Snow!

On Monday morning, December 29, we woke to a (very) light dusting of snow! I got a few pictures of it before it melted by midday.



We are in the Po River Valley here, so we don't get a lot of snow. Mostly, we get fog and rain, though we have been blessed to be without rain for the last week or so. And, to a girl from Georgia, ANY snow is exciting!

Compare this to the snow I saw while in Chicago a few weeks ago:


It has been cold here, though. Last week, our neighbors, who have been very kind to us, were gone to Paris to visit family for the holiday. Their cat got lonely and cold and decided to ask to come in our house to warm up! Hamlet was not receptive to the idea.

Buon Natale!

I keep meaning to walk downtown one evening and take pictures of the lights around town, but I haven't done it. I did get one picture of the town Christmas tree in the piazza in front of the Cathedral (see below), but that's been it.


The lights are not gone, though, so I may yet make it. They do the full 12 days of Christmas here, ending with a national holiday on 6 January (Epiphany), when Befana the Christmas witch comes and fills the children's stockings with presents. We went to the store the other day and saw that all the Christmas trees and decorations were gone, but there were stockings and pictures of Befana everywhere!

Speaking of Christmas trees, they do have Christmas trees here, though their standards are not the same as in the US. Apparently, artificial trees are very popular, probably more popular than live trees. Jeff insists on a live tree, though, so we went in search of one. They don't seem to have Christmas tree lots like in the US, but nurseries and garden centers do have a small selection of trees. All live Christmas trees come with the root ball still attached, and it seems that most people put up their tree in a pot, rather than a stand, so that they can plant the tree after Christmas. The vast majority of live trees are very small, maybe 3-4 feet tall. We did manage to find one that's about 7 feet tall, but it is not very full. Jeff says that it's a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but I think it turned out pretty well once we decorated it.

I didn't use nearly the number of ornaments that I usually do, but the important ones are all on there! Jeff even rigged up our star tree topper. We had to buy new lights here because we would have had to put our old ones on a transformer to use them. We just bought the tree topper last year after much consideration and searching for something we both liked, and it was lighted. So, Jeff took it apart and inserted some of the lights from our new set, so it lights up again!

On Christmas Eve, we went out some friends' house for a little get together. It was nice to just sit and talk for a while and enjoy some yummy snacks. It was just a few families from the American contingent here. We got some good advice for the Rome trip that Jeff and I are taking at the end of this week. I hear that there is a really neat pageant downtown on Christmas Eve, including a procession through the moat of the castle to place the baby Jesus in the manger, but we didn't make it this year. Maybe next year.

We had a lovely Christmas day, though I thought Jeff would bust when Emily slept until 8:30 that morning! I wouldn't let him wake her up and he was dying to get to the presents! Here are a couple of pictures of Emily with her Santa presents.



Here are Jeff and Hamlet relaxing later on Christmas day.


We missed our families and all the festivities at home, but it was actually kind of nice to just have Christmas once this year, and not worry about all the travelling.

Christmas stuff

Ok, time to play a little catch up! I haven't posted anything for a while, but that doesn't mean nothing was happening! We were actually quite busy right up until Christmas, especially the week before.

That Tuesday was the NATO Christmas party, which is very neat. All of the countries that are stationed here (I think there are about 12) get together for a big party, and each country has a table where they serve food from their homeland. It is really neat to go around the room and see and try all the different foods. We Americans did chili and cornbread this year, which didn't thrill everyone, but they were tired of doing ham and turkey every year. One country had made signs for each of their dishes saying what it was and what was in it, which I think was a really cool idea. Santa comes for the kids, and there is a raffle for some pretty cool prizes donated by different countries.

On Thursday, the 18th, was Emily's school Christmas show. Apparently they do this every year, and the kids practiced for it for about 2 months. Each grade level puts together a little play, skit, or song to show the parents. It was very cute! It was especially funny to hear all of the kids speaking English with their Italian accents (all the skits are in English). Having worked in public education in the US for 8 years, it was interesting to see the contrasts in what kids were willing and allowed to do. For instance, the secondary school kids did a mystery skit, and one of the "detectives" had a fake cigarette throughout the skit, which would never be allowed in an American school. Also, the 5th grade did a skit based on Romeo and Juliet, and, at the end when the families realize their folly in being enemies, the kids representing each family hugged, including boys. There is no way you could get American 5th grade boys to hug each other!

Here are some pictures of Emily's class' skit "Snow White on Christmas Night." Emily was a dwarf. That is one of Jeff's sweaters she is wearing.


