A few days ago we enjoyed a really fun day, with some American friends visiting Soriano - in fact, they're the people who told us about Soriano in the first place years ago. So the four of us crammed ourselves in to our little Fiat 500 convertible and put the top down, to head over to the nearby town of Canepina on this beautifully overcast day. The weather was cool and breezy, no direct sun, with a droplet of rain falling on you every 5 minutes… Perfect convertible weather, as far as these two “pazzi americani” (crazy Americans) are concerned.

This morning we played for an event in the town piazza. We were playing “Il Canto degli Italiani” (the Italian national anthem) with a choir of children from town. Our mayor spoke, along with other public officials, and the leaders of fire and police forces.

Whew! It has been another week of SCORCHING temps here in Italia. We have a very full roster of itinerary clients, and a couple of research trips of our own coming up; so we have been just sitting in the house chained to a computer all day.

Having all this work is not that bad (at this time of year), because it’s too damn hot to do anything outside anyway. But we both get stir crazy after 8 hours or so of screen time, and after a couple of days I lose track of what day it is!!

It looked like we were wrapping things up by this weekend, so we did a last minute search and booked ourselves another day at an agriturismo/restaurant that has a pool, about an hour from our house.

A year after the pandemic lockdowns in Italy lifted and travel was again legal, one of our trips was to Italy’s northern Lakes. We spent a few nights in a tiny town right on Lago d’Iseo, usually bypassed altogether by travelers.

Walking to dinner one night, on the one street in town, we came across this “Balcony Angel” on her terrace, eating an ice cream cone…