shave ice & gelato

Now to catch up on what I have not yet posted...

One of the highlights of my visit to Venice was my tour of the Clock Tower or Torre dell'Orologio. In order to take this tour, you must make a reservation in advance. Three English tours are offered each day. The cost is 12 euros. There are a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 12 people per visit. I had some difficulty with my credit card making my reservation and was fortunate to have Katia to help me with this.

Sunday, June 10th
My tour was not scheduled until Wednesday. I was pretty excited about this tour and headed to see the clock tower early Sunday morning, the day after I arrived in Venice to take a few pictures. I was lucky to get a few shots before the crowds arrived. Here is one of my favorite pictures:

Wednesday, June 13th
Wednesday morning finally arrived, the day of my Clock Tower tour!! I took a traghetto over to the the Rialto Market area to search out a bar that I read about for some coffee. I was not able to fine it but instead found a great little bar on the corner of Ramo de la Donzela. The only sign I could find was "Wine Bar", which was written on one of those little slates along with a list of drinks and things to eat outside the bar. After having a great coffee and a delicious pastry, I spent a little bit of time at the Rialto Market. I love looking at all the interesting fish and the delicious produce.

I then headed over to the Museo Correr. I arrived about 20 minutes before my tour. I gave my email reservation number to the man at the ticket office and was told that my ticket for the tour would also allow me to visit the Museo Correr. He suggested that I visit for a while and return just before 10am. My plan was to visit this museum in more depth later in the day but since I had a little time before my tour was to start, I entered the museum and spent a little time in a few of the rooms. I will talk more about the museum in a later post as I did return and spend quite a bit of time enjoying the many rooms and items on display.

Wednesday, June 13th
After finishing my Clock Tower tour, now that I understood all about the different ways the time was displayed, I wanted to watch the time change and the bell rung by the Mori. I took another little video of the time changing and bell ringing but again, I need to figure out how to do the youtube thing before posting the video.

In addition to the time that is displayed with the numbers on the two wheels (see previous post), there are two more clock faces. The clock face on the front of the tower under the Virgin Mary displays the time of day, the Zodiac sign, and the current phase of the moon:

The clock face on the back of the tower, which you can see when taking the street to Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) I believe only displays the time:

It was a little after 11 am. I realized there was only a tiny line to get into the Basilica di San Marco (Saint Mark's Basilica). I hadn't planned to go into the Basilica as I had been before, but I couldn't resist with such a short line!

My first stop inside was to go up top where the horses are located to get yet another view of the Clock Tower as well as the rest of Piazza San Marco. It was pretty packed but I managed to find a few spots which were not so crowded. For those that don't know, the horses up on the balcony are replicas. The original horses are located inside and with no photos allowed.

Wednesday, June 13th
The island of San Giorgio Maggiore has always fascinated me.

I have taken many pictures of this island from afar but I have never actually visited this island. After a wonderful lunch, I headed back to take a vaporetto to finally go into the church that dominates the island and to go to the top of the clock tower.

The vaporetto was a little tricky to find as there were either two or three docks close together (am having difficulty recalling the exact number now) and I was not sure which one would take me to San Giorgio Maggiore. I went to the wrong dock, but was redirected. I still was not sure if I was at the correct dock (which is why I am thinking there must have been three docks) but then saw the route on the board and knew I was in the correct place. The vaporetto for this route did not run as regularly as the others. Fortunately for me the next vaporetto was set to arrive in about 10 minutes. The boat was not too crowded. This allowed me to take some good close up shots of the island.

Thursday, June 14th
I awoke Thursday morning to a cloudy day. It was tough to figure out if the clouds meant rain. I brought my raincoat with me just in case.

After having my morning coffee, I went in search once again for Peter Pan, the mask store I had been searching for. I took the vaporetto over the San Stae stop and tried to retrace my steps from last year when I stayed near that stop.