Below are a couple of pictures of the end of the show when the whole school came out and sang a few Christmas carols. All the black shadows in the lower picture are the parents standing in the aisles taking pictures.

It was a cute little show, and Emily sure enjoyed working on it!

Pronto Soccorso

I got back from Chicago Wednesday evening, December 10. I had a good visit with my family and especially with my grandmother. It had been a very long time since I had spent that much time with her, and since I had seen the whole Butler clan together. The journey home was not so very pleasant, though. My flight from Chicago to Paris was officially delayed just over 3 hours, though it was more like 4 1/2 by the time we actually took off. I ended up missing the connection to Bologna in Paris, despite having given myself a 4 hour layover in case of a delay from Chicago. Then the flight to Bologna was delayed 20 minutes, so I finally got home about 7:30 pm, about 22 hours after my arrival at the Chicago airport the day before.

But, of course, the trip was not the end of my adventures in the last few days! I woke up Thursday morning with a mild backache, and, thinking that it was from sleeping on planes, etc. I didn't worry about it. I got Emily ready for school and walked her there. By the time I made it back to the house, though, my back pain had increased greatly and I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. I managed to call Jeff and tell him to come home from work, and spent the next hour and a half on the couch or in the bathroom crying, vomiting, and trying to deal with the intense pain. Honestly, if I had known how to call an ambulance, I probably would have. Poor Jeff had a dead car battery at work, so it took him quite a while to get home. He finally got home about 10:00 and we took off for the hospital.

We went right to Pronto Soccorso (which means ready or prompt help), the equivalent of the Emergency Room. The nurses did not speak English, but it wasn't too hard to communicate that I was in pain and where it hurt. Luckily, most medical terms are from Latin and are very similar in Italian and English. They put me on a gurney and a doctor (who spoke a little English) did a quick examination before I was sent to what seemed to be a holding room. There were several other patients and their family members waiting there and they were constantly moving in and out. I was still in pain, but not vomiting anymore, and the pain was beginning to subside a little.

After about 30 minutes, I was taken back to an examining room with 2 doctors and a nurse. One of the doctors - I think he was an intern - spoke pretty good English. They examined me and asked some questions and told me that I probably had a kidney stone. Kidney stone is colica renale (renal colic) in Italian. I was given a shot for pain and an IV with more medication. After that, the pain finally went away. The doctors said that they would order an X-ray and an ultrasound, and I was sent back to the holding room.

A little while later, I was taken to another area of the hospital for the ultrasound and X-ray. The radiologist who performed the ultrasound spoke some English, and one of her interns spoke it even better. She could not find a kidney stone in the right kidney (where the pain had been), so she said it must have passed, but found a small one developing on the left. I was then taken for the X-ray and wheeled back to the holding room after the X-ray was developed.

A nurse came a little while later and told me we were going for another visit in another department. I thought at first that she said Neurology, but it turned out to be Urology. The Urologist spoke English and explained a little more about what had happened and what we should do next. She gave me some prescriptions to have filled. She just wrote them on one of the papers that we were given to take home, not on a special prescription pad. Then I went back to the holding room.

A few minutes later, the 2 doctors who had examined me came out, asked if the pain was gone, then told me we were done. The nurse took out my IV, and we left. The only information that the hospital took from me was a copy of my passport. They did not take an address, insurance information, or anything about payment. We were told by some of Jeff's coworkers to call our insurance, which we did, and they said that they would send a guarantee of payment to the hospital. They had a nurse ask about what had been done for me, I guess to make sure we had received appropriate treatment. I was told to make a follow up appointment on the Army base, but they seemed satisfied with what had been done at the Italian hospital.

All together, I did not think that our experience was very much different from an American ER, except that I think the wait may have been a little less, there were definitely fewer people there waiting, and far less paperwork. The whole visit took just over 3 hours. I did notice a poster on the wall about ER visits. I could not read everything that it said, but the gist that I got was that if your reason for visiting the ER was legitimate (a real medical emergency, and there were 3 categories of legitimate reasons, from life-threatening to just needing immediate care) that the visit would be free (on the social health care plan), but that if it should have been taken care of in a regular doctor's visit, you would be charged for it. Seems like a good way to keep people from overusing the ER.

