Arrival

 

Oh happy sight. After the chaos of massive Frankfurt Airport and immigration (plus jammed bus rides to and from the planes out on the tarmac) nice knowing our bags made the plane for the short flight to Milan. 

We were met at the airport by a Viking rep who quickly arranged private transfer to our hotel in the heart of Milan. Viking is known for their good service. We had a very quick driver to put it mildly. He did the hour drive in about 45 minutes. Neither of us slept on the long flight from Seattle so it was heaven checking into the cool hotel.  

BTW. We are in the midst of an unseasonable heat wave, with temps in the mid 90’s and high humidity. 

Simple pizza for dinner…

Then a night of awful, wide awake tossing and turning for me. Finally exhaustion took over and I got in a few hours before the alarm went off. The downside to organized tours is no la-di-da sleeping there’s a strict schedule.

And flying east, the jet lag is especially brutal in the morning. The espresso machine in the room helped jumpstart the day. 

Our hotel is just steps away from the Galleria and truly magnificent gothic Duomo, which took 600 years to build. 

We had a guided 3 hour walking tour of central Milan this morning before it got too hot and crowded. 

Our local guide, born in Milan…

I could spend days here exploring the city.  Not to mention the food. 

Gelato and fruit for lunch on this scorching hot day. Perfect and all we needed after this incredible hotel buffet breakfast.

Some nice gooey Gorgonzola for breakfast?  

Tomorrow is a big day. The suitcases need to be in the hallway by 7 am, then we take a bus to the northern Italy Lake District before heading to st. Moritz Switzerland in the afternoon on the Bernina Express, the most scenic line. And the sun will be shining in the Alps!  There we will spend the next 2 nights. 

Internet is great here in Milan, and I’ll try to check in again if time permits. 

Ciao. 

 

Lord have mercy

 

 

The packing was going pretty well until we got the idea (actually Viking's suggestion) to divide our clothes between the suitcases. 

The sensible reason being, if one gets lost, that person will still have half their wardrobe. John is a man who wears identical button down shirts, a uniform style of pants and cookie cutter socks, handkerchiefs and underware. He said, just make a couple of identical stacks. 

For women, it's not that simple dividing up different styles of pants, dresses, capris, light sweaters, t-shirts, scarves etc. 

The carry-on capsule travel wardrobe idea is big right now. I failed. But at least my separates go together because everything is black, brown and beige. 

I'm overthinking the whole clothing thing as usual. The object is to be as cool and comfortable as possible as the temperature will be in the 80's and 90's. In fashionable Milan, no one is going to notice a tour group walking around with Viking lanyards on their necks.  Haha

Anyway, after so many, many months of planning and anticipation, we are checked in for our Lufhansa flight to Frankfort tomorrow afternoon. Somewhere in that monstrous airport, we transfer for a quick flight to Milan and the 4 day tour of Italy and Switzerland begins. We board the Viking longboat on May 30th for a 6-day cruise up the Rhine River to Amsterdam. Home from there. 

I'll check in along the way as time and Internet allows. Ciao! 

 

 

 

Where's my?

 

 

Viking "highly recommends" using Bluetooth tracker devices in your checked bags. And so does every other travel expert out there.

I bought a four pack because Apple rips you off when you purchase just one. (There's a reason why Apple is a 4.5 trillion dollar company.)

Another bit of technology to supposedly give you control over something you have no control over. Anyway, if your checked bag doesn't make it on your plane, you can spent the flight worrying about it. So much for peace of mind-- but they are supposedly helpful in locating lost luggage more quickly. 

We're spending the weekend packing and getting stuff in order around the house and yard. So much planning and preparation goes into an international trip like this-- nothing like our little vacation jaunts to Twisp. I'll be glad when we're finally on the way. 

The growing season

 

The Fatsia japonica by the deck has just exploded in growth this spring after a severe hacking back. That bright evergreen tree to the left (about 15 feet tall) started life as one of those Trader Joe decorated Christmas trees. 

