In Boston

Well, I am in Boston. But not for long! I am off to Los Angeles soon for the Sarah and Fergus wedding. So this will be my last photo for a while...

I stuck my water pitcher in the freezer and forgot about it, and it had a weird ice thing going on. Solid all the way around the bottom and the sides, with a small cup indentation on top. I thought I had blown my prospects of getting cold water at breakfast, but the single serving ice cube worked out for me!



It was pretty much 85 in my apartment all the time last week, so cold water was a must. I shudder to think how hot it will be in August...

Rigi

I hope I am spelling his name right! This weekend, Praskovia and I went on a walk with her dog Rigi in Parco Sempione. Besides the occasional bark at other male dogs, he's amazingly well behaved! He doesn't pull on the leash, try to eat trash off the ground, or try to scarf treats before he is explicitly given them. Praskovia took him to serious obedience classes!



Rigi's a wire fox terrier.

More grocery adventures.... this flavor of Schogetten is "For Kids":



With milk, the subtitle reads. It's not that different than the other flavors. Same milk chocolate shell. The milk filling is the same as the one in the caramel bar, just without a caramel ribbon. It's OK. I mean, it's still chocolate!

I don't know if I had ignored these yogurts before, or if they are new to Penny. There were four flavors, including a "Ciao Turkey" which had hazelnut and chocolate, and "Ciao Italy" with cherry and chocolate.



I had the France flavor yesterday... I though it was OK, the pear flavor was a little fake. But I see pear as a challenging flavor for yogurt...

Biodegradable Bags

So, my regular grocery store, Penny, uses biodegradable bags. There's a certain smell I associate with grocery shopping, and recently it dawned on me that the smell comes from the biodegradable bags. It's actually a nice smell, sort of savory. I have refrained from chewing on the plastic to see if it tastes as good as it smells. (Probably not as good!)

Loquat!

There's a loquat tree near my office! I didn't realize it was an edible fruit until one of my friends pointed it out on our walk to the coffee bar.



This is a pretty small loquat, and a loquat seed. The flavor is mild, but good. A little bit like an apricot, but not oversweet. The texture of the flesh is smooth. It would make a really good puree... I expect to keep picking and eating them for the next few days before I head home!

Riccione Monday

Monday morning we all had breakfast together at the hotel. I loaded up on sweets as usual! And then Gerri and Linda were off to the train station and Aurore and Kamal were off to the airport. We smiled at the sign on the way out of the hotel parking lot.



Chris and I hit the beach one last time and did a little street shopping before we headed to the train station. We changed trains in Bologna. As a major train station, it has the control tower bridges that you see at a lot of those stations. I love the way they look, and they state of disuse they are in. They are cool relics!

Riccione Sunday

Kamal and I rode bikes up from the hotel to the pool center to see the ladies compete! Thank goodness they were early in the morning schedule, as it was pretty sunny out there. Here's Gerri and Linda leaping in!



And Chris and Aurore posing after their swim. What glamour girls!



We had lunch at the hotel, which was pretty awesome. While we were just hanging out in the lobby, they started us off with peanuts, olives, and juicy aperitivo drinks, and then they had a salad bar out there with lots of yummy stuff. I had the spinach ravioli with the butter and sage, and fresh made tiramisu for dessert. That was really good!

We hit the beach, and then got ready again for dinner. We drove all six of us over through Rimini to an organic restaurant, Bio's Cafe. The food ended up being delicious. I had a pizza with spicy slightly sweet sauce, vegan sausage rounds, and really creamy soy cheese. I just loved it. Everyone was pretty pleased with what they had!

I should mention that I was the noble one who volunteered to ride in the cargo area of the group vehicle, since their weren't enough seats for everyone!

Riccione Souvenir

OK, I got a pair of cute flea market earrings too, but this is my little real Riccione souvenir. It's a tiny shell I picked up from the beach... It's not a lot, but I just liked it.

Riccione Saturday aka Lemoncello

Saturday was a good day! In the morning I went with the ladies to the pool, where they were practicing. I got to watch the older group routines, some of which were pretty cool. The costumes are always fun! After the ladies got in their afternoon rest, we headed out to the beach. But, I would have to say that our day was really about dinner and lemoncello. We saw some cool souvenir bottles in the touristy shops.



