Close to Home

A few pictures within a little walk from home, taken with the new
camera. It seems I lost our other one on our recent trip to Croatia.

Sun Tans

Big discussion on the expat website about Italians, especially women, spending too much time tanning in the Summer. There is a tradition that at least two weeks every Summer are spent at the beach, more if possible. During that time the main goal is to get as dark as possible. Of course not everyone does this, Luisa for example has always found it to be too boring. The schedule is like this. Rise fairly early get to the beach by 9 the kids play the parents chat and lay in the sun. Around noon or so, go back to the camp, apartment or hotel for a big lunch followed by a rest. Finally return to the beach around 3 or 4 and stay until 7, go home, eat, go out if you don't have kids, and then repeat the same thing the next day.

Many women in Italy still think that tanning is good for their looks. This works great for the under 30 generation, but one does notice many of the women in their early 40's that look much older. The sun doesn't do the face or skin in general any favors as far as the aging process goes.

Camping on Uglian, Croatia

Waterfalls & Lakes

A few of the sites at Plitvicka Jezera, Croatia

Antique Wood Floors From Italy

We are looking at marketing wood flooring made near here from antique wood recycled. They are people we know from the kids school and have a very good business selling all over Europe. They don’t have any sales in the US and are willing to work with us if we can start something. Times are tough now, but since this is a high end specialty product it might still work. This is really beautiful stuff, some of the wood even comes from the old poles in the Venice canals.

Let us know if you have some interest.

13 Days in Croatia

Some friends were staying on one of the Islands for two weeks in a hotel comlete with breakfast and dinner. They asked us to join them so we decided to take the camper down. Turned out we were right next to their hotel in a tiny camp ground. The island is Uglian and so is the town. We went to Croatia for a very short trip a few weeks ago so we had some idea. But this island was much more simple shall we say. The great thing about these islands is that there are so many places to swim and very few people. The water is clear, clean and warm enough. It seems Croatia is making a huge effort to stimulate it's tourist business. Construction is going on everywhere, improvements to streets, boardwalks, and town squares.

We spent 10 days on the island with our friends something longer than we planned, because the kids were all playing together and things just went well. Then we moved on to see the cascading lakes at Plitvecka Jezera. They are a series of lakes each one a bit lower than the other so they are connected by waterfalls. Very beautiful, and quite a tourist attraction. A little like going to Yosemite. It's all very organized, we did the six hour tour, you take a bus down to the highest lake, then walk for an hour and a half or so, eventually arriving at one lake where you are taken on a boat across it. At that point there is a nice park with food service, we stuffed ourselves with roasted chicken.

What really made this a vacation was all the little problems, you know what's a vacation without them. The first couple of days on the island it rained a lot, the only hot water was solar so no hot showers, we were able to use the camper shower, but there was no water connection so I couldn't refill our tank. Eventually I bought some extra tubing and disconnected the camp shower hose to hook up my hose. It worked fine. Did I mention that there was only one other family in the camp. In fact when they arrived to stay in a trailer fixed in the camp they were just behind us so I decide to move, and that's when I backed into the tree, smashing a tail light. Next came the mountain bike ride in which I lost our camera going over some really rough rocky roads. Hours of back tracking failed to find it. We did have another camera but of course I didn't bring the charger for it as I hadn't really planned on using it. The final episode was the dead battery when we went to leave, our friend and the neighbor helped us jump start it. That was fine, I kept the motor going on the ferry ride, but when we stopped on the island of Pag for a little tour, dead battery again. I manged to jump it using the camper battery, but that requires taking out the driver seat to access it. Not much fun.

More later

Beauties on the Beach

Pictures in Croatia

A really nice place for the kids to swim.