After he took me home, Jeff went and had my 4 prescriptions, including one that I have to take for a month, filled for 39 Euro (about 52 dollars). Just a neat little fact, all the medicine boxes that I have seen in Italy have Braille labels imprinted into them in addition to their regular labels. I hope that I do not have to use the prescription that I was given for pain, because it is an injection. I was given 5 vials and 5 sterile syringes, with instructions only in Italian on how to use them. So now I am home, drinking lots of water and hoping that the medicine with shrink the stone on the left side so that I do not have to go through that again!

Sad News

This doesn't really have to do with living in Italy, but is about my life, so here it is. My Grandaddy passed away on Thursday, November 27, 2008. He was 87 years old. It was somewhat sudden, but death can't be completely unexpected at age 87. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer about a week prior, and went downhill very quickly. Although he will be sorely missed, I am glad that he did not have to endure a long, painful illness.

Grandaddy was from McNairy County, Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi. He and my Grandmother were married more than 62 years. In his work life, he sold liquid carbon dioxide for carbonation and ended up as the president of his company in Chicago. He was very dedicated to his work. He was also active in the Baptist Church for many years. Grandaddy was well-known and active in the retirement community where he lived. He and my grandmother raised 4 sons and have 7 grandchildren. I am told that he was a very stern father, but he definitely had a softer touch when it came to his grandchildren, whom he adored.

Though I am sorry that I wasn't able to see Grandaddy one more time before he died, I am glad that Jeff, Emily, and I stopped in to see Grandmother and Grandaddy in June during our trip to Wisconsin. I will be flying to Chicago on Tuesday to spend a week visiting with Grandmother, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and my dad and sisters. A sad occasion, but it will be a rare chance to visit with so much of my family.

Trash talk

Something you don't think about until you are in a different place is how trash is handled. Italians do a lot of recycling. It is mandated in some places, but not here in Ferrara. However, it is still made easy.

There is no household trash pickup. There are dumpsters all along the streets (there is one about 30 yards from our front door) for people to put their trash in. All the dumpsters are color coded as to what kind of waste they are for. Gray dumpsters, which are the most common, are for general household trash. Brown, the second most common, is for yard waste like leaves, bush trimmings, etc. Then there are recycling dumpsters along the street about half as often as the brown and gray. Yellow ones are for plastic, blue is for cardboard and paper, and green is for glass and aluminum. I don't quite understand why glass and aluminum are put in together, but at least they can be recycled. Occasionally you see white containers for clear glass only. There are even containers in about half the recycling areas for old clothes and shoes to be donated to charity. There are also small clear containers in different places around town for old batteries. One thing I have not found is recycling for steel cans. In some places, but not as much in Ferrara, you find containers for "organico" or food waste, which is then composted.

There is a large center on the other side of town where you can take bulk recycling items (I took some of the packing boxes and paper there 2 weeks ago), paper, glass, cardboard, and even appliances and oil. It is free if you have a residence in the city, and if you don't you pay a small amount per kilogram of material discarded. They weigh your car when you enter and again when you leave to figure out how much you dropped off.

I was always shocked by how few people in the US recycle, even when pickup is included in your garbage bill. I am glad to see that some places are better about that.

Laundry Day

I have had adventures the last few weeks in learning the fine art of laundry with European appliances. A washing machine was included with our house, and we were issued a dryer from the base.

Here is a picture of the washing machine. Sorry about the angle, but it's in the downstairs bathroom, so it's hard to get a good angle for a picture.


It is a front-loader, as you can see, which is standard here. I don't think they have top-loading machines. It came with instructions only in Italian, so it has been a bit of an adventure learning how to use it. The first time I used it, I tried to put the detergent with the clothes, and that made a big mess. I think I had to run the rinse cycle 3 times to get the soap out. Then I found the little drawer where you are supposed to put the detergent in. That helped some, but my things kept coming out soapy. Finally, I went online looking for instructions and discovered that I needed to drastically reduce the amount of detergent. I can stuff the drum completely full of clothes and put one tablespoon of detergent in the drawer, and my clothes will not only come out clean, but most of the time there is leftover detergent in the drawer when I go to put in the next load. I had to get medicine cups out of my medicine cabinet to measure the detergent in, because the caps are too big. The cycle time on this washer is very long (up to 90 minutes plus, depending on the load), but it works very well, and, rumor has it, is much less harsh on the clothes since there is no agitator.

Here is a picture of my dryer.


It is in the kitchen, because there was no room for it in the bathroom with the washer. A lot of Italians do not have dryers, but simply use clotheslines or large drying racks to dry their clothes. That is not a completely viable option, though, because Ferrara can be very humid and foggy, especially in the fall and winter (like now), and clothes will not dry thoroughly when hung out in that kind of weather.

