Bellagio

On Sunday, Anteneh invited me up to Como, and we headed out to Bellagio and Faggeto Lario with his friend Kal. On my way up I ran into this Boy Scout troup (OK, they're the Italian equivalent, but I don't know the name of the organization) at the Bovisa train station.



We walked up to the fountain in Como to take a coffee before heading out on the bus.



Bellagio also is a pretty major ferry stop for tourists.



We walked out on the seawall of the harbor at the tip of the peninsula, where you can see all around the lake.



We had a kind tourist take a group photo! See I am wearing my six Euro shoes... they are working out!



The harbor is quite charming, and there is a beach there so you can swim in Bellagio too. It's a sad little beach, though.



The town itself is quite charming, with lots of shaded streets that aren't totally packed with tourists. You just have to get above the lake line a bit!

Neighborhood

In Italy they have these signs all over that tell you the direction to the closest freeway entrances. This one is in a pretty small square in my neighborhood, I didn't realize it got enough traffic to justify such a complete sign. Yes, it is near-ish to a freeway... but not all these freeways!



These are slices from that strange Italian zucchini from the other day. The seed area was not present along a good chunk of its length and almost lacy in other parts.



Groceries! The little jellies are rose gummies, the ice cream is plain cream flavor with coffee ribbons, and those onions are like overgrown green onions. The tops work as chives, and the bulbs have some serious onion volume. The crackers are sort of like Ritz, but a little thinner and crispier. I had some with cheese today for lunch :D

Shoe Re-Do

I guess it's been a good week for shoe stuff. The blue-green sandals have panned out so far, and I did this fix-up of a pair of shoes my friend Esther gave me. She bought them at a street market stall quite cheaply, but they stretched to not fit her in about an hour I think. And then they stretched more when I tried to walk around in them. The issue is that the lace at the back slips off your heels, and you are mashing it down while the shoes are trying to slip off your feet. My solution: Tie little elastic bits through the lace at the heel and around my ankles. So far so good. The elastics aren't tight enough to bother me at all, but they do enough to keep the heel up.



The cream color of the lace is cute, and so far I have managed to keep them clean! I think the gold works well enough...

Just a quick mention of my dinner last week with my landlord Roberto at District 39. It's an all you can eat pizza place where they bring the pizzas by your table, it's actually a good idea since you can take your time eating but not worry about your pizza getting cold and stiff. My favorite piece I tried was probably the pear one. Apples and Gorgonzola is a semi-normal pizza option here, but this pear pizza had a milder cheese and maybe even a tiny bit of brown sugar...

We went to Mi Sciolgo for gelato after. I've been once before, I took Gerri and Linda when they were here. It's really one of the best places out there! I have got to start getting cups instead of cones, though, the name of the gelateria is quite accurate (it means "I melt").

A few from around the house...

I've started freezing my water jug at night, and the coolest ice patters form on the outside of the jug from just the condensate from the air. (It also sometimes ices itself to the place-mats.)



And these are groceries, of course. I am sort of hooked on the ricotta salata, I've been eating it for breakfast with a touch of honey. The arribiata sauce was on sale so I bought a bunch.



So my friends are telling me that some of the grocery stores here will be closed for parts of August... I might get lucky with my Penny since it's a German-run chain. I am not sure if I should stock up on foods or just hunt for the deals that the few open stores will be running. One of my friends spent a whole August in Milan, and got great deals at Esselunga, so it might also be a chance for me to enjoy some really high quality food on the cheap.

Ladybugs!

My apartment doesn't have air conditioning. It's a little hot at night sometimes, so I just open the windows and that usually does the trick. The issue is that even on the fifth floor, I sometimes get bugs. Not many, but I try not to leave the lights on in my bedroom when the windows are open, to avoid attracting them. In the kitchen, though, I usually don't bother with these measures. I thought it had backfired a couple of nights ago, as there was some huge looking kind of loud insect buzzing around. I went and grabbed my zapper racket (rechargeable!) and looked around for the thing, but it had settled down... and I couldn't see it... Turns out it was a ladybug! I didn't really comprehed how much their wings unfurl when they fly.



What a cute little guy! I love the ladybug faces. Once I saw it was a ladybug, I was quite relieved. I got him on a piece of paper and shooed him out the window, hopefully to find greener pastures.



Later in the evening I had another vistor, a this time a red one...

Market Day!

