It’s October 1st. The weather is cooler. Vendors selling roasted chestnut from their carts have magically appeared in town. Gone are the plums, peaches, and melons of summer and in their place you’ll find artichokes, pumpkins, and chestnuts – beautiful red-net sacks heavy with unbelievably fat chestnuts. If I only had a sharp knife to score them I’d buy a sack to roast at home. We’ve been spending quite a few days at home. After all, it’s tiring to travel out of town every day. I think we’ll go to Burano tomorrow, but the skies are grey and overcast today, so we’re staying in once again.
What do we do on these? Well, this morning we woke up around 10am. Cinzia makes her coffee in her moka pot and we sit on the loveseat on our tablets with the TV tuned to news programs. Tsunami in Indonesia, hurricane in Japan, flat-tax debates in Italy, and Supreme Court nominee confirmation back home in the U.S. People are worried about immigrants, finding good jobs, and saving for retirement (or relying on their governments to provide for them). More of the same wherever you go. Last week I connected our Amazon FireTV Stick to the tiny television in our living room. You only get a small portion of their total content offerings, but it’s enough, and it’s nice to hear something in English. Cinzia found “Forever” and we watched all of Season 1. I’m not a big Fred Armisan or Maya Rudolph, but it’s a novel concept and worth it for the few hilarious lines. Now we’re on to another Amazon series called “Red Oaks” about a group of young people who work at a New Jersey country club set in the mid-1980’s.
We watched an episode before getting dressed and heading out the door to Piazza della Erbe in search of some carciofi, pomodori, limone, and aglio. At one of the bakers we picked up 4 wonderful rolls (all for only €0,84). Then back at Bottega dei Freschi we got some burro, mozzarella di bufala, prosecco, and polo. The butcher actually butchers the chicken fillets for you, cleans them, pounds them, and wraps them in front of you. Nice. Back home we make Panini with prosciutto, pomodoro, and the mozzarella. Wonderful. During lunch we tune into Cuochi & Fiamme with Simone Rugiati as today’s 2 contestants attempt to impress the panel of 3 judges with their ability and creativity in the kitchen. For dinner I’ll make chicken piccata and Cinzia will make carciofi alla Romana. We always have plenty of snacks and we picked up some Poppy Twists and jelly candies to go with the apricot cookies, torrone, and chocolates in our goodie cabinet. We also picked up something called Pinza from another baker during our outing. This looks like a heavy, moist cake made with raisins, figs, plums, and apples. We’ll have to same room to eat it after dinner tonight.
After lunch we settle back down on the loveseat. Cinzia surfs Pintrest while checking her Facebook and texts. I have the trio of Supercell games opened on my tablet: Hay Day, Clash of Clans, and Boom Beach. Growing tired of this I turn on the laptop, update the Gelato-a-Day section, and bang out this blog about nothing in particular.
Cinzia is a bit down on herself for selecting Padova. It’s certainly no Firenze or Roma, but I’m content with it. She finds the town too small. There are not enough museums. We’re certainly feeling our age when we hop the train for day trips to Venezia or elsewhere. After about 6-8 hour walking around town, we’re tired and ready to come home. I suggest that we might consider a longer trip – maybe to Firenze and Bologna – spending a coupe nights in each city. It’s a lot of work for her to research and “take the lead” on these trips. We still want to take a canal cruise to Venezia and a day-trip to Verona. We’ll see what we can fit into October before heading home on the 29th.
If the 29th sounds a bit off from our original plans, it is. We had planned on departing Florida on 1 Aug and returning 1 Nov, but at the airport we found that Italy is trying its best to crack down on immigrants and, without a visa, you must have your return trip booked prior to arriving in Italy – and the return had better be within the next 90 days. Our days of staying 105 or 113 nights seem to have ended, unless we can apply for and receive Italian passports or receive a visa. We’ll just have to keep that in mind in 2021. Can you imagine the pain we’d have had if we had booked a 4th month like we had in 2011 and 2014 with our last couple nights in Roma before flying home? I’d have to untangle all that and lose various deposits. Thankfully we can just check out of our apartment here in Padova a few days earlier than planned and go directly to the airport in Venezia. Whew.