This is a European condensing dryer, which means that it does not vent to the outside, but catches the water that comes out of the clothes in a special drawer (pictured below).


This drawer must be emptied at the end of each cycle (and sometimes in the middle if your stuff is really wet). Like the washer, the dryer takes much longer than the American kind. The driest cycle for cottons automatically sets to 2 hours, but does not always take that long. There seems to be some kind of sensor inside that shortens the cycle if the clothes dry faster. One other different thing is that I cannot use dryer sheets in this dryer. I'm not sure why they don't work, but they come out all balled up with none of the fabric softener having rubbed off on the clothes. There is a compartment in the washer for fabric softener, so I'll have to try that when I get some Downy.

Some of my friends here have said that they cannot run their washers and dryers at the same time because it causes the electricity to go out. I, fortunately, have not had that problem, and have actually been able to run the washer, dryer, and dishwasher at the same time without a problem. However, I discovered today that I cannot run the washer, dryer, and oven at the same time. That did cause the power to go out. I was able to fix it by flipping the breakers in the garage, but I won't try that again!

Better get back to work. A full week's laundry takes me an entire day. In American machines, I could do my laundry in about 4-5 hours, but here it takes 8-9 hours.

backtracking to Halloween

Just had to post this picture of Emily and her friend Kirsten, ready to go to the Halloween party put on by the Americans here.

Emily was Queen Amidala from Star Wars, and Kirsten was a spider. The Italians do not officially celebrate Halloween, though it is gaining in popularity here. We did see some shops with Halloween decorations, etc. All Saints' Day (November 1st) is an official Italian holiday, though.

The night of the party, the last crate of our household goods was being delivered, so Jeff had to stay home while I took the girls to the party. My friend Chris was picking us up (I don't have a driver's license over here yet), and she didn't know where our house was, so we walked up to another area that she was familiar with. So I stood on a very busy street corner with the above pictured children in costume for about 10 minutes waiting on her. I'm sure the Italians got quite a kick out of it!

More house pictures

I have finally gotten a good bit of the house in order, so I can post a few more pictures. I got inspired on Saturday to get the downstairs set the way I want it because 2 friends and their kids were coming over on Sunday.

Here is my kitchen. The two cabinets that don't match are the ones we were issued through the military.




Our kitchen was very well outfitted when we moved into the house, so we were lucky. The built-in refrigerator is behind the very tall cabinet door next to the oven.

Here is a view of the front entranceway. It's a little dark, but you can see it OK.


This is a view looking back the other way into the dining/living room. There are still a few boxes around, but nothing like it was!


This is the marble staircase.


Here are a couple of views of Emily's room. I haven't had time to really organize it yet, but it was the first room unpacked, mainly so that Emily would have plenty to do while I worked on the rest of the unpacking. Most of the furniture in Emily's room came with the house. We decided that it would be nice for her to have 2 beds for sleepovers, and she has already had one with her friend Grace.



I've got a lot more cleaning and organizing to do, but most of the unpacking is done.

Yesterday, Sunday, my friend Sue and her kids, Kirsten (who is in Emily's class at school) and Charley (who is 2), and my friend Darci and her daughter Hope (age 1) came over to hang out, have lunch, and let the kids play for a while. Emily and Kirsten get along very well, and played on their own pretty much the whole time. Charley has entered the terrible twos and spent the time trying to keep all the toys away from Hope, occasionally whacking her with a block when she got too close. Hope kept a very sunny attitude through most of this treatment. The grown ups did manage to visit a little bit in between refereeing, and it was nice to do something a little different, since all of our husbands are out of town. Darci is American, and Sue is technically Danish, though they came here from the UK and she speaks English with a perfect British accent. Her husband is British.

A few house pictures

OK, so I was inspired this morning because it is beautiful and sunny (at least for now). It has been overcast and rainy the last several days, and yesterday was the worst! So I went out this morning and took some pictures of the outside of the house.


This is a view of the front of the house. You can't really see the upstairs because of the large tree, but there are 2 balconies up there. Every room on the 1st floor (upstairs) has a balcony, including the bathroom! And yes, those are crape myrtles along the right side of the walk.


This is a closer view of the front door (on the right side). The big door/window on the left is the kitchen.


This is the back of the house. You can see the garage in front and Emily's room (R), and the office (L) upstairs. The blue thing is Jeff's grill, covered with plastic.