Just after getting off the vaporetto, the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. I was glad I decided to carry my raincoat with me. Even with my raincoat on, I was drenched. I saw a few older ladies stopped under archways waiting for the rain to stop. To me, it looked like it would be raining all day. I walked as close as I could to the edge of the road to try to escape some of the rain. After about 20 minutes, the rain stopped.

Friday, June 15th
Friday was my last full day in Venice. It was an overcast day which reflected my mood as I was not yet ready to leave Venice. My first stop of the day was to a little pasticceria shop on Strada Nova in Cannaregio for my morning coffee and a pastry. I ordered one of those delightful pastries from Naples called a sfogliatelle. Big mistake! The pastry was indeed delicious but there should be a warning placed on this pastry saying “Do Not Eat in Public”. I made such a mess. I must have gone through at least 10 napkins.

After leaving the pasticceria, I wandered through more of the Cannaregio area. I wandered down the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, through the Ghetto area, and also down the Canale di Cannaregio. I took some photos along the way:

One of the highlights of my visit to Italy every year is time spent with my friends in Italy. Unfortunately, it did not work out to meet up with Francesco & Irene this year, but I did get to spend another wonderful weekend with Katia & Guido in Coccaglio. They recently married and are living in a wonderful little apartment nearby Katia's parents' house.

Saturday, June 16th
After finishing up my last minute packing, I grabbed a quick coffee and then headed to the Ca' Doro vaporetto stop. I was a little nervous about how packed the vaporetto would be as there were many others also waiting with their bags to head to the train station. The vaporetto was pretty full, but at least we were not packed in like sardines. I have heard of having to pay extra when taking luggage onboard. So far (knock on wood), I have never had to pay.

I took a Eurostar train to Brescia where Katia met me. We headed back to her apartment and had lunch.

View of a monastery above Coccaglio:

After lunch, we went to Guido's shop to see if he could fix my suitcase. I was hoping that he could get it to go all the way up and down but at the very least, I needed for it to close or the airline, which by the way damaged my handle, would not let me check the bag and it was too big to carry on. Guido took the handle apart. It was pretty interesting seeing the inside of a luggage handle. Even with a little oil, it was not going to budge. He finally found the problem. There was a huge dent in the metal halfway down one of the handles. My bag must have been dropped from pretty high up and had to have landed on something hard for it to dent like that. Guido was able to get the handle to close but we could not make it go up any higher.

Monday, June 18th
Bologna is known for its food, its porticoes and its towers. At one point in history, many have said that there were up to 180 towers in Bologna although more recent studies now suggest that the number is closer to 80 - 100 towers. Click here to see a panoramic picture of Bologna in the 11th century. Less than 20 towers remain today.

The two famous towers in Bologna are the Garisenda Tower and the Asinelli Tower. It is pretty difficult to get both towers from top to bottom in one picture. I took this picture on my walk over to the towers from the main piazza in Bologna

Both of the towers are leaning towers. The Garisenda Tower is shorter, leans more, and is not available for climbing. It is the tower pictured above on the left. The Asinelli Tower is the taller of the two towers, the tower I climbed, and the tower pictured on the right. I have read that there are 498 steps to the top. I lost count on my way up. It definitely was a challenging tower to climb.

I can't believe it has been 8 days since my last post. Where has all the time gone? When I returned home from my trip, I started to download all of my pictures onto my computer and ran out of room! I also ran out of room on my external hard drive. After doing a little research, I found a new external hard drive that seemed to meet my needs. It was delivered last Friday. While everyone was enjoying their new Harry Potter books, I spent 3 full days re-organizing my computer. I also learned a BIG lesson. If you have a Mac, DO NOT touch any of the folders or information in your iPhoto program. I was able to retrieve them all using iPhoto Library Manager, but it was a long process. My eyes were pretty blurry after all that work and so I avoided the computer for a few days after that, but now I am back.

For this post, I wanted to share more of Bologna. Leslie, I hope this continues to inspire you!! The following pictures are of the porticoes and the beautiful buildings and colors of Bologna.

