1) how to order Gelato
2) That carbonara is amazing.
3) Gniocchi is amazing.
4) The title of my blog is grammatically incorrect in Italian, it should read, “Le Avventure Italiane di Annalisa”
5) How to navigate Macerata, based on the visibility of a couple domes, and some other landmarks.
6) How to take the bus… but I really only know how to get to one destination, but I know 2 lines to get there.
7) Even if they elbow you in the street on market day, little old Italian women are great to ask for direction from.
8) There are lots of genuinely nice people in the world, even if you don’t speak the same language, sometimes even more so then.
9) The watermark was invented by the papermakers of Fabriano, Italy.
10) The sound of church bells is one of my favorite sounds in the entire world.
11) Maga Cacao hot chocolate, aka cioccolato in tazza, which translates to chocolate in a cup, is one of the most incredible inventions ever.
12) The Latin word ortho means straight…. Orthodontist? Lightbulb moment.
13) I have an obsession with inlaid wood, marble and the like. Also with mosaics. I love them.
14) Carmina Burana means “songs of Beuren” and they were drinking songs written by German students, and later compiled into an opera.
15) The peacock was an early symbol for the church.
16) I still don’t really like fish, even when prepared by an expert chef.
17) I love rainbows. And I wish Michigan got them more.
18) I love mountains, this is not really new, but just a reminder. I love them, like really a lot.
19) You can take the kid out of the 90s, but you can’t take the 90s out of the kid.
20) The world according to Filiberto is so much more interesting.
21) I have the family chocolate chip cookie recipe memorized.
22) They do not sell vanilla extract, here and aroma of vanilla is not an acceptable substitute.
23) Making tiramisu without a hand mixer will work muscles you did not even know you had… especially the part where you WHIP cream by hand.
24) If you want to take a bus to a chocolate festival, buy your ticket in advance.
25) Italians psychically know if a train is late, or if it has been for some reason changed to a bus, changed platforms, or some other such nonsense that is not shown on the arrival and departure screens.
26) I could be German, Polish or Italian, all of which I have been mistaken for.
27) I love tea with milk and sugar.
28) The Bologna train station is like a maze…
29) Someday I will learn to play accordion, potentially before I learn to play the harp, which I am also going to learn.
30) Roasted chestnuts are delicious, I will also learn to make these.
31) There is such a thing as a reversible bench.
32) Much as I love Italian food, I love the variety of food available in the US.
33) The cathedral of Milan took almost 600 years to complete, and there is a slang term “fabrica del duom” which means basically “the building of the cathedral” for a project that is going nowhere fast…
34) Under certain circumstances, I can tolerate the taste of mushrooms.
35) You can boil the peels of Clementine’s to make tea.
36) When you don’t have a good way to communicate, it is quite nerve-wracking to have a loved one coming across the peninsula who doesn’t speak the language, even if you have tried to prepare them the best you could…
37) There’s nothing like sharing your one of your favorite places with one of you favorite people.
38) Michigan is the true mitten, but Italy is the true boot, and I do best in places where i can use my body as a geographic reference.
39) After almost four months I still second guess myself when I look at a clock and see 18:00, and so on. I feel like Henry Blake on M*A*S*H, “Isn’t it just normal until noon, and then you start all that hundred hours stuff???”
40) It takes 463 stairs to get to the top of the dome of the Cathedral in Florence, but there are 320 stairs to the top of the Dome at St. Peter’s AFTER you take an elevator ride.
41) The cathedral of Florence was built to match the proportions of the temple in Jerusalem.
42) Fruit is often symbolic of death in Renaissance art, because fruit picked from the tree will rot and die.
43) Saint George slayed a dragon to save a princess.
44) If a Vestal Virgin broke her vows in the Roman times, she would be walled in, and starved.
45) There was a cattle market along the Tiber River in Rome, and every night they pushed the manure into the river… not sanitary guys…
46) A pinecone has also been used a symbol of the church, because it is a fruit with many seeds.
47) I realized the depth of my obsession with Audrey Hepburn by my level of excitement at going to the Mouth of Truth, knowing she stood in that very spot.
48) The first world wide radio station was the Vatican channel, and it was set up by Marconi himself.
49) Street performers really brighten my day.
50) Crowded buses can make for some great stories, once you are off them…
51) Margherita pizza is actually named after an Italian queen.
52) On some early harpsichord and piano keyboards, the black and white keys are reversed, and it is a lot trippier to me than I expected.
53) Steinway would give you their instruments for free, if you played a concert on them, and this is how they got their name out, but until WWI the instruments were durable, but the sound quality was bad.
54) At the end of the day, what really matters is the time you spend with those you love.
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