THURSDAY ....morning we got up and the sun surprised us with its presence... We ran to the station and jumped on the first train west. In 30 minutes it had traveled the great distance of 18 km (this is not the famous high speed line everyone talks about) to Lucca, the birthplace of Puccini and, more important, Aldo Ballerini--Dani's father. There we changed to a more reliable form of transport:

The city of Lucca is completely enclosed by a huge wall constructed by the sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was obviously afraid of something, living there exposed in the middle of a plain with no hills for miles. ... Maybe Pisa? Maybe Florence.... or maybe she was just paranoid since Lucca is in the middle of one of the most peaceful places in the world. Think about it... how much have you heard of the Italian army initiating aggressions. As Dani reminds us, the last Italian general to win a battle was Julius Ceasar.

After a BEAUTIFUL one hour circle around the top of the walls, which, as you can see, is a huge wide boulevard (think Paris... and Napoleon's sister loved boulevards), ...

... we walked down into this medieval city and in about three hours we had seen the most amazing collection of little churches, and had the most amazing lunch. (No gelato yet... too cold!)

 The guy who owned this tower wanted to put his trees where they would get more light.... 

It was impossible walk up the 13 flights of stairs to check (we had just had lunch).... maybe next time.

Lucchesi anti-theft system for bikes:

As the sign says... "happiness street"

Our friend Memmo was right... "Da Gigi" was a fantastic place to have lunch. We could list the details, but we don't want to make everyone suffer too much. We can say there were zucchini involved... a special local soup, a pasta with a ragu of funghi and prosciutto... but, we won't bore you with the details... When we came out, Dani took this picture while waiting for the bench to be free but the guy never woke up ... 

... so we gave up and went on to explore some amazing Roman ruins embedded in the outer walls of the main Piazza (where Dani saw Eric Clapton perform a few years ago.)

.... more soon on this weekend....

Dani and Kate

Finally we have the movie of the opening! Only a few minutes.. enjoy!

More tomorrow on today in Lucca!

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!

 Today finally the sun was shining. We came for the weekend to the house we used to share with friends in a national park a towards the southwest end of Tuscany: El Parco dell-Uccellina. Most of the same group of friends still share the house (and have for 18 years!) and very generously invited us to spend the weekend with them... and a few of the "kids" (now adults in their late '20s early '30s!)... each day there are a few more. Today we are ... I think about 17!

As you can see, this morning was gorgeous ... so a few of us went for a llloooonnnngggg walk!

We arrived back just in time for an apperitivo...

followed by Easter lunch!

Now on to serious things... partly by popular request, and partly because we do so much of it, the rest of this post has mostly to do with food.

Memmo was up at the crack of dawn to light the wood stove:

To roast the lamb and the roast beef that Roberto and Memmo prepared  to roast with potatoes and artichokes to eat...

 oops, no! that is not the Easter lamb...

... after the pesto lasagne...

All of which we ate after a blessed, hand-colored hard-boiled egg.

Dani and Stefania did most of the coloring on Saturday to take to church today for the priest to bless...

Of course, we ended with the traditional "colomba" (or Easter cake)

 It is amazing that within 20 minutes of finishing all is cleared away!

When we finished eating the sun was actually hot and the day even more gorgeous. Most of the group headed for the beach. Dani, Kate, Memmo and Giovanna stayed home to shower, rest and generally enjoy the quiet of the afternoon

Followed by another long walk...

who was that guy???

Going back in time... We arrived Friday at midday and Dani and Giovanna went right to work

to feed us poor hungry souls a "simple" ravioli with a sauce of fresh florentine tomatoes, fresh basil and garlic, two "tortillas" that dani and I brought and a fresh artichoke salad...

All accompanied by quantities of red or white wine and procecco... later a digestivo...  oh! They are calling me for dinner again...

If you are thinking that basically what we do here is eat...

Your are right!

Now even further back....

march  29

allora....

negli ultimi giorni tanto Kate quanto io ci siamo dedicati a lavoraresui corsi di UMass e a continuare la mia istruzione sull uso della cibernetica nell' arte e printing da Maestro  Raffaele. Ecco un risultato di questi corsi che ha gia riscosso un discreto successo, misura 1.50 cm x 20 cm, per apprezzarlo, dovete ingrandire.

