bullet at times, and you can't turn your back on him for more than a second. We were playing upstairs while Christine was doing research for our weekend trip to Parma, and every time I turned my back he would run into the guest bedroom and start climbing on the bed. I'd say about 50% of our playtime was spent on the bed, rolling around on the pillows and freeing his inner bruiser without any of the bruises. His favorite game was to try to get "away" from me before I could push him over and make him fall into the pillows. "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" didn't really leave any sort of imprint on my logical thinking skills. Grade A care-taker right here! As you can see from the video, jealous Levi HAD to join in the fun, and Jameson is not at all ticklish. Not one single bit.



Tickle Monster, originally uploaded by Kindra T.

(Bridge of) SIGHS

If you didn't get the terrible play on words from the title, just imagine me letting out a big, long sigh right now.  Christine and I have been overwhelmed all day with this fantastic idea we have, and I've been doing research for the larger part of the day (when I wasn't chasing Jameson around).  Because of all this reading and computer work, I realllllly don't feel like blogging tonight.  Since I have this personal commitment to blog every day (obviously when I have a working internet), I'm just going to share with you some of my favorite quotes about Venice and Italy.  Enjoy!

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.” -Truman Capote

“If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is -- Venice is better.” -Fran Lebowitz

“A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.” -Arthur Symons

"It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone." --Erica Jong

"What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago." --Erica Jong

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy." --Giuseppe Verdi

"For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery. back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness." --D.H. Lawrence

"Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life." --Anna Akhmatova

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." --Orson Welles

"Open my heart and you will see 'Graved inside of it, Italy.'" --Robert Browning

Today my favorite thing about Italy is:  Other peoples' equally shared passion for Venice.