When I first walked into Piazza Maggiore, I was a little disappointed that there were men setting up this huge stage with an area roped off and scaffolding placed right in front of the Basilica di San Petronio. There were two reasons for my disappointment. I was disappointed that it would be very difficult to get a good picture of this church and also that I would not be in Bologna for the free festivities about to take place over the next few days, a dance marathon of some sort.

Fortunately, a couple of hours later when returning for one more moment in this beautiful piazza before heading back to my hotel, I found that although the chairs and the stage was still there and the men were still working on some sort of electrical work, the roped off areas and the scaffolding were no longer there. I started to walk down one of the aisles to get to a good angle to photograph the church when a dog that was by his owner under a chair started growling and barking. I was pretty freaked out (barking dogs and thunder & lightening being my two fears). I jumped and let out a little scream. I was glad to see that he was on a leash, but still was not comfortable being near him and so I maneuvered my way through a few more rows and then was yelled at by the men working on the electrical wiring telling me I could not be there. I sort of acknowledged their message but continued on to get my photo.

The Basilica di San Petronio is the 5th largest church in the world. As you can see the top half was never finished. This makes it a rather unique church today.

One more entry for Bologna and then I will move onto Rome. The food in Bologna is definitely one of the highlights of this wonderful city. Here are a few pictures that I took during my afternoon there:

I have wanted to try this trackback thing for a while now and thought of a perfect post. Both Leslie and I have a LOVE for smart cars. I am not as smart as she is though as I have not yet figured out how to make a slide show. She has a made many wonderful slide shows for her blog. One of my favorites is of her smart cars.

In this post, I have added a few of the smart cars I have photographed during my past few trips to Italy. Now I am not sure what is going to happen as far as the trackback thing goes, but if it does not work, at least you will have the photos I have posted. My hope is that a link will appear so that you can also enjoy Leslie's smart cars.

a Bologna smart car

I took tons and tons of pictures while in Rome. I am still going through them trying to decide what to keep and what to delete.

Where to start when sharing my images from Rome? After some thought, I decided on starting with Piazza Navona since it was where I started after arriving in Rome.

There are three fountains in Piazza Navona. On one end, you will find the
Fontana di Nettuno or Fountain of Neptune

One of the highlights of my trip this summer was my visit to the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums). The Musei Capitolini are said to be the oldest public museums in the world. The history of these museums can be traced back to 1471. The Musei Capitolini are located on the famous Campidoglio or Monte Capitolino (Capitoline Hill). The collections of art, statues, archeological remains, and other items are housed in three main buildings which surround the Piazza del Campidoglio and are interlinked by an underground gallary beneath the piazza.

The ticket cost 8 euros. I believe the cost for the audioguide, which I would highly recommend, was about 5 euros. When you rent the audioguide, you need to leave an ID. My copy of my passport worked.

The entrance into the museums is through the Courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. I'm not sure how, but I did not know about these museums until this spring, while reading up on Rome. I saw a few pictures of parts of a statue in this courtyard, the Courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and I immediately put a visit to the Musei Capitolini as a must on my list of things to do while in Rome. The museums were even more amazing than I imagined.

Courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori
Colossal statue of Constantine: right hand
313-324 AC

Today was my 8th day of teaching and I am still beat! Most days, after putting in an 8-10 hour day, I am passed out two to three hours after arriving back home at night. It is amazing how much energy preschoolers have and how little energy I have. This year however, I will be getting a second mini vacation very soon! I am renting a place on the beach up on the North Shore for a few days when my friends Katia and Guido arrive.

Meanwhile, I will try to do a few more posts before they arrive. I then may have to take a little detour on this blog and post a few pictures of Hawaii.

In Piazza della Minerva, you will find a very cute elephant. This elephant is the base for an Egyptian obelisk. The Roman name for this statue is "Pulcino della Minerva". The statue is located in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva and behind the Pantheon.

