Festa della Liberazione.....April 25th

Waking up to dramatically clear skies this morning........we continue to be overwhelmed by the physical beauty of this place.  We have become adjusted to our surroundings, but a day never goes by without reminding ourselves how special this experience is.  We also noted at the breakfast table that tomorrow will be the halfway point of our fellowship stay.  I think we are now caught in the daily flow of our experience which is allowing our time to move much faster than we would like.  The comfort level and growing friendships accelerate our relative ease and sense of place.  We need to try to slow things down a bit!

After breakfast this morning, we went with Robin (a writer) to the central Piazza Aprile XXV in Bogliasco.  Today is Liberation Day in Italy, a national holiday. We walked to the church and piazza where we understood ceremonies would be held but after sitting patiently in our pews with a just a handful of local people around us, realized we must have misunderstood something because nothing was happening either there or in the piazza by the war memorial.  

Disappointed, we left the church and were just looking around the piazza when a very elderly woman approached us, speaking in Italian.  We pieced together most of what she was saying - which was so sad to learn.  She explained how during the war the Nazis had lined up local men against one of the piazza walls, shot them & tossed their bodies over the walls into the sea below.  It is the same piazza wall where we watch children kick their soccer balls against during the afternoon play time around 5:00.  

As she explained this history, she emphasized the brutality of it all by striking her cane repeatedly against one of the wooden benches in the piazza.  She clearly still had very strong emotions about this horror.  Her spirit, however, was not broken and she continued to elaborate that most of her family had moved to Australia in the intervening years in order to find work.

She was so sweet, holding our hands in hers and when we said goodbye, blew kisses to us all. She said that after a visit to the church, she was headed to a small trattoria adjacent to the plaza because they helped the older people of Bogliasco by giving them much food for very little money!

This beautiful little piazza, so full of life every day and the heart of the village of Bogliasco, means much more to us now that know a little of its poignant history. Today the wall is covered with ceramic plaques, the primary memorial commemorating the annual Liberation Celebration (april 25, 1945), with 31 adjacent smaller, but quite beautiful, individual markers in honor of the men of Bogliasco who died during the occupation.

La Mattina nella Citta

Could not resist an afternoon drive......

what were we thinking on a holiday!

Actually, aside from a massive traffic back-up, it was a great trip! Camogli e molto bello

Leaving in late afternoon, after siesta, we drove to Camogli, about 7 miles east along the coast.  The drive down was beautiful & parking was amazingly easy. We walked all along the seaside promenade running along the beach & harbor. The cafes were crowded, children playing soccer in every open space....... and everywhere people eating ice cream! The gelato is so unbelievably good, we could eat it every day. Today it was strawberry & lemon (per me) and pistachio & chocolate fondant for Fiske.

After a few hours we headed back for dinner and encountered the worst traffic jam ever, as everyone was headed home from the long weekend at the same time! It took almost two hours to go just seven miles back to Bogliasco.  We finally arrived at the tail end of dinner!

e tutte le persone!