Just a few days before I go off on vacation to the States and Canada a short entry in the blog - so you know I'm alive and kicking.
My parents came to visit at the end of March for a bit over a week. Was nice to have them stay. Aside from other things I got to enlarge my repertoire of cooking things - thanks to my mom I am now into veal cutlets and steaks (was eating a lot of chicken up until then, why? don't know, maybe the easiest way out...). Still have to work on my veal cooking but the steaks are coming out pretty good. I keep forgetting that here it's easy to get good meat. We also went to some nice restaurants during the visit - one was a bit strange, they actually have donkey (yup, this is not a mistake) on the menu. We ate other things... The other one was an excellent one where they specialize in risotto - Trattoria Temperanza da Abele di Milano where we went with Paola and Enrico.
The highlights of the visit were: our trip to Venice - it was a lovely day and we had a wonderful time. It was a good time to visit the city, relatively speaking it wasn't too crowded with tourists (the last time I was there was with Hagit K. for Carnival and it was PACKED then). Here is a link to some beautiful pictures my father took during this trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/Ezra1Oc/VeniceA
We went to see an exhibition there called Rome and the Barbarians (http://www.palazzograssi.it/roma/index.htm) It was interesting but a bit overrated - both in publicity and in prices (cost a heaping 16 euros per ticket...). My Roman history isn't the best but my parents recalled a lot of what they'd learnt in school and elsewhere regarding the Romans and the various invaders who came along. As my father mentioned it was interesting to see how things have become politically correct over the years and the barbarians now appear with quotation marks to diminish a bit the negative association connected with the term barbarians. Interesting to see how the names of these tribes became synonymous with bad and evil things - only because they were enemies of the Romans (which is weird since the Romans were not exactly saints themselves as far as torture and strange deaths were concerned).
The other highlight was going to see Macbeth at the La Scala. Tickets were not easy to come by and by no means cheap but it was worth it (as they say in the Lonely Planet - go see any show you can over there). The quality of the shows put on there are fantastic. The opera is not Verdi's best - it's one of his earlier ones and like they said in Amadeus - it had a bit too many notes... (practically four hours). However, one can already hear why Verdi was on his way to becoming an outstanding opera composer and it was definitely an experience. Also, the story is a good one (it being Shakespeare after all) so it was interesting to see.
Finally, we went to hear the La Verdi Orchestra playing Chopin (with a Korean Pianist) and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition which was outstanding. It's nice to be able to go hear a concert near home in an excellent music hall. It's nice also that they play things that are not that commonly played by famous orchestras.
So, these were the highlights of the visit. Last week was very busy work wise - we had a small event connected with the medical equipment sector, an important meeting with a big pharma and diagnostics company in Florence and I also visited a cosmetics fair where many Israeli companies exhibited in Bologna (a lot of train travelling...). The weekend was therefore dedicated mainly for resting. I just came back from visiting a large flower market in the Navigli (canals) area near home. Very colorful.
I'm off to the States and Canada for Pesach. Will spend it with family and friends. Can't wait. Wishing everyone a happy Pesach and all the best. Oh, and don't forget to write to me. Love receiving your letters (the fact that I write a blog doesn't exempt you from writing...).
and so it won't be said that there are no pictures in the blog (and as Alice said "what is the use of a book without pictures?") here are two taken by my dad during the visit - in Venice:
