Rain, rain go away

Before we leave Manarola we have to tell you about the hill outside our window. There is a story about this grouping of simple, religious scenes. A local resident, Mario Andreoli, promised his dying father that he would replace the old cross on the family’s vineyard. He has been adding figures to this scene ever since. After recovering from a rare illness, he has redoubled his efforts. Today he was working on a camel. On religious holiday’s they are all lit up. I guess we are going to miss that event though it has been fun seeing them on the hill outside.

You haven’t had a language faux pas for awhile. We must be getting used to this communicating in different languages. Let me share the latest one.

Since the only restaurant in town was closed for 2 days, we had to find something to eat. We had eaten the last of the soup for lunch and decided we would have foccacia bread with ham and cheese melted on top and sliced tomato. We were at our local food market (remember the one that is only the size of your living room) and Jim found a package of Risotto alla Marinara also to cook. The package was similar to a Rice A-Roni package with pictures of shrimp, calamari, clams and octopus in it. I was thinking that just like Rice a Roni, you must add those extra special ingredients. The Risotto alla Marinara plain would be just fine (isn’t marinara tomatoes?).

I looked at the back of the package and saw the word liter so I guessed that we needed a liter of water. As the water was coming to boil, Jim read the directions and it said “Mezzo litre”. All of you with a musical background should know what Mezzo means (especially me). Jim doesn’t trust me to cook it without translating it first so he grabbed the Italian/English dictionary and said, “Maridee, Mezzo means half so I think it means half a liter of water, not a liter.” Thank goodness I hadn’t added the risotto yet.

Once “half the water” came to a boil I added the package of risotto. Imagine my surprise when I saw little dehydrated shrimps, clams, calamari and I think, octopus legs pour out of the package with the rice! I didn’t know they had things like that! I asked Jim “Doesn’t Marinara mean tomato sauce?” I guess in this case it meant Marine life! I don’t think we will be buying that again!

We finally called the apartment owners and told them we had no hot water again and no heat was on. They came by and fiddled around in the utility closet outside our apartment and now we have heat. We asked them to come by in the morning and the afternoon and then we will leave first thing Friday morning. The alternative to them doing this was to move us into another apartment. I couldn’t imagine repacking for 2 nights and probably dragging our suitcases up another hundred stairs! They were dressed in warm coats when they came over but interestingly they said “it is not too cold out now”. I guess they were justifying to us that there is really no need for heat!

We go to our next home tomorrow, Friday November 17th. It is a larger town than where we are now and it is farther north and close to Portofino, the town we fell in love with last year. We have a “hotel” room there so maybe we can count on hot water and heat. There is only one “direct” train to Santa Margharita from here and it leaves at 8:15 am. We are taking that one so we don’t have to do the transfer thing (you know, down the stairs under the track, up the stairs to the ticket counter, down the stairs under the track, up the stairs to the right platform and onto the train, all the time carrying our luggage) (see last Saturday’s entry for clarification ).

It has rained off and on most of the day today. It is supposed to be dry tomorrow. We hope so because it certainly makes traveling a lot more difficult. How can we use an umbrella, drag our suitcases, carry a backpack and carryon and an UMBRELLA? Doesn’t sound fun at all.

Hopefully we will have an internet nearby so that we don’t have to travel on train to communicate with the world!
Until later…………………………………………………………. Print this post