Staying Fit Looking Young

People ask John how do you do it, stay so young looking at your age. Well actually no one ever asks me that, but I want to talk about anyway. Really my secret is to drink a lot of wine, and eat plenty of salty greasy snaks. The wine and the snacks are my weakness. Otherwise I do all right with the food. But I think the important thing to remember in keeping one's physcial fitness as one ages is to make the effort part of everything one does. For example: the little things we do everyday make a difference, practice your balance by always putting on your socks and shoes standing on one foot rather than sitting down, stretch your legs by reaching down to the floor without bending the knees, unless picking up something heavy. Take the stairs always. Walk whenever you can rather than taking the car. The idea is to make things we have to do anyway part of an overall fitness program, I'm sure you can come up with your own ideas. One really needs to be stuborn and not accept the aging process as a given, of course it is, but we don't have to just sit back and get fat and weak. Are you 30 something and think it's not important to excercise. Don't kid yourself, the body starts going downhill after 20 something. Take care of yourself and at 65 you might ski better than you ever have, or swim 2k. It's really amazing how much one can do if one takes moderate care of oneself.

TRIESTE & ROVENJ

A few of the pictures from our recent excursion, see more pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/HMItaly/TriesteRovenj

The Emperor of Mexico

I think many Americans have heard of Archduke Maximilian. He's the guy who was asked to and finally accepted the title of Emperor of Mexico. Little did he know what he was getting himself into. His end came at the firing squad of Benito Jauraez. We made a trip down to a beach in Croatia this weekend and along the way stopped off to see Miramare Castle, manily because it was used in a movie we saw recently. It's in Trieste. It was built by Maximilian as his home which he lived in only 3 years before heading off to Mexico. I had no idea really of the history so I've since done a little studying, that's the funny thing about traveling about, it does make you have to wake up a bit to what's around you.

We took the camper of course, "camped" in a parking lot on the water front in Trieste the first night which gave us a chance to make a bike tour of the center of the city. It's really a pretty city, and on a Saturday night with warm weather, the outdoor bars and restaurants where full. One can see the influence of the Austrians in the architecture.

Croatia, was the second night but only after taking a tour of the biggest cavern in the World also in Trieste. Very impressive, especially the 140 meters of steps to go down and then back up. Then it was the beach, mostly rocks big and small, but very clean and clear water. Not really a great place for kids, but being so early in the season at a camp ground we had a beautiful spot overlooking the water. The nearby giant waterslide free as part of the campgrounds made up for the lack of sand on the beach for the kids.

All this followed Monday by it taking 4 hours to travel 90 kilometers. Just traffic and border crossings. Interesting being in a traffic jamb in a camper, spent time cleaning and organizing, then fixed dinner, ate, got Giovanni and Julia ready for bed, teeth brushed etc. Then they went to bed and slept through the rest of the trip, but not before watching some of a movie on the laptop.

Family Blogging

I feel a need to write about this, as I guess I have mixed feelings. It's great to be able to keep up with family members spread around the world, daughters and grandchildren from Seattle to San Diego to Switzerland and me in Italy. Email has pretty much replaced the hand written or even typed letter sent through the mail which was something to keep as a record of relationships, friends and lovers. It was a way to record history. I have copies of letters written by ancestors nearly 200 years ago, they really give a sense of the times.

Email on the other hand just doesn't have that personal touch, how many of us file them away to remember times past. Well I guess a lot of them are just left in the computer to be searched for later. Of course the new computer every few years and changed email programs tends to eleminate them regardless.

But blogging I don't know, it's kind of like reading about your family in the newspaper, ultimately unpersonal. It is great as an addition to the personal call or email. A way to see pictures, videos and little stories. It's not a replacement for some form of direct contact, it doesn't make one feel better to see photos when phone calls are rarely returned or initiated. In a way without the addition of personal contact it can make one feel somewhat alienated, like well there is a life going on there but I'm not part of it.

Not Much

What's up, not much, you? Seems we've been busy, but nothing exciting that makes life in Italy seem different than any other place on the planet. We went to Milan for Julia's orthodontist appointment on a Friday, then home Sunday morning for a kids birthday party. The next weekend was off to Pradipozzo for Luisa's Dad's birthday and to see her brother in from Canada for a visit and a conference in Tuscany. Then back home for guess what, another kid's birthday party. Then this last weekend back to Milan for Sara's first communion (Luisa's sister's daughter). This coming weekend is a three day one so maybe we will take the camper out someplace. But we can't leave until Saturday as Julia has her dance class Friday until 7:30. They are getting ready for the big show in another week.

