Aosta

We have been longing to go to the mountains for quite some time.  So I reserved a room for two nights in the Valle Aosta.  The plan was to leave the office about noon on Friday, but it was about 2 pm before we got to leave.  We drove about 2 hours north west and we were there!

 The valley was  beautiful with all of its mountains.  The higher we got the better things looked 

  The road was heading towards France, going through the Monc Blanc tunnel. 

 We got off the autostrada several towns before the tunnel and drove on the old road because we could see more.  The last town in Italy was Courmayeur.  It was  fabulous.

 Here is a glacier on Mont Blanc

 All of the buildings in this valley are built with slate roofs.

 Most of the homes and all of the hotels were all decked out with flowers boxes on their balcony rails.

 There were many many water falls!  I want to come back to Courmayeur.

 We then drove back to the largest town in the valley - Aosta, and found the main piazza.

 It was very vibrant with many residents walking around and shopping on a Friday afternoon.

 This is an ancient roman gate to the city.

 And just one block away are these Roman ruins.

 It is just a gorgeous setting. - they even hold concerts here at these ruins!

 And from there you can still see the fabulous alps.  We wandered around town.  Found some shoes that are big enough for me. and then had dinner at a nice sidewalk restaurant.

 After dinner we drove to our hotel in the small town of Introd, about 12 Km from Aosta.  It was a fantastic place.  Notice the slate roofs.  Our room was the top floor of the addition you see with the rock chimney.  The room was the honeymoon suite complete with rose petals on the bed.  The room had a sauna and a fancy shower with body jets, rain shower head, music and choice of lights.  The shower had two doors to it, one from the bathroom and one from the bedroom.

 Saturday we had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel then drove north east to the town of Breuil.  This is the ski resort town on the Italian side of the Matterhorn.

Yes! We were at the Matterhorn.  I had no idea that the Matterhorn was on the Italian border. 

 It was very picturesque

 Every where they had these flower planters made from carved out logs.

 Nice car!

 After walking around town and checking out the shops and admiring the scenery, we stopped and had some hot chocolate at a bar.  Very nice!

 Driving down the valley we could see all these alpine / Tyrolean homes and villages.  WOW!

 We stopped in this one town that had a gondola cable car lift to go up to the top of their mountain.  We were discussing how much money we were willing to pay to go on this lift and decided that 30 euro was about it.  Any higher than that and we would have an excuse why we did not go.  I went and asked the price and it was 2 euro!  0.50 for residents.  We had no excuse.

 The lift took us to a tiny town called Chamois.  All of the buildings were hundreds of years old, but very well kept up.  This is a ski town and the ski lift goes from Chamois up the mountain farther still.

 Here their fountain was made from a carved out log.

 Everywhere on this weekend trip we saw these horse trough style fountains.  This one is feed by a bronze mountain goat.

 Beautiful houses with rooms to rent every where

 And lupines!

We found a restaurant at the other end of the Chamois and had lunch. I had sausage with polenta and Peggy had polenta with Goat!  Yes, she ate goat.  She really liked it.  

 A view of houses below as we were waiting for the next cable car to come back.

 We safely returned to our car after the fabulous gondola ride up and back the mountain.  We then drove down to Aosta and across to the other side of the Aosta valley into the 1st Italian national park.  It is called Parco Gran Paradiso.  There were water falls everywhere!

 This is a different view of the same falls in the previous picture.  It appears to spring forth from the very top of the ridge line and falls many thousands of feet.

 More waterfalls.

 As we drove up this valley we were headed toward a town called Cogne, which was supposed to be our best chance to see an Ibex, the Italian mountain goats.  We did not see any.

 This is the town of Cogne.

 We wandered through the town and gazed at the valley beyond.

 More flowered balcony rails

 and more unique water fountains.

 It was raining in Cogne so we came back to the Aosta valley.  This is a picture of Introd and Aosta below.

 A picture of Introd.

 This Ibex head was hanging outside our Hotel.  This is as close as I got to a goat.

Up and down this large Aosta valley are 30 - 50 castles.  Many of them in ruins but some are  still looking great.  This one even had flags flying from the top turrets just like a princess castle in a Fairy Tale.  This was a fabulous weekend.

Trieste & Gorizia

We are now inspecting more apartments  I think we have about 40 of them to do now (once per quarter).  So this week we decided to go on Wednesday to Genova to inspect three apartment there.  Genoa is a beautiful city right on the coast.  But it is a horrible city to own a car.  Easy to get lost and no place to park.

When we got to the elders apartment they were parking three cars on one side of the street and one car on the other side of the street.  I was very fortunate to find the only open space (that is me in the dark blue Opel in the middle spot).

While up in the Elders apartment I looked down to the street and saw some Italian paring right behind my car.  Oh well, they will be gone in 30 minutes when we leave.  No! they were still there.  I banged on the top of the car to make some noise and alert someone that I needed to get out.  After several minutes a guy screams at us from the coffee shop that he will be out.  Wait another 5 minutes and two guys come out grumbling and very upset that they need to move their car.  They get in their car but it doesn't move.  Peg talks to them and they say the car is too hot and they need to wait 30 minutes for it to cool down.  They say it does this all the time.  15 minutes later they try to start the car and it wont start.  After several more it attempts they finally get the car to start.  The whole time they are grumbling and cussing at us that we are making them move. Italian drivers - got to love them.

We have been working with the Elders in Trieste for a month to get an old apartment that we are closing cleaned out.  The landlord claim that everything in the apartment is ours.  It is all old and junk that we would never buy. The Elders have been asking in church for help to move everything to the dump. But no help.  We We tell them that we will drive the 4.5 hours there with the van on Saturday to get the junk hauled out.  Then on Thursday, Sister Dibb announced that she will be using the van.  I attempt to change her mind, but no luck.  I then call the Keeffers who only live 1.5 hours from Trieste to see if they would be willing to help.  Maybe with two hatch back cars we can get the job done.

We get up at 4 am to get there on time, and luckily find the only open parking spot for blocks only 2 buildings up from the front door.  When we get up toe the 4th floor apartment and open the door, it is horrible.  At least 4 times the stuff that I expected.  There are large wardrobes, beds, couches, tables, chairs, shelves, cupboards, refrigerators, washing machine and even a kitchen sink. It is impossible to get all of this done in one day.  I get the elders going and we start to haul broken down shelves to our car.  With the back seats down we load it up to the roof, and then head off to the dump..The 1st dump wont take wood so we go to the next dump and unload it.  By the time we get back to the apartment it has been 1 hour just going to the dump and back and we have at least 12 loads to go!  Mean time Peggy and Sister Keeffer are standing up on the balcony wondering how this job will ever get done.  They notice that across the street is a junk dealer.  They walk over they and ask him if he wants any of the stuff we are getting rid of.  He came over and offers to take the so-so stuff away for 150 euros.  Great, then he asks what we are doing with all of the other junk.  He offers to take care of everything for 200 euros.  Sold!  He had 4 guys there immediately and in under an hour the place was complexly cleaned out, while the elders swept and cleaned.  We were done a little after noon!  This was a miracle!  We then took the Elders to lunch.  Trieste was a nice city.

After lunch we drove with the Keeffers to Gorizia, a city that is right on the Italy / Slovenia boarder.  Here is the church.

The organist was practicing while we were walking around the church, it was really neat.

On our walk up to an old castle I saw this private drive way.  Very nice place to park!

Nice door

There was a vegetarian festival going on at the castle.  The grounds had sea pines - very nice.

Looking across into Slovenia

Here is the church we went through.

In the castle was an armory with lots of medieval weapons.  This helmet must have been used by a guy with a very large nose - or he would head but his enemies.  Not sure which.

They even had a music room room with lots of old instruments.  Here is tiny portable organ.

Nice views

They even had a cannon!

Here is the castle as seen from the church building. 

We then drove north several kilometers to a piazza where the Slovenian train station is on one side of the border and the hotel is on the other side.  There is this large medallion in the center of the piazza marking the border.  We all stood on the medallion and took our picture.  Elder Keeffer said we had one saint, a sinner and two fence sitters. I was the sinner on the Slovenian side. (missionaries are not to leave their mission).

