Tag: milan

Saturday April 5-Friday April 11

France/Italy

Saturday was an easy day around the house and then out to dinner for tarte flambe.  Tarte flambe’ is an Alsacienne specialty.  It is kind of like a flat bread pizza with ham and a white cheese sauce.  You can make additions such as other kinds of cheese, onions and mushrooms. I am not a real cheese fan (basically a crime against humanity in France).          (That also explains why you don’t think my jokes are funny) but I do enjoy a good goat cheese (chevre in French) so that was my selection.  Delicious.  I can’t believe I have been to Alsace 3 times before and have never had this??

Paul and I made our first trip to France in 1991.  On that trip, we met our cousins Jean Jacque and Marie-Laure Weinzapflen and became instant friends. ( zay are zee best) We have stayed in touch over the years and have visited back and forth several times.  They invited us for lunch on Sunday. Their friends Tonio and Rachel, who have become our friends, joined us.   Marie-Laure sets a beautiful table and is an amazing cook.  Jean Jacque always keeps the aperitifs and wine flowing.  I often end up with the giggles after spending a day enjoying JJ’s drink selections! (I could tell you stories, as could anyone else who was trying to sleep in the same house) We had a fantastic afternoon catching up in person. 

We mentioned to them that we had a few unscheduled days in the next week and were tossing around some ideas. Marie-Laure is Italian, and she jumped right in when we threw out the idea of visiting Italy. We were a little nervous at first.  We speak zero Italian.  Marie-Laure assured us we would be fine and helped plan the driving route and made a suggestion on cities to visit.  So….after our very enjoyable Sunday lunch, we headed back “home” to pack for a three-night visit to Milan.

We (by “we” I mostly mean I) ( as conveyed by the numerous gasps and stifled screams as well as the finger nail marks in the dash and the worn out carpet where the car manufacturer apparently forgot to install a brake for the passenger) wasnervous about driving into a large city like Milan so we made reservations at a hotel in a town just outside Milan and planned to use public transportation for our travels into the city.  Our first challenge was to figure out how to acquire the necessary permit to drive through Switzerland (one must pay approximately $50 dollars each year to drive a car in Switzerland).  Challenge Two was figuring out road signs first in Switzerland and then in Italy.  Driving challenge three was that at this point in our trip, our car was still speaking French to us.  We had not yet figured out how to change the language on the driving assist.  Imagine driving 80 miles an hour in New York City with your car occasionally yelling at you in a language you don’t speak. (The car was just telling me that I might want to pull over and rest because I had been driving for so long. It just sounded so much more important in French. “ATTENTION!”)  By the time we completed the five hour drive and arrived at the hotel, I needed a serious nap to reset my stress level. (apparently the word “nap” can be used in place of “large glass of Chanti”?)

We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday exploring the beauty of Milan.  We spent almost a full day visiting the Milan Cathedral.  We went all the way to the roof top for some amazing views of the city, visited the crypt of St Charles and explored the archeological dig under the church.  Another highlight of the trip was seeing Leonardo Di Vinci’s The Last Supper painting.  Most of the other paintings in this church were destroyed in World War II (On a serious note, we all know that Hitler and Mussolini were frggen idiots, with over 65,000,000+ dead because of their actions, but I continue to be amazed at the amount of destruction they caused. Some of the most beautiful cities and villages in Europe completely decimated! Thousands of years of beauty destroyed in the matter of a few years. War is so stupid….) but they were able to preserve this painting by surrounding it with sandbags.  We walked to many other monuments and sites in the city.  On the drive home, we spent part of the day driving around Lake Como.  Lake Como is a beautiful lake surrounded by picturesque Italian villages.  It is so charming. 

After three weeks away, Friday was laundry day.  It is also the day that Christianne, Stephanie, Stephanie’s sons Max and Alessandro, and Max’s girlfriend Lise all arrive at the Rouffach house to prepare for a very special event on Saturday.  There will be more about that in my next post.

I had not seen Stephanie in person in 23 years.  Being able to hug her and see her smile in real life was a really special feeling.  Stephanie prepared a delicious meal Friday night, and we all stayed up past midnight reminiscing about our past times together and catching up on life.   It was the perfect end to the week.

As usual, comments from Paul/The Editor are in bold

New things this week:
Visited a new country -Italy and the cities of Milan and Lake Como

Tried a new food Tarte Flambe

Coming up- a very special birthday celebration