Aloha! I like to use that one, because like ciao, it is good for coming and going. So this is my last little update before being a good little Michigan girl and going up north for a few days (what else are you supposed to do on a vacation anyways?)
Last night I went out to the Trattoria, a little restaurant our entire group has taken over twice on AHA sponsored dinners, and has delightful food. The owners are awesome, quite fun, and the food is just great. We had taglietelle with a meat sauce, and spinach ravioli with pesto, followed by home made grilled meat balls, and eggplant. This woman makes the best eggplant I have ever tasted. They followed with up with a simple cake with a little bit of chocolate sauce… which we all ate, but… there was fresh made tiramisu waiting at my place. We wanted to put the ingredients to good use, and we had left over after the last time. But this time we froze the bowl for whipping the cream… and Carlye mostly whipped it with her killer biceps. But it was delicious, and the company was wonderful, we talked and laughed, and laughed quite a bit more. We also had some hot chocolate, and a few little treats from Maga Cacoa (the wickedly delicious place down the street)… bottom line is we were stuffed, but we called it a night pretty early by Italian standards, because we all had pretty early days to begin our mid-semester break travels. Because I will be gone for the next few days, and I plan to have lots to tell you when I return, here is an entertaining (hopefully) synopsis of today, because it was exciting.
Cataloguing the Delightful Misadventures of Day One.
Kudos to my dear cousin Tanis for providing me with word to describe the moments when travel does not follow the anticipated pattern…
Day one: the original plan: Wake up, walk to bus station, and go to Perugia for the tail end of Chocolate festival and look for a sister city sign to take a cheesy touristy picture by, because well it is a sister city to Grand Rapids.
Day One: Reality.
First Misadventure- this one I took solo. I was taking the elevator down to the Gardens (aka bypassing trying to scale the city walls at 7:30 AM) Whilst on the elevator, the elevator began to shake… not just a little, but a lot. I was very scared that things were going to go quite badly there, but the elevator finished going down the level and a half and the door opened, we were alive.
I managed to avoid a second misadventure for a moment, because I successfully found the bus station (I have not been to this particular one since our walking tours with Filiberto)
2nd Misadventure- Met up with Chelsea in the bus station that was crawling with Italian high school students and just people in general. We stood in line to buy our tickets… and then were told that the bus for Perugia was full. Well then, so much for the chocolate. So, we paused, regrouped, and decided to go to Civitanova Alta, where I could see Enrico Cecchetti’s house, so it was off to the train station.
3rd Misadventure- We bought our train tickets for Civitanova Marche (same city, but C. Marche is the more modern coastal city, and C. Alta is the hill town). It was now about 8:15. While in line for the tickets we bumped into Filiberto who was buying a paper, and he almost offered us a ride, but realized that he didn’t quite have time if he wanted to make it to his meeting on time… but that was just fine. Tickets in hand, we walk into the lobby to check train times, one was leaving at 8:21, which was the current time, we saw a train on the tracks and ran to it, and thankfully asked the conductor where it was headed… not Civitanova, he told us there was a bus going to Civitanova…so we ran back to the front of the train station to catch the bus… but it wasn’t there, there was abus for Ancona, but not one for Civitanova. Thoroughly confused, a little frustrated and winded, we decided it was time for cappuccinos and croissants while we waited for the next train in an hour.
While waiting we bumped into Brian, who was also going to Civitanova, but only passing through to get to another city. We waited together, and then the time for the train was very near… and it was a bus. So we hopped on, and finally made it to Civitanova.
Saturday is market day in Civitanova Marche, so we wandered around there for a while, then sat to eat our lunches.
4th Misadventure- Then it was time to get to C. Alta, so we went to the train station to ask about buses. We bought our bus tickets, and asked about where to find the “house of Enrico Cecchetti,” which according to Filiberto is like a museum. The man at the train station drew us a little map… and it seemed simple enough…
So we go to the bus stop, several buses pass and we ask the driver if they are going to C. Alta… none of them were, we had neglected to ask the man at the station when one was coming, but thought we had determined that there should be one soon based on the schedule posted at the stop. Meanwhile, it was cold. Finally, a woman standing near us takes notice of our failure to find the right bus, and tells us she is going to the same place and there should be a bus in 5 minutes. Excellent. However, that bus drove right past the stop. 15 minutes after that one, another arrived, the correct bus, and it stopped.
In other news- an older Italian woman who was also waiting for the same bus thought that we were Polish. I have now been mistaken for Polish and German. (and Italian once!) But I have also been straight up called out for being American, some times you just don't blend as well as you would hope.
The 5th- We set out on our quest… found a set of really, really steep stairs where the walls must have been expanded. And made it to what we thought was the piazza from the drawing done by the guy we bought our bus tickets from… but we couldn’t find anything. We wandered some more… but carefully because we didn’t have a map to help us back to the bus stop.
After a bit, I decided to go into a hairdresser’s shop to ask for directions. Apparently my accent is thicker than I thought… and they thought I was asking about a specific person, who they both seemed to know… but that was not the case. After a couple minutes of me trying to convey to them I was not trying to visit a friend, they directed me back to the same piazza to ask for more directions at the little café.
6th- The man at the little café also did not really get what I was asking… and I was not entirely sure what I was asking, considering I was not planning on taking this particular adventure today, I had made no preparatory efforts. So he directed us to another office across the piazza, and said that a red haired man would help us there… That office was the police station. It was closed for the afternoon. But for some reason, I feel as though even if it had not been… I might not have tried that option.
7th-At this point, we relinquished our quest to the cold and the language barrier, and made our way back to where we hoped to find the bus again. Not much was open, because it was mid afternoon at this point, riposo. There was a café open though. And we asked the girl there when the next bus for C. Marche was coming… after some broken back and forth, we managed to devise that it would be within half an hour, and that it was just across this piazza. We walked across and sat, and a few minutes later, the bus pulled up on the other side. So we made a mad dash across (about 50 feet) and bounded onto the bus…which proceeded to make a three point turn in the piazza and stop again to open its doors at the stop where we were sitting a mere moment ago. Brilliant.
The bus did get us successfully back to Civitanova Marche, where we walked into the train station, and pretty much directly onto the train, which got us successfully back to Macerata. We went to Chelsea’s, drank tea with milk and sugar, watched step up, and ate some left over pasta. Then I headed home to pack, and do some fridge clean out for myself and all that jazz.
Off to Bolzano in the morning!!!!! Sense of humor, flexibility and patience in tact.
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