Staying Up All Night And Eating Too Much Gelato

Ok, I promise this post will not be as long as the last one.  That just means you will have to ask me about the missing week in Venice.  It was fun, but the highlight was the little party we had for Slava’s birthday.  It started with Laura and I trying to mape these Ukrainian dishes with no recipe or picture to go off of, just a list of ingredients and what we remembered of Slava’s explanations.  It all turned out pretty good though.  Highlights of the night included: the food, the dessert (I made caramelized figs and bananas and served them over gelato), dancing to a wide variety of music including Ukrainian folk music and modern music, Italian ballads, funny Italian songs I have on my computer (“Mama Get The Hammer (There’s a Fly on Papa’s Head)” “Show Me The Way To Go Home” “Tici Ti Tici To Tici Ta”), and some American music, sitting on the canal talking about anything and everything, staying up all night and watching the sunrise over the canal, taking pictures and an ungodly hour when we all looked ragged and tired, and then grabbing a coffee in the morning after being up for almost 24 hours.

The next stop on our adventure was Rimini to visit with Laura’s family.  Getting from Venice to Rimini was the most stressful train exchange we had.  We had about 20 minutes, ended up running up and down the 3 floors of the station twice and making it to our correct platform about 5 seconds after our train was scheduled to pull away.  Luckily for us our train was 7 minutes late.  


Laura had been in correspondence with her cousin Lucia, and we were staying at Lucia’s parents house.  They were so funny.  So my grandparents are Romeo and Julie(t), right?  Well Lucia’s parents are Anthony (Marc Antony) and Cleopatra.  One thing I can say about our time in Rimini is that we were never hungry.  I thought my grandma was a food pusher…she’s got nothing on Cleopatra.  I have never felt so constantly full in my life.  At least 3 full meals a day and snacks.  We had food fresh from their garden and figs right off their tree (which is almost the height of their two story house, for a frame of reference).  Everything was delicious.

They were also hilarious.  Just watching them interact with each other was a show for the most part.  They lived in Germany for about 25 years, and so sometimes they would start talking in German.  They would watch German tv sometimes, and cook German food.  Cleopatra was a Renaissance woman when it came to languages. She speaks Italian, German, Greek, some English, some Spanish, some French, and I think at least another one but I forget. Maybe Russian.  She gave us massages, offered to do our laundry, and told me to use their towels and not the ones I brought because I was on vacation.  She also ironed some of Laura’s clothes.  I felt bad about all the stuff she did for us.  We tried to help out as much as we could.  We did the dishes and Laura helped in the garden and cleaned the kitchen.  I also played Rummy with them one night when we got back.  I was impressed with myself for knowing what they were playing.  After some vague discussions about what their rules were, I got the swing of things.  Cleopatra won like 4 hands in a row, and then on the last game I won.  I was so excited, I threw my hands up and said “VINTO!” which means “I win/won”.  They just laughed at me.

We also met Noah, the newest member of the family.  He is an adorable 10 month old baby complete with a permanent smile and eyelashes I would give my right arm for.  Ugh, literally I was so jealous of the baby's eyelashes that I cannot even explain it.  His dad, Loreno, had them too.  We only had a few days there but we did get to see the city and the famous Rimini beaches.  Everything was so beautiful and we also had some great gelato because Lucia has a sweet tooth, haha!  "Sometimes in the summer, the people in this area just eat gelato for dinner because it is so hot.  This means you have to get a BIG gelato, though!"  The day we went to the beach, we had gelato twice.

Travel days are always hard, and the trip to Atina was no different.  Getting to the train was fine, and for once our train switch was over a half hour and at a small station so we didn’t actually have to freak out and run around with our heads cut off.  Our total train time though was about 5 hours and then we had 40 minutes until our shuttle bus from the train station to the airport.  The shuttle was longer than I thought it would be, and then the phone numbers to the shuttle to pick us up to take us to the car rental weren’t right.  Luckily the guy who picks up people for every other car rental knew the number we needed by heart and told us what it was.  Then my credit card wouldn’t work at the actual rental place even though it had worked online for the deposit.  Apparently they had put a security hold on my card because they couldn’t get a hold of my mom even though we had told them that I would be in Italy until the end of July.  The phone numbers to call Visa/Chase on the card also weren’t going through.  Then the car we thought we had rented was not the same one we got so we didn’t have a GPS in the car and had to use my phone.  Once we got close to Atina, my phone just dropped us on this street that was not where we needed to be and I wasn’t quite sure where the restaurant was.  After a call to Antonella, a stop at a caffe that was open, and a second call to Antonella, we found it.


More to come on Atina later.