As you probably already know the northern region of Italy has been repeatedly hit by earthquakes in the last few weeks. The first was a 6.0 in the early morning hours of May 20, which killed 6 people in Modena and woke all of us in Chiavari. The apartment rattled as the building shook and the chandeliers swung from side to side but there was no damage. The rest of that morning and for the next two days we felt aftershocks as we sat at dinner, went to the beach or strolled by the ocean.
By Wednesday the 23rd we thought the shaking was over and decided to go spelunking with friends. The cave was the biggest we have explored in Italy - full of beautiful stalactites and an underground stream which made it very muddy. And the earth did not shake the entire time we were in cave :-)
The next day (Thursday May 24) mom, Woody and I boarded a train and made our way south to visit family. We heard as we arrived in San Arachngelo that another quake had hit that afternoon so we called home to check in on dad who, although a bit jumpy, was doing just fine and looking forward to a visit from one of his Swiss cousins, Lorenz.
Our first stop on our family visit was San Archangelo, the home of my grandmother's sister, Carmela, who lived to be 100 years old. She passed away in January of this year and so this was our first visit without her. Still, we had a great time with my aunt and uncle Maria and Franco and their kids, Doris and Gian Franco. For our first night, Maria cooked us an Indian chicken curry dish in honor of all of our travels and our lack of time in India. It was very good and also a surprise - Italians are very proud of there food and so they are not very experimental with new flavors. I guess they feel after thousands of years of civilization they have perfected there food so why try anything new. Anyways like I said it was good and it is the first non-Italian meal any of my family had ever cooked us so we were very honored.
We stayed with Lina and Ugo (and family) in there house in San Nazzaro. Lina kept us well fed while Ugo dazzled us with his piano playing.
Woody came with me to San Nazzaro 3 years ago during our last trip to Italy and made a lasting impression with my cousin's boyfriend, Ivan, and their friends. They were eager to drag him away to the bar for a beer - or three - and he was excited to be with the guys. Even though he barely understood a single word of their thick dialect, the alcohol helped in the translations.
Eating was a big part of the weekend, each meal seemed to invite more family and more amazing food. The amount of food consumed was on par with a Roman feast (come to think of it, we weren't that far from Rome.) Pasta. Steak. Salad. Wine. More pasta. Cheese. More steak. More wine. At one point Woody said, "This isn't a meal - it's a martial art. You need to be prepared for this!"
On Monday we headed back to Chiavari and were greeted by another earthquake the very next day. The quake that hit on the 29th of May hit during the day and killed 16 people in the Modena area, we were at the beach as the ground started to roll and although it was comforting to know nothing could fall on us it was eery to see the beach roll like the waves on the ocean in front of us. Again we were all fine but it shook the community and was the talk of the town.
If you want to see a cool web site that keep tracks of earth quakes around the world check out:
http://www.emsc-csem.org/#1
To see photos from our trip down south, check out our web album.
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