While changing my memory card in Trastevere, I noticed this interesting reflection of some apartments. My camera was pointing down onto the hood of a shiny car. I could not think of a title for this photo but thought it was pretty cool.

The Castel Sant'Angelo has always intrigued me. The first couple of times I visited Rome, I never had enough time to visit the Castel Sant'Angelo. This past summer, I finally spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon inside this mysterious castle. The admission was 5 euros. Here are some images from my visit.

Ponte Sant'Angelo with the Castel Sant'Angelo in the background:

After spending a few wonderful hours enjoying the Castel Sant' Angelo, I headed to the bookstore. Outside sat a gorgeous cat. We quickly made friends. I must have spent 30 minutes just hanging out with her. I am sure she would have been a little happier if I had some food to share but I think she appreciated the attention I gave her. If I lived in Rome, I might have considered taking her home with me, but since there is a certain cat quarantine issue in Hawaii, I sadly said goodbye, and instead took a few images home with me.

While in Rome this past summer, I had the opportunity to once again climb to the top of the Cupola of the Basilica di San Pietro (dome of St. Peter's Basilica).

After climbing 323 steps, I was treated to an amazing view from the interior gallery at the base of the Cupola. Although I chose to climb the first portion, there is also the choice of taking a lift to reach this point. However, from the base of the Cupola to the top, the only way to get there is by climbing more steps (I believe it was 228 more steps).

In this post, I would like to share a few pictures that I took from the interior gallery at the base of the Cupola.

After leaving the interior gallery at the base of the Cupola, I continued my climb to the top for some magnificent views. I took this picture from the roof below. If you look closely, you can see all the people along the bottom railing. This is where you end up when you reach the top.

After taking in the 360 views at the top of the Cupola, my last stop on my " Cupola climb” adventure was a visit on the roof of the Basilica. Because it was extremely crowded at the top, I was relieved to find a lot of open space down on the roof. This was my favorite part of the climb.

The roof houses a coffee shop, a gift shop, and restrooms. I must comment that I was quite impressed with the cleanliness of the women's restroom on the day I was there.

While on the roof, you are allowed to walk around, get up close with the statues, and you are rewarded with more incredible views. I spent quite a bit of time just hanging out and enjoying the views.

I also went inside the bar to get a cup of coffee. I mentioned in my July post about a possible trivia question about the roof coffee bar. “Where in Italy will you get an espresso served in a tiny paper cup (and I mean tiny, even smaller than a dixi cup)?” Answer - at the bar on the rooftop of the Basilica.

A few of my favorite pictures from the roof of the Basilica:

My second trip to Italy, in the summer of 2000, included a visit to the Campania region. This is the region where Montefalcione and Lapio are located. My great-grandfather was born in Montefalcione and my great-grandmother was born in Lapio. My hope was to visit at least one of these two towns while staying in this region.

I met a friend who would be joining me on my Sorrento leg of my trip in Florence the day before we were to travel to Sorrento. We traveled by train the following day. After a day or two, we stopped at the tourist information booth where I inquired about directions and transportation options to get to Montefalcione. The man at the desk offered to take us if he would be going that way during the week while we were in Sorrento, and if not, he would try to find someone else to take us there. I was thrilled as I thought the only way to get to Montefalcione would be spending most of the day on trains and buses. That evening, he called me and said that his brother, Luigi, would be able take us the following day.

Luigi arrived at our hotel at 8am the following morning. After years and years of genealogy research, Wednesday, July 5th, 2000, would be the day I would finally step foot on the land of my great-grandfather's birthplace! I was a little nervous at first not knowing this man, but he turned out to be a very kind person. It took us about two hours to get to Montefalcione because part of the Salerno to Avellino autostrada was closed for construction. We had to take a long detour up and down a mountainside, stopping for directions a few times along the way. I know I would have never found it on my own. Montefalcione is located up high on a mountainside (monte=mountain). It seemed to me to be a pretty modern little town. We drove thru part of the town and then parked the car.

