To Italy - Casale Pompolo and Casale Monferrato

Yesterday we did the drive to Italy, including the long tunnel under Mont Blanc (about a 15 minute drive) and the many many tunnels once we were in Italy.

Our first stop was Casale Popolo, my ancestral homeland (of the "Costanzo" branch of the family).  Casale Popolo is a small village in Italy that doesn't actually exist any more but is basically a suburb of nearby Casale Monferrato (where we are actually staying).  We are about halfway between Turin and Milan.

We found a nice restaurant in Casale Popolo for lunch ... a typical Italian meal with primo (pasta), secundo (meat & salad), dolce (desert) and coffee.  We were stuffed!  We didn't speak any Italian so we just got the chef's recommendations.  Along with a mezzo litre of vino rosso and a boatload of bread.

Here is downtown Popolo ...

We dropped by the local cemetery to pay our respects to previous generations of Costanzo's ...

We felt very fortunate that one of the first crypts that we came across was for a Costanzo!

However we soon found that "Costanzo" is one of the most common names in old Popolo!

Yes, these are all Costanzo families, and that's not even the half of them.  Seems like every third person in Popolo is either a Costanzo or married one.  If you plan to do any genealogy research here set aside at least a couple of months.  It will be more difficult by the fact that all the Costanzo women are either Maria or Francesca and all the men are Giuseppe or Pietro (fun fact these are also the names of all my ancestors).

We also found only one "Palena" (my great-grandmother is Francesca Palena)

This crypt contained a "Giuseppe Palena" - could be my great-great grandfather?  But like I say a very common name, and there was no "Maria Guseno Palena" (my great-great-grandmother).

We also saw a few Costanzo businesses on the way into town, one florist (they had a giant sign by the highway) and this business that we walked past in Casale Monferrato:

Casale Monferrato is a beautiful little town, and I think we're the only tourists in the whole place.

We arrived at our Airbnb and - following the directions - took the elevator up to the 4th floor and checked into the apartment "on the right".

OK actually we had taken the wrong elevator.  A trip down and then up and we made it into our proper apartment, whew!

After a large lunch we decided to just get a couple of "apperitivo's" for dinner.  The board in the picture below is a "kitchen sampler" that came with the drinks.

... and we stopped by a specialty wine store to sample some of the local vintages.

A nice first day in Italy!  Today we are going to explore Casale Monferrato, although we are expecting thunderstorms!

Road trip to Chamonix - Gondolas,Trains and Automobiles

We just returned from 2 days/1 night in Chamonix, which is France's answer to Whistler (although I suspect they wouldn't put it like that).  It's less that an hour from Bonneville so it would also be an easy day trip.  However we decided to stay a night and save some driving ...

We got off to an early start and arrived before noon.  The first thing we noticed was the number of para-sailers in the sky, dozens and dozens.  (On the last day we saw some taking off, they just ran down the hill trailing their parachute until they were lifted off the ground.)

For our first day we did a hike from the town of Chemonix up to the glacier, it was about 3.5 hours of hiking round-trip with about a 600m elevation gain.  This is the kind of hike advertised as "easy" in this part of the world.

Of course this being France we passed two cafe's along the way so we stopped for lunch.

At the end of the hike - a view of the glacier!

... of course when we got back to town we realized you can see the same glacier from town - this is the view as we exited the parking garage (i.e. the very first thing we saw when we arrived).

We had dinner at a fancy schmancy place called Atmosphere, it was right beside the river.  (However due to the spring floods not so relaxing a place to dine!)

This is the view from outside the restaurant, shows how close we are to the river.  (Btw this is the river Arve, the same river that flows through Bonneville.  A bit narrower at this point.)

The second day we purchased a Multipass (explained here) which gave us access to the local gondola and train rides (as well as a few other things we didn't get around to).

First the gondola ride up to L'Aguille du Midi (next door to Mont Blanc itself).

We had to switch gondolas part way up, and eventually made it to the station at about 2300m.  (We didn't take the elevator up to the very top, at 3800m, not sure why I think the thin air was making me dizzy.)

Anyways the views were spectacular.

There were a lot of people hiking out in the snow, you can see a few below.  Crazy IMHO.

Another view of "our glacier".

We stopped and did a short hike at the midway point (where we changed gondolas) and had a rest by a mountain lake.

Afterwards we found the train which went to the other glacier.  The track is VERY STEEP, maybe a 10 or 12 degree incline.  You can see the middle rail, which has course teeth - the train has a giant gear which meshes with this third rail to allow the train to climb these steep grades.

The "other" glacier, I'm sure would have been more impressive about 50 years ago.  It's retreated all the way up the valley.

... and of course lunch ...

