@hypomodern we found a fabulous place on a narrow street lined with shops and restaurants a couple blocks removed from blvd de clichy so it should be relatively tranquil
then we have to get the hell out of there before the olympic games start. it’s prob’ly gonna be crazy already. and hopefully the farmers 🚜 will be back home planting their crops by then.
lynn is in the process of booking some hotel rooms: three nights in rome, four nights in naples, three nights in catania (which, she tells me, is in sicily), a couple nights in ortigia (an island adjoining syracuse).
On a roll: we'll see Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the magnificent Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania. It's opening night, but I snagged a couple aisle tix in the last row on the main floor—boxes were sold out.
It turns out this opera was first performed at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, where we're seeing La Gioconda earlier in the week. Good thing I have my father's Victor Book of the Opera (1968 ed. of the 1929 classic) for reference. (That’s Victor as in Victor Talking Machine Company).
@paul_ipv6 i remember seeing a german opera with hungarian supertitles one time lol. luckily, i knew the piece (götterdämmerung) ... well, mostly ... but i had my literate son along so it was all good.
planning a long trip is really fun. we're leaving some gaps to fill on the fly. like we have a week between leaving syracuse and arriving in palermo where i think we're going to rent a car and drive through sicily looking for hotel vacancy signs.
@paul_ipv6 it will be fun! lynn spent an undergrad semester there about a million years ago, and i visited in grad school, a million and one years ago, while at a denotational semantics workshop in sophia-antipolis, and attended a couple smartcard conferences there back when smartcards were a thing.
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