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.