benvenuti in italia

day 2

comune di rovereto

We got up at a reasonable hour and had breakfast in the hotel dining room. I had an espresso and bread with jam and nutella. Italian breakfasts are typically bread and jam and espresso. Then we piled in Martin's van for the short drive to the neighbouring town of Rovereto. Zdeněk and I were off to Mart, the local art museum http://www.mart.trento.it/ and Dan and Martin were off to the Museo Storico Italiano Della Guerra (War Museum) http://www.museodellaguerra.it/. Zdeněk and I have a lot in common and Dan would have committed suicide if he'd have to wander through an art museum for 3 hours. Z and I were just fine taking in each picture and discussing it in depth in a strange mixture of English, Czech, Italian and the occasional German phrase. (As a side note, I think many people were confused as to where we were from as I don't think any of our sentences were completely in one language the entire trip. Z taught me some Italiano and will hopefully continue this as he will take French lessons from me this summer and trade these for Italian lessons. Mostly we spoke an amusing dialect of half English half Czech...plus Martin is a fluent German speaker so any German we could use was greatly appreciated.Some of our conversations were just ridiculous..."I must jit peepee machen" (I have to go pee, in English, Czech and German)

walking to Mart
 (museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di trento e rovereto)

Mart





we saw original van gogh, gaugin, degas, monet, cesanne, renoir and so many others

comune di rovereto

Martin is king of the world

 After a few hours at our respective museums it was time to meet up for a small lunch. We stopped by a street cafe while walking around Rovereto and sat down looking forward to eating. I ordered a coke and insalata caprese. It was quite good and light. Danny had a pizza and unfortunately a large coke. It cost 10 euros. We didn't know this until the bill came. 10 euros is like $14. For a coke.

Dan's coke for rich people only. rich people who like to waste all their money

 We drove back to Trento and rested in our rooms for an hour or so. After freshening up we decided to climb Trento's highest hill where there is another war museum and the mausoleum of Cesare Battisti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Battisti_(politician) who is an Italian national hero. The weather was incredible, the fragrance in the air intoxicating and we needed to get some exercise. The hill was good and steep which afforded a lovely view of Comune di Trento and the river Adige.

comune di trento

mausoleum of Cesare Battisti
http://www.trentinograndeguerra.it/context.jsp?ID_LINK=76&page=3&area=5&id_context=373

a great picture of Zdeněk

Dan and Martin goofing around on cannons. I was fundamentally opposed to this sort of behaviour, but no one ever listens to me...sigh

adige river

 After returning from our hilltop adventure we changed and went for dinner. The place we went to had waaaay too much Czech food on the menu (remember we are just within the tyrolean influence which merges German, Austrian, Czech into a mish mash that was not, regarding this restaurant, as Italian as I would have liked. But we have many more days for luscious Italian cuisine...)

Following dinner we strolled late into the evening around Trento and had the obligatory gelato, this time at Grom. A name which irritated Z to no end. He even asked the worker at the gelateria what"Grom" meant and was met with the answer that it is a last name of some sort. http://www.grom.it/eng/index.php


While we were standing on the square, eating our "Grom" brand gelato, a strange man came up to me saying (in italian) "Countessa, Countessa, all the fresh things have arrived!" The rest of the trip, I was referred to as "Countessa" and told repeatedly when fresh things were arriving. Thanks guys...



Countessa