Sicily - late March

Emilia-Romagna - early April

Ferrara Intro

Apartment

Museums 1

Rossetti

Eating!

Ravenna Hills

Ravenna Hills 2

Faenza

Tuscany, Florence - April 8

Umbria - late April

Our Apartment in Ferrara

I know I said I would describe some of our art tours, but I decided to take a break and tell about our wonderful apartment and hosts in Ferrara. We were picked up at the train station (after our all night run up from Sicily) by our charming and gracious hosts Nicola and Jenny, he an Italian (or maybe an Italian of Greek extraction), she an Australian. They apparently met on a cruise ship in the 50s where she was sailing around the with her two children and he was a ship's doctor. It's all a little vague, mysterious and romantic and we just left it that way.

We did learn that Nicola had been a young man in 1941, maybe 12 or 13, and that his maternal grandmother had owned a lovely town house on the site of the current house. One week he went visiting there and to help with the garden and the next week when they went back, the house was gone--blown up along with most of the block. He didn't mention if any people were harmed, but it seems inevitable. Most difficult, the bomb was from a "friendly" plane trying to take out a bridge or communications point to slow down the Nazis. Jenny complains that all the rubble in the ground makes gardening very difficult.

It's a lovely garden none-the-less, with flowers, birds, little lizards chasing each other around and a nice brick barbecue. "Do you use the barbecue much?" Dawn asked. "Oh, yes, " Jenny said, "we sometimes cook eels on it." Yipes! I'm glad it wasn't eel season. I couldn't face them even 35 years after reading the Gunter Grass flight of fancy in Tin Drum.

We had a great view of the back yard (and were allowed to use it too) because we were on the 2nd floor (3rd to us Americans) and we had to earn the view by walking up and down several times a day. We missed the Syracuse elevator, but the location was wonderful, just a few blocks from the Castella Estense and the historic area, but nearly rural in feeling. Well, we were actually IN the historic area, with grand buildings and the botanical gardens just a block or two away. (This first picture is a random, unidentified building around the corner and the second was taken at the botanical gardens, they're nice, but not particularly impressive.)

The apartment is very light and airy, all in one room (except the bath) with a tidy little kitchen area, sitting area, a washing machine etc. This time there was no dryer and we had our first experience trying out our drying-off-the-balcony technique. Neither one of us is a stranger to hanging clothes on the line to dry (although haven't done it for some time and never from a third floor balcony). Eventually it turned out okay, but the first time, when we came home after our 7-hour jaunt around town, sure we had pinned things out carefully, we were missing a summer top and a sock and the rest of our laundry was inside not drying at all.

Nicola said that he was just sitting in the garden, wondering about the sudden bursts of wind, when it started raining down women's clothes. So he and Jenny retrieved things, most of them with their clothes pins still firmly attached. After that we pinned more carefully, paying more attention to the clothes line. And we pretty much stayed home while it was drying. Then there is a cheat. Since the heating runs hot water through radiators and it was a bit chilly out, we could put on the heat in the evening and drape the laundry on the radiators. That worked perfectly.

Next some Ferrara museums.