Visitors to Bologna

We have had a number of friends and family who have come to visit in the past several years. I thought it would be fun to post some of the photos.

Mom and Keiko came to visit just after Ray's birth. Here Mom and I are in Bologna's Piazza Maggiore (it's easy to see what I am going to look like at 70). Keiko has visited three times now - last summer to take a language course which she plans to do again this year (she has been studying Italian for several years now and is way more advanced than me).











Here we are in Lugo (Andrea's hometown) doing a Slow Food tour (http://www.slowfood.com/) of various restaurants. The little bags around our necks is what one keeps a wine glass in to do all the various tastings. How fun is that?! Lugo's native son is Francesco Baracca, a WWI hero who apparently flew this plane. The logo he used, of a rearing horse, is the one that Ferrari now uses on their cars. (http://www.museobaracca.it/)




Celeste, Rik, Kyle and Lauren came to visit one month after I moved here (Kyle is obviously jet lagged). Celeste and Rik took off for a couple of days in Venice to celebrate their 25th anniversary, and Kyle and Lauren hit the sales in Bologna (every July and January for those interested in Italian clothes).







Andrea's thesis advisor, Peter Bondanella, came to Bologna with the Indiana U. summer program students.


Dick and Susan Stryker visited every year until his retirement from Indiana's study abroad program. And Pietro Frassica comes from Princeton regularly (he was Andrea's best man at the wedding).
Sophia and her friend Marissa came in the first year. I thought this photo was funny - I look like Michael Jackson in his "I'm Bad" video (that's Marissa on the right). They were able to go on an excursion to Urbino with Andrea's students which was nice. Here, they are sitting at my favorite bar in Piazza Maggiore and below, standing next to one of the canals in Venice.


Pico and Jeremy came to visit last summer. I don't have a photo of them, but here is Pico when we saw her in Spoleto, where she was in the orchesta for the international music festival.










Having Melinda and Susan visit from Princeton was a blast. We spent three days in Venice drinking wine and watching the gondolas go by. An American woman approached us and said she wished she was hanging with us instead of her husband, ha. It was a special time. We are on the Rialto Bridge and there they are toasting, yet again, at my favorite Bologna bar.







Fiorenza Weinapple lives in Princeton but is originally from Bologna where she still keeps an apartment (a 5 minute walk from ours). She hired both Andrea and Alberto as lecturers at Princeton. She'll be over next Tuesday for an aperitivo, along with Esther and Alberto, who came to visit us in Sicily two years ago and now are expecting a baby in September and just got married! Alberto lives in Massachusetts but his family is in Rimini, about an hour by car. Esther teachers at SUNY in upstate NY. Hopefully they can juggle the distance when the baby arrives. Alberto is Ray's Godfather.


Uta, my former manager at Princeton, visits Germany every summer and here she came to visit us in 2004. She may try to come again next month.








Our friends Marsha and Greg met up with us in Rome, but haven't made it to Bologna yet. Here is a recent photo of them in the south of France where they went last month to celebrate a BIG birthday for her!





Alicia and Rob Shimer stopped in Bologna for dinner one evening while they were in Italy for a conference. They were economists at Princeton but moved to Chicago a few years ago.



Tori came to visit - here is an exciting photo of us at the Bologna train station. She did a LOT of shopping. Andrea's friend, Ken, came from Portland and stayed with us for a month while researching his family's history in a small town near Rome. I will try to find a more exciting photo than this one - he doesn't bite.