Milan was nice this last weekend. After dinner Saturday night Luisa and I walked what is I guess a couple of miles into the central area, where the duomo is. It was a nice warm evening, but then it started to rain; we were of course without umbrellas, but we managed to get into the central area where there are porticos without getting drenched. Going to Milan often one tends to forget how beautiful that part of it is. It is spectacular, always something new, and the store windows full of the latest fashions. Tourists from all over the World, and the occasional, beautiful woman passing by who can actually aford those fashions and wear them properly.

In Belluno, maybe, hopefully, the warm weather has finally arrived. We've had a ton of rain lately, so now it's quite humid and very green all around us. I managed to get my garden started the other day. It's going to be a simpler one this year for a couple of reasons, one we don't plan on being home that much and two, Luisa insists she would rather just buy her lettuce at the market as it's cheap and doesn't come into the house full of dirt.

Bank Money Transfers & Exchanges

I've been asked by one of my "many" readers to say more about some practical matters of living in Italy. I just wrote this reply to someone asking about transferring money to Italy and how to avoid the add ons from the banks, so I thought might as well post it here too.

It's pretty hard to avoid the add on fee charged over the wholesale rate you find on the Internet. Those rates are for million dollar exchanges. We do phone transfers from B of A to our bank in Italy. There is a flat fee for the transfer and an add on depending on the amount we transfer. Then our bank here charges a small fee for their service.
If you are in Italy use your credit card from the US or just take money out with your atm card. Either one is a bit less than or the same as bank transfers. I found PayPal to be good. You can set it up to transfer money in from you bank account, they put the money in a money market account and pay interest. They only charge $1 for atm withdrawals and the exchange rate is usually better than the bank. If you use the atm card as a charge card when purchasing you can set it up to get 1% cash back.

We also use a credit card that gives us miles on a frequent flyer program. We pay it off every month using our US checking account. So we get mileage and also avoid having to transfer money for daily expenses such as groceries, clothes, etc.

Purse Snatcher

We were coming out of the underground on the way to Julia's orthodontic appointment. On the stairs in front a guy in a suit was pulling on the purse of a woman. Without thinking much I yelled at the guy. Next he starts yelling at me, saying what do I want to do, my Italian escaped me and I was silent, just giving him the dirty look. In the mean time his wife or girl friend, the one with the purse, was saying something like calm down. Turns out they were having a fight over a cell phone. When I realized that I walked away and let them have their fight.

The thing is I keep wondering what I should have done, just ignore the incident, and let someone steal the purse, or do what I did. Now in a calmer moment I think it was right to yell, a real purse snatcher may have just run off, my next move if it ever happens again will be to find the nearest policeman. In this case we were right in the center of Milan and at the top of the stairs were a bunch of cops. Doing anything else would run the risk of some physical injury, probably to me, possibly to the bad guy and not worth the loss of a purse.

More Pictures

Here is our Google site for pictures, http://picasaweb.google.com/HMItaly Many more pictures of the stuff on the blog.

Ravenna

The campers come into a large grass parking area. In true Italian
style, many bring out the tables and chairs, fix a nice lunch of
pasta, wine, etc. and relax.

Po River Delta and Ravenna

A few shots from our recent trip.

Wildcamping

Wildcamping, that's what the English call motorhome camping outside of an organized camping area with facilities, like electricity, showes, toilets, etc. and of course security. So far in our three weekends out including this last four days we have camped in a campground once and Wild camped in several areas. It seems to be quite popular here in Northern Italy. I'm not so sure about the south. We've had great fun, camped next to the water in a fishing village in the Po River Delta, took a long bike ride through the marshes to visit a light house, the kids learned how they harvest clams, and mussels first hand from the fisherman. Then we camped near one of the old basilicas near Ravenna and finally parked right next to the beach for one night, about an hour north of there.

The beach parking was interesting, it reminded us of the coast of southern California where one can sometimes park right next to the beach. The main difference is that in California one can't spend the night. There were many other campers there and we were able meet a few other people. I guess what got it started was me asking about claming. I noticed a few people out in knee deep water collecting small clams. So I started asking questions. Once informed I grabbed a bucket and started digging myself. One just digs down a couple of inches and there they are. I managed to get enough for a great spagetti and clam sauce lunch today. Wow, eating them in a restaurant will never be the same, so sweet and tasty. I will post some pictures tomorrow.

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