Genova - Liguria - Italy

 The hotel we're in was built in 1897 (we think - it might have been 1891?).  It has operated as a hotel that whole time and was the first hotel here.  They still use the old phone.

Hah, just kidding.  That's the phone in the ELEVATOR.  One of those fun ones where you have to open the two doors, then close the two doors before you push your floor button.  When you arrive at your floor, you have to open the two doors on the OTHER side of the elevator, get out, then close those two doors again so the contraption can carry on it's mission of making people slightly nervous about whether their will is up to date.

And, btw, that's the ONLY elevator for the hotel.  If we were closer to the lobby instead of being on the 5th floor, I'd be giving the stairs more of a workout.  As it is, I'm only taking them to go down.  Not up.  Lazy - yes, and cranky knees.

I didn't sleep last night.  Suffering from jet lag I guess.  I also like to read for a while before bed, and what do you supposed landed in my inbox from the library just when I was leaving home?  Yup - Steven King's Fairy Tale.  It is very good so far, which also makes it a challenge to fall asleep.

And, we are eating supper very late for me - 7:30 last night is when we sat down for a wonderful meal of pesto gnocchi, then sea bream, then coffee flavour semifreddo for dessert.  We got back to our room at 9:50 pm with a full stomach.  

I can't even talk about our first night meal in Milan - it was at Casa Tua, and consisted of eight courses, along with many bottles of wine.  That night I thought I was going to explode.  But running on zero sleep over the previous 24 hours I fell into bed and konked out.  In the morning, Janice remarked that at one point she wondered if I was dead.

Here, our little breakfast cafe in the hotel is really cute, done in reds and pinks.  This is the first time I've seen any hint of vegetables.  At breakfast???

Today we had a morning walking tour over to the waterfront, which finished at noon.  We travelers (37 of us) were released on our own recognizance until dinner at 7:30 tonight.  Janice and I browsed the shops for a couple hours - look at the beautiful floors on the outdoor pathways!

We didn't buy anything and both of us were kind of running out of steam.  First we got lost in that downtown area, but managed to find our way back to the waterfront so we could retrace our morning tour to get back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost as f**k when we were within 5 minutes of our hotel.  We came upon a nice lady & her husband who were taking their two dogs for a walk.  The wife convinced him to lead us in the proper direction while she continued on with the dog walkies.

When we manged to get back to our room, I had a couple glasses of water and we both passed out for a nap.  The weather is gorgeous, sunny & warm.  This is the view out our window.  It's on a rather busy road, so every couple minutes "Anthony" lets "Vincente" know that he's a terrible driver, if you get my meaning.  And emergency vehicles are also running by regularly with their horns blaring.

Tomorrow we have another half-day tour and then we'll be heading to Chiavari for two nights.  More adventures await!

ITALY!

 It was a long 24 hours to get here, from the time we left the house, two plane rides and a bus ride.

Flying over some Alps, between Paris and Milan.

Waiting for our hotel rooms.

Our room in Milan.

Sunrise in Milan.

Gotta run, before the bus leaves without me!

She's having what for lunch??

 This is a bowl of leftover green beans (DH does not like green beans) and pickled beets (DH also does not like pickled beets, the weirdo) and feta cheese.

This is what I have picked so far today:

That's 5 sweet peppers, 2 lovely tomatoes, a bunch of cherry tomatoes, 2 strawberries (now gone - they were my lunchtime appetizer), a container-thingy of purple beans (which turn green when you cook them), and 3 zucchinis.  I already have 9 zucchinis in the fridge and I gave away 3 yesterday.  I have to go back out again to pick the Roma tomatoes.  And don't get me started on the kale - OMG, so much kale out there. 

This is what I picked two days ago.

That was 7 sweet peppers, 4 zucchinis, 2 lovely tomatoes, a bunch of cherry tomatoes, a few peas, and another container-thingy of purple beans.  Along with a whack of Roma tomatoes which are still sitting on my kitchen floor.  I pick them a little bit green, hopefully before some pest starts nibbling on them.

