Doors, Knockers, & Handles

Here are a few of the doors, knockers and door handles we saw in Piacenza.

 This is a wooden door handle on a glass door for a shop.

 How about this for a knocker

 This ratty door was directly across from the next door

What a contrast these two doors make!

 Nice Knocker

Piacenza

December 29, 2013

I shouldn't be surpassed  but this has been a very easy week.  Once Christmas came, we really did not have very much to do.  It was a chance to catch up on many tasked that had been postponed for months.  We moved a new cabinet into the office to store the additional apartment binders and I got caught up on all of the medical claims that I must send into to Salt Lake.  We went into the office late (8:30) and left early (5:00).  It reminded me of the times I did not take vacation the week between Christmas and New Years.  The phones rarely rang, there very few emails, and even the mail dropped to almost nothing.

Saturday we decided to drive down to Piacenza - A city about 40 miles south of Opera.    It was pretty good. We found a parking place and wandered around until we found Centro.

Surprise!  It is market day in Piacenza and everyone it out.

 Nice Christmas tree

 This main square is called Piazza Cavalli - There are two horse statures one one each end.

 Up on the main wall of the big building were old candle holders (now light sconces) that were in the shape of a dragon holding the candle holders

Across on the other side of the square was a giant sun dial up on the 3rd & 4th floor.

 Off to the east side was another square and church. (there were vendors everywhere)

 The main door of the church

 In side there was one chapel that was painted with very vibrate scenes.

 While wandering east past the church we saw this church tower through a narrow foot path of a street.

At the end of the very long street with hundreds of people walking both directions was the duomo.

 This one was very large.

There were more vendor stalls in this square.  It seemed that everywhere you looked were people wandering and talking and enjoying the sunny day.  We walked back to the main square and decided to have lunch.  I went back to the car to buy another parking slip so we wouldn't get a ticket.  Lunch at this resterarante was quite and good.  After lunch we wandered around to the north of the square.  It was after 1:00 and the vendors were packing up and the crowds were thinning out.  Everyone was going home to eat.

Here is the Opera house Piacenza 

 Then around the corner is this enormous church.

 It was closed for lunch.  The sign said open from 8:00 - 13:00 and 16:00 - 19:00

 On the way back  we saw this interesting building.

And another church

Christmas 2013

Christmas in Italy

A week or so before Christmas we went on a shopping trip to Centro Milano.  

Here is a picture of an outdoor sidewalk cafe where they have totally enclosed it and installed heaters inside. Many of the side walk cafes have no seating inside.  Some of them the Kitchen is downstairs of the building next to it.

Here is the Duomo in all of its grandeur with a gigantic Christmas tree in front.  Very impressive.

There was a Christmas market with vendor stalls all around the sides and back of the Duomo.  Here is one selling candied fruit.

And another one selling bread and sweets

I had to take a picture of these wooden ducks with boots.  Very cute.  I love them.

At the mall and supermarket they even had a Santa Claus!  It was great watching the kids.

Christmas eve the Office elders were very excited.  One of them had made a home made version of Settlers of Catan.  They were having a great time!

Here is our office tree with all of the gifts under it.

Christmas morning Peggy made Cinnamon Rolls.  We ate them and then opened up our presents.

Peggy made the elders socks sewed together like a pair of little long johns.  They loved them!  We also gave them each a box of popcorn, a box of Master Crunch cereal (the best cereal I have ever had.  It is only sold at Lidl - a German grocery store.  It is a granola type cereal with chunks of chocolate in it!) , and some chocolate straws (straws with little beads of chocolate or srtawberry flavor in them so that when you drink your milk through it, it turns it into Chocolate milk!)

One of the gifts the elders gave us was this little Christmas Angle wrapped in 6 amazon boxes.

We saw these at the large supermarket.  They are Bufanas.  The Christmas witch that visits you if you have been bad.

Last minute Christmas shopping

Another busy week.  After we got back to Opera  from Alessandria Monday night, I had to enter all of the rent payments for the quarter starting in January in order for them to be completed and the accounting system to be closed by the end of the year.  We sent another batch of missionaries home on Wednesday and we had new missionary training on Thursday.  We did most of our grocery shopping on Friday so we didn't have to fight the crowds. Also on Friday the Molinaries moved out of their apartment, they have been transferred to Alessandria to work with GANS  (Young Single Adults).  And the Burgers began moving from Verona to the apartment here in Opera where they will be able to work from a more central location finding and furnishing apartments for the missionaries.

Then on Saturday we had some last minute Christmas shopping to do.  Peggy had seen some very nice things in Vigevano at the Christmas Market when were there several weeks ago, so off we went.  Very busy town but we finally found a place to park and walked about 6 blocks to the Centro and the booths that used to be there we now gone!  We walked all over and could not find anything close to what we had planned to purchase.  So then we decided to drive to Pavia, the next town east, to see if they had anything.

 Here is picture of the countryside.  Lots of rice corn and rice fields.  It was a cloudy, hazy day and very picturesque.

We got to Pavia and TOMTOM guided us into town a different direction than before.  We got parking spot and began to wander towards Centro.

 Yes another interesting door

 Pavia had a skating rink up in one of the town squares.  The rental skates were bright orange and the push around things to help novice skaters keep their balance were little dolphins.  Here you can see a father pushing around his kid on the dolphin.

 We found the market area and the items that we were looking for.  Here is an interesting item - Stuffed pigs feet.  They pull the bone and every thing out of the pigs feet and skin and stuff them with a sausage mixture.    Zamponi, only 12.90 euro per Kilogram. (about $8/pound) YUM?

 One of the toy stores we walked past had this cat piano and sing along toy in the window.  We bought one of these for Leigh's kids several years ago (very loud & noisy).  Kids loved it and parents hated it.  Now Italy has it.

 An extremely nice, modern door

 My sister has commented about the lack of dog pictures in my blog.  So here is one of the many dogs we saw on our shopping trip.  We also saw a couple of greyhounds and a poodle that was dressed up in a frilly dress for a wedding.

 Walking back to the car we went past these three medieval towers

An interesting church. We have seen the combination of the light and dark bricks in some other old churches buildings.

Alessandria

Another busy week and a busy week coming up.  Monday we were doing all of the food for 50 missionaries for their Christmas zone conference in Alessandria.  Three large spiral cut hams, and 7 - 9 X 12 pans of Gouda potatoes, rolls, veggies, and apple cake for desert..  Alessandria is about an hour south of here so we must do all of the cooking there.  Our plan was to drive down there early Sunday morning, go to church and then use a missionary apartment that is currently unoccupied there to prepare and cook the food.  Sunday afternoon we had a couple of hours before we needed to start peeling 30 pounds of potatoes so we wandered around the town for a while.  We found the Centro and a place to park then started to wander.

Here is a neat old church.

 And it's front door.

 We walked past a several Christmas market booths and then came one where they were making a traditional Christmas candy.  It was made out of sugar, honey and some water and boiled in a copper kettle. Then they pulled it like taffy to pull in air and then stretched it out.  It was cooked to a hard crack and tasted a little burnt.  Oh well, it was great to watch then them make it.

 Another church

 With it's front door.

 Here is an awesome new door.  Wonderful large knocker.

 And a very interesting old door that has seen lots of use.

Also while driving around in Alessandria  we saw this great large tree.

All in all the conference turned out great but was tons of work.  We are very happy that most of the meals we put together for the missionaries are in Milano so we can prepare them at home.