to Gargnano

Mere hiccups, that's what the day offered. No drama, no great dilemmas, no confrontations.

Of course, much of the time was spent still in getting places.

(Excuse me as my eyes overflow with emotion as we approach Lago di Garda. I am on the bus, the very final leg of the journey. It's evening and the lights are starting to come on. My friend is in the seat in front of me -- here, you can just catch the back of her head.)





Getting places -- this is the grandest part: when you're rounding the last corners knowing that with each new familiar turn, you're coming closer to the spot that gives you such good images for months on end.

But the earlier parts of "getting there" were good too. This morning, for instance, I was up at six and walking up to the RER station and I couldn't help thinking how beautiful spring is in any and every place and how splendid it is to momentarily see it in Paris. The sun is not yet up, but the sky is a glowing pink at the edges, and the crocuses and plum trees (that's a guess) are starting their bloom in the Jardin Luxembourg.















I'll be seeing the gardens again, on my way back (unless my brief stop then again turns out to be too brief). For now, I'll make do with these glimpses from behind the iron bars of the closed for the night gardens.

My flight to Milan is easy and uneventful and of course, there is that wonderful moment when we cross the Alps and they and therefore life both seem magnificent.





[Getting off the plane in Milan I was struck how addicted we all are the world over to keeping our Internet flowing. Upon landing (it was such a long flight -- all of 1 hour and 10 minutes) everyone except me reaches for their smartphone. And I would have been in on it too were it not for the astronomical prices charged to Americans when they dare power on outside the borders of their country.]





In Milan I have a two and a half hour wait for Diane. No, I can't sit still. I catch the city bus to town, thinking that the day is beautiful and that it should not be allowed to just merely float by without my attention to it.

But in Milan, I don't really go anywhere. That's my problem with Milan -- it never motivates me to explore, randomly, letting the place be its own guide.

So I do some light shopping (not for me). Very very light. Because I'm on a crusade to keep the suitcase feather light, even if it kills me. Here, I'm watching someone else buy the place out: items for her husband. Maybe.





And then it's time to greet Diane and here's another hiccup for you: Linate airport, the place where she is to land, closes. Something about a runway being blocked by a plane. Strike related? Maybe. After all, there is, today, a strike in Milan. the metro, for example, is shut down.

Other flights are diverted or cancelled, but her's lands!  Albeit with a slight delay.

And before we know it we are on the train...


 


.... and then we are on the bus whose final stop is Gargnano.





Happily, oh so happily I am back, we are here, opening the season at the Albergo du Lac. (But wait, is there really snow on the other side's mountain crest? Is there? (Ans.: yes there is. And the forecast for all summits above 1000 meters? More snow next week! Honestly, has the world gone mad?)


Dinner tonight is at the Albergo du Lac (the hotel where we are staying). We eat salads and spaghetti and fish and lemon cake and I cannot have my fill of this place ever. It is a bubble of magic. Worth every irksome tiresome moment of the trip here.

learning to experience the journey

What you do not want to hear in the middle of your transatlantic flight: the captain has informed us that we are turning back. We will be making an emergency landing in St John's due to a problem with a passenger. You come out of your groggy sleep and you watch in amazement as the little airplane icon on the screen before you turns around, even though it is nearly in the middle of its ocean crossing and heads back to the tip of Newfoundland -- the closest possible landing place.

No one says a word. It's insanely quiet. Lights come on, crew rushes back and forth. The drama is in the back of the plane and it is a drama that can affect any flight any time -- a cardiac arrest, this one right over the Atlantic. (Unusual is the age of the passenger: just forty years.)

The eerie thing is that I've been on a plane making an emergency landing in Newfoundland before. Nearly to the month, fifty years ago, flying from England, we landed in Gander because of multiple engine malfunctions. I remember the landscape from that even more dramatic landing (with propellers on both sides of the plane eerily in a resting position as we sunk closer to the ground). This time I'm on an Airbus 340 -- a much larger plane and, it turns out, too heavy for the small landing strip in St John's. And so we dump fuel. And in the partly misty, partly starry night, we come to a tiny terminal where the ambulance is waiting.

