Five days, Five Pounds

No, that's not five pounds sterling - although I wish it were that cheap - that's how much weight I gained on my recent trip to visit family in Italy. I had lost about 5 pounds since I got to London just from having to walk all over the place and prepare my own meals (which means I eat less). I had no problem getting the weight back after eating at Zia Idin's for the long weekend. I got up at about 4:30 am after going to sleep at 1:30 am and headed out to catch the tube to the bus stop to stansted airport. I flew Ryan Air so of course it was delayed and I ended up arriving in Pisa a little after 1 pm Italy time. My Aunt Margy and her co-worker Mary met me at the gate and we hopped in the car for the drive to Mercallo - a small town north west of Milan - where we have family. My zia Idin and zio Luigi live there with their daughter Grazia. Zia Idin is my great-grandmother's sister. I visited them once before during christmas my freshman year of college and I am so happy I had the opportunity to go back. We ran into a lot of traffic going through Milan but finally made it to zio and zia's house. 

We were greeted by a dinner of Rissotto and Ossobuchi. It was amazingly delicious. My zia Idin is a fantastic cook and always yells at you to keep eating! So I ate, and ate and ate... We talked for a long time - although only Grazia speaks english and she has to translate for zia and zio. My aunt Margy also speaks Italian so she was able to help translate too. The next day Grazia, Margy, Mary and I went to the nearby town of Arona. They told me it was one of my great-grandmother's favorite places to go. I was lucky enough to know my great grandmother and it was very cool walking around her favorite town. We stopped at a little cafe and had pastries and coffee and stocked up on sweets for the weekend (they made some great Canoli). We walked around a while then headed over to the Esselunga, a big grocery store, to get some food. We got three types of cheese from the alps which were very very good and I was able to bring some back with me to London! We ate lunch at the cafe in the store - i know what you're thinking, hmm eating in a grocery store, that sounds questionable at best. But no, it was amazing. I had one of the best ham sandwiches ever! We then went back to the house for a little bit then went over to the convent to visit with Sister Raphaella (the picture above). I met her the last time I visited and I was really nice to see her again, she is such a sweet lady and has a great sense of humor. We stopped back at the house for a little while and zia had made fritelle, a carnival dessert that was absolutely amazing:

 

Then we came back and went to mass at the church in Mercallo, it was all in Italian but it was cool to be there with my family. It's such a small town, that everyone in the church realized we were there and a lot of them came over to say hi and about half of them ended up being part of the extended family! After mass we came back and had dinner of cheese filled crepes, veal steaks, french fries, roasted carrots and cheese. It was all so good, I kept eating even though I was full. It's hard to stop with zia yelling at you to keep eating after she had served you a ridiculously big portion of everything. She also won't let you out of the house with your hair wet and will smack you on the arm if you walk downstairs in shorts and a t-shirt (my pajamas) because she thinks you will be too cold, as I found out. 

The next morning we took the train into Milan. We hopped on the underground and went to see the Last Supper. It was amazing to see the actual painting and was much bigger than I expected. After that we went to the Piazza Duomo to see the church which was huge and beautiful and then walked around the Galleria and the Rinascente - two big shopping centers right on the square. Everything was ridiculously overpriced but it was fun to walk around and look. We ate lunch on the top floor of the Rinascente, looking straight across at the Duomo, which was pretty cool. We got some Gelato, which was amazing - I got creme caramel and amaretto. Then we tried to catch a train at Milano Centrale and missed it by mere seconds - we watched it pull away from the opposite platform. So we took the tube to a different train station and caught a train back to Mercallo. 

When we got back, Aunt Margy and I helped zio set the time on a pen that had a built in clock. It was fun trying to communicate with him and eventually he was able to do it. Zia and Grazia went to mass and we were supposed to turn on the oven and get things ready for dinner. We were distracted by the pen and forgot to do it and we all got slapped by zia when she got back and it wasn't ready. We eventually had dinner of lasagne, veal roast, roasted cauliflower, stewed peppers, cheese and canoli.

On monday I woke up, had breakfast and visited with everyone for a while. I was really excited to be able to understand a few sentences of Italian and communicate directly with zia and zio. I really loved being there and it was hard for me to leave. It did help that zia made pizza for us to take back. They packed up the car with an insane amount of food and we headed back to Pisa.

We got back to Aunt Margy's house in Pisa in the early afternoon. It's a really nice place, not as big as the house in Germany, but still nice. We went down to the leaning tower and walked around a bit. It's really striking to see it in person. I mean, you know it leans but when you actually see it you're like wow, it really is leaning a lot. It's also a little weird to be there after seeing the place on tv and in history books, it's kind of surreal. The weather was really nice the whole time I was there. I am already missing the sunshine and warmth. Later on, we went down to the coast and the sunset was amazing. 

When we got back to the house, Aunt Margy made banana nut pancakes and we watched Gladiator - one of my favorite movies of all time. We also had some amaretto cookies which were unbelievable. We got them from an Italian bakery and they were seriously some of the best cookies I've ever had. On tuesday, I slept in a bit and then my aunt picked me up and took me to the military base. It was a lot smaller than the base in Germany - the commissary was like 4 aisles wide - but the office was a lot nicer than her old one. I got a genuine american hamburger - which was delicious - and we headed off the base to the airport. The rest of the trip was pretty much uneventful. 

It was so nice to relax with family and I miss them all already. As for now, I will think of the trip every time I sit down to eat, wishing that my meal of frosted flakes was zia Idin's lasagne and veal steaks.