Luigi took the picture of my great-grandfather along with my genealogy list with of all my relatives' names from Montefalcione (Catalano, Martignetti, Musto, Noviello, Del Sasso, D'Amore) and started to ask some of the people if they knew if any of my relatives were still living in the town. Because Montefalcione is not a town where many tourists visit, we seemed to be quite a curiosity to many of the residents of the town. They seemed quite amazed that I came all this way looking for relatives. We did find a woman whose mother's name was Catalano but her mother was very old now and would not be able to help us.

We then went to the main piazza. This is a picture of Luigi and the main street in the town. Pictures in this post were scanned into my computer. Unfortunately I did not have a digital camera at the time and did not take that many pictures of the town.

Thank you softdrink for suggesting this fun topic on your fantastic Blonde Momentos blog and for helping me with my post for today :-)

I was going to try to do the hometown post but was not quite ready, so this idea worked out perfectly!!

Don't forget to check out softdrink's bookish meme.

Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I followed these rule as close as possible, but since I have been reading, or trying to read, three books (I am sort of ADD-ish) and they were all together, I chose "A Thousand Bells at Noon" since it was a book about Italy. The second of my three books was "Eat, Pray, Love" which has been a pretty popular book and I am sure has already been in a bookish meme, and the third book was a "female health issue" book which I am sure would not be as interesting to all readers.

I also will not tag anyone in particular, leaving this idea for as many bloggers as are interested, to use as an idea for a post sometime in February.

My Book: A Thousand Bells at Noon, by G. Franco Romagnoli:

"For you, my dear!" said the duke. Father and daughter were duly impressed; the duke's gamble worked and he gained a wife and a dowry. Rome (legend true or false) gained a splendid fountain.

But now the integrity of the rione that survived persecutions, wars, famine, and plague is beginning to break under the attack of the new affluence.

Can anyone guess the fountain being discussed? I will give you a hint...
The subtitle of the book is: A Roman Reveals the Secrets and Pleasures of His
Native City.

I am surprised at how these three sentences on page 123, sentences 6-8, turned out to be a perfect mystery question for all the Italy lovers out there. I have confidence that someone will be able to answer this question without peeking in the book. I will post the answer here in a few days, after everyone has time to guess.

*Edited to add the answer - the Turtle Fountain in Piazza Mattei

This car was parked in Piazza Sant'Egidio (Trastevere, Rome) a few doors down from the apartment I rented. I took this photo last summer.

Today has been a bad migraine day for me. A quick "photo post" was all I could do. Spending a lot of time on the computer is not working well for me today.

Manuelina is a restaurant in Recco famous for it's focaccia. I first heard about this restaurant and the focaccia they make from my Italian teacher, while taking a night class here in Hawaii.

In 2003, I spent a few nights in Camogli. After arriving in Camogli, one of the first things I did was to inquire on how to get to Recco. I was told that Recco was not that far and so I decided to walk there. It was a long walk (about 3 KM each way). The town of Recco itself was not that far, but Manuelina was located at the far end of Recco from Camogli.

When I finally arrived at Manuelina, I was rewarded with the most wonderful focaccia - focaccia col formaggio. This focaccia was not anything like the typical focaccia one has seen or eaten. It was thinner and filled with a delicious cheese mixture. The taste reminded me of my mom's blintzes. The only thing missing was the plum jelly to put on top.

So, if you are ever in Recco, make sure to visit Manuelina and order some focaccia col formaggio. They also have a take out window just for the focaccia.

San Fruttuoso is located in a bay between Camogli and Portofino. It can only be reached by boat or by foot. Since I will jump on a boat any chance I can get, how to arrive there was an easy choice for me. The boat ride from Camogli to the charming little bay where San Fruttuoso is located was quite relaxing.

The day I visited San Fruttuoso in the summer of 2003, a wedding was taking place inside the church. That unfortunately prevented me from more than a quick peek inside. I did however check out the special amber exhibit in the little museum nearby. I was quite surprised with what I learned about amber. After seeing some of the insects inside some of the amber pieces, I have not had much desire to purchase any amber.