It's another several hours before we unload our critically ill passenger, unload her luggage, refuel. And so perhaps we should not be surprised that when we finally do fly out, cross the ocean once more and approach France, the captain once again comes on. This time it's a "rules" problem. The crew has been in flight too long. So even though we are less than an hour from Paris, we are landing again -- at the first possible airport in France -- Brest. A tiny airport. We disembark. We're offered a sandwich. A new crew will be flown in to take over.  At some point.

I take some forty flights in the course of the year and they can't all be without issues. But if the weather is fine (and it was), it's rare that all flights in one itinerary are going to misfire. This time they did. Because it isn't just the transatlantic segment that turned us around. On my flight out of Madison, I had a first: I've been on a handful of flights that have had aborted landings. Where the plane is nearing the ground and suddenly the engines rev up and the plane nose goes up. I always imagine there is a pooch on the runway and the captain wants to avoid it. (You are never told what happened because often it is pilot error and no one wants to quite announce that to the sitting ducks in the back.) But I have never before had an aborted take off.

I have it now in Madison. We are beginning the rush down the runway and I am marveling how commonplace these take offs are these days and suddenly we are not rushing anymore, but slowing down hard. The captain comes on. Well folks… It's never good news when he or she starts with a "well folks."

This time a light indicated an open cargo door. Impulsively, we all glance at the runway, looking for strewn suitcases. Nothing there. Still, the plane does have to go back to the gate where we wait for the mechanic to come to the airport, to diagnose the problem, to communicate with the pilot. Hours. The irony: in the end, there is no problem with the cargo door. Just with the faulty warning light. Many people have missed their connections and the attendants warn that there are very few options on this day as it is, for so many, the beginning of spring break and flights are full. I am lucky. I make my flight to France.

But of course, I'm not really going to France. This was to be a treat stopover: a half day in Paris which, because of the reversals, double landings and what have you, is turning out to be a very short set of hours indeed. Those who hate to travel will say -- it's good to stay home. You wont hear that from me. In fact, I feel myself to be lucky. I did not miss a connection. And I did not have a heart attack and we did not have a faulty cargo door after all.

And I have a few breaths in Paris. Maybe. If we ever leave Brest.


Later

Into our fourth hour in Brest, the natives are getting restless. Not the American passengers, mind you, but the French. (It always hurts more if your own people aren't stepping up to the job.) We understood the emergency, in St John's, but this... how could you do this to us? One of the unhappy campers picks up one of the plastic wrapped cheese sandwich we were handed at the airport. French cuisine, he mutters, tossing it into the trash.

Me, I have no more hope for a Paris day. But I do want, at the very least, a Paris dinner. I'd reserved a place in my newest restaurant of choice (Pouic Pouic). Now, in Brest, thanks to a kind French man (I needed a French cell number), I got online which allowed me to email the restaurant to tell them I'd be late.  Very very late. Would they take pity? Such a small wish compared to those stranded passengers who have so very many adjustments to make in their travels thanks to these compounded delays.

I dont think anyone believed that we'd make it to Paris that night, but, in the end, we did. I wished my fellow travelers well and scooted to the RER station to catch a train to Paris.

So now I have to think that I am facing some kind of a test -- to see how far I can be pushed before I back down, stay home, never travel again. At the RER office, the machines refuse to take my credit card. Okay. I just happen to have enough Euros to get me into the city. But is this for real? Am I in Europe without cash or a functional credit card?

And then there is the RER ride: as always, we pass through some of the saddest immigrant neighborhoods of the city. As I settle into the 45 minute ride, we stop at a station. A guy steps in, reaches from behind and snatches a woman's purse. She screams, but he's gone. It could have been me...

But it wasn't me. I alight in Paris. It's after 9 pm instead of after 11 am. I look around. It's drizzling slightly, But it doesn't matter! It's so enormously wonderful to be here!





And here's some irony for you in case you haven't spotted any along the way: I came to my little hotel and the night clerk hands me the key to my room. He smiles. I go up and I see that I am given a thank you for my many returns: a penthouse instead of the tiny single that I always book. Ah well... according to my current calculations, I will spend exactly 6 sleeping hours here.

Never mind, it's lovely and I appreciate the gesture.

I go to Pouic Pouic. It's mad, it's chaos, but they find a spot for me and it's so loud here and everyone is so jovial that the last of the tension from the trip fades. I passed the test. I still love to travel. And I still love Paris.




