The Fringe Festival

I wrote earlier about the Fringe Festival and how it is an amazing gathering of artists from all over world. Their talents cover all walks of life and the festival houses thousands of shows. While Meghan and Jacob were working, I managed to catch five shows. Four were comedy shows and the fifth was an autobiographical one-woman show that just took my breath away. More on that later!

Here is just one example of the many venues that were being used around the city.

The performers also acted short bits of their shows in order to entice spectators to purchase tickets for their show.

An urban beach! This was the location of yet another Fringe Festival venue.

This is one of the largest venues of the festival. Because this particular location housed many stages, it made it easier to just show up and find show to go see.

My first few days in Edinburgh, Scotland

Jacob met me at the airport when I arrived in Edinburgh because Meghan was suffering from food poisoning. Poor Meghan! So we went to the apartment to see her and hang out a bit. Then I left with Jacob so that he could go to work and I could go off exploring the Fringe Festival. However, on the way to his job we ran into someone he knew. This person was on way to a beer crawl and that's how it happened that I went on beer crawl with 10 people I had never met before. Turned out to be a great night and Jacob met up with us after he got off work. Here we are at the third pub, and here is the group of people I followed around and drank with for five hours.

Here we are at pub #3, a bar with karaoke. No, I did not partake.

While they went on to hit two more locations, Jacob and I sneaked away to a quiet pub to enjoy a pint and a bit of rugby.


ahh, my love.

I did quite a bit of exploring around Edinburgh and here are the pictures to prove it! Notice the Scottish flag. i have never met a people with more country pride.

It was quite tricky to pull off a shot with no one in it.

Edinburgh city streets

Skyline



The Edinburgh Castle. This is where the Tattoo was being held. Pictures of that later.

Castle again.

A random pub.

Exact location where inhabitants of the city used to come to watch public executions. Lovely!

A zippy looking Smart Car.

From one Midlothian to another. Meghan and I met at Midlothian High School in Virginia, and years later, here she is moving to another Midlothian.

More lovely street shots

I stopped in at the Whiskey Museum and perused the premises. Here is a menu of the whiskeys they were currently selling, separated as blends, single malts, and by location (mainland, islands, highlands, etc).

Back to work. The WALL.

Here we are on the terrace, putting a layer of cement on the inside wall.

The Dream Team in action

Taking a break to observe and document progress. Not bad!

My cement mixing station. Cement, Sand, Chair, Water...All essential elements for successful cement mixing.

Me, doing a self portrait with progress behind me.The terrace is larger than it seems when you are cementing its entire perimeter!

Progress

More progress

In progress

After a hard day's work.

Lago di Garda

I know what you are thinking, is there any work being done? YES! This is what happened. We were cementing the main outside walls and we did a great job (pics coming next) but I overused my right wrist muscle in mixing cement all day, and my father scraped his hand quite a bit. So, we HAD to take a day off work and go to Lago di Garda. This is one of the largest lakes in Italy, it is beautiful, and I had never seen it. So we decided to drive up for the day. Here are the pictures!

Cool alley leading down to the water

Me, by the water, taking-in our day off.

Il lago.

Me, next to some beautiful flowers my dad loves.

Hello, me again.

and again, me.

Flowers, water, mountains. Awesome!

Man walking his bike in another nice alley.

Inside Ca' Bondi

I thought I would take a moment to post a few photos of the inside of Ca' Bondi. When I took the shots, I was actually pointedly trying to keep the damaged areas outside of the frame. So it's not easy to see the work we have done since. Anyway, here goes....Oh and it's worth mentioning that while I'm doing this, my father is slaughtering the overgrown areas in the nearest part of the garden with a chainsaw.




My command center. This is where all the magic happens, and where I waste hours of time waiting for photos to upload. Luckily, there is always something to do (or that I should do) while the uploading is happening.




Same shot, zoomed back. This is the dining room and where we have most of the memories at Ca' Bondi. We spent thousands of hours at this table with my family, grandparents, and friends.




This area is actually in the same room as the dining room, it's just behind it. The couch, lamp, and coffee table are from our apartment in Bologna. The chair in the lower right corner was in my bedroom, which I shared with my older brother, in our apartment.







My grandfather, Bonando, was the champion of Italy in Greco-Roman Wrestling. He was a strong guy! He also appeared at the Olympics but could not compete because of an injury to his elbow. Here is a small collection of his plaques, medals, and other memorabilia. I'm very proud!

Here I am showing off our very high-tech radio and only form of electronic entertainment. This furniture piece was also from our apartment. There is also so Red Label whiskey in the background and it is delicious.

Same shot, zoomed out. On the left side is the kitchen (and the bathroom)and on the right are the stairs that lead to the bedrooms and terrace on the second floor.