I will try my best to briefly describe a little of the colorful history of the Abbey of San Fruttuoso (Abbazia di San Fruttuoso) from the brochures that I have saved and from a few google searches. The Abbey's existence has been dated back as far as the 3rd to 7th century depending on which account you read. The Abbey was attacked by the Saracens, a name which referred to the Arabs, Berbers, Moors and Turks, as well as pirates. The Abbey was rebuilt by Greek and then Benedectine monks. The Abbey was later home to fishermen and then finally the property of the Doria Family. The tower of Andrea Doria was built in 1562 to guard against Saracen and pirate attacks. In 1983, the Doria family donated San Fruttuoso to FAI.

First view of San Fruttuoso by boat:

One of my favorite places on the Ligurian Coast in Italy is the little fishing village of Camogli. I first learned about Camogli when watching filming of The Bold & The Beautiful in Italy. For those of you who are not familiar with The Bold & The Beautiful, it is a daytime soap opera, one of two I have been addicted to for years and years. I can now proudly state that I am no longer a daytime soap addict. I am thankful however that I was addicted back in 2002. If I wasn't, I would not have seen Brooke, Thorne, Macy, and Ridge in Camogli. I was immediately struck with the beauty and charm of Camogli when watching the scenes being filmed there. I knew right than while watching that show that I just had to go there one day. I went the following summer.

The Camogli boat harbor:

I do not have great memories of my two night stay in Santa Margherita Ligure. My initial plan was to stay in Camogli for five nights. Unfortunately all rooms were booked for the last two nights. Instead of cutting short my stay in Liguria, I decided on three nights in Camogli and then 2 nights in Santa Margherita Ligure, not exactly slow travel, but then again, I had not yet heard of the “slow travel” concept.

The train ride from Camogli to Santa Margherita Ligure was only 5 minutes. It was not really that much of a hassle to pack up and change hotels. When I arrived at Albergo Fasce (my hotel in Santa Margherita), I was informed that there was a problem with my reservation. I was given a single room with the bathroom down the hall that I would be sharing with two other girls. This did not make me happy at all. One of my "musts" when booking a hotel room is having a private bathroom in the room. I reconfirmed my reservation a couple of weeks previous to arriving in Santa Margherita and was not informed at that time of the problem with my reservation. The hotel situation definitely affected my stay. My review of Albergo Fasce goes into more detail about my experience at this hotel. I was hesitant at first to include my review on this post, but after a current search of reviews for this hotel, my review is reflective of many other reviews. To be fair, not everyone gave Albergo Fasce a bad review.

My first visit to Piemonte was in 2006. I spent four nights in Saluzzo followed by five nights in Torino. During one of my days in Torino, I did a daytrip to Asti and Acqui Terme.

Asti had been a town high up on my list of places to visit after reading about all the towers in the town years earlier. I love towers, taking pictures of towers, and climbing towers. I have a few posts about towers on this blog.

My reason to visit Acqui Terme was more personal. I had communicated with Diana Bauer during the planning phase of my 2006 trip to Italy. She was extremely helpful. We made plans to meet while I was in Torino. I was delighted that we would be able to meet and spend time together during my trip that year. I wanted to thank her in person for all of her help.

I walked by this cute little trattoria one day in Trastevere last summer and couldn't pass up taking a photo. I never found out the name. If you have been to Rome, have you eaten here?

Happy Easter!! ~ Happy Sunday!!

Coccaglio (my last stop) is a tiny little town where my friends Katia and Guido live. Coccaglio is located in the Franciacorta area of Lombardy (Lombardia) between Bergamo & Brescia, and when using more familiar landmarks, between Milan & Verona:

Closer view of Coccaglio:

The center of Coccaglio:

When reading Leslie's Kaleidoscope post today, I was reminded of PhotoHunt, a cool photo posting idea, and thought I would give it a try. What is PhotoHunt?