There's dancing on the streets somewhere in this world right now. Always, someone will be dancing.

to spring!

You might say that spring began with a crash and a boom. In the wee hours of the morning we heard it -- the noise of something falling, breaking with a mighty crescendo. We rush downstairs, switching on lights. In the kitchen we see what has happened: Isis smelled cake on the table. Isis jumped up and pushed the cake plate to get to the stuff underneath the inverted glass salad bowl that I use to cover cakes. Pushed it hard, it seems. So that it toppled to the floor. And now here he is, amidst a million pieces of shattered glass, sniffing around for crumbs of olive oil/lemon cake. Isis!

It's cold outside. Twelve degrees to get us started. And yet, there is a robin on our crab apple (or hawthorn -- opinions vary). I haven't seen their red breasts here until now. Welcome robin! Ah, you're huddled into the warmth of your own feathers! I don't blame you.





Before I scoot off to teach, Ed and I plant tomato seeds (64 containers, 2 seeds each). Let me remember that I planted tomato seeds when the snow lay thick and heavy on the ground outside.




Breakfast. There is always breakfast.




Spring break for me starts tomorrow and so my next post will be from Paris. I'm not there for long -- under 24 hours, to keep ticket continuity (and the rate in check). Where to after that? Gargnano, on the banks of Lake Garda in Italy. Longterm readers of Ocean may remember that I was just there last spring break. When is it that I turned into a person who goes back to favorite haunts rather than searching out the new, the unusual?

I'll tell you when: when the joyful calm of a place sinks into my blood and stays with me months after the trip -- that's a destination worth revisiting.

Though Ed is staying home for this one, I am not going alone. In Milan (Friday) I'll be meeting up with my friend and actually, over the years, quite frequent traveling pal (and fellow blogger!), Diane. How's the weather over there, in northern Italy? Well, the good thing about leaving terribly inappropriate spring weather is that anything else is likely to be an improvement. I may have rains, but they'll be warm(ish) rains.

So, to spring, to spring break, to dishes not breaking, to new plant life and to many happy returns to places we grow to love.

the last (official) day of winter

Several things to note:

First (and how could this be anything but first), it was brutal out there this morning! The freezing air, the wind, all of it. I was reminded of eating ice cream too fast as a kid: the penalty was a shooting pain right to the cavernous recess of your skull. As I walked to campus (just from the parking lot -- let's be real here!), I had to cover my face, or suffer the consequences.

And it looked so benign earlier on, when the sun was just cracking the clouds! Wintry, yes, that, but so gentle and well intentioned.





Breakfast was a bit hurried, but lovely, cheerful, as if all was right with the world out there, as if sunshine meant we were in for a warm spring day.











Then all windy hell broke loose. Outside, every plowed walkway and road were quickly covered by drifting snow. And the wind made your eyes water and your head spin.



In the evening, things settled down somewhat. The sun held tight. My little golden bouquet held tight as well. As if emboldened.





Supper? Inconsequential. Leftover lettuces, leftover asparagus, leftover cabbage soup, with stuff thrown into each of those.





Tomorrow I'll write about spring break. With good reason. If all goes well, the day after I should be across the ocean.

and once more...

We woke up to snow. It's not as if we did not expect it, but you can know something is about to be delivered and still not like the package when it arrives.

Snow. White, a cold white snow. Like the color of the bouquet on the butcher block, only not really.





Over breakfast, we consider it: snow in the second half of March does appear in Madison every now and then, but this snow, sticking snow, covering frozen earth is over and beyond the usual...











After work, when the light feels very tentative, almost not there anymore, we decide to load the donkey car with skis (I'd put them away for the season... how stupid was that!) and try to make our best loop by Lake Waubesa. A hare's breath from the farmette.





Ah. you notice Ed's shorter hair? I trimmed it this morning. Wild inventor no more.

At Lake Waubesa, where the creek comes in, there is a curious conglomeration of birds. Wild swan? So unusual to see them here!





A little less unusual is the call of the sandhill crane. In the summer, we see them often -- on the streams, the wetlands. Today, their warbling call keeps us company on the ski trails as well. How did they get here? Are they deeply disappointed with the snow cover?