Stairs, and more wrestling stuff.

Old faithful. This is the best fireplace in the history of fireplaces. There I said it.

Bathroom. We are back in style with the 60s tile.

The bathroom is the shower, the shower is the bathroom

Kitchen. No frills there. Awesome tile continues.

Funny Edinburgh

I'm currently in Edinburgh fully enjoying the complete luck of having come here during the Fringe Festival. The festival is a yearly congregation of performers that come from all over the world. The performances vary from music, to comedy, to dance, to drama, etc. There are over 400 venues being used throughout the city, housing thousands of shows. It would be physically impossible to catch each one. While Meghan and Jacob are off volunteering at the Tattoo (picture a UK army parade that is hours long) each night (tonight is the last night and they are going to try to sneak me in) I have been entertaining myself with comedy. No, not MY comedy, though that would be entirely possible and have been known to do on occasion. No, I have been going to back-to-back standup comedy shows, and well, God loves me right now because I really can't picture a better way to spend my time for the few hours i have on my own.

I have to comment that while i'm typing away, there is a three year old kid at the computer next to me and he has single-handedly inserted money into the machine for Internet access, navigated to You Tube, and is now watching some sort of age-appropriate show. His father just came up to him very tentatively and said "I've ordered you a diet coke, I hope that's ok. Looks like you are going to be there for a while, why don't you make yourself more comfortable and take off your coat?"

Am I sitting next to a genius?!

Alright, off to another show...

More to come

And now i must go to bed. It is nearly 1am and i have to get up at 5am to fly to Scotland to visit my friend Meghan for a week. Anyway, i have plenty of more photos to upload from the work on the house (yes we got back to work!) and i'm sure i'll have much more after Scotland!

The Italian alps

After visiting my relatives on my father's side, we continued to drive northeast to the Alps to visit our good friends the Mongardis and the Guidicinis during their august vacations for about five days. We arrived in Venas where the Guidicinis have an apt and got immediately lost on the way there. We ended up on a very narrow uphill winding road. I continued to drive uphill hoping to find somewhere wide enough to turn around, all the while hoping that we would not encounter another car coming in the opposite direction. Immediately after this thought materialized in my mind, a car appeared. God Damn! So, I stop, and the car heading towards us stops and the driver gets out of the car to try to figure out how we can get by each other. And wouldn't you know it, it's Bruno Mongardi! He and Mariangela and Laura (who I call Lulu) are coming back from a hike,while Paolo Guidicini (Laura's husband) is waiting for us at the apt! This was really hilarious. Anyway, clearly we manage to get by each other and follow them to the apt.

Paolo G. immediately presents us with three sleeping options. Either both my father and I stay with them (same room, twin beds) or we both stay with the Mondardi (same room, twin beds) or we separate and each get our own room. Immediately my father and I jumped to option three. The reason is because the night before we slept in the same room, two twin beds, and my father snored all night and I remember falling asleep somewhere around 5am. Separate rooms SOLD!

So, I stayed with Bruno and Mariangela and this is the view from their porch! This is Il Pelmo, as you can see, it looks like an enourmous throne. This mountain is the one I hold dearest from all the times we came here when i was a kid.

This one is viewable from the back of their apartment. This peak is Antelau. The houses shown are typical of the area.

Paolo Guidicini and Paolo Maso on the way up San Marco.

Antelau deserves another look.

And here we are at Lake Misurina. During the winter this lake is completely frozen over and covered with snow.

Here is another shot of the lake. From this angle you can see the chair lift that brings skiers and hikers up to the top, depending on the season.

I couldn't decide which shot I liked more so I decided to include both.

We took a walk around the lake, and here is a picture of the hotel from the other side.

The next day we went to Cristallo, another peak and yet another mountain we used to ski down. We took the chairlift up to this point and then walked down to the lake shown below.

Very nice lake at a very high height.

The brat pack.

Walking up from the lake.

View from where we had lunch. The mountain we are looking at here is Faloria, we used to ski on the trails that you can see on the right side.

Me, with Faloria in the background

Me, with Il Pelmo covered by my head.

That old brat pack again.

Bruno Mongardi, the joker.

On the way down from Cristallo.



Serious climbing was involved. :-)





A margherita.





Here we are hiking up to the Cinque Torri (Five Towers)





Omage to the Virgin Mary on the trail up to the Cinque Torri. Italians love the Virgin Mary. Love her.






Le Cinque Torri!!! (we also used to ski down from here, one of our favorite slopes).






The Italian Alpini trenches used during the first world war against Austria. After the war, Italy made out with quite a few peaks that were a part of Austria. Here, the trenches and cannon holes are all pointed towards the last valley they had to hold and the Austrian alps.