This is the actual back door, which is to the left of the garage. With all the shutters, this place locks up like Fort Knox at night, but lets in lots of light during the day! Not that I am very worried about our security; Ferrara is a very safe city.

Now, I'd better get back to unpacking so that someday you can see the inside of the house!

A HOUSE!

So here's the post you've all been waiting for - we've moved into a house! We moved out of the Hotel Europa on Saturday, October 25 to our new residence. It came furnished, so we were able to move in and stay before our household goods arrived.

Hmm, what to say first? First of all, I'm not posting any pictures yet, because the place is a wreck, full of boxes and junk everywhere at the moment. I am chipping away at the unpacking, but it's a pretty big job.

So, a description of the place... It is a 3 story townhouse, attached on both sides, with 210 square meters (roughly 2100 square feet) of space. The ground floor and stairs are marble, the 2nd floor (here, 1st floor) is parquet, and the top floor loft is tile. We have a kitchen, living/dining room and full bathroom on the ground floor, the master bedroom with its own ensuite bathroom (pretty rare in Italy), a second bathroom, Emily's bedroom, and an office on the 1st floor, and a loft on the 2nd floor with storage space and bedroom, den, and play areas. We have an Italian style 2 car garage (it will fit 2 cars, one behind the other), a front and back garden, and a small neighborhood park out back with some playground equipment. It is a 10 minute walk to Emily's school.

Our household goods arrived on Wednesday and Thursday, October 29 &30. We had 9 crates of stuff! We have so far managed to squeeze it all into this house that already had furniture, though there is a lot of stuff in the garage! Jeff and I moved the furniture from the master bedroom into the loft for our guest room, we are using the furniture that was in Emily's room, and the landlord's couch, our dining table and 2 of our beds are in the garage. We have heard rumors that our landlord might let us use a storage garage that he owns, but nothing definite on that.

The main issue is closet space. Italians do not have closets! There are large wardrobes in both bedrooms, and we brought the armoire from our bedroom at home, but a wardrobe is not the same as a walk-in closet! Also, there is no storage space in the bathrooms. We have a VERY small medicine cabinet in our bathroom, but there is none in either of the other bathrooms. I hope to get some narrow cabinets to put in Emily's bathroom, because there is enough space to fit them in there. I have squeezed a plastic 3 drawer cart into our bathroom, but it is tight! Currently, I have extra towels and toiletries in the cabinets in the office.

On Thursday, October 30, we received our appliances from the Army base in Vicenza. We were issued a large freezer, an American style refrigerator (Italian ones are significantly smaller), a European dryer, and 2 kitchen cabinets (there is limited cabinetry in Italian kitchens). We already had a European washer, oven, stove, and sink (we could have been issued those as well if we had needed them). I am still figuring out how to do the washer and dryer. Unfortunately, the washer's instruction book is only in Italian! A European dryer does not vent, it collects the water extracted from your clothes into a reservoir which must be emptied every cycle. We could have gotten an American one, but didn't have a place to put it where it could vent to the outside.

I will try to post at least a few pictures soon, as I get things settled. There is so much to describe, it's hard to do it in one post! Things are very different here, but also very interesting!

Trip to Venice

OK, so I've finally got reliable internet, and I can begin posting again. Yay! Yes, we did get the house, but I am going to save that story for another post. This one is about our trip to Venice on Saturday, October 18.

Some friends of ours from back when Jeff was in school in Troy, Alabama are stationed in England and made a long weekend trip to Venice, just after we arrived in Italy. We decided to meet them for a day trip. We took the train from Ferrara to Venice that morning. Here is Emily on the train to Venice.


It was great to be able to take the train, since parking most places in Italy is hard to find and/or expensive. The train is also cheap! It was only 30 Euro for all 3 of us round trip. It took about an hour and a half to get from Ferrara to Venice, and Bill and Laura met us at the station. We walked around for a little while and found something to eat before going to the famous Piazza San Marco. On the way, we did see the Rialto Bridge, as pictured below.



Here we are in front of the Basilica San Marco.


We found a traghetto, which is the poor man's version of the gondola. A ride on one of the famous gondolas, with the gondolier in his striped shirt, and velvet cushions on the seat costs about 80 Euro. The traghetto, which is the same type of boat, but without the fancy appointments, and they fit as many people on board as possible, costs 1 Euro per person for a ride straight across the canal. Here are Jeff, Emily, Bill and Laura, ready to get on board.


Here are Jeff and Emily in the middle of the grand canal on our ride.


