After spending a little time in Bergamo, it wasn't so bad at all. We had a lucky week: no work on Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday. It's been COLD though. Tuesday afternoon I hopped in the car, grabbe my bottle of water that had turned into 50% ice! We went to Milan, a city that's not very impressive. Spent the day there just walking around, seeing what there is to see.
Wednesday we had a full day of work. It started out kind of rough: trouble finding the school, terrible story telling on my part, just some disorganization in general. Things started looking up at lunchtime. The chef at the school made us a 3 course meal with salad, fruit, crepes, gnocchi, veal, chicken, rice, etc etc. I don't know why some of those things were even at a school to begin with. He did have one request, however. That we find out where he can buy a Queen (like the band) t-shirt. Yeah... it didn't take very long. After lunch we had a set of sketches that went great! The last one was WWE Smackdown! and the kids went ballistic. Of course when I came out as the Undertaker and said "I have very strong muscles" they were like 'yeah right'. It was a great way to end the day, though. Spent the evening at a posh bar full of beautiful people and free food. So, here's the bets deal in Italy - aperetivo. You buy a drink and then you just get a free buffet. We sat and ate for about an hour. Nothing was that great, but it was fun! Back at the hotel we had a visit from Grandma Skivo, my new favorite character.
Thursday we had a great show in the morning and I noticed that it was just starting to snow outside - first snow of the year in Bergamo. The kids were fun, but some slower than others. One kid, Marco, was hilarious, but he didn't know eyes, ears, nose, etc. Even after all the others would point to their eyes, he'd still be standing there pointing to his feet until I yelled his name. We had a nice plate of pastries from the teacher as a send-off treat and hit the road to Florence. Being that it was Thursday, Jackie immediately started stripping off layers, commencing the first of many Naked Thursdays. We all ended up in underwear & shoes. The real kicker was that the snow only got worse. On top of that, I had to get out and fill up with gas wearing my skivvies. The weather got worse, even though we were driving out of the storm. I just prayed that I wouldn't get in a wreck. It's alright if you slide off the road in a snow storm. Nobody gives you a break if you do it in your underwear, though. The truckers obviouly found it entertaining when traffic slowed to a crawl on the iced-over highway and obviously radioed ahead to all their buddies, whose windows were rolled down by the time we would drive past. It wouldn't have been a complete day without running around in the snow as well, so yeah... we did!
The snow turned to drizzle as we approached Florence. The hotel was great: heated towel racks AND a shower door! It was Australia Day, so Jackie took us out for Chinese and Gelato. We ended up at the Red Garter, a karaoke bar, with 2 other Aussies, who kept us entertained. I did a Neil Diamond tune right away to get the crowd going. Jackie met the italian John Travolta.
Friday we walked Florence. I bought some shoes and took my picture with the fake (but scale version) of the David statue. Saw the bridge that people live on. Ate some chesnuts. Florense is a really nice city, but full of English speaking (especially American) tourists, which was really strange to be around.
Made the rest of the drive down to Naples, acutally Castel San Giorgio - a small village near Pompei. We may get to Pompei today, but if not, we'll be back here soon and should have the chance to go. Had a wonderful pie last night. Things are well and now I should sign off.
Ciao
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