Our trip to Italy was GREAT! Nick is working on posting his photos and we\u2019re both working on our trip blog. \u00a0 Before we left for Italy, \u00a0however, we were skeptical about many things.<\/p>\n
1) Q: Should we have gone now when it is not travel season or waited until spring?\u00a0A: \u00a0We absolutely did the right thing by going now. Italy was not crowded with tourists, so it was easy to get into all the places\u00a0we wanted to visit.<\/p>\n
2) Q: How would I be able to sleep through Nick’s snoring? A: I didn’t\u00a0sleep at all on our\u00a0\u00a0first night there.\u00a0On the following nights\u00a0I tried to fall asleep before Nick\u00a0did. Most of the time, that worked. When his snoring awakened me,\u00a0I worked very hard to go back to sleep, and often succeeded.<\/p>\n
3) Q: Would we have anything in common with the other travelers? A: They were absolutely wonderful people! They were sympathetic with Nick’s recovery process, and many were recovering from issues of their own. Some had had recent hip or knee replacements, one had myasthenia gravis, and \u00a0another, Parkinson\u2019s. The more able bodied helped those who were less so. Seventeen\u00a0of them were retired teachers from the Troy area, where Nick went to college, so they had much in common with both of us!<\/p>\n
The oldest\u00a0member of our group (in chronological age but not in spirit) was 93. He had been a bomber pilot in WW II. He bought a house in Malibu for $500,000 and sold it for $13,000,000 as a tear-down! His goal is to see the world either for the first time, or to revisit favorite destinations that he and his late wife \u00a0had seen together. The last time the two of them were in Rome was after WW II when they went with their friends Burt Lancaster and his wife. Among his recent destinations have been Ecuador (Galapagos Islands), Peru (Macchu Picchu), and Antarctica!<\/p>\n
4) Q: Would Nick be able to eat the food? A:\u00a0He doesn’t have his\u00a0appetite back yet,\u00a0and his food needs to be very moist because of his lack of saliva. However, he learned that adding olive oil to dry foods made them easier for him to chew and swallow. He ate most of the pastas easily.\u00a0Bread was too dry. Eventually he tried the pizza. Although we saw thick crusted pizza,\u00a0\u00a0the pizza crust was typically very thin. He was able to eat the thin crusted variety. He could eat some of the\u00a0salads if he could dress them with olive oil\u00a0but without\u00a0\u00a0vinegar. The dessert\u00a0was\u00a0often fruit salad, which is far too acetic for him. All in all, he enjoyed many of the meals and was only unable to eat a few of them,\u00a0after\u00a0which we searched for gelato. Nick started by\u00a0choosing\u00a0milder flavors such as vanilla, but he eventually ventured to pistacchio and chocolate. So delicious! Once he had mini-cannoli\u2026\u00a0fantastico! The ricotta filling\u00a0was so creamy. On the other hand, when it came to Italian buffalo milk \u00a0mozzarella vs. American \u00a0cow’s milk mozzarella, we preferred the American kind.<\/p>\n
So after two weeks in Italy, Nick gained a pound. He\u00a0\u00a0used my pedometer every day to track his steps. He was thrilled to reach 1000 steps at first, but eventually 5000 steps was the norm, with some days surpassing 7000 steps.<\/p>\n
I’ll be back with doctor\u2019s reports and the links to our photos and blog when they are ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our trip to Italy was GREAT! Nick is working on posting his photos and we\u2019re both working on our trip blog. \u00a0 Before we left for Italy, \u00a0however, we were skeptical about many things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nicks-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}