Goin' to Naples

Well, holy Toledo! I'm flying out on June 3 to London, arriving about 7 a.m. in Heathrow. Then I have to get myself to London Stansted airport in time to meet Peggy, who is flying in from Glasgow on ezJet, arriving about 11 a.m. It's easier said than done, I'll say that. There's no direct train, and the bus....well, they warn you that the traffic is very heavy and to plan for about 3-4 hours to make the trip. Heh.

After Peggy and I convene, we can hang out in Stansted (not much to hang out in--it looks like the Dubuque, IA, airport--or, more charitably, the one in Cedar Rapids) until she goes back to Glasgow, and I board ezJet to fly over the freakin' Alps to Naples.

My plane arrives in Naples, please goddess, about 8:15 p.m. Because of the relatively late hour, Cathy (who is already IN Italy) has suggested we stay in Naples for a couple of nights while I rest up. (I'm very old, you know....) We made reservations in Naples at what seems like a decent hotel, and Bob's your uncle!

Problem is, we have subsequently found out that Naples is beset by a humongous GARBAGE problem. The trash has not been picked up in Naples since DECEMBER!!!! There are rats and roaches and that ilk swarming all around, and the place stinks to high heaven. Some angry Neapolitans have been setting fire to the mounds of trash on the streets and blaming the mafia, especially, for the situation. Seems the mafia have been "handling" the trash for years and taken the opportunity to import tons of trash from up north and deposit it in Naples. This is why the Naples landfills are overflowing. The president of Italy has ordered the Italian soldiers to guard the landfills and has assigned other places to deposit the garbage once they haul it out of the streets of Naples.

Wouldn't you know, the citizenry are complaining about putting any new landfills or incinerators for the garbage in THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS. Plus, some cardinal of the R.C. church has intoned that it's not right to put garbage right where people live, etc. (Are you wondering whose pockets the mafia are lining?) (I am.)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I am flying into Naples, no way around that, and Cathy is meeting me there with a driver who will take us to Ravello. Ravello is home to the famous festival (later this year) and sporadic concerts now. It is an hour and a half from the airport. I'm wondering when I'll wake up! Maybe with the first cock crow in Ravello, which happens every morning, I'm told. Chickens! Swell.

Long Weekend = Supper with Lida

Here we are at some Greek restaurant in Rockville. Not pictured were the MOUNTAINS of food on our plates. Zowie! We should have been forewarned when the waiter delivered a monster pizza to the table next to ours. Seated around the table were grandma and grandpa, mom & dad, three young boys, and a baby girl. All except grandma, who was a very bright blonde, had curly brown hair. Anyway, they tied into the pizza, then the waiter brought them DINNER--the pizza was just an appetizer.



Lida had a huge plate of greek-style green beans (with some kind of tomato stuff), and what could have passed for lasagne, but the pasta part was macaroni. I had three bites of salad...maybe four...two bites of potato, and a chicken leg. Plus half of a nice little dish of rice pudding with cinnamon on it. Lida had flan, and we each had a glass of wine and a cup of chewy greek coffee (lots of grounds!!)



Lida was pretty tired because she had made a one-day trip up to northern PA yesterday for her cousin's son's bar mitzvah. She doesn't like sleeping in hotel beds, so she found a friend to drive her up and back. She said it was the most wonderful bar mitzvah she's ever been to. There were four generations of her family present, and the rabbi worked them all into the ceremony. Lida loved that, especially because she got to sit pretty high at the table. Anyway, she'd gotten up at 4:30 to leave at 6:30 a.m. and didn't get home until almost 11 pm.

I forget what I did yesterday aside from biking and marching around for blocks to buy a nother camera like the one I lost this past winter. This one is even better. It has 8 megapixels instead of 6, and I can take movies with it, too. Very BRIEF movies, but with sound! Who knew?

Maybe I can take a wee movie of Cathy and I butchering the Italian language next month when we visit the Amalfi coast. She wants me to bring my good summer clothes, but I reminded her that my summer wardrobe is exactly the same as my winter one, except I leave off the sweaters and roll my shirt sleeves UP. I mentioned, too, that my cargo shorts are thief-repellent....the pockets button. I don't think this is what she has in mind.



Here I am in my brand new Penn State Tennis t-shirt. Very tasteful and hardly faded at all. I bought it because my nephew Jim's son James plays tennis for Penn State, and his son Marc plays tennis for Northwestern. Or is the other way around? Northwestern does not sell tennis t-shirts, or I'd have gotten one. Is this good enough for the former stomping grounds of Virginia Woolf and Gorvy Dahl (that's how Don says it)? Hmph.

Long Weekend = What are the kids watching?

Echidne of the Snakes has a great post today...about the preponderance of male characters even in children's cartoons and other programs. She cites a post by Ammu Joseph on WIMN's Voices blog.

Lots of people don't even notice this--or see anything wrong with it. It just happens to be way out of sync with reality, is all.

New Links to Enjoy

Welcome to Whoopee, Vetmommy, and the Iceland Traffic Webcams. Feel free to visit these unique blogs, which I found in my travels online.

I discovered Whoopee when I clicked "Funniest Blog" on some listing and got connected to (yes, it is) a very funny blog by a young woman in London. It helps that she has a toddler and a great eye for photography.

Vetmommy is the creation of another young woman who is a mommy--and also a veterinarian. I forwarded it to my niece Lu, who is very much into dogs, dog care, and care dogs (which she trains). I love "Puppy See, Puppy Do," a recent post on Lu's blog. It shows a photo Lu took of one of her pupils....after two days of simply watching an older dog go through the paces of getting fed (fetching one's own bowl may be a part of a care dog's routine), the puppy caught on just like that. Smart little mutt.

And the Iceland Traffic Webcams? Well, this past week I saw another list of U.S. cities with the most congested traffic, and guess which town was at the top? You're right....Washington, D.C., home of traffic scofflaws supreme. These Iceland traffic webcam sights are very restful if not exactly side-splitting.

Truth in Weighing

Well, for anyone who is paying attention, the little frog on my weight loss tracker is back in view, thanks to a week in which I pretty much crashed and burned on my diet. Even HE looks fatter. Maybe I'll get rid of him, the smug little....(I was going to call him a reptile, but I caught myself just in time) amphibian. Ha. I can't remember whether amphibians are also reptiles, but more to the point, I don't care. So much for belonging to Beta Beta Beta. Which, btw, has changed their insignia to a stupid shield. Before it was a gold snake with a ruby eye.

And in honor of El Busho's taking the occasion of Israel's 60th birthday party to suggest that the Democratic party's candidate for president is like a Nazi appeaser, Charlie is back, biting his brother's finger. Ouch, Charlie! That really hurts!!

Pigging Out....

Peggy's blog has a great post today on a barbeque in Budapest, where she was visiting last week. The main course was chunks of bacon fat from the superbly delectable Mangalica (mang a LEET za) pig, a native of Hungary. I was curious about this pig, so I looked it up.

Say, hey! SOME PIG! It's long-haired, and just about the cutest pig I have ever seen. What should we call this one? Zsa Zsa? Or...hm...Zoltan?