Puccini!

Hello from Lucca! It has been a fascinating, spontaneous trip thus far. We arrived in the afternoon, changed clothes and went immediately into the city to scavenge for food. We are very glad that we did, because on our way we happened upon the home where the famous composer, Giacomo Puccini, grew up! Outside the square, which now has a statue of his likeness, there was a five-string orchestra with two opera singers, performing some songs from his operas! What a lovely, accidental concert!

It lasted about an hour, and Ankur fell in love. It was his first exposure to opera, and he was so excited (as was I) that we went and got tickets to a Mozart/Puccini concert for tonight.

It did not disappoint. We had FANTASTIC seats -- front row, right in front of the piano so we could see his fingers, and maybe five feet from the singers (I think we got spit on). The seats also came with our own personal Puccini tour guide. As it happened, the man sitting next to us was an opera singer himself. He has been all over the world singing, including DC, NY, Philly, Austria, etc. He was quite excited to see two young people there for the opera, and to have a chance to practice his English. Before the concert began, he took us behind the scenes and introduced us to the performers of the evening, Soprano Chiara Panacci (very good), Baritone Mattia Campetti (a mere 23 years old, and a star), and Massimo Morelli on the piano. Then the concert began, and we were blown away. It was a number of highlights from Mozart and Puccini operas, including The Marriage of Figaro, La Boheme, Don Giovanni, and Madame Butterfly (all in Italian, of course, with no subtitles). One of our favorites was actually the intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, but we loved the singing, too. We left singing "Cinque ... Dieci...!" We had such a fantastic time that we are very much considering returning for another performance tomorrow. We wished that Savta was here with us!

In other news, we wandered into a gelateria on the way to the concert, which is owned by an expatriate from the UK. He was quite friendly, and it was a joy to talk to him until he informed us that the US financial markets had dropped 800 points yesterday. We gasped. Then we reconsidered buying gelato. But hey, we will worry about that when we get back.

We initially had planned to be here for two nights, but our room is so lovely and we are so excited about the opera around here that we decided to extend our stay another night. That gives us only one night in Venice, but we have been there before so it's fine. Tomorrow we will walk the ramparts and seek out some more beautiful music.

That's all for now. We miss you all!

Assisi pictures

Assisi was one of our favorite places. Here are a few pictures to show why:

First is the view from our hotel at sunset. I know, breathtaking. I feel like I have used that word a lot on this blog, but there is really no other way to describe a lot of these views.

Next is the basilica of San Francesco, where numerous world religious leaders met in a forum on world peace, and which houses numerous beautiful works of art as well as the tomb of St. Francis.

Finally, the view of Assisi from Rocca Maggiore, the castle at the top of the hill.

Assisi and beyond

Hello from Assisi! Sorry it has been so long since our last real post. We have been tired. Yup, tired. Yesterday we calculated walking (half uphill) about 9 miles (conservative estimate). Assisi is set on a "hill" called Mt. Subasio. The old city is about a quarter of the way up the mountain, with the newer parts in the valley below. There are olive trees everywhere, and numerous churches dedicated to its hometown heroes, St. Francis and St. Clare, peppered between the old city and the new city. Assisi is capped off by two castles dating back at least a thousand years.

Over the previous two days, we covered pretty much the entirety of Assisi proper, visiting an ancient Roman castle, an ancient Roman forum, numerous churches with amazing frescoes from the Giotto period, numerous historical Franciscan sites, and a lot of simply beautiful medieval streets. We also discovered the joys of antipasto. We are now in love with bruschetta of all kinds, as well as paté. (Yes, believe it or not, it is Melanie who is writing this.)

Today we hiked to near the top of Mt. Subasio to Eremo Carceri, a beautiful and peaceful retreat in the woods on the top of a mountain. The views and the peace were both breathtaking, particularly after so many days with so many tourists. The >2.5 mile hike up was also breathtaking--in the sense that it stole all of our breath. It was STEEP! We climbed more than 2000 feet in the process. Add that to our treks from the previous days, and we are two tired tourists! We were even too tired to walk the few feet up the hill to get a gelato on our way back to the hotel. =) But we have thoroughly enjoyed our time here, and we will miss the place. It is a very special place, and we encourage you to visit some day.

