I have my tickets! Christine from Harbour City Travel has been great with all the flight arrangements. There are three weeks to go before Shahla and I meet in Rome on 9th April. We will be joining thousands of visitors, many of them pilgrims there for ancient spiritual and religious rituals of Easter.
Shahla has found us an apartment in central Rome. Our tour includes Rome for a week then down to the Amalfi coast and Sorrento, Portofino Capri and Napoli, then up to Sienna then over to Padua, Verona and Lake Guarda. My nephew Lance is joining us for 3 – 4 days there. Then we go back to Rome and I will fly home, and Shahla will stay on.
In preparation I am learning some Italian from a set of CD’s by Michel Thomas. He teaches by emphasising thinking rather than memorising or writing anything down.
I have my tickets! Christine from Harbour City Travel has been great with all the flight arrangements. There are three weeks to go before Shahla and I meet in Rome on 9th April. We will be joining thousands of visitors, many of them pilgrims there for ancient spiritual and religious rituals of Easter.
Shahla has found us an apartment in central Rome. Our tour includes Rome for a week then down to the Amalfi coast and Sorrento, Portofino Capri and Napoli, then up to Sienna then over to Padua, Verona and Lake Guarda. My nephew Lance is joining us for 3 – 4 days there. Then we go back to Rome and I will fly home, and Shahla will stay on.
In preparation I am learning some Italian from a set of CD’s by Michel Thomas. He teaches by emphasising thinking rather than memorising or writing anything down.
To cover all bases, I have an Italian phrasebook. Certain phrases have grabbed my attention. My favourite sayings are:
Sono stanca – I am tired
Questo e' rotto – this is broken
il bagno e' sporco – the bath is dirty……. I am beginning to wonder if other preparations are needed! I am trying out conversations with the barrista from Caffe Italiano on Brandon Street. ‘Bon giorno’ I say, ‘comme stai?’ and he responds. I do understand what he is saying but so far, my only response is to look completely stunned as I desperately scramble in my mind for a sensible reply.
Hoping to capture images by sketching I have been honing my drawing skills in a weekend workshop with Jane Sinclair and Anna Marie Kingsley and thirteen other artists. Their teaching was completely inspiring, and by the end of the weekend, some of my images were recognisable. Jane and Anna encouraged us to see landforms and sky as light and shadow and the show and tell session refected our individual artisitc responses to the same image. We stayed in the French Village in the Maungateretere valley on the outskirts of Carterton. Set in an idyllic native bush setting, the morning mist then warming sun gave us plenty of choices for our searching eyes.
So far our tour plans include a picnic in the gardens of Villa Borghese, a stroll on Saturday evening along via Conditti and the Spanish Steps, the ballet at Teatro d’el Opera, and of course wandering around Piazza Navona and Campo di Fiori, a day in Capri,a pizza in the orginal pizza café in Napoli, a visit to an olive grove in Malcesine, the Sunday antiques market in Denzano, and of course, walking everywhere.