Uff da, the craziness and hectivity abound

Yes, hectivity is a real word. I made it up just now.

I have been a very busy bee, and it has been a roller coaster-ish couple of weeks. I had some friends come to visit, and we had a delightful time! We did wine-tasting at Villa Sceriman and Enomas, watched a historical regatta in Venice, found the castle in Bassano del Grappa along with the distillery museum, and explored the castle and ruins in Sirmione. We were blessed with terrific weather, and they came back from venturing on their own in Florence and Rome with some good tales and excellent advice. Can't wait for the next round of visitors! Now...who's it going to be, hmm?

Entry to Sceriman

In Venice, near sunset

"Pink ladies" in the Venice Regata Storica

Let's see, I got kidnapped for my birthday and celebrated with sushi, a walk around a street fair, and some really dang good gelato. (My delightful friends also presented me with a fruit tart in Venice to celebrate - there was a candle and they sang to me! Going down in the history books as a really wonderful birthday. I like 32 so far!) Then I tasted more wine and  harvested and stomped grapes at Le Pignole, which might be one of my new favorite places ever. I'm sensing a trend here, with all the vino...Which reminds me, if you like wine and drink a fair amount of it and like trying new ones, you may be interested in the app Vivino. I use it to help me remember what I've tasted, bought, liked, and disliked, and also to get recommendations. You can take pictures of wine bottles and the app will match it with something in its database, and if it's not in the database real live people will research and add it. You can rate wines and compare other people's ratings and pricing information, and it's pretty dang helpful.

First birthday picture!

At the Vicenza fair

Kids running around at Le Pignole

A real, genuine, authentic grape stomp!

I also dog-sat for a friend (the same lovely friend who kidnapped me) for four days, and had a very fun time cuddling and playing fetch. However, I think my favorite gelato place (conveniently located 1/8 of a mile from home) is probably the ONLY gelato joint in the entirety of Italy which does NOT allow dogs. Whoopsie.

I watched the bi-annual Live Chess tournament in Marostica, and had some delicious pumpkin risotto for dinner beforehand. I think there were a total of 12 of us who went as a group, and it was a really fun event despite the rain delay. If anyone is planning a visit in September 2016, I will take you to it!  There were flag twirlers and sword fighters and dancers and horses; the costumes and pageantry were great! Hopefully by 2016 I will understand more Italian and be able to translate a bit of the story. All I got were "La bella regina bianca," a few other chess piece names, and some disjointed words. But I had fun laughing smarmily when everyone else did.

Live chess match in Marostica

Then I battled a mid-term exam for roughly 30 hours, then I got sick, then I got better,  I recorded a bunch of radio commercials for the Local Red Cross, I'm going to a picture framing and matting class tomorrow, and Tony comes home soon! Next weekend: Oktoberfest in Munich!

Verily, life is good.