Here is Peggy standing on the boarder.  We were in Slovenia!  WOW

We then drove to Roverado and spent the night at the Keeffer's.  It is a super nice small quite town.  The tallest building is only two stories, lots of singles family homes and no graffiti!  Sunday we went to church with the Keeffers in Pordenone at the military ward.  Wow, the building was fabulous.  New construction, carpet, pews and no folding chairs and loads of classrooms.  No doubt this is the nicest church building in Italy! And everyone spoke English.  It was great to be able to understand the discussion in the classes. They even had sandwich bread for the sacrament!  

Vercelli

It is great to have the President and Sister Dibb back in Italy again!  This week was pretty normal, if you call transfer week normal.  Monday President Dibb held the normal transfer week staff meeting.  Only 4 new missionaries coming in and 5 departing.  Tuesday we went shopping for the two dinners and one lunch we ware doing this week. I got my traditional transfer Tuesday haircut.  Wednesday we found out the arriving missionaries will be 1 day late.  Now we will do two lunches and one large dinner.  Thursday the Transfers occur and the new missionaries arrived on time with all their luggage!  We have taco salad for lunch for everyone. Then I train the new missionaries on finances and bikes.  They leave to go to the Duomo and the departers arrive.  While the president is interviewing the departers I take care of all of the final finance stuff for them. (taking their money away and then giving them enough for luggage fees and food on their flight).  Peggy made 3 large dishes of Lasagna (yum) and there are 17 of us eating dinner at the mission home.  Both the departers and arrivals sleep in the old Burger apartment or with the Elders. (Now we are also running a hotel with Breakfast!) Friday there is new arrival training and the match-up with their trainers followed by permesso training by Peggy and then Foccatia Sandwiches for lunch.

I was hoping to go to the mountains on Saturday, but it was way overcast and the forecast was for rain from noon on.  We decided to go to Vercelli instead.  Vercelli is about 1 hour west of us and is the rice capitol of Italy - paddy after paddy of rice.  Very green and quite beautiful.

 We first stopped at the Vercelli Cathedral.  Very large and some big statues on the facade.

Front doors going in.  They did not allow any pictures. It was very ornate with wonderful stained glass windows

 Here is a great door on the side of the building.

A view of the Cathedral as we were coming back to the car.

 Peggy noticed that there were many levels of roof tiles on this building. Lots going on.

 The cathedral had a nice park in front of it.

 An interesting building as we were walking 

 Here is the side of St Andrews Basilica.

Here is the front facade of the Basilica.  Interesting how the grey stones on he lower part suddenly switch to red and white for the upper towers.

 The building across the street from the Basilica.

 The Basilica is connected to an old monastery.

 The basilica is completely different than the other church we visited.  Very stark, plane and almost cold.

 It even had flying buttresses.  However it looks like they have now been filled in.

 Walking back to the car we found this hole in the middle of the street.  It was fenced off and it appears that they had found an ancient foundation.  All of the levels were marked off with survey tags.  I guess they were going to install a new sewer under the street and ran into this.

 We then found the main shopping area and walked around there for a while.  One of the shops had this dog dish out for the shopper with pets!

 These were enormous door knockers that were 8 feet high.  Most people could never reach them.  This lion has a human nose and teeth!

Here is an ancient wooden door on the outside and a modern glass door on the inside.

 Sisters even ride bikes here in Italy.  This is folding bike.

 The main piazza in town.  We were looking for some shoes for me but could never find anything bigger than a size 46 (about a size 11.5 or 12 in the states)

We took the back roads back home and enjoyed the many little towns and beautiful fields of rice.  We ended up at a restaurant that we had eaten at about 8 months earlier a little north of Pavia.  It was just plain good Italian food.  The fixed menu today was bread with a home made chile salsa,  rigatoni with a tomato / cheese sauce, grilled vegetables, and roast pork, with a peach crosatta.  Very nice.