Over the past few days, both Dani and I have been working...me in my UMass courses, Dani has continued his instruction in digital creation with Master Raffaele. Below is the discrete successful result of the "courses": "Pablo Digital" (to appreciate it, you should enlarge it):

"PABLO DIGITAL"

In realta' non e' stata tutto lavoro la settimana: mercoledi, approfittando del bel tempo, siamo passati da Firenze, abbiamo visitato la Galleria Tornabuoni, una Galleria d'arte in Borgo San Jacopo, siamo poi andati a visitare i nuovi uffici di Stefania,  e successivamente siamo andati ad una deliziosa cena da Camilla e Francescocomposta da:

Antipasto di salamino toscano

tagliatelle al sugo di cinghiale

melanzane alla parmigiana ala Camilla

tiramisu fatto in casa...

tutto annaffiato da un delizioso Morellino di Scansano.

Actually, we have not actually been working all week... Wednesday we went to Florence to visit a friend's art gallery (Galleria Tornabuoni) in Borgo San Jacaoi and then visited Stefania's new office and finally took the new (to us) tram to dinner with Camilla and Francesco. Camilla is a fantastic cook and it was wonderful to be invited to one of the "kids" homes (are we getting old or what?!).

(Sorry, no fotos... you can take our word for it that it was a special dinner... thank you Camilla and Francesco!

Ancora facciamo fatica a renderci conto che nelle case italiane questa e' una cena "normale". / It is still hard for us the realize that in an Italian home these dinners are "normal"

Now seriously... we are about to eat... again! Leftovers tonight. They'll have to drag me... that's a lie!

As they say... molto volentieri! (with much pleasure!)

martedi, 26 marzo

Accidenti, sono 6 giorni che non scriviamo niente sul blog...

wow! Six day without writing in our blog... we will lose our audience! The fact is that after coming back from Luxembourg, it has been either crazy busy with one thing after another and not getting back to where we have an internet connection until way too late to post, or we are both working too late and get too sleepy to write. So... we have some catching up to do! (Today we are both writing in the blog... while not exactly translations of each other, the meanings of the entries are close. Tim, if you are translating, it isn't exact!)

mercoledi, 20 marzo

Siamo finalmente ripartiti da Lussemburgo una nevosa mattina, e dopo un lungo periplo (maccina da casa all aeroporto, aereo da Lussemburgo a Milano malpensa, autobus dal terminal alla stazione, treno da Milano Malpensa a Milano Centrale, Treno Alta velocita da Milano centrale a Firenze, treno a bassa velocita da Firenze a Pescia) siamo arrivati Miracolosamente a casa, e dico miracolosamente perche tutti i treni e autobus sono arrivati in tempo per prendere il successivo, cosa che in Italia e' considerato un Miracolo !!! Forse sara' l'influsso di Francesco I.

Wednesday, March 20: We left Luxembourg on a snowy/rainy morning hoping it would be warmer in Italy... not really but at least it wasn't snowing. The trip back was LLLOOONNNGGGG ... car to plane to train to train to train... By some miracle, even though trains were late or sluggish, we made all the connections and arrived back in Pescia some 10 hours after leaving Luxembourg having made every planned connection. This seems a miracle for the Italian trains... Maybe the influence of Francesco I?

(And a plug for Easy Jet [LUX-MIL] ... a super experience in every aspect of their operation and very, very reasonable. The trains actually cost us more than the plane!)

giovedi, 21 marzo

Il giorno dopo, giovedi, dopo una lunga passeggiata per Firenze,

Thursday, March 21: After a LLLOOONNNGG walk through Florence 

Kate and the duomo

nella quale abbiamo visitato il Chiostro di san Lorenzo (la chiesa dei medici e di dani):

during which we visited the cloister of San Lorenzo (the church of the Medici and where Dani was baptized), 

e la vecchia scuola di Architettura,

and the school of architecture ... even the very room where Dani presented his thesis a few years back

outsideinside

siamo andati all'apertura di una bellissima mostra di disegni di Simona Dolci, www.simonadolci.com,

we went to the opening of a BEAUTIFUL show of drawings (a few with paintings that developed from them) by our friend Simona Dolci [www.simonadolci.com]. 

Simona poses the question in her show: What is the function of drawing in our lives? And what happens when a drawing becomes a painting or a sculpture. Thoughts?

dove abbiamo incontrato vecchie amiche che non vedevamo da molti, molti anni.

At the show we met some old friends we hadn't seen in many, many years.