The skiing is difficult. We're trailblazers once more and the snow is sticky, clinging to anything and everything. Slow going.

And I am somewhat in a hurry because my girl and her husband will be stopping by for dinner. They couldn't come yesterday and it seemed too long to wait until the Sunday when I'm back from my spring break.





 Pasta with a tomato sauce and sea foods.





Tomorrow, the cold, really cold air will come down yet again and it will stay in place for the better part of this week. An unusual spring. A spring that isn't really a spring. Extended winter. For no good reason.

On the upside, 24 hours passed and we did not cancel our airfares for June. So we're set there. Can't back out now. And that's a good thing.

...like a record

You remember when we played records for music, instead of Smart phones? When a scratch would cause the disc to not move the song forward and it would replay again and again until you pushed it clumsily past the scratch mark?

Well now, we're stuck alright. Like a scratch on a record. We repeat each day and the weather repeats itself and I swear I'm going to wake up tomorrow and we'll do exactly what we did today: look desperately outside for signs of spring and, too, cancel all June bookings made the previous day.

I can't explain the impasse in the weather, but I can say a word about our tortuous June trip planning. We found the cheap flight. Okay. But nothing else felt right. Here we were, flying to Iceland and from there, flying on cheap airlines you've not have heard of to the continent. That part was okay. I didn't mind the round about travel. And I didn't mind having to take a long train ride south, and then east and after, west and north -- in other words up and down the continent. And we were willing to change airports between flights in New York. And to arrive at midnight in one city and depart at 1 a.m. from another. But the price of staying any amount of time in Iceland wiped out any savings from the complicated plans. So what's the point? We cancelled the whole thing.

Yes, yes, there was Iceland in the deal. I visited Iceland once, by myself. Many, many decades ago.  I went in November because it was inexpensive then. The sun was out for three hours each day and even though I was a mere schoolgirl, not even drinking age in the States, I rented a car and ventured out into the bleak countryside. What a dumb trip that was. The roads were treacherous and I had to turn back. All my money blown on a rental that got me nowhere. In Reykjavik, waiters were on strike and stores were closed and I could get nothing to eat. Like I said, maybe I'm biased.

So the whole "cheap flight" (but expensive stay) through Iceland is out and it's back to Barcelona that'll be plenty exciting, thank you, even as we'll not even step foot in Barcelona until the very last day and then only for about twelve hours.


In other non-news, we had a pretty little breakfast in the sun room...





...and I had my 75 minute yoga class and I did some modest amount of house cleaning, but mainly I sat at my computer and that's not too satisfying for a Sunday afternoon, especially a sunny Sunday afternoon and so I was quite happy when Ed agreed to go for a walk.


 













We don't often do that. Usually we switch from cross country skiing (winter) to biking (all other seasons), but it's just too cold for me to enjoy a bike ride in this most difficult pre-spring season. And now that I ever so inadvertently brought up the weather here on Ocean, may I tell you how stunned I am to hear that we are getting ANOTHER snowstorm tomorrow?

Never mind, I'm outta here by the end of the week. I'll chase spring elsewhere.

As for St Patrick's -- well, I have no Irish in me, but not belonging to some thing, place or group has never stopped me from doing as the Romans do, or in this case the Irish do. So I made cabbage soup for supper (isn't that truly Irish?)  and in an uncharacteristic for these times move, I baked a cake. Not Irish, but Italian: lemon and olive oil.














And if you aren't yet convinced that this was actually quite the lovely day, do note that, against a backdrop of snow, I saw this solitary cardinal. Hello, cardinal. Are you chirping away because we are just three days away from (calendar) spring?

it ain't over 'til...

