Verona
After leaving Florence, we had 1 night in Verona. This is the Verona which is the setting for several of Shakespeare's plays, most notably Romeo and Juliet (not the little island named Verona next to Bucksport, ME). It is a very quaint, old town with a lot of history, which obvious when you see the huge Roman amphitheater next to the main piazza. It is the third largest in Italy and is still in use for concerts and the opera. We haven't been to Rome yet, but this was the largest and best preserved Roman artifact we've seen. It was impressive, and sitting on the marble bleachers, I imagined myself watching gladiators fighting to the death. We had just one day there and enjoyed strolling through the town, with Jesslyn as the tour guide as she read the Rick Steve's walking tour aloud and I snapped a lot of photos.
Lake Como
After Verona, we stayed in an apartment for 4 nights in a tiny village called Fiumelatte directly on Lake Como, and just outside of a bit larger town called Varenna. At over 1300 feet deep, Lake Como is the 5th deepest in Europe (the 4 deepest are all in Norway). The lake is surrounded by mountains and is just minutes away from the Swiss border and Swiss Alps. The small villages that dot the shore, with their colorful paint and terra cotta roofs make the area very picturesque. We had a few dips in the lake, although the water was a pleasant temperature, it wasn't exactly crystal clear, and there wasn't a great area to swim. Our first night we ordered a white fish from the lake called lavarello, which was really good, but a bit too fishy for Jesslyn. This was the first full apartment that we have stayed in, so we took advantage of the kitchen and our newly found cooking skills. We bought some fresh pasta from a bakery, and tomatoes and meat to make our own ragu. It turned out great. We stuck to the old advice of using just a few really good, fresh ingredients, then not messing it up. We ate on the balcony most nights with what we imagine will be the best view from our room that we will have in our entire time in Europe.
This wasn't our homemade sauce, but a simple lunch of bresaola, cheese, and focaccia with veggies and local white wine called soave.
Cribbage
No, it is not the name of a town in Italy. We have played many games of cribbage over the years and wondered what our records were, so, on this trip, we decided to keep track. If you have been paying attention to the ticker on the sidebar, you will see that we are fairly evenly matched (although if we were playing cut-throat or counting skunks as 2 wins, I think I would have a slight edge). At one point, Jesslyn was up by 8 games, and I have been up by 5 games on 2 separate occasions. When one of us gets a lead of more than a few games, I remind myself of how common streaks are in random events. They happen more often and for longer than we typically would expect. In a statistics class, one of my professors had the class simulate a series of coin tosses by writing down "H" or "T" in a list on a piece of paper. This was without the coin, we were just supposed to randomly write Hs and Ts as if we were flipping a random coin in our heads. Then we flipped an actual coin to compare. We counted the number of times there was a transition from heads to tails or vice versa. In reality, that transitioned happened much less than compared to what we wrote down. In real life there were several runs of 5 in a row, while none of us had 5 in a row on our paper. In real life there were many, many runs of 3 which were uncommon in what we wrote down. We know logically that the previous result of a coin flip has absolutely no impact on the next, but it still influences our thinking. It is reassuring to remind myself of this phenomenon when I am behind be a few games. Some really exciting news: I recently had the first 28 point hand of my life!
My first ever 28 point cribbage hand.
- Jake