Gelato Impossible

So I’ll start with last night, since I never gave it much press. I ended up going down to Blues to Bop with Alyssa and Deniz around 9:00pm. We found this little stand with amazing sandwiches, which Alyssa and Deniz bought and affirmed that they were indeed amazing. Unfortunately, I had already eaten dinner, and I wanted to save room for gelato, so I didn’t partake in the eating of amazing sandwiches. After that we walked around for a bit, as we waited for the Fabulous Soul-Seekers (Searchers? Not sure) to come on. We got gelato during the in-between time. I had stracciatella and chocolate, Alyssa had amarena and nocciola, and Deniz had biscotti and nocciola. The biscotti was so good! I think I’m going to have to get it next time we get ice cream. Then we sat on a bench on the waterfront and we watched the fireworks show, which was very cool. After that we went back to the music and saw the FSS’s, who were a band of 12 guys, six or seven of whom were gospel singers. They were a lot of fun to watch; they were all wearing matching suits with green pants and blue jackets. They apparently wore all white on Friday night. So that was fun. Once they were done playing around midnight we found a bench to take a break from standing/walking, had people talk about us in Italian (they pointed out we were speaking English), got really tired and eventually decided to walk home; we got back around 1:00am, I do believe. So Blues to Bop was a lot of fun. It was quite entertaining to listen to all these American musicians singing in English and rocking out. None of them looked like they would really fit in in Lugano. They had some really good shows there. We couldn’t figure out if this was a purely-Luganese event or if they travel around. We’re thinking they must travel around because it just seems like such a misfit, to have all these conservative Italians listening to Americans blues and bop singers. I quite enjoyed it in any case.

Then today I ended up waking up promptly at 7:20am, had breakfast, and then went back to sleep. I woke up around 11:15am, which I was shocked by. It seemed like time travel. I cleaned my room, washed the dishes, took a shower, and proceeded to make some pasta. Alyssa and Deniz came over and we had a potluck. I provided the pasta and olives, Alyssa brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Deniz made French fries. It was sort of an odd combination, but delicious nonetheless. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed bread until I had a PBJ sandwich. I’m going grocery shopping tomorrow and bread is at the top of my list. Strangely it’s rather difficult to find dark, grainy whole wheat bread here. In German it seems like that’s all that they sell, so I figured we would find it here. But they appear to eat mostly white bread. Maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places.

Oh right, the rest of my day, I’d forgotten about that. So Alyssa and Deniz went back to their rooms around 3:30pm, and I surfed the web looking for train and plane tickets to Munich. Wasn’t overly successful there… I ended up falling asleep for about an hour. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of happened. Not doing anything is a lot of work; I think I’m more tired that way. I met up with Alyssa and Deniz again around 8:00pm outside of Florida and we walked into downtown looking for the amazing sandwiches that they had in downtown last night and the gelato, but neither were to be found. Everything was shut down. We were under the mistaken impression that Blues to Bop was continuing through this evening. Alas, we were very wrong. We walked around downtown searching for about 45 minutes until we decided to turn back up the hill, rather hungry. We went to the BP gas station next to Girasole and got gelato substitutes, which were not nearly as satisfying and made plans to go grocery shopping and gelato hunting tomorrow night.

We’ve had lovely weather all week, and it just keeps getting hotter. It was in the mid-80s today and it’s supposed to continue getting warmer. I’m not sure what to do with the warm weather here except sweat maybe and walk around and sweat some more… And drink lots and lots of water. Good thing I like warm weather. Oh more good news on the phone front! My cellphone is now up and working 100%; I am able to make and receive calls and I know how to check my voicemail now too! So feel free to call and leave me as many voicemails as you like. I’ve had some contact with Skype, but I have not yet solved the problem with receiving calls with SkypeIn. Still working on it. If it ends up really not working I might just cancel it and resort to SkypeOut and phone cards, we shall see. The phone cards cost about the same in terms of cents/minute, and they sound a whole lot better. There’s not so much delay or echo.

I’m off to bed! I’ve got 8:30am German tomorrow. Hope you’re all having lovely Sundays! I miss you!!