We had a very nice day walking around, looking, and taking pictures. There were lots of nice views to see. We even had gelato (the Italian version of ice cream, which is wonderful!) twice!

Here are a couple more good pictures we got.



It was a very nice day, though we were very tired by the time we got back to Ferrara. For more pictures, check out my album on Facebook.

random stuff and houses

I have finally gotten the internet working today, so I'll just comment on some random stuff.

I took this picture this morning on the way home from taking Emily to school.

It was in a park that we pass through every day on the way to and from Emily's school. I just thought it was funny that in American parks you see beer bottles, etc. left over from the night before, but, in Italy, it's a WINEGLASS on the park bench!

Yesterday, I had some yogurt, and Hamlet got his sample, as pictured below.

European yogurt is similar to the kind we have in America, but not quite the same. It is not as thick. It's not like the drinkable kind, but it is definitely more soupy than the Yoplait that I usually eat. It tastes good, though, as Hamlet will attest.

Here is Hamlet enjoying one of the cabinets in our hotel apartment.

Hamlet and Jeff relaxing in the hotel.

We have been looking at houses lately, in search of somewhere to live for at least the next 2 years. It has been interesting. Italian ideas about houses and furnishings are not the same as American ideas. For one thing, Italian houses do NOT necessarily come with kitchens or bathrooms installed. When Italians move, they take the kitchen sink. And the bathroom sink, and the oven, and the cabinets... All of the houses we have looked at have had kitchens and bathrooms because Silvia, our housing liaison, knows that we need them, but I have seen pictures of houses and apartments with just pipes sticking out of the wall. We did see one that was missing the kitchen sink and the stove.

Italian houses are small compared to American houses, especially the bedrooms. We have seen some secondary bedrooms that were barely as big as a small bathroom. Most houses have more than one floor, and most of the ones we have seen have 3 levels. We have not seen any houses with carpet. All of them have tile, wood, or marble. Every house that we have seen has shutters on the windows that can be opened and closed. Italians close these every night, and open them in the daytime. They come in several different types, but they block out the light very effectively, so you don't need heavy curtains. Here are some pictures of a couple of the different kinds.

Most buildings do not have screens on the windows or air conditioning, unless an American family has already lived there. I don't understand this because the mosquitos here are awful! Worse than Wisconsin! We have been eaten alive in the hotel because for the first 2 weeks we couldn't figure out how to work the air conditioning and had to open the windows. It seems that all air conditioning is done room by room with units that mount on the wall and work with remote controls. The remotes had somehow been removed from our rooms. We have gotten them back now, and are sleeping much better. If only we could kill the last 6 mosquitoes that are hanging out on the ceiling...

We have found a house that we really like, but we are still negotiating with the landlord on some issues, so I will not comment too much about it here. I don't want to jinx our chances of getting it! We are supposed to meet with the landlord on Monday, so hopefully I will have good news then, and can tell all about it. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Ceramics in Nove

Wednesday, October 8, I went with a group of the American wives to a town called Nove (know-vay), which is famous for its ceramics industry. We got off to a late start, but went and looked at a warehouse shop which had just about every type of ceramics one could want. They had platters, cake plates, pitchers, candle holders, tiles, plates, bowls, spoon rests, and just about everything else you could think of. They had patterns with lemons, olives, tomatoes, eggplants, onions, artichokes, and many, many other things. I bought the white ceramic basket pictured below that was marked Tiffany and Company on the bottom. Ceramics from Nove are sold at Tiffany's, Pottery Barn, and many other famous companies.

We were only able to go to one shop because we had to get back to Ferrara to get one of the girls' son from school at 4:30. Nove is about 2 hours North from Ferrara. We went to the nearby town of Bassano for lunch. Their specialty is bruschetta, which is similar to pizza, but with toasted bread instead of pizza crust. It was very good. Bassano is located on a mountain stream and has lovely views of the mountains. Even though it was overcast that day, the view was still beautiful. See the pictures below. It was nice to get away from Ferrara for a little while, and to get to know some of the other wives a little better. This is a very close-knit community amongst the Americans because there are so few stationed here.

One of the buildings on the piazza in Bassano. Note all the geraniums in the windows.

The bridge in Bassano across the beautiful mountain stream/river. The water was very clear.

View from the bridge of Bassano and the mountains beyond. This was an overcast day, so I can just imagine how beautiful it would be when the weather is clear!

This is a view across the river of a lovely garden.

The Alpini (al-pee-nee), which are soldiers specially trained for fighting in the Alps, are based in Bassano and have an annual meeting there.