With the exception of the laurel hedge and fig tree, I'm responsible for planting everything over the last 45 years. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

In fact, generations of plants have come and gone in just about every spot. Never a master plan, just years of impulse planting along with trial and error. Now, the yard is a wild and random hodgepodge. Martha Stewart does not like hodgepodges. Ask me if I care. The birds love it. 

 

We had pasta with homemade sausage sauce last night, priming the pump for Italian food next week. 

Actually, just a quick taste of Italy-- 2 nights in Milan, then a day tour near Lake Como, then off to St Moritz for 2 nights (Alps train and gondola experiences) before boarding the Rhine River boat in Basel, Switzerland.  

Talk about hitting the ground running! Although this a guided pre-cruise tour offered by Viking, and the transportation and hotels are taken care of. We'll just go with the flow and get a handle on the jet lag. 

And this is a learning trip for us. It might be a once in a lifetime experience, or the start of many river cruises.   

The European weather forecast looks beautiful next week, quite hot actually. I'm determined not to overpack. For once haha. 
 

Fiddling away the time

 

No newsy blog this morning, I’m on my iPad trying to figure out how to upload iPhone photos into Blogger posts while we’re on vacation. Google and Apple get along, but in a most begrudging way. I think the word is frenemy. 

Anyway, so far so good. 

Relay race champs

 

Maya (bottom left) and her friends are having a really successful middle school track season. Good for them! So many benefits, both physical and mental, for girls participating in team sports. 

It wasn't always that way. Nova and Maya look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this:

Title 9, the 1972 federal civil rights law, prohibited sex-based discrimination in school sponsored sports. Now taken totally for granted by this young generation, that requirement for equal treatment in high school sports was an earth shattering change at the time. 

At our small Colorado high school, the boys played intramural basketball and the girls had segregated gym class and joined "pep club." That was our only participation in sports. 

Few families had money to spare, and the dorky, old fashioned pep club uniform (remember this was the mini skirt 60's) was quite an investment: stitched down, below the knee wool pleated skirt in ugly kelly green, formal blazer, and, yes, white gloves and Keds. Wool fabric was cheap then and the clever girls tried to sew those complicated skirts in Home Ec class, with varying success. 

It wasn't like we were entirely excluded-- the pep club trouped along with the basketball team to away games, hours on the road late at night in a dark bus. Trust me, we had fun as teenagers do, but the sexist roles were sharply defined: the boys played, and the girls cheered them on from the sidelines. As Nova and Maya say, "Nana, that's CRAZY." 

I have a tendency to bemoan change, but who would ever want to go back to those days?

A little slice

 

Here's our answer to the "affordable housing crisis" in Seattle. Take a tiny lot, tear down the bungalow, and build three or four wildly expensive townhouses looming over their modest neighbors. Street parking, because everyone takes public transportation here. Ha ha ha.

Single family homes are considered politically incorrect (even selfish) in our socialist leaning city. There's yet another of these housing complexes going up near us, so more bang, bang, bang and our street blocked with construction. 

 

 

The way of the future, and glad I won't be around when entire neighborhoods look like rows of lunch boxes. 

Anyway! What's the point of complaining about things you have no control over. Despite the steady loss of backyard habitat, West Seattle is still beautiful and our backyard nature preserve is gorgeous in May and June. 

Is there a flower more perfect than an Calla Lily? 

 

Georgia O’Keeffe 

If springtime were a painting... 

 

Our resident bunny, who decided our yard is a fine place for low income housing. He lives under the hedge, and comes out to sun himself on nice days.

Donburi means bowl

 

Donburi is a rice bowl dish, an everyday staple of Japanese cooking, consisting of vegetables and meat simmered together and served over rice. 

The secret, as they say, is in the sauce. On the internet, where you can easily find recipes for anything, they were all wildly different. There's about as many kinds of donburi as Cambell's soup.