Last night, I was dead tired significantly before Ed. With the utmost effort I dragged myself upstairs just before midnight. Sleep, I needed sleep. But as I was pulling the quilt ever so comfortably up to my chin, I heard Ed dial out downstairs. A rapid phone conversation. Then another.
Ed? Is something wrong?
I'll come up in a minute.
Thoughts of sleep? Gone.
What happened??
Oh... I cancelled my Pakistani Airline flight. (If you've read the previous post, you'll know that he had just purchased a ticket for our vacation in June and I had purchased mine and all was well, even as we were traveling separately, on different airlines.)
Why?? Ed would never stay away from something just because it was mildly unsafe.
Well, looking at the Pakistani Airline record, I realized there is a strong probability that they may cancel flights, ground their fleet, do any number of things that would cause problems. If we're to meet up in Barcelona, I can't be one week late.
Was it easy to cancel?
No, but I explained to them that this is the law (in fact, maybe you don't know this, but we now have a legal right to cancel, free of charge, any reservation we make, within 24 hours) and that I would not pay their penalty fee. So then I had to call my credit card company to put a stop to the fee that they nonetheless tried to impose.

Bottom line: we are on square one, except not really, because I have my own purchased ticket to Barcelona on my beloved airlines. By myself. Ed continues to grumble that this year's fares are $100 more than last year's fares. Never mind. I can cancel my flight as well. And so we really are back on square one.

It is, I think, rather fascinating and disconcerting to realize that I have now spent most of my March posting lines on the topic of travel scheduling for the month of June.


We are up early today. Ed is anxious to get back to his inventions and mechanical manipulations and my mind is spinning about our travel plans and decisions.

But breakfast always puts me in the gentlest mindset...





...and today is also a yoga morning and so by the time I come back to travel scheming at around noon, I am as chill as the day is cold.

I wont run you through the many, many, MANY stages of imagining a cheap way to get to Europe in June (and BTW, just to be totally bummed at the unfairness of it all, did you know that if you fly from Milan to Chicago round trip, you  are charged half the price of the flight from Chicago to Milan, round trip?). Suffice it to say that Ed's addiction to the Matrix website saved the day for us. There is one and only one way that you can cut the cost by 50% and it requires the exact combination of flights and some pretty unconventional stop overs, but we found it and we booked it. So we are set to go on what promises to be an exotically weird and I think perhaps beautiful set of travel adventures for that month. And we'll be traveling together. So that if one gets overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of what we've put in place, the other will steer the ship and carry us forth.


Our day ended in a good way. Ed suggested we go watch the UW women's team play volley ball at the Field House. We'd done that once, many many years back -- in those days when we didn't know each other well and I was taken aback then when I realized that he didn't really care if our home team won or lost, he just liked watching a good play.

Tonight, the Badger team was fabulously in control of the court. I don't know if you've ever attended a women's sport competition at your local college or university -- it doesn't draw crowds. Parents are the dominant demographic. At our game, people snacked on nachos with melted cheese and drank bottles of coke or water. It's all rather tame and endearing. Occasionally a dad will shout "Go Emily!" and you have to really wonder if Emily, playing for Loyola in Chicago, really wants her dad to be here, shouting "Go Emily" again and again for the world to hear.





After, we went back to the Indian Restaurant just down the street and I smiled at the fact that for nearly eight years we never went to an Indian restaurant and now, in the last month alone we've chosen Indian food three times.






So it was quite the day. And I want to pat myself on the back for steering clear of writing about the weather. Even though it was cold and it will remain cold here tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that.

what feels right

Sometimes, a dinner looks like this: left over tomato soup, quickly grilled shrimp, grated Irish cheddar,  horseradish and tomato, salad with stuff you rarely imagine in a salad (like leftover broccoli). I put it on the little table and we do our own combinations. For me, the cheese belongs in the soup, for Ed it goes on the salad. The shrimp can be mixed into most anything, or they can be eaten solo.



 


Since our earliest days together, I understood this about Ed -- he can only do what his gut tells him feels right for him. In return, I knew that he would never tell me what to do with any portion of my meal, my day, let alone my life.

So I am not at all surprised that we do finally reach an agreement on our June travels. It is a simple one: we each travel on the flights we feel strong attachment to (Ed, with the Pakistani carriers, me with the Americans and French, then later in the month, both of us with the Spaniards; I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that in 2007 the Pakistani Airline was banned, for safety reasons, from flying most of their aircraft in any part of Europe) -- to meet up at our final destination.

Many would see this as a rather bizarre way to vacation together. Not us. We spend mountains of time in each others company at the farmette. Really, whole mountain ranges of time. Flights apart? I think we can handle it.