From the official PhotoHunt blog:

"The Photo Hunt was started in March 2006. A theme is given each Saturday. Post a photo that best represents the theme. New and old photos welcome."

This week's PhotoHunt Saturday theme is High:

It certainly looks like a long way up!! (Asinelli Tower in Bologna).

From the top ~ looking down at the Garisenda Tower and the tiny people below.

girasoli ~ I originally chose this name when setting up a yahoo email account many moons ago (or at least it seems that way now). My real name is such a common name and it was always taken. Even my last name is a pretty common name.

I decided on coming up with a unique Italian name as my user name. During my first couple of visits to Italy, I fell in love with the fields of sunflowers. After thinking about things that I loved about Italy, I decided on using the Italian word for sunflower ~ girasole as my user name. Unfortunately girasole was taken. Now I know that I am a singular person and "girasoli" means sunflowers (a plural word), but the only way I could use sunflower in Italian to create this new email account was to combine the Italian word for "two" with “girasole” and because I was now making the word plural, I changed girasole to girasoli (to be grammatically correct).

Since then, I have used girasoli in various combinations as well as by itself. To stay grammatically correct, I tried to use girasole when alone but it just got too confusing for my fingers to remember and for my family and friends needing to remember when to end the word in an "i" or an "e" especially since many could not even pronounce the word correctly. That is the story of how I became to be known as ~ girasoli.

Now, hoping not to confuse anyone further, I am adding a photo of a sunflower (singular) ~ il girasole. I took this photo while on the island of Burano two years ago.

Photos of the entrance of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria in Perugia. The art gallery is housed on the fourth floor of the Palazzo dei Priori.

For those contemplating or planning a visit to Torino, I would highly recommend a visit to La Mole Antonelliana and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema (National Museum of Cinema). I spent 5 days in Torino in July, 2006 and visited the Cinema Museum twice.

La Mole Antonelliana is the tallest building in Torino and at one time it was the tallest building in the world. The Museo Nazionale del Cinema is located inside La Mole Antonelliana.

Another museum I would highly recommend visiting while in Torino is the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum). My Torino card also worked for this museum.

After purchasing my ticket, it took me a few minutes to find the entrance to the museum because there were two different displays in the building. I found the entrance and wandered around the first room. This room held ancient rocks, dishes, pottery, jewelry, etc.

When I finished looking at all of the displays, I could not figure out where to go to find the next room. I went to ask the man sitting outside the entrance to the museum. He was not very friendly. I named him "crabby man." Instead of nicely pointing where to go, he yelled "sotto, sotto" at me, which meant downstairs. I found the stairway and headed to the next section of the museum.

I was in utter amazement when I entered this portion of the museum. I spent quite a while looking at each exhibit. I could not believe that we were actually allowed to take pictures in this amazing room! The only limitation was no flash.

This week's PhotoHunt was a tough one. All week long, I have been counting groups of things. I found 12 beautiful palm trees in a row, 7 great hibiscus flowers on a bush, but I have yet to find a group of 13 items that would make a good photo. I also searched through my photos with not much luck there either. I ended up going with a few photos with signs (even though next week's PhotoHunt has to do with signs). I figured with this choice, I could add a little bit of trivia to my post.

The word rione (plural - rioni) comes from the Latin word regio (plural - regiones) meaning regions. If Wikipedia is correct, the rioni in Rome were established for the first time in the 4th century BC by Servius Tullius, with only four, which at the time were called regiones (the plural of regio). More regions were added since then and they have been changed often over the years. Currently, there are 22 rioni.

R. XIII refers to the Trastevere rione of Rome.

Mondovì

Saluzzo

I still have tons of photos to share from my trip to Italy last summer. Because some of my photos would work better in a slide show type set up, I finally learned how to make a picasa web album slide show today. I have not posted any photos of Cortona yet. I decided to make my first slideshow of a hike I did in Cortona in June 2007.