We had dinner at La Fattoria del Mare, right on the beach. We were there so early that the place seemed pretty deserted, but we were lucky to get a table since they were booked up full for the night! We basically came in for the pre-dinner shift. I had a yummy pizza with eggplant, parmesan, and asparagus. But apparently we were done with plenty early because they brought over a complementary bottle of lemoncello to our table! Chris and Linda were not so familiar with it, but Gerri knew what we were getting into.



No, Linda didn't drink it all down! We actually didn't come close to finishing it!

Riccione, Friday

I arrived in Riccione Friday night. The ladies picked me up at the train station, and we headed back to the hotel to get me checked in! We were staying at Hotel Pigalle. I give it high marks! It's a few blocks back from the beach, so it's a little more quiet. There's parking and free bike rental. The included breakfast had a big selection, too. We had dinner at the hotel as soon as I got in, and it was pretty good! The cream of asparagus soup was great.

After, we took a walk on the beach. The sunset was just gorgeous!



Linda, Gerri, and I took off our sandals to enjoy the water and sand barefoot. The water felt pretty warm at night, and the sand on that beach is really fine and soft.



And of course I made the ladies pose for some group pictures!

Glicine

It's been a while since I wrote about wine... But I haven't been drinking enough of it to mention! This was my wine earlier this week. Glicine...



I didn't know much about this wine going in, and I don't have too much to say about it, to be honest. It was white, neither sweet nor tart, without too much fruitiness. It was light and pleasant. I would certainly drink it again, but it didn't make a big impression!

14th FINA World Masters - Riccione

I just got back from Riccione! I was there for fun and sun, but also to support the Redwood Empire team at the FINA World Masters. This year's delegation was Linda, Gerri, Aurore, and Chris. (Chris, thanks for the photos!)



They were each competing in solo, and paired Linda/Gerri, Aurore/Chris for the duets. We have some medalists here! Chris and Aurore's free duet to the "Palladio" suite was well received. (The song is the one from the De Beers ads, a great choice, really.)



And Chris nailed the gold in her solo. Congratulations on that awesome showing!



The synchronized swimming was just a small part of this big event. I was told there were around 250 synchro ladies. (At the international level, men cannot participate in synchro currently. In the US, they can swim!) The whole championships, which included speed swim, open water, water polo, and diving, was supposedly close to 15000 swimmers strong. The facility was huge, and that beach you saw in yesterday's photos had some of the open water swimming go past it! Tomorrow I will put up some photos of the facility, too.

Riccione Preview

Having a blast in Riccione. The beach is beautiful. Here's a few preview photos from my first night here. The Adriatic stretching on over the horizon...



And the umbrellas as well!

Riccione

This weekend I am in Riccione with Linda, Chris, and Gerri! It's a pretty typical tourist spot here in Italy. I first heard of it when the Jersey Shore kids went during the season they visited Italy... It's sort of like the Cancun of Italy!



Hopefully my pictures will be a little classier than theirs!

More from last weekend.

Here's a few more pics from La Rinascente! I have always liked the view up there.



My drink was huge! Luckily, it wasn't too strong.



Everyone else went with wines.

Pizza Heart!

Heart pizza!



And it was pretty good. In Italy, mixed fruit salad is called macedonia...

St. Gerri

Here's a cute one of Gerri and her "Saint"!



I think riding the subway was actually a lot of fun for the ladies. It's a good way to people watch, and we weren't ever going very far. Also, we were on Line 3, the yellow line, most of the time. It's the nicest and newest and has air conditioning!

The Ladies Visit

Linda, Chris, and Gerri are in Italy right now, at a big FINA meet in Riccione. I got to show them around the town a bit this past weekend. Here they are in front of the Duomo on Friday. When we stopped by the Duomo again Saturday morning, there was a big ceremony going on for ordaining priests! It was quite lovely.

Foods at La Rinascente

This weekend I attended aperitivo at La Rinascente with the swimming ladies. I have a big bunch of pictures to show off from their visit, but I figure I will start with this quick food pic.



Pasta rings! And deep fried cocktail capers, like from yesterday's post!

Esselunga Trip

I hit up Esselunga today. (Sunday hours, 9-14!) It's definitely nicer than Penny Market, with a bigger selection. And higher prices too. Here's my big haul.



The most exciting things I got were these cocktail capers, and some new flavors of filled pasta! Ravioli di zucca, turban squash ravioli, and these artichoke and pistachio tortellini.