But the basic sauce ingredients are pretty much the same: soy sauce, saki, sugar and mirin. I just cobbled something together by taste. The good news is, it was good. The bad news is, I couldn't  make it the same again. (If you're too lazy to write down a recipe, just call it creative cookery.)

A steak and caramelized onion donburi is called "gyudon." And a perfect way to stretch a small piece of quality steak I had stashed in the freezer. 

 Good weather for donburi-- chilly, breezy and wet for the next few days in Seattle. 

After the rain

 

 

This dramatic beauty is called "Starring." It does remind me of  glamorous movie stars from the olden days. That black part of a bearded iris is called a "fall" and the white part is a "standard." 

Hopefully Penny Lane, Easter Candy, Champagne Elegance bloom before we go on vacation.  You miss it; you wait another year. We bought them from the Brecks Catalog years ago. Growing iris requires patience in so many ways. 

 

The breeders have gone nuts, and there are over 300 species of iris in every color of the rainbow. The name comes from the Greek goddess Iris, the divine personification of the rainbow. Her job was to glide along the rainbow to the ends of the earth, swiftly carrying messages to gods and men. 

D. H Lawrence wrote a poem called "The Scent of Iris" in which he described it as "faint and sickening." It is the most distinctive flower smell when you bring them inside, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and especially noticeable walking by the vase at night. 

Lovely rain

 

 

Looking out the window on a lush and drenched garden this morning-- it has been quite dry for the last few weeks. And if a person is going to lie awake in the middle of the night, there's nothing nicer than the sound of rain pattering down on leaves. 

I've started on a new medication that is causing some side effects and anxiety. Of course, the worst thing for your blood pressure is worrying about it. I'm optimistic it will be resolved in good time, since I've made it this far in robust good health. Now a few tweaks are in order. Welcome to the human race. 

National Nurses Day

 

 

Hats off to all the hardworking nurses, including our Amanda! 

“Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” Dag Hammarskjold 

Flowers and pot roast

 

John gave me flowers for Mother's Day, which is nice since we're kinda between the spring and early summer blooming season and there's nothing to cut at the moment. In another week, if this warm weather keeps up, the yard will be full of peonies, iris and roses. 

So, lovely having the very fragrant white Oriental lilies inside-- a preview of late summer, when ours bloom. 

He also bought an "Opera Cake" at Metropolitan Market. Ever had? They are amazingly good. I can resist most cakes, but not this one. 

 

"Created in the 1950s, the cake's thin layers of coffee-soaked sponge, ganache, and buttercream are designed to evoke the elegance of the levels in a Paris opera house."  (Thanks, AI.)  

For dinner, pot roast, another rare treat. Remember when chuck was just a scrappy piece of cheap meat? Now that humble cut costs more than a Porterhouse did a few years ago. 

Yes, we seniors are constantly dating ourselves exclaiming over high food prices. I told the girls I remember buying a sandwich for a quarter and a (big) candy bar for a nickel. "Really, Nana?" 

I'm not sure they even know what a "nickle" or "quarter" is. They sure as heck don't carry around loose change for penny candy, like we did. 

 

Happy Mother's Day

 

Our amazing Amanda and her beautiful girls today, camping with a group of friends at Banks Lake in Central Washington. 

This is a 17-year tradition for these families, going together in May since their kids were wee babies. Now teenagers!

 

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful moms in our family, including April, Julie, Marji, Irene and Janice. We are truly blessed. 
 

 

 

Iris Day

 

Today is Iris Day and this one is about to pop open. I have a love/hate relationship with that flower-- so glorious and then, frankly, a pain in the neck for the rest of the year, hogging up garden space and always needing to be divided. But, that one week of bloom makes it worthwhile. 

Happy Mother's Day weekend, hope you enjoy some time with your family flock. 

