Day 9 - First Weekend

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 0

Slept in this morning which was a lovely feeling.  I've enjoyed going to class, but I haven't enjoyed having to wake up to an alarm.  Especially not every day this week.  It felt too much like being back in the workforce.

After a leisurely morning, I wandered out to go the local flea market.  It was lot like the non-food part of the Preston Market or the Queen Vic Market, but a pleasant way to spend the morning all the same.  The only obvious difference was that there were a lot of stalls selling fabric and sewing notions.  It must be common to sew your own clothes here.  I bought myself a pair of (purple) slippers.  The floors here are wooden and are a little bit cool first thing in the morning.

Across the road from the flea market was a park and all around the perimeter there were food stalls.  There were stalls selling traditional Indian food, American food and French food.  There were also stalls for Sicilian, Neapolitan, Pugliese, Calabrese, Genovese and Sardinian food.  There is no such thing as "Italian" food in Italy.  I checked them all out and tried various samples.  I did this all in Italian.  Even though I ended up buying a canolo I had't planned on purchasing I still consider this a success.  I also spent some time listening to a seller of honey talking about bees.  I understood about 70% of the words but I just couldn't understand what they all meant when put together in sentences.  My Italian is still very basic.

After snacking I went to the book market where I ended up buying 3 books.  One was a fantasy novel by Andre Norton with a title I didn't recognise.  I was excited to discover something new by her as I thought I had read everything she had written.  Sadly, when I got back I checked online and discovered they just changed the title for the Italian market and I have read it.  Even more sadly, it isn't very good.  I also bought a murder mystery by a Mary Roberts Rinehart.  She is a contemporary of Agatha Christie. There were plenty of books by Agatha Christie available but I thought it would be more interesting to read something where I didn't already know whodunnit.  The last book I bought was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.  As it is written for 13 year olds and up, I should be able to follow it without too much difficulty.

Next stop was for lunch.  I went to a restaurant in a more touristy part of the city, Mangiassieme.  It had a very reasonably priced fixed price menu.  However, after I was seated I found out that this was only available to parties of 2 or more.   I was rather peeved, especially as I ended up ordering an entree, a pasta dish and a coffee while the couple at the table next to me just had one pizza between the two of them.  I spent more than they did.   My entree was prosciutto with mozzarella, which had clearly been prepared earlier and kept in the fridge until it was wanted, as it was stone cold.  I suspect it would have been quite tasty if it had been at room temperature.  My pasta dish was gramigna with cream and sausage.  This is apparently a classic shape in this region.  This dish was very good although the shape of the pasta is a little off-putting.

After lunch, I fought off the desire to have a post-lunch nap and went to the science museum at the Palazzo Poggi instead.  It had a fascinating collection of exhibits.  The most gruesome was a room full of lifesized models of uteruses (uterii?) each with a 9 month old fetus ready to be born that were from a medical school.   One half of the uterus was missing so you could see how the baby was positioned.  There were several dozen and each had the baby in an abnormal position.  There was also a model with a removable, jointed baby that could be used by midwives and obstetric students to practice on.  Seeing all these made it seem like a miracle that any woman managed to give successfully give birth to a live baby and survive the experience.

I then retreated to my apartment as it had started to rain.  I decided to watch some TV to practice my Italian some more.  Everything is dubbed into Italian but I thought if I could watch something with the subtitles on, ideally in English but even Italian would help, it would be educational.  However, I couldn't find any program which had subtitles.  The TV is a smart TV with Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube apps but no keyboard, just a standard remote, so there is no (obvious) way to log into any streaming account. There is a free streaming service on the TV called Rakuten.  It is either Japanese or Chinese as is most of the content.  I'm not sure.  I ended up watching an action movie as you don't really need to understand the dialogue to follow their plots.  Watching all these Asian actors seemingly say all their lines in Italian was a little odd.  I'm not sure if this will help me get fluent but it is an undemanding way to pass the time.