My MAMA!!! Yes! For my mom's 40th birthday, she came to visit me in Bologna!! I am a very, very lucky girl! It was the best weekend in Bologna, and even one of the best weekends of my life! And it was like Christmas because she brought me hats and socks and the latest issue of the Verily magazine!! Conversazione in Sicilia has not been touched since that magazine came into my apartment. :)
The plan was for her to take a taxi from the airport to my apartment, and email me a few minutes away form my apartment so that I could come down and meet her. (I had actually planned on surprising her at the airport, but there was a bus strike--oh Bologna.) What I didn't know was the my email inbox was full and it had been like that for a little over a day without me realizing it. So you can imagine where this story is going. I had given her my street address, but not the apartment building number. So she had no way of knowing which of the 60 apartments I was in. Let's just say my mom and the VERY NICE taxi driver became friends, in a kind of we-don't-speak-the-same-language sort of way for over 30 minutes. Did I mention this was all happening after midnight?
But after that snafu, the weekend was pretty perfect! We saw all of Bologna (it only takes a day), and she had gnocchi for the first time! Then the next morning we got up early and went to VENICE!! Touristy? Oh yes!!! For the first time here in Italy, I thought I would be better understood in English instead of in Italian. But it was so beautiful. Every time you turned a corner, there was something else that was really beautiful! There were the little canals, the street shops, the artists selling there paintings in the piazza's, the gondolas, the churches (and more churches, and more churches...). One of the best parts was walking through the street and then looking to your left and seeing the great canal on the other side of a really narrow street. Or seeing the clothes hanging out to dry between two apartment buildings. Some buildings had the rich Mediterranean colors of yellow, orange, and pink, with pretty flowers in the flower boxes and green shutters. The weather was perfect all day, and then we got into the train station and it started to rain!
The train comes every hour, and of course we missed then train we wanted to take by about 3 minutes (literally), so we had to wait another hour. But we didn't mind: we could talk just as easily in the train station as on the train. :) But only we could get so caught up in our talking (this is after talking non-stop the rest of the weekend) that we almost missed the next train and had to stand almost the whole way back because we didn't come soon enough to get a seat. Sanguines in a train station together...
By the time we got back to Bologna it started pouring rain. I had booked (or thought I had booked...) a hotel that was right next to the airport because her flight was leaving very early the next morning. We needed to cross the street to get into the taxi to take us there, but the rain was pouring so hard that we had to wait under the portico and let the rain die down a little just so we could cross the river that minutes ago had been a street. (Yes, this is an exaggeration.) But even after waiting for several minutes, we sill got soaked crossing the street! When we made it to the hotel, we were soaked. And it just goes to show that living in Europe for 2 months (can you believe I've lived in Europe for two months?!?!) doesn't not equal adult capability, as I utterly failed at booking the room. Maybe next time I should check what day I am booking a non-refundable room for. :/ But we survived, got ourselves some delicious italian food and beverages, and almost didn't make it to sleep before my mom had to get up and catch her flight.
I know this post is long, but I'm actually leaving out a lot. Mostly because they aren't stories so much as really happy moments that can't be described over a blog. I am one lucky girl!!
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