Italy, part uno

We started our Italian adventure in Latina, about 60 kilometers south of Rome. After a flight to Rome and a train to Latina, we exited the Latina train station and watched as two taxis loaded their passengers and drove away, and we set our bags down at the designated taxi area to wait for the next one.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And then the local crazy guy got bored with checking the pay phones for change and came out to talk to Ben. "Taxi number," he said, pointing at a box on the wall with numbers written on it, and then walked off.

A minute later, he returned. "Go to school? NATO school?"

"Um, yes."

"Take da boos. Take da boos!"

"I don't want to take the bus. I'm taking a taxi."

"Why no take da boos? Take da boos!"

"No thank you."

The crazy guy finally gave up and wandered off again to stare at other travelers and left us sitting there wondering where the heck all the taxis were. And then we waited some more.

Finally we seriously considered the previously mentioned "taxi number" box.

Now the box looked like it may contain a telephone, so first, Ben attempted opening it. That didn't work. So, next step, pull out the NATO map with hand local business phone numbers on it and look for the number for a cab company. Aha, one of them matched the numbers plastered on the wall of the station. Surely we could get a taxi now.

So Ben dialed the first number. The box started ringing. The box. Was ringing.

This was either really funny or really bad.

So we dialed the next number. The man who answered the phone spoke enough English to repeat, "Yes, train station" several times, but we weren't entirely convinced that he was getting the point of our phone call.

At this point, I was pretty sure we would be living at the Latina train station for the next week, or until somebody realized that Ben never showed up for his class.


Finally, FINALLY, a taxi zips around the corner and pulls up to the station. And it is, in fact, the taxi that we had seen leaving when we first arrived. Latina may or may not have only two taxis for the entire city. But we got one of them in the end and made it safely to the hotel.

The rest of the week in Latina was uneventful. Ben went to the most boring class in the history of the world, and I walked and walked and walked around Latina and found that it wasn't really a very exciting place. I may have even refered to it as the armpit of Italy, but it probably wasn't that bad. But it was pretty boring.

To be continued with our tourist extravaganza in Rome...

Ciao!

We're leaving today to go to Italy for 10 days! Ben has a class in Latina, Italy during the week, and then next weekend we're going to head to Rome for a few days. We plan on drinking some vino and eating mozzarella and taking lots of pictures.

Arrivaderci!

We had a nice Easter. It was nothing really big or exciting, but it was nice and happy and relaxing. Last week sometime I decided that to celebrate after going to church at noon, we should come back and laze around and have french toast and drink bellinis. So we did. And it was nice. And our friend Carol joined us, because really, who can turn down an invitation for french toast?

A few pictures from our Easter festivities:

We colored eggs on Saturday





And then on Sunday, Ben was the french toast master


While I managed the other things to munch on. The little creatures are cream filled pastries. You'll see more of them in a minute.


And Carol sipped the atomic-orange colored bellinis. We used peach juice from our local Dutch supermarket and it looked suspiciously like Tang, but it tasted okay. Well, mostly. Fresh peaches would have been much nicer and a lot less scary looking, but the only peaches I could find were at the commissary and they looked like they were fresh maybe a year or two ago. I decided against them.


And... the pièce de résistance...

Are you ready?

Lamb shaped butter! For those of us who have had Easter dinner with the Burgetts, this butter looks like an almost exact miniature replica of our very special cake.

And, unfortunately for the poor butter lamb, it met a gruesome fate, much like that of the annual lamb cake.


And after french toast, what do you do? You have dessert! I found these little creatures at a bakery and just couldn't resist the charms of their tongues and googly eyes. Carol's bunny unfortunately did not taste very good. But it's still cute, right?



Delicious!

Happy Easter!

Last week, as Ben was off working hard and I was at home (doing something terribly important, I'm sure), the doorbell rang. When I answered it there was a guy standing there and he started talking to me, and the conversation went something like this...

Guy: Dirkadirkadirk,sjfdskjfhdsfkjhdkjfhdsfds?

Me: I'm sorry, I don't speak Dutch.

Guy: Oh, English?

Me: Yes!

Guy: I'm from Q Services and we will be on your street soon cleaning windows, and I was wondering if you would like to have you house done?

Me (wondering why everyone here, even the window cleaning guy, has such a strong command of the English language and the extent of my Dutch is "Hallo!" and "Sorry!"): Oh, no thank you.

Guy: Oh, you'd rather do them yourself? That's okay, but if you change your mind, here is one of our fliers. You can give us a call.

Me: Okay, thanks a lot. Bye!

Now, here's thing. This was a very brief, polite exchange. The guy was nice, his English was perfect, but he lost me completely at "do them yourself". What? You mean, clean the windows, the outside windows? Ummm, when I said no thanks, I was fully intending to just not clean my windows. Seriously. And it didn't really seem like a big deal tom me, because back in the U.S. I rarely saw people hanging out their second story windows with a squeegee, because it just isn't that big of a deal. But after he said it, I realized that here, I HAD seen it, and on multiple occasions. People with little squeegees, big squeegees, cleaning solution, rags, everything, toiling away on their windows, even if it meant hanging out one window while cleaning another. Window cleaning is a serious enterprise here.

So, this means that not only are we the Americans with the barky dog and the Americans with the noisy lawnmower, we are also going to be known as the Americans with dirty windows.

The sidewalks here may be littered with trash and dog poop, but the windows? Sparkling!