Saturday, prior to my son Tristan and I knowing that we had contracted the flu, we all walked into the center of town to visit the Egyptian museum. It contains the largest collection of artifacts, outside of Egypt. We had thought that Italy was still allowing free admissions to museums from the 5th – 9th. However, this was not the case. In fact, we could not even get a student discount since those are only offered on Thursdays – oh well. The one thing we did get unexpectedly were headsets, which unfortunately ended up to be useless technological throwbacks to the early 1990’s. Undeterred, we soldiered on determined to make the best of it, even among an afternoon throng.
The amazing pieces were the statues and sarcophagi which were surrounded by glass so you can see all sides.
Below is Patti in front of a 4200 year old Sphinx, like the one near the pyramids of Giza.
And finally the sarcophagi we mentioned before.
Well after an hour, which we really enjoyed (our son, Tristan is an ancient history buff), we took our leave to consume some of Italy’s really fine coffee.
Next time we hope to post about something a little less macabre.
We landed early this morning at Malpensa/Milano airport, then on to Milano via TrenNord and finally Torino via the FrecciaRossa 1000. Due to conditions beyond our control, our Airbnb host was delayed until 1 p.m. That forced us to remain at the Porta Susa train station for an hour and a half. But, as we arrived on foot to Antonio’s front door, he pulled up with his car right on time.
We spent the next hour or so discussing with Antonio what our objectives were in Torino, how we selected the city, and lastly, how to go about renting an apartment. Our host appears to be a kind person and very concerned with helping us navigate the tricky waters of high Italian rental contracts and all of their associated taxes and costs. We have welcomed any assistance he can provide.
The rest of the afternoon we spent resting.
Pizza!!! Yum…
We ventured out later this evening for something to eat, having skipped lunch we were all starving. Supper at “di Michi” Pizzeria was great and inexpensive. We ordered 14 inch pies, one melanzane and two prosciutto, for 6€ each ($7). Some beer and salad and we were satisfied.
It is now around 9 p.m. and time for more sleep, stay tuned…
Last night we enjoyed dinner at Stellino’s to say farewell to Dana, he will be staying behind in Cary, working for Genesys in RTP.
Erick, Patti, Dana and Tristan at Stellino’s
After a great supper, we said our goodbyes and stayed at the TRU Hilton hotel. It is located very near RDU airport, so it was a snap this morning to drop our rental vehicle off and start our real trip. First destination, JFK airport in NY. So we say goodbye to North Carolina for the time being, onto new adventures.
RDU airport and NC from the air
We will keep all posted as we make progress to our final destination, Turin Italy. Ciao for now!
We are in the TRU Hilton hotel next to RDU airport, our jumping off point for our trip. Tomorrow being the big day.
We spent the last couple of days moving out of our apartment. Most of the furniture went to Dana’s apartment, the rest to storage which is now really FULL.
Our Air-Conditioned Storage Room
We have a few more things at Dana’s to do then just waiting for our plane ride. Will be back soon to let you all know how we faired.
Possessions are strange things, they exist in a real sense, are tangible and have numerous properties. Take their affect on a person preparing to move or actually in the act of moving; a task that is required of most during one‘s lifetime. We have gone through just such an undertaking in sell our house last year, but were not prepared for the work nor the memories it evoked that needed our attention. It was like these possessions had more of a hold on us than we did on them.
Our attic prior to our move, just one repository or cache for our junk…
In America we tend to amass a great many of things, possessions (what we call our property) and let‘s face it, junk! This is probably a result of our capitalistic society which not only condones this behavior of the collector, but encourages it! An affect of this behavior is we tend to collect things most of the time that have no intrinsic value, things we have no real intention of using again. Some of us even collect for the sake of collecting, or because we are too lazy or too unwilling to sell, give away or throw out. This is when we discovered we were carrying this stuff around as a large invisible burden. We did not realize it was there, until some force of nature made us confront this massive monster.
We came to our epiphany shortly after my wife and I decided it was time to sell the house and move on with our lives; which up until then we considered one of the foci of our live’s, the other of course being our children. As we poured through all the boxes and other containers in our attic we continually shook our collective heads as to why we saved some of what we had. There are always some things for sure that should not be thrown out, a family photo album or Bible, for example. What we found instead were boxes and bags of old clothes, old children toys both usable and broken, old electronics and a myriad of other paraphernalia. These were all sorted into the following substantive sets, keep for family, sell for money, donate to those in need and throw it away. It was only with this multi-pronged approach that we were able to climb out of our own mount Collyer without it falling in on us.
In the end most of our stuff will not be missed. Some of it has found a better use helping others or has been recycled into the community via the many internet transaction portals one has access to nowadays. The little that remains, that which has any intrinsic familial value, will remain with our children. Most of it furniture that we have collected, jewelry, paintings or other family related artifacts. And yet no longer having it or worrying about where something is has been cathartic. We have recognized a new found freedom that we enjoyed once prior to our marriage. We are unburdened, free. It was always there it was just covered by so much junk we had lost site of it. We have therefore made a promise, moving into the waning years of our life, to change our spending and collection behavior. Our experience is we just do NOT need it and no longer want any of it. It is with this re-found knowledge that we take to our retirement and our fondness for travel, with an ever lighter step. The pain is now gone. Buon viaggio!
Welcome to the Griffin’s European travel journal. Here we hope to highlight our travel preparations, travels and experiences moving to Europe and specifically Italy. Today is the start of this blog but not the start of our journey, which frankly started some five (5) years ago.
To be frank, this journey has been long in coming. The first germs of our even wanting to do this occurred close to a decade ago, if not somewhat longer. Now that time is growing short for our trip, there seems almost too much to do: financial planning, selling, gifting, storing, packing, and shipping; the list seems to grow each day. We enter our third week from finishing all this up which will culminate with our travel and entry into Europe via Milan, Italy.
Our storage – our life condensed into a 16 cubic meter space for our children…
As this our first post on this subject and the day has grown somewhat long in the tooth already, I shall pause here and add more tomorrow or later this week. I hope to convey some of the results of our own specific preparations as well as investigations into what we think still must be done. Back soon!
This is where I write about non-travel related things important to me. Unfortunately since my interests are so esoteric the topics may range quite far from each other, I will therefore try to add a subtopic tag to each along with a hopefully accurate title, we’ll see. The posts may also come in bursts instead of a steady stream, so please be patient, it is probably due to travel or stresses related to moving to Europe.
