Hi Again Everybody:
It’s a rainy (can’t believe it) Monday morning (November 4th) in Aix en Provence. We take the kids to Luynes (you can look it up) each morning to catch the school bus. No bus this morning. No idea why. It’s a 15-minute trip to their school, which is actually on the very northside of Marseille. The trip took 40-minutes this morning with the rain, and we got caught in the start of Marseille rush hour traffic. It’s a daily adventure.
We’ve recovered from the 15-day trip, but life is more complicated as we got Maurice back yesterday. The dog was staying with the housekeeper of the home we’re staying in. He’s sweet, if sweet includes chewing holes into socks that happen to get left in shoes on the floor.
Got 15-days worth of mail, which isn’t much by the time the U.S. Postal Service discards the junk mail before forwarding. It was especially good to hear from the officials of Multnomah County, Oregon, with the news that they’ve raised our annual property taxes by $1,500. Some people know how to dampen a good time!
By the way, if you’ve been to France you know of all of the traffic circles/roundabouts. Oh yes, they have them in Great Britain, but the French have taken them to an extreme. Didn’t see that many traffic circles on our journey, so yesterday was an adventure getting my equilibrium adjusted to continually turning the car to the left. There is one good thing about the traffic circles. When you are not sure of which way you’re going when you get to the circle (sometimes there are five choices or another traffic circle on one or both ends of the traffic circle you are in), you can just keep going around in the circle, holding your map up and hoping you’ll figure something out. My record is five times around the circle. I believe Keaka’s line was, “Dad, you’re making us look stupid!”
Anyway, let’s close out the Lake Como, Italy portion of the first of four school vacation European expeditions. Marlene and Ken drove to the city of Como (in Italy) one day, having seen Lugano (Switzerland) on the way to our condo in Menaggio. Both are good-sized cities near Lake Como (Como is actually at the end of the lake). Como was fine, with a typical ancient center city. We happened to check out the Como football (soccer) stadium (every city has one), and it was amazingly run down. Probably had about 10,000 seats. It’s a real task to get a grasp of professional football in France, then Switzerland, and then Italy. There’s Division 1 (the Major League) in each country and then lower divisions. It seems every decent sized city has a pro team at some level. And, the teams move up and down between divisions based upon performance each season. We’ve glimpsed a few French and Italian games on television and it makes Major League Soccer (MLS) in the U.S. look like it’s being played in slow motion. We have four tickets to see FC Barcelona on March 1st. They draw over 90,000 for each match. It should be interesting. Meanwhile, back to the drive to Como. Along the way we left the “modern” road along the lake, which at some points is built up the side of the hill, looking down on the villages and the lake. Marlene wanted to go into the village of Moltrasio. This, of course, meant some hair pin turns, some scary elevations, and some streets so narrow you’re sure you can’t fit your car through.
We caught a few glimpses of the village (population 1,710) – see attached photos. Amazing how the dwellings were constructed. You can’t see an entrance to some of the buildings (houses), while others just kind of hang, leaving you wonder what they are attached to? There’s a great stream moving down the hillside through the town. The beautiful church probably looked great once upon a time, but rather curiously, a modern building was built in front of the church, housing a bar (of all things) on the first floor.
And, for good measure, a glimpse of the Duomo (more coming later), which is the fifth largest cathedral in the world, the cathedral for Milan, and construction began in 1386, taking nearly six centuries to complete.
The Wilsons