Peanut, please

 

My new friend, who shows up on the deck every afternoon at the same time. Begging the question, who trained whom?

Yes, peanuts are fattening. 

Slow down

 

 

I was at Target yesterday and everything in the garden section was already on clearance sale. Talk about rushing the seasons--if you haven't bought outdoor furniture by Memorial Day, you're out of luck at Target. Maybe they were getting the section ready for back-to-school. 

Anyway, I scored this pretty terracotta pot at 40% off. I'll try and transplant a root bound dwarf snake plant (Sansevieria Trifasciata.) 

We got spoiled by a string of bright sunny days-- the last few have been chilly and grey.  Depressing, really. The furnace is running again this morning. The marine overcast finally burned off yesterday about 5 pm when I was outside cooking dinner.

 

Whole chicken thighs on the grill are so good, if done right. If you scorch them like steak, the fat turns to unhealthy charcoal, instead of dripping "harmlessly" off into the bottom of grill. Ha. But worth the mess. Speaking of slowing down, it takes about an hour.  

Bitter greens

 

Another one of those NYT "quick and easy" recipes. 

There's always a bag of frozen potstickers in our freezer and I had some kale on hand, which I don't usually buy. Kale is bitter, and raw in salads, so tough! People often grind it up for green smoothies. Yes, yes, healthy and all that. 

 

 

I thought this turned out OK- crispy dumplings with the soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger and garlic balancing the bitterness. John, not big on any cooked greens, took one minuscule fleck of kale. The main dish was meatless Monday stir fry tofu and vegetables. 

Farm life

 

The Carlton orchard looks like a lush Garden of Eden from the abundant irrigation. The big question is, will there be any fruit? 

Unfortunately, a late frost damaged the blossoms a few weeks ago, which will reduce the yield significantly. So it goes.

 

It wouldn't be the Garden of Eden without one. That's Millie checking out a RUBBER snake, I guess part of her education to rural life. Snakes are a fact of life in that area, including rattlesnakes, which they can expect to see every summer on the farm. So it goes.

In a different world, we went to a mostly Mozart symphony yesterday and heard the Clarinet Concerto in A Major. Mozart adored the clarinet (and so do I.)

We're enjoying beautiful warm weather and no lasting damage from the Friday night water mishap. The hall carpet is (slowly) drying out. And there's a silver lining to every cloud-- it looks considerably cleaner after all the blotting up. Not so the white towels. 

Disaster averted

  

I often go down to the basement bedroom when I can't sleep. It's cooler and considerably quieter than upstairs, where the fridge hums a few steps from the bed, and random noises on the street. John could sleep though a major earthquake (more on that in a minute.)

Anyway, I listen to my sleep podcasts like "Get Sleepy" and "Lights Out Library" where a soothing voice tells a long boring story or reads a topic from Wiki. It usually works. 

About 1 am last night, almost ready to drift off, I heard a sudden sound like 100 toilets flushing. Well, I know every little creak and groan this old house makes. I ran out of the bedroom and found water pouring down on the carpet from the recessed ceiling light fixtures. 

Long story short, the plastic fitting on the upstairs toilet water supply line had suddenly burst (more like exploded) and water was gushing onto the bathroom floor and into the hall. Then right through the floor into the basement. We have good water pressure here (thank you very much.)

I woke John from a dead sleep. Could he have slept through the roaring noise until morning? What a gift.

Fortunately, he knew what to do and the toilet turn off valve worked. That's the type of thing that tends to break at the worst possible time in old houses. When the water stopped, there was much sopping up with every clean towel in the house. And little sleep.

Well, we truly dodged a bullet. As they say, never underestimate the power of water. If this had happened while we were away, it would have destroyed the entire house. The upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling might have collapsed and the basement filled up with water.

An early trip to Home Depot for a few inexpensive parts, and all is fixed now. Crisis averted, thanks to insomnia and John's skill with basic plumbing.