DAYS 58 & 59 - RAINDROPS Keep Fallin' On My Head... (Part 1)

May 16 & 17 - Vicenza.....Two Days of Catch-Up

Founded in the 2nd century B.C. in northern Italy, Vicenza prospered under Venetian rule from the early 15th to the end of the 18th century.  In 1994 UNESCO inscribed "Vicenza, City of Palladio" on its list of World Heritage sites. In 1996 the site was expanded to include the Palladian villas outside the core area, and accordingly renamed "City of Palladio and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto".

The Basilica Palladiana

THE BEST host ever!  We grew to love Teresa so much!

 Teresa is a single mother with two grown children who still live at home.  This is very common for European youth to continue to study or work and live at home.  Families are very important and they stay together, helping each other for years and years.

Teresa teaches elementary music at a local school that she walks to each day.  We had a lot in common that way and it was fun to talk to her about music. 

Her youngest daughter, Sylvia, and her boyfriend, Mick - what a cute couple!

 Sylvia teaches voice at a private school and sings professionally.  She is amazing!  We wanted to give each other voice lessons, but it never worked out to find the time. 

Teresa's son - Giovanni and his girlfriend of four years - Elisa....what sweethearts!

Giovanni works at a local music store selling instruments,  He has a private recording studio and dreams of composing music for movies.  We listened to some works of his on you tube.  WOW!  He is definitely going to make it!

When we arrived, it had been raining quite a lot and the rivers were very high.  Unfortunately, it continued to rain, but mostly off and on, so the flooding wasn't as bad as it had been in the past.  It still worried Teresa, however.  She was on the phone a lot with her friends calling her to make sure she was okay.

You can see how high the water is on the bridge.

This was the view from her balcony out to the adjacent buildings.

Rich helped her with some fix-it jobs.

That was so easy - what's next?

We found things to do in Teresa's apartment to help her and we worked on couch surfing and the blog.  We did laundry and caught up on sleep....felt so good!

We even had a "SOCK PARTY!"  when Teresa showed me her basket of socks, I told her I would LOVE to help her sort them into matching pairs.  I told her that when I raised my six children, that was our favorite thing to do when they were little (and older).  We would lay them all our according to kinds and colors.  The youngest children would start with one on the end and go from sock to sock saying, "Is is match - is it match.? - no- no- no....YES!"  It was so fun!

OK kids....does this look familiar?

She only had two children.  Can you imagine how many socks were at our sock party?

We loved her flat which was really two flats put together.  It was so beautiful with very nice interior design.  Her kitchen was one of the biggest ones we had seen yet in Europe.

Beautiful white cupboards - EVERYONE has these...very IN!

Rich loves spending the rainy days working on the computer in Teresa's dining area.

And the bathroom was so clean that it shined!  She actually had three bathrooms and four bedrooms, a large living room, a dining area, a kitchen, and....

Immaculate & spotless

....she even had a piano in a large family room with desks and computers.  I had really missed not being able to play for awhile now.  I think it may have been one of the longest times I've ever been away from a piano.  TWO MONTHS!  I remember back in 1969 when I went on a 5 week European tour with the American Youth Symphony and Chorus, we were gone for 5 weeks and I didn't play the piano then either.

As I went to play, her cat jumped up on the keys, so I played "Alley Cat", a song which my grandkids love to dance to! - ha!

Another scrumptious meal!  Thank-you Teresa!  I forgot to write down what this was - casserole with eggplant maybe??

Italian mozarella is to die for!  I will never eat American mozarella again.

The Perfect Italian Host!  We loved this vegetable raw, but what is it called in English?  HELP!

The next post we go into Vicenza's old town city walls.  Although it was raining a bit, we can't miss this wonderful historic Italian city.  Stay tuned!