We did run into an interesting character last week. On the way home from eating, we passed 3 guys chatting on the street. One of them made some comment to me and we started talking. Luca Ferrari owns the jewelry store they were standing in front of, as well as several other stores in Padova. He was interested in America, specifically Florida, and wondered, as we are now, why we chose Padova. This guy was certainly a character. He invited us to his store the next day for coffee. We stopped in a few days later and he was all smiles and hugs. He’s a huge golf fan and was watching the Ryder Cup. “Hey, show me where Navarre is and I’ll come next year for a month to play golf and go to the beach with you. I love you guys and want your life.” Yup, he’s a character. His staff set to procuring coffee for Cinzia and taking out ruby rings for her to look at. Luca offered, “40% off anything you want, my friend, good only for this moment.” I didn’t see anything of interest, but that didn’t slow him down. More rings; emeralds, sapphires. Nothing of the style or quality I was looking for, so we eventually bid him a buona giornata as he dashed off to a 12:30pm meeting, but not before asking us to return on Saturday. What a guy.
Ok, this is running on. Time to end this blog and join Cinzia on the loveseat for more “Red Oaks”. Ciao.
We watched an episode before getting dressed and heading out the door to Piazza della Erbe in search of some carciofi, pomodori, limone, and aglio. At one of the bakers we picked up 4 wonderful rolls (all for only €0,84). Then back at Bottega dei Freschi we got some burro, mozzarella di bufala, prosecco, and polo. The butcher actually butchers the chicken fillets for you, cleans them, pounds them, and wraps them in front of you. Nice. Back home we make Panini with prosciutto, pomodoro, and the mozzarella. Wonderful. During lunch we tune into Cuochi & Fiamme with Simone Rugiati as today’s 2 contestants attempt to impress the panel of 3 judges with their ability and creativity in the kitchen. For dinner I’ll make chicken piccata and Cinzia will make carciofi alla Romana. We always have plenty of snacks and we picked up some Poppy Twists and jelly candies to go with the apricot cookies, torrone, and chocolates in our goodie cabinet. We also picked up something called Pinza from another baker during our outing. This looks like a heavy, moist cake made with raisins, figs, plums, and apples. We’ll have to same room to eat it after dinner tonight.
After lunch we settle back down on the loveseat. Cinzia surfs Pintrest while checking her Facebook and texts. I have the trio of Supercell games opened on my tablet: Hay Day, Clash of Clans, and Boom Beach. Growing tired of this I turn on the laptop, update the Gelato-a-Day section, and bang out this blog about nothing in particular.
Cinzia is a bit down on herself for selecting Padova. It’s certainly no Firenze or Roma, but I’m content with it. She finds the town too small. There are not enough museums. We’re certainly feeling our age when we hop the train for day trips to Venezia or elsewhere. After about 6-8 hour walking around town, we’re tired and ready to come home. I suggest that we might consider a longer trip – maybe to Firenze and Bologna – spending a coupe nights in each city. It’s a lot of work for her to research and “take the lead” on these trips. We still want to take a canal cruise to Venezia and a day-trip to Verona. We’ll see what we can fit into October before heading home on the 29th.
If the 29th sounds a bit off from our original plans, it is. We had planned on departing Florida on 1 Aug and returning 1 Nov, but at the airport we found that Italy is trying its best to crack down on immigrants and, without a visa, you must have your return trip booked prior to arriving in Italy – and the return had better be within the next 90 days. Our days of staying 105 or 113 nights seem to have ended, unless we can apply for and receive Italian passports or receive a visa. We’ll just have to keep that in mind in 2021. Can you imagine the pain we’d have had if we had booked a 4th month like we had in 2011 and 2014 with our last couple nights in Roma before flying home? I’d have to untangle all that and lose various deposits. Thankfully we can just check out of our apartment here in Padova a few days earlier than planned and go directly to the airport in Venezia. Whew.
We did run into an interesting character last week. On the way home from eating, we passed 3 guys chatting on the street. One of them made some comment to me and we started talking. Luca Ferrari owns the jewelry store they were standing in front of, as well as several other stores in Padova. He was interested in America, specifically Florida, and wondered, as we are now, why we chose Padova. This guy was certainly a character. He invited us to his store the next day for coffee. We stopped in a few days later and he was all smiles and hugs. He’s a huge golf fan and was watching the Ryder Cup. “Hey, show me where Navarre is and I’ll come next year for a month to play golf and go to the beach with you. I love you guys and want your life.” Yup, he’s a character. His staff set to procuring coffee for Cinzia and taking out ruby rings for her to look at. Luca offered, “40% off anything you want, my friend, good only for this moment.” I didn’t see anything of interest, but that didn’t slow him down. More rings; emeralds, sapphires. Nothing of the style or quality I was looking for, so we eventually bid him a buona giornata as he dashed off to a 12:30pm meeting, but not before asking us to return on Saturday. What a guy.
Ok, this is running on. Time to end this blog and join Cinzia on the loveseat for more “Red Oaks”. Ciao.