The sound of fall
Not falling leaves or trick-or-treaters
But a bite of you, dear apple,
Your could not be sweeter.
All year I pine
And wait anxiously for your arrival
Tolerating other tastes
Biding my time; it is pure survival.
Then the signs appear--
Oh what joy and rapture are mine--
To see you in the market
Bringing arm-fulls of you to my home to dine.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Lugano, Switzerland -- 7, Team Trish&Adele -- 0
Point 1 for Switzerland: No stamp in our passports. The border control guys just waved us through in a secret, "don't tell the boss but you can just go on in" kind of way. Sheesh.
Point 2: Switzerland, which I thought was part of the European Union and accepted Euros as its only currency, has in addition to the Euro, its own special currency: the Swiss Frank. Which wouldn't have been a problem except all of the parking spots we saw had meters that only accepted the Swiss Frank ($2 coin) and I didn't have any of those. And this led eventually to...
Point 3: Trish and I were so frustrated by this time that we pulled into the first non "Privato" Autosilo we saw. That happened to be, we later realized (see point 4) was for a grocery store.
Point 4: After an expensive meal (do you know what the exchange rate is for Swiss Franks? NOT GOOD!) with a cranky waitress who took 30 minutes to bring us our check, we walked back to the Autosilo where we'd parked...and to our utter HORROR, discovered that it was closed--as in "no entry, no other way in, must wait until this place opens again to get your car" CLOSED. We'd missed it by 15 minutes!
Point 5: And then, to make matters even worse, we figured out that the grocery store (and thus by extension the parking garage) would not reopen until MONDAY morning. Yes, folks, that's right: we had to wait about 36 hours until we could get the car again...that's if it hadn't been towed already....
Point 6: There wasn't a phone number anywhere to be found on or near the garage or the store front--but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because my new fancy global BlackBerry unit didn't have service, despite its fanciness. And the battery died because it takes a lot of power for the fancy phone to sit in my purse and tell time. And because my fancy phone was dead, we couldn't call our Field Relations Manager, Walter, who lives close to Milan to help us out. We were completely on our own. (Did I mention that by this time, it was 10:45pm...and we were in another country...alone...?)
Point 7--Winning Point: This point was an 'assist' by a series of unfortunate events that occurred in Milan. I will not bore you with the details of the long ordeal right now; let's just say that it took us 3 1/2 hours to get from the central train station in Milan to our hotel--a journey that by taxi took 5 minutes. This "detour" involved an eccentric old Italian man who didn't understand English, getting a personalized night tour of Milanese historic locations, "sans gluten free" bread sticks that tasted like burnt toast and rosemary, and an Obama-loving, chain-smoking teenager who ended up being a knight in a shining hoody.
Game Summary: Though Lugano was beautiful (and if you take the train tour, you'll find out from the 'Ukranian' driver that it even has its own swimming pool...), I don't think I'll be visiting there again....well, except for tomorrow morning when we go to pick up our rental car.
Good job, thank you very much, amen.
Point 2: Switzerland, which I thought was part of the European Union and accepted Euros as its only currency, has in addition to the Euro, its own special currency: the Swiss Frank. Which wouldn't have been a problem except all of the parking spots we saw had meters that only accepted the Swiss Frank ($2 coin) and I didn't have any of those. And this led eventually to...
Point 3: Trish and I were so frustrated by this time that we pulled into the first non "Privato" Autosilo we saw. That happened to be, we later realized (see point 4) was for a grocery store.
Point 4: After an expensive meal (do you know what the exchange rate is for Swiss Franks? NOT GOOD!) with a cranky waitress who took 30 minutes to bring us our check, we walked back to the Autosilo where we'd parked...and to our utter HORROR, discovered that it was closed--as in "no entry, no other way in, must wait until this place opens again to get your car" CLOSED. We'd missed it by 15 minutes!
Point 5: And then, to make matters even worse, we figured out that the grocery store (and thus by extension the parking garage) would not reopen until MONDAY morning. Yes, folks, that's right: we had to wait about 36 hours until we could get the car again...that's if it hadn't been towed already....
Point 6: There wasn't a phone number anywhere to be found on or near the garage or the store front--but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because my new fancy global BlackBerry unit didn't have service, despite its fanciness. And the battery died because it takes a lot of power for the fancy phone to sit in my purse and tell time. And because my fancy phone was dead, we couldn't call our Field Relations Manager, Walter, who lives close to Milan to help us out. We were completely on our own. (Did I mention that by this time, it was 10:45pm...and we were in another country...alone...?)
Point 7--Winning Point: This point was an 'assist' by a series of unfortunate events that occurred in Milan. I will not bore you with the details of the long ordeal right now; let's just say that it took us 3 1/2 hours to get from the central train station in Milan to our hotel--a journey that by taxi took 5 minutes. This "detour" involved an eccentric old Italian man who didn't understand English, getting a personalized night tour of Milanese historic locations, "sans gluten free" bread sticks that tasted like burnt toast and rosemary, and an Obama-loving, chain-smoking teenager who ended up being a knight in a shining hoody.
Game Summary: Though Lugano was beautiful (and if you take the train tour, you'll find out from the 'Ukranian' driver that it even has its own swimming pool...), I don't think I'll be visiting there again....well, except for tomorrow morning when we go to pick up our rental car.
Good job, thank you very much, amen.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Ciao, Italia!
So, I'm here. In Italy. And I love it!
Tomorrow morning (it's 11:30pm here in Milan) I'll write a longer post with pictures and a verbose, "bowl-minded" narrative about what I've experienced. For now, here are the stats:
Tomorrow morning (it's 11:30pm here in Milan) I'll write a longer post with pictures and a verbose, "bowl-minded" narrative about what I've experienced. For now, here are the stats:
- Amount of time that my new global BlackBerry device has worked since we left the United States: 0 hours and 0 minutes
- Number of connections to fly to Milan: 3 (SLC to Minneapolis...to Amsterdam...to Milan)
- Hours it took to travel from SLC to Milan: 17.5
- Number of wrong turns we took while trying to drive to the hotel in our little Fiat: 3 7,000 (which is code for too many to count)
- Number of hours in Italy (thus far): 13
- Total count of Gelaterias visited in the last 10 hours: 2
- Gelato flavors sampled: 5
- Fragola [FRAH-go-la] (strawberry)
- Pistacchio [pee-STAHK-yoh] (pistachio) -- 2 times
- Mango (mango)
- Stracciatella [strah-cha-TEL-lah] (like a chocolate chip ice cream) -- 2 times
- Limone [Lee-MON-ay] (lemon)
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