If food is medicine, then... I should live to be 248 years old.  God save us all, lol.  Which is why I will indulge in some not-so-healthy chocolate later on.

Tonight's supper will be Charlie's Beef & Zucchini.  My friend Sue gave me this recipe years ago - it's one of my favorites (although as you can probably guess...not DH's favorite!).  I suggested that he could make himself hamburgers but he's decided to grin & bear it.  😫 ⬅His face at the supper table.

What I also have in the fridge is about 3 litres of fresh raspberries from the neighbour.  Mmm, raspberries & yogurt for breakfast ❤.  She already gave me that many a week or two ago, which are in the freezer.  

And I've frozen three cookie sheets worth of Roma tomatoes.  The last few years I've been canning tomatoes but I still have several jars from last year, so I'm going to skip all that labour.  I do plan on doing a couple sheets of roasted tomatoes...they are sooo good.  I'm almost out of what I roasted two years ago.  Roasted tomatoes make an excellent base for pizza, instead of tomato sauce.  And I'll throw in a couple dollops whenever I need a bit of tomato flavour, or sometimes I use it instead of tomato paste.  I freeze it in little half-cup portions, which is close to the size of a can of tomato paste.

I've also frozen sheet #1 of diced sweet peppers.  We make a lot of soups/stews/stirfries and, fyi, sweet peppers are very expensive in the winter.  I can save that money for chocolate.

I was wide awake at 3:15 am today and had my nap from 8 - 10 am.  Crazy.  Here was the lovely sunrise, though.  Taken at 6:52 am when I'm sure I was the ONLY person on the planet who'd been awake long enough to have had two cups of coffee already.

QUILTING

And when I get sick of PRODUCE (which is starting to happen most days, some years I'm very glad when November rolls around), I'm working on this lovely quilt:

The stitch-in-the-ditch is all done.  I'm now quilting the motifs in the blocks.

Things have to look up soon, right?? And random stuff.

 I bought a layer cake.  Well, actually I bought a lot more than a layer cake, but we'll leave it at that shall we?  At least this goes with a border print that's been in my stash for many years, AND I have a pattern that will work with all this stuff.  So it's good!  Well, except for the part where I'm not supposed to be buying fabric.  Ahem.

Even Coco thinks some of DH's t-shirts should go in the trash bag.

The last couple of weeks have been interesting. 

WEDNESDAY Aug. 23rd: I was half way through this quilt.  Then BAM the hydro went out while the quilting machine and the computer were all turned on.  No more work that day because the hydro stayed out until 8:30 pm.

THURSDAY 24th:  Quilting equipment was acting weird and kind of schizophrenic so I reached out to my support team.  They gave me a couple of suggestions which did not help.   Blecch.   Then 9:30 pm BAM the hydro goes out again.  And stayed out until 6:30 am, by which time the basement had flooded.  Because of course the generator decided to act like an asshole.

MONDAY 28th:  We had an outdoor guild meeting.  Just a nice social event to catch up and show off our summer stitching work.

TUESDAY 29th:  DH changes the start/stop switch on the quilting machine, and that seems to be the fix.  Yay!  Broken machines are very stressful.  Apparently the first hydro outage fried that little sucker.

FRIDAY Sept 1st:  I get an email from one of the guild members who was at the Monday get together.  Uh huh, she'd just tested positive for covid.

SATURDAY 2nd:  We had 1-800-LUKE and his wife here for dinner.  I spilled a whole mug of fresh HOT tea in her lap.  Oh, dear God.

SUNDAY 3rd:  The internet is out A.L.L.  D.A.Y.  Puhleeze... people can't live like that!!

Have you been reading news stories about how fast fashion is not sustainable and is really bad for the environment?  You may rest assured that that does not apply to me.

I made a lovely batch of Peach Marmalade.  One of the recipes without added pectin, where you have to watch the temperature and when the jam gets to a certain temperature it's ready to put into jars.  Uh huh...after I gave away two jars I decided to have some myself on toast.  Oy vey...that stuff is hard as a rock.