As to the destination -- well, half of it is predictable: Sorede, the village in France that keeps pulling us (me especially) back each year. The other half is less predictable, but I am running terribly ahead of myself. My thoughts right now are back with the miserable days we're having -- cold and wet. Even Isis is hunched at the shoulders as he navigates the paths between the sheep shed and the farmhouse.





I'm cheered with the prospect of spring break which, for me, starts this coming Thursday.

If you stop thinking (and talking) about the weather (a task so difficult for us right now that no one here can quite do it), there are some nice touches to the day. For example: I glanced, in passing, at my hair today. My God. I used to have a color expert paint, trim and fluff it up monthly and now it hasn't seen a haircut person since my daughter's wedding in September. So I walked in to a tiny shop where the proprietor cares that her products are made of potatoes, oats and honey and I set her loose with the scissors (no painting: I'm done with that) and I feel much better.

And of course, earlier, much earlier, there was breakfast. It's like a tickle to the day. Here's my (daily?) photo of that tickle. Today, the mad inventor's hair is freshly wet. It will be wet again as he takes out his motorbike and gets caught in a freezing rain.

Thursday

Well it's Thursday. You can never expect much from this day here. So let me spin you through a couple of photos and let's call it a day, okay?

Early breakfast in the sun room:




This, after Isis yet again rearranged his stomach on the bed moments before sunrise. Isis! Get off the bed if you're going to clean your internal digestive system! (Add to list for today: laundry)


After breakfast we have a half hour's worth of intense negotiations over summer travels. Pakistani Airlines (the airline offering the cheapest fares to Europe) has, according to a number of websites, a terrible safety record. Ed rightfully points out that even if their record is ten times worse than the next bad one, the chance of a fatal accident are incredibly small.

But I remind Ed that anxiety doesn't always track reality and I do not want to begin nor end our big vacation with anxiety packed tightly into my backpack.

We end this back and forth abruptly as I have an early morning class to teach. And then another. And there are office hours and meetings with important people at the Law School and before you know it, the daylight hours are fading.

My routine is that on Thursday after work I pick up groceries for the week. Today I am so buried in office tasks that I almost put shopping off and suggest that we make do with pizza. And then I reconsider. To get this done - work, the shopping, the cooking -- all of it, will give me a sense of relief. So I persevere.


Two grocery stores later, I'm driving home. I take the pretty route. It's still cold, but the sun is out momentarily. And yes, I know the whole next week is slated to be cold, but I'm no longer upset by this. I am now on a roll toward spring and in any event, spring break begins soon and by the time that's over, we'll be in April.






At home, I start the laundry, unload groceries, stir-fry a dinner and clean up. Dinner isn't special, but it's fresh and honest, with left over chicken pieces for the cat.






And then, too, I picked up a $5 bunch of flowers for the week. Uplifting to the core.





So we watch our crazy stack of library movies and we come back to our talk of summer travels and eventually, hours later, I exhale enough to sit down and write a post. There you have it. Thursday. I say this with a smile. Because the day is almost over and predictably, I survived.

then and now

A year ago today... I remember it so well!  Go ahead, click on it: right here.

Important things to take note of:

A year ago, the lakes were no longer ice covered.
The snow was long gone.
Crocuses were abundantly in bloom.

You cannot expect 78 degrees on a March day every year. But can we split the difference? Because I would have loved 53 degrees, as opposed to the 28 I had to confront today at noon.

Of course, there was the sunshine. I do love the sunshine. I wake up and it is the first thing I notice.



(through the snow on the skylight)


The second thing I notice is that Isis is turning over his stomach (I have no better explanation for it) on the bed. Well now, dear old cat. That took care of the rest of sleep time.

So long as we were up early (and we were: thank you, Isis), while stumbling through breakfast routines...


 


...we resumed our discussion of summer plans. Ed found cheap flights and we would be booking them right now but for the fact that they are on Pakistani Airlines and it's not part of my frequent flyer program! Ridiculous -- he tells me. Not for me it isn't. So we're stuck. It could be that we'll fly separately. We've done that before!

The rest of the day was so predictable that I'm shying away from any more details. Just a photo of our frozen lake, so that next year I wont feel so terribly morose when March 13, 2014 will (again) fail to produce the crocuses.



Lake Monona



Monona Bay, with a snowman in the middle