After a long train ride to Cortona, finding a taxi, settling in, and having lunch, I spent my first afternoon in Cortona hiking up to the Sanctuary of Santa Margherita and the Fortezza del Girifalco. It was a long hike uphill. Although it was a hot afternoon, the views were spectacular. When I finally reached the top, I arrived at a huge church, the Sanctuary of Santa Margherita. It was unfortunately closed when I arrived.

I continued walking a little further uphill to reach the Fortezza del Girifalco. The cost to enter the fortezza was 3 euros. There was only one other person visiting this very peaceful fortezza while I was there. I first spent about 30 minutes walking along the wall that surrounded the perimeter along the top (similar to the fortezza in Montalcino) enjoying the views and the cool breeze. I then spent a little bit of time checking out the rooms inside. There were a few art pieces hanging in one or two of the rooms. Although the other rooms were empty, they were also peaceful and cool. After an enjoyable visit, I headed back to town, taking a different path, which took me along a few windy roads through a beautiful area of the town.

view from the bus stop:

another view from the bus stop - the Santa Maria Nuova Church:

shop in Cortona:

Teatro Signorelli (scenes from the movie Life is Beautiful/La vita è bella were filmed here):

i dolci (sweets):

I took this photo last summer while visiting St. Peter's Basilica.
This is one of my favorite photos from my visit that day.

While in Cortona, I took a daytrip to Arezzo, a place I have wanted to see since seeing the movie, Life is Beautiful. I wrote about my visit, "the men of Cortona & Arezzo" while traveling last summer. Here are some photos to go with the post.

The Duomo was HUGE!! Too bad it was closed when I arrived.

María did a post about her favorite palazzo on the island Murano in the beginning of May. I made a comment on her blog about taking a similar Venice window photo (of course now looking at the two side by side, they really are quite different). María asked me to post my window photo on my blog. Well it took a few weeks, but here finally is that window along with a few more of my favorite Venice window photos.
Do you have a favorite?

If you are in need of a nice bathroom while you are out and about in Rome, check out the Antico Caffè Greco, located on Via dei Condotti near the Spanish Steps. It is also a cool bar, although I can only personally vouch for the refreshing glass of peach juice I had while there.

It was a Wednesday in June 2005. I was staying in Bellagio on Lake Como. The prediction was for temporale that day (bad weather). I woke to overcast skies. I hung out for a while watching the weather trying to decide what to do.

The day before I walked all over Bellagio, got lost a couple of times, but had a wonderful time following the Bellagio walking tour. My feet and toes were pretty tired after a long day of walking and so I decided to spend the day on the boat, heading to Colico, the farthest point north on Lake Como, hoping that the weather would hold up for the day.

The first boat leaving (except the rapido boats) was at 11:30. I gathered up my things and headed down to the boats. The boat was not very crowded due to the unsettled weather. I found a great seat with a wonderful view and took lots of pictures on the ride up north. You can see my photos of the ride here. I enjoyed some cheese and some fruit on the way while checking out the towns along the lake. Many of the towns seemed much smaller to me than the towns on Lake Garda.

When I arrived in Colico, everything was closed except for a few bars. My original plan was to take the rapido boat back but because my boat was late to arrive in Bellagio, the rapido boat beat my boat to Colico and was heading back towards Bellagio just as we arrived. The next boat was scheduled to arrive in about 40 minutes. I walked around the town and found a little gelateria that was open while waiting for the boat.

On the way back to Bellagio, the sky seemed to clear a little as we got close to Varenna. I decided to stop there for an hour or so before heading back to Bellagio.

View of Varenna from the boat:

*Updated: click on "Continue reading" so see the 3 photos leading up to this photo...

I posted my favorite water photos last September: colors of the ocean and
ocean foam. Click on the pink words (links) and check them out when you get the chance.

Instead of posting them again, I chose a few of my favorite Lerici photos for
this week's water theme.