Tomorrow we are off to Lucca, another small Tuscan town. Sorry we weren't able to take any of your suggestions for this leg of the trip, but train schedules did not permit it. We did follow the advice of some locals though, and we have high hopes for the place. We will spend two nights there, and will hopefully let you know how it is.

Now we are off to guzzle some aqua frizzante. (We disagree with paying for water, but we are quite happy that the fizzy water costs the same as regular water, so we can be fancy every meal!) Hope all is well with you! Keep us in the loop!

PS. Happy late birthday to Marko!

Breaking News!

We are pleased to inform you all that...

Ankur's dad has had his dissertation approved!

Congratulations! We are so happy and proud of him.

Assisi

Hi all!

We are safely in Assisi, and loving it. It's a beautiful small well kept medieval town with lots of history. Will post more later. Hope that the economic news isn't getting you all too down back home. If it is, feel free to join us over here. Also, does anyone know if the debates are taking place? If so, please feel free to post a summary for us out of the loopers!

Gastronomia

Italian food is my favorite food in the world. Which is why it is shocking to me that I am starting to crave something other than pizza, pasta and gelato! We have been eating our way through Italy in force. Every morning we have the typical Italian breakfast of cappucino (or tea, in our case) and a hard roll or chocolate croissant, standing at the bar (it costs more to sit down here). For lunch we get pizza at our favorite pizza place (they have even started throwing in free upgrades as we are their best customers) and either eat it at the bar or sitting on the steps outside. For dinner we have some sort of pasta. And of course there is a gelato or two thrown in throughout the day. We are particularly fond of Fragola (strawberry) and Stracciatella (chocolate chip).

As you can see, however, while definitely tasty, our diet has been rather devoid of vegetables, fruits, and fiber. We went in search of fruits the other day, and paid 7 euros (11 dollars approximately) for three bananas, one peach, and one apple.

Believe it or not, we even sought out the one McDonalds in Siena two nights ago in order to get some healthy food. Who would have thought--McDonalds = health food?! But they have protein and salads, both of which are sorely lacking in Italy proper. While we were there scarfing down our familiar food, we ran into our new American friend, Richie, who was also procuring health food for his lovely wife and daughter!

Last night we had more adventures in food. We met two real Italian girls who are staying at our bed and breakfast (minus breakfast). Their enthusiasm and friendliness more than made up for their broken English, and our uselessness in Italian, and we quickly bonded. They invited us out to dinner with them to a trattoria, where with their help we experienced more traditional Tuscan food. For the appetizer we had carciofi and something, which turned out to be artichokes in oil and some form of meat. For the main course, Ankur had some form of chicken, pollo arrosto. We still aren't clear about what "arrosto" means. Perhaps "in need of arrest," as it was pretty bad. I had spaghetti ala ragu--spaghetti with meat sauce. For dessert, they ordered us cantucci vin santo (pardon my spelling). We should have recognized the last part from our experience in Tuscany, but we did not. Turns out it was six rock hard biscuits to be dipped in vin santo sweet wine. We tried our best, but I ended up walking out of the restaurant with a pocket full of biscuits so as not to offend our hosts. It was definitely a unique experience, and we were happy to learn all about life for real people in Italy.

As an aside, some other things we learned from Frederica and Georgia, our Italian friends: they are not at all fond of their current government, but they are quite excited about Obama! They know a lot about the US, including about Fannie, Freddie, etc (although they were under the impression, reasonably, that the government was nationalizing all of the banks since Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch, and Bank of America sounds like the national bank). We learned about their university system (5 years usually, with opportunities for further study), that they enjoy reading Nietzsche and Marx, that they are vehemently atheist despite living in a Catholic country, that they live in a medieval town and it is no big deal, and how to say good luck in Italian (in bocco al lupo, which much be followed by creppi lupo or it becomes bad luck).

Ciao for now!

Piazza del Campo

Here are two pictures from Siena.
This one's of us on the Piazza del Campo. Eating gelato, sun-bathing, and people-watching are favorite pastimes of ours while here!

This one of the city hall in Siena, which is on one side of the square.