Yesterday I headed to the street market in the morning. Wow, there were actually more stalls than ever before, I guess because it's peak summer time, right before everyone goes on vacation... Here's some of the stuff I bought! (This is all the stuff for me, I got some gifts too, so they will not be appearing!)

Squash, melon, zucchini, and shoes. It's the time of year that all these things are pretty darn cheap. Including the shoes. They are super cheap-o, 6 euros! OK, they are made out of terrible materials, the soles are foam I think, but I am wearing them today and they were very comfortable on the walk to school. They certainly won't last forever, but for a fun summer shoe... Part of the reason I went for them is the color, you know me I like that sort of turquoise blue for everything. The other part is that the sole is pretty think. You can't really see in the pick but even in the toe the soles are just over an inch thick.



I actually am not a fan of the sandals with really flat leather soles, and around here, your feet would get filthy fast. But, that's the style that the Italian ladies are wearing...

This is a zucca squash, as far as I know. I think the term means pretty much any winter squash, including pumpkins, but this one is like a turban or buttercup squash. This is what the picture of the zucca on my last box of ravioli di zucca looked like...

Signage

The signage for the commuter train stations in Milan. I like that they list the stops the train is making, it makes me a lot more sure about getting on the trains! I find it a little odd that the track number display is digital here, since it doesn't change...



What I noticed for the first time recently is these signs for the conductors. What it really says is for 3-car trains to be stopped here, 6-car trains to slow down, and 8-car trains not to sweat it.

Sunday Shoppings

On Sunday Christopher and I strolled through the Giardini Indro Montanelli at Porta Venezia. Unlike the last time I was there, the kiddie stuff was in full swing. The little merry-go-round and train were running and lit up, and they were having pony rides!



It's a strange little park. There are a few ponds, a planetarium (which I will go to one day!), and a weird rocky rubble area along the northern edge.



We hit up the shopping on Corso Buenos Aires, where I bought some Kiko make-up and he bought a Benetton jacket. And then we were off to Ciu's Bar to meet up with Sina for aperitivo. Ciu's Bar has an amazing aperitivo, and the cocktails are huge...

Station Graffiti

This is graffiti at the Bovisa train station.



The bird is my favorite. "Piou Piou!"

Sicilian Foods

I mentioned earlier in my blog (many months ago) that most stores have paintings on their roll down doors, often representing their business. The one on the left in this picture is for a hair dresser... The one on the right is a Sicilian cafe. I actually have seen this symbolism for Sicilian food a lot. What the picture shows is a fried rice ball eating a cannolo (singular of cannoli). It always makes me smile!

Hail!

Yowza! I was going to post about other random stuff (graffiti, food, etc.) and then we had a hail storm. Basically it went from typical sunny 80+ Italian summer day to ice falling from the sky and back in about an hour. Seriously, it was just hot and clear before this:



I thought it was just heavy rain until the wind blew some hail against my window. This was all collected in the corner of my balcony.



Some of these pieces were large-pea-sized!



Yikes! I am glad I don't have a car or motorcycle to worry about out there. The thunder and howling wind were pretty serious. I am glad I was home because sometimes I forget and leave my windows open when I leave the house. Most of the time it's a good idea, to keep things ventilated... It's all melted now! There are just a few clouds in the sky.

Visiting the Doctor!

Yesterday I decided to head to the doctor. My calf was incredibly sore, and getting more painful every day. I asked my labmates a lot of questions about how this whole doctor thing was supposed to go. Luckily, in my packet of papers from the administrator at ITIA, one was the proof of payment of insurance, stapled to my primary care physician registration along with his open office hours. So I headed over there.

The office was just in an apartment building. This seems to be pretty common in Milan. Once I got to the office, I took a number and sat in the un-air-conditioned waiting room. The whole thing felt rather retro. The office was just the one doctor, one aide filling out prescriptions for the regulars, and his daughter as the admin. But, the operation ran rather smoothly. Considering that I took number 7 arriving 10 minutes after the beginning of office hours, he saw me in just a little over an hour. So 10 minutes per appointment, not bad. The doctor didn't speak much English, so I explained my problem in a combination of Italian and charades. He gave me prescriptions and we chatted about his upcoming family trip to the US for the summer holidays. (Let me just say that I am glad that I needed to see him now, rather than during his vacation, when I would have had to schlep over to his substitute's office...)

