BASSANO AT NIGHT

Bassano del Grappa is a very beautiful city, but especially at night. The above pictures are of the famous bridge, the town square, and the river. The river is about 100 meters from our flat.

PS: If I have to get used to metric, so do you!!!!!

STARTING TO LOOK LIKE HOME

Our flat is starting to be home. Here Alan is reading while we wait for our dinner guests to arrive. Our first dinner guests where from Denmark and work with Alan when he is in Randers Denmark. We had a great time talking about work, customs of the different counties and enjoying cross cultural communication. We have started a guest book for all that come to the flat for a visit.

NAME THAT MEAT

This is one of the typical seafood counters in the grocery store. Can you name any of the above seafoods? I just wish I could include the smell!!!!!!!!

Apini's take over Bassano

This weekend is the 81st annual Alpini festival in Bassano. The Alpinies fought to save Mount Grappa from being taken over by the Austrians along with other areas of the Italian Alps in 1917. Bassano Del Grappa is a city of about 50,000. The Alpini group brought to town 450,000 people, 60,000 cars, and 2,000 buses. All trying to drive in the narrow Bassano streets. The entire city is closed to traffic. Alan can home from work Friday at noon just to get the Flat before they closed the streets. The only mode of transportation in and out of the city until Monday morning is by public transportation.
The picutre is one of the Alpini groups coming down the street in front of our flat.

OUR NEW WHEELS

We have four new wheels, two for Sharon and two for Alan. Our wheels are two 21 speed bikes that will allow us to get into the Italian/European mode of transportation. We had a great day biking around the city of Bassano and the surrounding areas. We biked about 15Km for our first ride. Now we have 4 bikes, so we are ready for visitors to come biking with us. Who will be the first??????

This is the bike shop owner and his shop.

Here we are ready to explore and try not to crash them on the first day.

Help us name the new bikes. You will get venti ”Grappa points” if we choose your suggestion.

SHANNON & FLANDERS DO ITALY

Shannon and Flanders are the two bikes we got from Tim and Mindy. Tim and Mindy never thought the two bikes that introduced them to Leuven Belgium would end up in Italy introducing us to Bassano. On this trip Shannon and Flanders were taking us on a trip to explore Bassano Italy.

Flanders in Flanders field. The poppies are in full bloom here. They grow wild and this is a wheat field close to our flat

MY LIGHTHOUSE

In Bassano, the street are very difficult to figure out, so I had to find something that would work to guide me home. This church is very large and as the next picture shows has some very tall bell towers and can be seen from most of Bassano. As long as the church is in sight, I can find home.

LAUNDRY THE ITALIAN WAY

Doing laundry in Italy is quite an experience. If you can not tell, this is my dryer. It works great most of the time unless it rains.

This is a picture of my washer. I don't think I will need the Maytag repairman any soon. I do however, (and I never thought I would say this) wish I had the old wringer machine we had a home when I was growing up. I do not seem to get all the water out of the clothes no matter how hard I try.