Verona

On Sunday, we left Trento relatively early in the morning and went to visit Verona, which is about an hour south by car.  It was a pretty easy drive, and it was pretty easy to get the car parked close to where we were headed in Verona.  One of the nice things about being here for a while is that we didn’t feel like we had to see everything Verona had to offer in a single day.  So we focused on the castle and just wandering a little bit.  After spending a couple of hours wandering around the castle (and the museum inside), we had some paninis for lunch.  Then we let Maya play for a bit at a local park.  She rode in the backpack the rest of the day (the hope, which was dashed, was that she’d be able to take a nap on dad’s back).  After playing in the park, we wandered into the historic heart of the city, past the Roman arena.  We happened by the clock tower and decided to go up (luckily, there was an elevator!) for some views across the city.  We drove out of the city by way of Basilica San Zeno.  It’s façade was covered for restoration, but maybe we’ll get a chance to see it while we’re here…

Cable Car to Sardagna

Saturday in the afternoon, we went up on the funicular that’s right outside the window of our apartment.  It goes across the river and up the side of the mountain to another town that is at the top.  We were just exploring a little on Saturday; we didn’t quite make it into Sardagna (the town that’s on top).  What there is from the top are a bunch of different marked walking trails that are targets for future exploration.  And we’ll be lucky if we don’t have to take Maya on the ride once a week any way…

First Real Sightseeing

Our first few days were taking up with sundry paperwork errands and getting to know where important things are (like the big supermarket). Luckily Amy gave us a map for most of these, which has been immensely useful. This morning, Maya and Tim went to the market and a smaller nearby supermarket while Christine stayed home to work. Not far in walking distance from our place is a daily open-air market with vegetables, cheese, fish, etc. They picked up some fruit at the market and then some things we had forgotten at tbe big supermarket (like tomato sauce). When they got back, we had lunch at home.

After naptime, we did our first real sightseeing with a trip to Castello del Buonconsiglio, which is right in the center of Trento. All of the pictures below are from in and around the castle, which comprises two portions: the old part and the new part. The old part dates from the 13th century, while the new part was built in the 15th century. Both the inside and outside walls were covered in frescoes, and the interior houses an impressive and varying set of artifacts. It turns out that the best way to keep a kid interested in a castle/museum is to let her take pictures of anything she wants. You’ll see Maya’s blog post of all of those tomorrow (since she’s asleep now). All of the photos below are Tim’s. We finished this day with yet another playground followed by dinner at a pizza place that Amy had suggested. Aside from the fact that we’re overstuffed, the pizza was delicious.

To see the results of Maya's photographic efforts, look here.

This picture is a little blurry, but it's apparently a painting of the seating chart for the Council of Trent.

We Have Arrived

We have arrived in Trento Italy (actually on Monday) and are getting ourselves situated.  We'll be here for four months, while I'm visiting the University of Trento (to work on some research with some colleagues), and Tim and Maya are simply spending some time living somewhere other than the US.

The past few days have seen very little sightseeing, though we have found a local playground, and Maya did make a quick friend there.  I had some work I had to get done, and we had some paperwork we had to get done to deal with staying for such a long time, but that's is slowly all getting completed.  So perhaps over the next few days, we'll have more of interest to report.

Maya decided she wants her own blog so she can talk about what she does and post her own pictures and videos.  So you can follow that here.  I don't know how frequent her updates will be.