Overall, I would say that it was an pretty good experience. The doctor was super friendly and assured all my concerns about possible causes of the soreness. (I had been a little worried about DVT, since I first noticed it when getting off the plane on Sunday, but he assured me that I was missing the sure signs. Just a pulled muscle from swing around my luggage on said trip.) The uncertainty of just sitting in a waiting room hoping I hadn't screwed anything up (my leg, my paperwork, getting the right number) for an hour was the only thing that was unpleasant.

There was a pharmacy on my way to the subway from the office. You can always spot them from the big green cross signs:



I was actually amazed by how fast the pharmacy filled my prescriptions. You don't hand in your prescription then sit down, you hand them your prescription at the register and they get your stuff right then and there. Super fast!

Since the pharmacy was right next to a small Carrefour, I decided to bring home some groceries and grab a cold drink.



Fennel, potatoes, green beans, jam cookies, breakfast rolls, and porcini ravioli... I also had a Fanta Aranciata that I drank on the way home! The guy at the checkout was really nice, I was short 5 cents on exact change and about to pull out a 5 Euro note to cover that but he just gave me the "no biggie" wave with a smile. Had fennel in my salad last night!

This Week's Groceries

I had to get groceries this week, of course. I went with lots of salad stuff. I really like those pre-cooked beets. That San Pellegrino is the bitter orange version, it turned out to be more bitter than I really like. The orange jelly cookies are a little too sweet. The rest of the stuff is going well. I haven't had any of those tiny pears yet, but I think tonight, or maybe tomorrow, they will be ready!

One last pic from Boston!

I don't know how this one escaped the photo round-up. Me and my old lab-mate Kotaro, and his almost-year-old baby Tomoki! We were out at a lab lunch, and Rieko came to join us and brought the baby! He was amazingly well behaved, quiet, and pretty much happy unless being held by strangers. I was so pleased that he didn't hate me holding him, even after he was sitting for two hours in a restaurant. It didn't hurt that I was wearing cute necklaces that he could grab on to!



Back to Milano... it's still hot, but actually not as bad as when I left. It's tolerable walking to work and in my apartment at night. I had a plan to eat gelato after work as pre-dinner, or perhaps even instead of dinner, which I never implemented, but I am thinking of trying it out in the next few days. There's one decent place directly on my way home from work, and a really great place, Misciolgo, a few blocks out of the way... The temptations are great, people! I'll bring back some gelato pics if I do go soon...

Soreness!

I seem to be recovered from the jet lag almost completely! However, my back and my calf are sore from the plane rides. It doesn't help that I spent two hours standing waiting yesterday at the Immigration Office! They need a better strategy for organization there. I stood around in front of the building in the informal "waiting" group for close to an hour and a half, at which point an officer came out and collected all of our "appointment" slips. It took me a while to find mine, since I didn't know there was one in my pile of assembled papers. Luckily, my "task" was simple enough so they called me early out of that pile of 20 or 30 slips. The actual appointment was pretty easy and pleasant. The officers were all smiles and simple instructions.

On the way back from the appointment, I took the commuter rail one stop from Affori to Bovisa. I think the Affori train station is really pretty, actually. It's very new and doesn't get that much traffic, likely, so it looks good.

Visiting in California

I had a great time at home, though my trip was mostly packed.

Sarah and Fergus's wedding was a lot of fun. Ross and Dad bonded a lot.



I rocked my Elena Miro outfit.



I got to see the whole crew, including my Uncle O, here on the left of the groom, and Rada, in from Maui.



We spent a few of our day hours at the Bowers Museum, where they were having a Faberge exhibit.



In San Francisco, I helped Mom at her garden a bit. I can't believe how the potatoes just surface when they are ready to eat!



We also hit the Gaultier exhibit at the De Young. It was one of the best single designer fashion exhibits I've ever seen. OK, probably the best.



We spent the 4th relaxing at the new home. Unca Marty came for some veggie dogs and card games!



Speaking of which, the new house is less than half a block from the ocean. Some days were clear, some super grey!



But all that's back in the States... Tomorrow look for pictures of Italy!

Back in Milan

I arrived this morning, and even though I didn't sleep on the plane I wasn't totally zombie-like! That did not prevent me, however, from coming home and taking a big old nap. I am writing this post post-nap :D Hopefully I will be partly recovered from jet lag tomorrow, since I have to hit the ground running at work! I'll fill y'all in on my trip home later.