Forse qualcuno di voi ne riconoscera' una o piu di una sulla foto!!!

Maybe someone reading this will recognize someone in this photo!!!

Santa Maria Novella, on the way back to the railway station Thursday night to return to Pescia

Il venerdi (22marzo) siamo restati a Pescia dato che c'e'stato uno SCIOPERO (parola da imparare subito quando si e' in Italia) dei trasporti, abbiamo approfittato per riposare, pulire, lavare ecc ecc.

Friday, March 22: we stayed home and worked, cleaned, cooked etc in Pescia due to a "sciopero" of the transport system. This is an Italian word you learn very quickly here since it is so common, especially on a Friday or a Monday. The official train site even has a page that tells you how you can plan alternative transportation when there is a "sciopero." Any guesses what a "sciopero" is??

Il sabato il Museo della Specola, dove Dani ha l'esposizione aveva deciso di fare una notte "notte bianca", ossia una notte dove dalle 8 pm a mezzanotte era aperto, inclludendo tutte le arre del museo stesso che normalmente sono chiuse e che si possono visitare solo per appuntamento...

Saturday, March 23: The Specola Museum where Dani has his show decided to do a "white night" ... they were open from 8Pm to midnight, including areas of the museum that are normally closed and can only be visited by appointment...

 From the rarely accessed tower

the final stairs from the observatory to the top of the lantern

telescope

Florence from the observatory

"Specola" means literally "observatory, which was its original purpose. Built in 1790, it is currently a museum (part of the Pitti Palace museum system and the oldest science museum in Europe), botanic garden, and active research institution that is part of the University of Florence. Its has collections in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, botany, geology, paleontology, mineralogy  lithology, and... zoology... hence the invitation to Dani to show his tropical birds, reptiles, fishes and frogs (and one gorilla).

...ingresso libero e offerta libera all'entrata, a beneficio del "Città dell Scienza" di napoli, che un mese fa e' stato incendiato dalla "camorra" la mafia locale, per vendicarsi delle operazioni che il governo sta effettuando abbastanza efficacemente  contro la malavita di quella zona (sono cose che, se non si e' italiani, non si possono credere, ma ricordate che ci sono dei precendenti: il 27 maggio del 1993 la mafia ha messo una bomba sotto la galleria degli Uffizi a Firenze, danni al museo e 4 morti tra cui una bambina piccola).

Everyone in Florence knows of this museum. Just about every school child in the surroundings visits at least once on a school trip. Entry to the museum last Saturday night was free and there were boxes for voluntary donations to benefit the Science Museum of Naples that was burned a month or so ago to take revenge against the local government by the"camorra," the local mafia (Italians will remember precedents, such as the bombing of the Uffizi on 27 May 1993 that seriously damaged the museum and killed four people, one of them a little girl.)

Da un calcolo approssimativo iniziale sono passate dal museo quella sera piu di 2000 persone, quindi piu di 2000 persone hanno anche visto la mostra di Dani !!!

It was estimated that over 2,000 people passed through the museum, and so, through Dani's show which is in a corridor right in the middle between two wings and unavoidable on any route through the museum!

check out the eyes of the little guy in the back!

ostriches and more in the rarely seen hall of skeletons 

(the Bach organ prelude and fugue that was playing when I went in was exactly the background music to raise the hair on the back of your neck!)

Quella notte abbiamo approfittato dell'accoglienza di emily e maurizio che ci hanno invitato a dormire a casa loro a Villa Ambron a bellosguardo,sopra a dove Kate ed io abbiamo abitato gli ultimi due anni a Firenze: la casa con la miglior vista della citta'....

We left the museum after midnight to walk up to our old house, Bellosguardo, where our wonderful friends and ex-neighbors Emily, Maurizio and Jacopo very generously welcomed us into their home in Villa Ambron, at Bellosguardo, two floors above where Dani and I lived in our final two years in Florence: some of you may recognize the best views of the city... (and the donkey on Sunday morning did not disappoint!)

e' stata un esperienza unica risvegliarsi la mattina in quel magico posto

What an experience to wake up on Sunday morning, again in that magic place!

I know this only brings us up to Sunday and today is Tuesday, but it is once again after midnight. Charlie (and Tricia), I don't know how you do it every night! Anyway, the past two days have basically been work, work and work, rain and work. We are ready for the next adventure! Tomorrow back to Florence to visit friends.