Afterwords we wandered over to the other side of town (there is maybe 20 minute walk between each of these attractions) and took a ski lift up the mountain.  (This side borders on Switzerland, whereas the Mont Blanc side borders on Italy.)  Again you can see "our glacier"!

This is where we saw some parachuters taking off, but no photos unfortunately.

This is the view on the way down.  There is a gondola going up the other side (to L'Aguille du Midi), not sure if you can make it out in the photo.

We're now doing a "rest day" in Bonneville (laundry, a bit of shopping and cramming some basic Italian) before we leave tomorrow for Casale Monferrato and Milan, a 4 or 5 day trip.

Reading on vacation

 I’m 3 books in, 5 more to go before I have to dip into Sonya’s kindle

Road Trip to Lyon

 We just got back to Bonneville after a 3 night visit to Lyon, the second largest cultural hub in France (third largest city), settled 2000 years ago by the Romans (at the time, Lugdunum).

This is our apartment (we always take a photo so we remember where we're staying - especially on the first day, after returning from a walk, sometimes we forget :-S).

The apartment (renovated of course) is in an apartment building from the 1700's.  We're down a long "traboule" and one flight up a very narrow circular staircase.  (A "traboule" is a long passageway and apparently used by the resistance during the war to dodge the nazi's.)

We stayed in the old town which is at the bottom of a large hill.  The Bassillica is at the top of the hill, up a long long flight of stairs.  ("Stairs" is a bit of a theme in Lyon as you will see.)

Here is the view from the top.

We visited the "Bassillica", which is a church on top of a church.  The "new" church ...

... is built on top of the "old" church ...

The whole thing is nicknamed the "sleeping elephant", as you will see (I took a pic later on).

On the hillside nearby is an old Roman theatre.

It was built by some rich guy back in the day, with his own money.  We tried to go to a concert while we were there but never made it.

This is what a beehive looks like over here - people build these with the hope of attracting bees.

After the walk, a beer on a nearby patio!

Afterwards we visited the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, home of a 700-year-old clock:

It could track the date, time and the position of the sun and moon as they revolved around the earth, as well as the phases of the moon and catholic holidays.  It's nor working now - it stopped apparently 2 years short of its 698-year cycle - and they will fix it once they are done with the church renovations.

Around the church, more 2000-year-old roman ruins.  They treat these ruins in a pretty cavalier fashion, letting people walk all over them and kids just run around and play.

Day 2 it rained all day!  The forecast was for thunderstorms, which fortunately didn't happen, however it did rain on & off all day, so we did a museum day, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts and the Centre d'histoire de la résistance et de la déportation.

The entrance tickets are works of art unto themselves.

The Museum of Fine Arts had some spectacular exhibits, and the Centre de la Résistance was fascinating.  (In between - while we walked from one to the other, looking for a restaurant for lunch - it started to pour and we ducked into the closest place, a Thai restaurant of all places.)

One of the main tools of the resistance was propaganda (as it was also for the nazis).  This is a one of the early papers published and distributed by the resistance - it mimics the name and style of one of the publications of the Vichy government, but with the news of the resistance.

There were three main publications of the resistance, and the networks they developed to print and distribute the papers helped to build the three main branches of the resistance.  Eventually they merged into a national resistance movement, with support and supplies from (and coordinated activities with) the British.

This is a wireless, used by the resistance ...

... and the code sheet for encoding and decoding messages ...

Nazis loading captured resistance and the jewish population of Lyon into cattle cars to send to the camps.

A printing press used by the resistance, it could be disassembled for transport and to hide.

One frightening aspect of the Nazi occupation of France was the level to which the Vichy government and other collaborators helped and supported the Nazis.  It echos the support for the right wing organizations that is happening today ...

On a lighter note, on our second full day in Lyon we had clear weather so we did more walking and less museum-visiting.

We walked up a bunch more stairs and got a view of Lyon from a different perspective.

There are two rivers that run through Lyon, the Rhone and the Saone.  And about a hundred bridges, even more than Vancouver.  (Vancouver wishes they could have so many bridges.)  (The Nazis demolished pretty much all the bridges of Lyon as they retreated at the end of the war, so they have all been rebuilt since then.)

You can see the Bassillica (the "sleeping elephant") at the top of the hill, to the left, in this photo:

Some Lyon food:

Not in Lyon, but in Aix-les-Baines, on the way home, voted "the best cider in the world":

We stopped in Aix-les-Bains to have a picnic by the lake - the map showed a large park and beach - but when we got there we found it was a "paid" beach, so we huddled in the free area with all the other plebs and ate our sandwiches.

We're now back in Bonneville, and planning our next excursions - tomorrow to Chamonix for one night to visit Mont Blanc, and later in the week to Italy.  Today ... laundry!!!