I tried the ravioli di zucca, pretty good, and quite different than the butternut squash ravioli I am used too.

Rediscovery

Well, I had an odd moment last night. I realized I had a completely empty cabinet in my kitchen, and I just "rediscovered" it.



See, right there, just to the left of the sink. That's a tin full of tea, also. To be fair, that cabinet to the right of it is pretty much empty too, but it's a drying rack cabinet and you all know how I loathe washing dishes by hand, I am dishwasher all the way. Anyway, I feel like I opened the cabinet when I first got here, and never needed it since. But, it's really a better place for my dried goods than above the fridge, so I have moved all that stuff over there. It goes to show how this place really is bigger than I need it to be!

Pirate Ship

In Italy, lots of these rides don't have the same safety equipment as they would in the US. The bumper cars had no seat belts and no fence surrounding the floor, the Condor did have little doors but no seat belts, and so on. The pirate ship kind of amazed me. It didn't go upside down or anything, but it did have these compartments on the upper decks where you could go into the cage and stand during the ride, gripping the bars for support. It looked fun, and definitely like the kind of thing that they would never have in the US since you could easily bonk yourself!

Booths and Food

Luna Euro Park was lined with games and food booths. I ended up doubling down on the granitas, since it was a pretty hot day. They had these odd candies up at the counter, I guess they are just sugar water, but I liked the color and the way they caught the light.



The carnival games came in most of the standard varieties. This one was kind of cute, you had to hook the swans by the neck as they floated past.



This one was a pretty standard throw the hoops over the blocks kind of thing.



We didn't end up playing any of the games, but I liked the look!

Flying Fury

At Luna Euro Park, this was our "crazy" ride. The Flying Fury looks like a regular swinging arm ride, but it's user controlled. You have control over two axes of motion, roll and yaw, and over the speed of this big old ABB propeller fan.



We let Dariush drive, and now I know why Ali doesn't want him to drive his car. I'm upside-down in this picture because that's the orientation the camera and I were in.



It doesn't look so bad in this video, right? They are actually going pretty slowly! Let me assure you it was pretty insane.



They make you leave everything on the ground, and rightfully so. I barely managed to hold on to my camera! Dariush lost a whole pocketful of stuff. Here's the guys after we found his phone on the roof of the ride next door. His lighter turned up, his cigarettes did not. And the phone was in four or five pieces, but it shockingly still worked after he put it together again.



We were all pretty beat after this ride...

Luna Euro Park

This last weekend, I went to Luna Euro Park by Linate with my lab posse. I took a lot of photos, a bunch of which I want to share!

We hit a few rides out there, one we all could agree on was the bumper cars!



Another one we went on was this one, called Condor. It seems like a standard carnival ride, but I don't know if I have ever seen this one before. I found the motion of it pretty hypnotic, so I made a video.



I found the ride to be pretty relaxing as well.

Recent Foods

I haven't been posting my routine groceries as much lately, but i thought that I might share some of my recent taste treats. Last week I forced myself to buy different stuff than usual on my Penny trip. You can't really make them all out below, but there's ricotta salata, lupini beans, bigoli pasta, different olives, shallots, a melon, the globe zucchini, roasted yellow peppers, and a new flavor of Schogetten chocolates.



Here's a closer look at the produce!



The globe zucchini don't have a squishy seedy middle, actually. These were really good, I cooked them up with some of the shallots!



I found the bigoli to be a little tougher than I like my pasta. I cooked them for way longer than instructed on the package! Not sure if I will get these again, but they did grow on me a bit!

Citrus Sadness!

I finally cut open the lime I got from Isola Bella, and unfortunately it's a decorative lime. It's all pith! That central portion is about 1/2 inch in diameter.



The lemon at least was a regular lemon...

Triennale

Blake and I visited the Triennale while he was here. Almost all of the exhibits were new since the last time I visited. The primary exhibit, the design exhibition, had changed to the new edition. The last one was furniture, the new one is graphic design, with the focus really on text and graphic identity.



The exhibit includes typefaces, magazines and books with a focus on covers, posters, brand identity items, and even video graphics such as station bumps and intro sequences. These safety posters were cute to me!



We saw pretty much all the exhibits in the museum, which included Gérard Rancinan's The Trilogy of the Moderns, and an exhibit of modern material samples. This piece below is actual alligator skin, treated to translucency!