we’re back at gregory‘s jazz club (three nights in a row!) and these cats are playing that monk tune “we see” again. i am ok with that! must be what’s in the fake book round here.
We saw La Gioconda in Teatro San Carlo. It was magnificent. I cried in all four acts, a river of tears in Act III, during Dance of the Hours. Just so beautiful, everything, so beautiful.
It’s opening night! So it’s all tuxedos, mink stoles, pearls, and diamonds! We’re seated on the main floor in the very last row. I feel so lucky to be here!
today is a travel day so we’re packing, then taxi to the station, then about an hour on the train to siracusa, then taxi to ortigia where have a pensione for a couple nights
We took a fast trip to nearby Rosolini to shelf surf the pharmacy (which is #SoFun when abroad, I mean it!) and stumbled upon the Chiesa Madre de San Giuseppe, a mid 19th century church in the Sicilian Baroque style
After spending the morning checking out mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale di Piazza Armerina, we drove to Enna, where we encountered the ancient Torre Ottagonale di Enna, an astronomical-geodetic-religious tower, said to date back 3,000 years
Pizza last night at Repubblica 20Due in Valguarnera Caropepe was so good we inhaled nearly the whole thing before stopping to take a pic. Gran bignè farcito con crema for dessert was also amazing.
Walking home afterwards, we saw how they put out the trash at night in Valguarnera Caropepe.
This morning, we drove out of the mountains to Agrigento, on the coast. I was driving 😱 so I couldn’t focus on the sights, but they were incredible. I kept exclaiming “lookit that! lookit that!” as we careered down the broad green and brown landscape between low peaks topped with crumbling fortresses.
“In the glass coffin there is an embalmed body, officially identified as St. Felice Martire, but there are 15 martyrs with this name and it is not known which he is.”
We’re headed to Palermo to turn in our rental car, but we stopped to check out the Scala deli Turchi, limestone cliffs overlooking the Tyrrhennian seacoast.
We grabbed a sandwich and some pesto at a fast food joint by the side of the road.
Nous avons arrivés dans notre petite appartement à Nice.
I’mma work on my French while we’re here! Two years of daily Duolingo have graduated me from « je ne parle pas français » to « je parle français comme le bébé »
Anyway, here’s the view from our apartment window on a rainy day.
We arrive in France on a national holiday, and it’s also an anniversary for us: start of week four of our trip. We slept in eight different beds, hauling a hundred pounds (46 kg) of luggage across southern Italy and Sicily, but are finally settled down for a couple weeks in Nice, with our own kitchen and a washing machine (omg no laundry for three weeks is a challenge!).
@peterhoneyman Ooo. Are you making a list of day trips from Nice? Drive the Corniches pretending you are Cary Grant and Grace Kelly? Or Robert De Niro and Jean Reno? Visit the Trophée d'Auguste? Or the Fondation Maeght?
@jef Fondation Maeght for sure (it will be my third visit), drive to Aix for a day trip, train to Ventimiglia for a day, maybe a day in Monaco. But we have a lot of lying around doing nothing to catch up on, too.
We found an open boulangerie, bought a baguette that was still warm and delighted to the crunch, the smell, and the taste as we nibbled at le croûton on our way back from the bakery.
In Sicily, almost all the overheard street chatter was in Italian, with German the most common foreign language. Not so in Nice, where you hear people speaking English all over the place, in cafes, shops, and on the street.
actually there’s a lot of cars in the places where cars are allowed but there are many blocks filled only with people
it’s nice here (ha ha how many times can i make that stupid joke)
our neighborhood is dense residential, mostly six-story or so. we’re in one of them, on the second floor. all the older buildings have shops on the ground floor, so there are bakeries, pâtissières, butchers, dentists, second-hand clothing shops, nail and hair salons, plumbing supply, basically everything.
About six months ago, @aka_pugs was ranting NFS MUST DIE and one of the NLUUG organizers challenged him to write up his thoughts for the conference.
When he agreed to do so, I knew I had to be there, and I was planning to be in Europe at that time anyway, so I threw down some old stuff I never wrote up and also submitted to NLUUG. They loved it and asked me to keynote!
So come to the NLUUG Spring Conference and hear me and Tom! Buy us beers! Utrecht is lovely in May!
We visited the Chagall museum and its numerous breathtaking oil paintings, many with biblical themes, which churned up long dormant feelings from my pre-teen fascination and puzzlement with Old Testament bible study
We stumbled upon the Fête des Mai à Nice in a large park that faces the Musée Matisse and found ourselves amid food trucks, olive trees, families, picnic tables, park benches, kids crying, screaming, running, climbing trees. A band just finished playing.
we took an extremely crowded train — full of tourists! — to monte carlo
it is impossible to get anywhere on foot here, in part bc the grand prix is nigh so there is an impenetrable, heavily fenced barrier running between anywhere you are and anywhere you want to be
Life has slowed since arriving in Nice umm … a week ago. (What day is it?)
Yesterday we did a little shopping at the Uniqlo by Nice Gare that just opened, wandered around our neighborhood, stopped for lunch in the shadow of the Notre Dame Basilica, and picked up some groceries.
yesterday we did nothing. (wrote some postcards, worked on my #nluug keynote a little, had dinner at a nearby vietnamese restaurant.)
today we had lunch with friends in beaulieu-sur-mer, a bougie, postage stamp-size town near nice, and dinner at home.
tomorrow we do laundry and pack (next stop: amsterdam) and tomorrow night we have tix for the ogc nice vs. psg soccer match at allianz riviera — very excited!
leaving utrecht by car — 45 kg of luggage is too much for a couple of olds to haul to the tram stop and then on and off the tram and then to the platform at utrecht centraal and then on and off the train to amsterdam centraal. (we vowed to travel light on this trip lol.)
#alas we should have booked the eurostar to lille a long time ago – of course it’s sold out, so we’ll be on the local
@peterhoneyman I love everything about this thread. I don't know if you are flying United on any long hauls on your return, but if so, DM me and I'm happy to apply PlusPoints for a Polaris upgrade. ✌️
fred, it was so great to spend time with you and so many others that i have not seen in almost two decades. i had a wonderful time at the conference and who knows, maybe i’ll be back. lynn loves it here! (and so do i.)
@peterhoneyman Sorry I couldn’t be there, Peter. #NLUUG conferences happen to often collide with my business travels 🤷🏻♂️ Thanks for coming and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Enjoy your trip and take care. 👋🏻
@peterhoneyman Did you make it to Calascibetta, the hilltop town just north of Enna (other side of the autostrada)? There’s a ~9th c. BCE necropolis just outside the town.
@20002ist@peterhoneyman Have you ever been to Petra in Jordan? If not, I strongly urge you to visit—it's the most remarkable place I’ve ever been. Admittedly, that part of the world seems a bit unstable right now. (Read the alt-text for explanations.)
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