A Night at the Opera

The mayor invited us to see Il Travatore....or something like that. They performed in in a cave type area. It was pretty neat. It must have been an old mining area because there were all these old pieces of equipment and huge tires scattered around.

In the middle of a pause in the opera I heard a mountain goat "maaaaaaaa" and I let out a sharp giggle before I realized no one else was laughing.

We were also in the newspaper! That was fun!

Reunited!

The K4 is back. Maggie is healthy. We completed 12x 3mins at steady aerobic pace this afternoon with no problems. As soon as we pushed of the dock I began singing "reunited and it feels so good". Everyone greatly appreciated it.

The Italian Federation has been so hospitable. I can't believe how nice people are here. And the cheese...well that's pretty great too.

My camera is attached to my hip

Aww...me and Brandon



The girls with the President of the Italian Canoe/Kayak Federation



Recovery at the water slide!!!









me and the swans


they're so bright.



Care Bear!!





Coach Luce




We finally have fans!!! Yay!





These kids were too cute! They hung around us for about an hour and they made sure they had each of our autographs. Spectacular.

Day 2

I swear it gets more beautiful here everyday.

The post office is right around the corner, so if you want a postcard from Italy let me know.

We paddled this morning and it was so dry and hot. It was great. I only like paddling one direction because it has the view of the mountains and cliffs.

The food is mediocre. The pasta is good obviously. But the meat is a little bit flavorless. Cavalino (where we stayed in '05) had better food, however that was a restaurant. This is a monastery. A catholic monastery at that. You can tell because they stick the Virgin Mary in just about every corner.

Here are more photos!

First Day...

We paddled this morning. The lake is about 9kil around and beautiful. You don't realize how incredible it is until you get halfway around and face the monastery. Behind it is a huge mountain with a rock face and there is a castle a couple miles away as well.

We're not allowed to live in the monastery because we're single women.Ha ha. So we get to stay in the pretty little apartment next door which is even better.

Maggie's arm hasn't fully healed yet but her range of motion increases everyday. Hopefully by tomorrow or Thursday we can jump in K4. Honestly, I'm a teeny bit nervous due to our lack of team-boat training the past week, but I refuse to dwell on that. We've been training k4 for almost three months and we're not going to loose it all in a week.

We all got a little delirious last night. I ended up putting on a musical and our dinner of pickles, onions, a rice was uncontrollably giggled over.

The plane ride over was actually pretty impressive. KLH or whatever the airline was called was mighty comfortable. Even though I was cuddling with some strange guy next to me do to my shoulder width, I got quite a bit of sleep. I also watched Disturbia and Premonition which were both very entertaining.