Lido

Lido, an island of Venice is a long thin strip with beach on both lengths, its at the end of the vaperatto (boat bus) line 1 not far from the gardens of the biennale. Jayne and l were kindly invited to stay a night there with our friends Nicola and Carlotta. They had organized an architectural based forum at the Excelsior Hotel for 350 people, it was quite an event over three days, lots of discussions, one on one meetings and main forums each night. Now we only came for a night and spent sometime around the pool and walking on the beach, but that evening there were drinks in which we met some incredible people, Alex, the dean of architecture at the Royal Academy of Art, Nadir from a very clever company called Transsolar, that used natural heat/cool in commercial and residential use, Riccardo who is the chief designer at Nicola, Carlotta's magazine "The Plan, and a good friend of theirs, Carlo who works in the building industry. We visited the Chinese and Russian pavilions, and the architectural biennale, which opens this week.
Ilse and Swen our Belgium friends were also there, sadly they leave soon to China, but it was great to have sometime with them quietly, and in Venice before they go.
That night we had a lovely dinner in the hotel with some of these people and others from all around the world, all who had come to be part of the forum.
Lido is a brilliant place to stay in Venice, as it is quite and yet close by, and a great place to escape at the end of the day the maddening crown of Venice, the nice thing about the Excelsior is that it has its own boat that shuttles to San Marco, and it is very stylish, l felt rather important in it! On the beach in front of the hotel is a long beach with incredible canvas huts that you rent for the day (200 euro), these huts have deck chairs, lounge beds and changing areas, a home away from home, and they are perfectly positioned along the beach with bougainvillea growing around them. The beach itself faces onto the adriatic, and so is not the best, no surf, the water is clean but not always clear, and the sand is more like silt, but we know that, and the view and the surroundings  compensate for that.
The following day we went to Venice to see the pavilions, and ended up with Riccardo and Carlo, at Harry's having bellini's, and then to Fortuna Museum to see a Dora Marr exhibition and some others. Later in the day we drove back with Carlo, having a great conversation.
Both Carlotta and Carlo have been most helpful in helping us get the boys into a local italian school , called Malpighi.

On the hotel boat, feeling great

Jayne celebrating having time away

Beach infront of hotel, note the beach box's

DAY TO DAY STUFF IN BOLOGNA - BY JAYNE

As the school year draws to a close, at the International School we get an extra two weeks of school, as Italian school finished earlier and all the italian kids are off to the many campi estivi ( summer camps ).
We will be starting a new phase in our sojourn in Italy, not a sojourn for the ragazzi though, they will start at the Italian school ' Malpighi ' in September, so they are busy with their tutor Nicola twice a week, Poverini!!
We will miss some aspects of the Bubble, oh, I mean the International school. We have met some great people there, in the early days of being here and trying to figure things out without many language skills it was easy being surrounded by english speakers.
Now after three years its finally time to fly the coop. We are ready for the next challenge.
Not sure if the boys are though, Ewan has been rather grumpy of late, and the playstation is foremost in his thoughts as an escape I presume.
Although he does now have very straight and perfect teeth after his braces have just been removed by our wonderful italian orthodontist Christina, like all good dentists she likes a chat, the fortunate thing is she chats to me and Im not in the chair, about where we are going and where we should go on our travels.
This school year Ewan was lucky to have a wonderful piano teacher, Nora from Portland, Oregon who came here with her family, Liz, Alex and Sophie on sabbatical. She is now going back to the US, we will miss her a lot, she became a wonderful friend, Ill miss our cups of tea and chats about music and her events of the day writing her book on Medieval music and Boccaccio,  prior to Ewans lesson.
Also Ilse and Sven from Belgium, who we came to know over the year are off to Shanghai. We wish they weren't leaving. We will miss them too and Ilse's laugh.
I suppose that is the life at the International School, people come and people go, we have met another great couple Gina and Stefan, so will enjoy them whilst they too are here.
Luckily for the boys their classmates in the boy dept are all Italian and they will remain in Bologna so they will hopefully catch up with the three boys in their class Michelangelo, Gianandrea e Matteo.
The new school they will have 100 kids in their year so potentially lots of friends to choose from.
Hunter has really got into world Cup soccer fever and has been up most nights to all hours watching, along with us after two 230am nights on the weekend. He went to Michelangelo's for a sleeepover with Ewan to watch Italy and England, Ully, Mickeys mum told me Hunter was the only one who would'nt wear the italian jersey, I think he was still upset after Australia lost the other night to Chile.

The joys of the bureaucracy of Italy we have been waiting nearly two months for our Permesso di Soggiorno, which is our permission card to stay in the country, I normally would'nt stress over these matters, but apparently you can't travel in Europe without it, and we plan on doing a lot of plane travel in the holidays, hence my concern if it interferes with flitting around the place.
There are now local police at the Questura, and I thought it seemed more efficient when we went to do our paperwork and fingerprints, no stupid questions like Residenza Elettiva? , non ho capito!!!I think they seem to think why on earth would you elect to come here voluntarily, siete Matti!!
As they say, all good things take time, not excluding the permesso, we need it to stay in this wonderful country despite its bureaucracy.
Well the skies are a bit grey today with rain and humidity, it has put a dent in my trips to the tennis club now the pool is open its very relaxing by the pool with the cicadas and loving my sessions with my trainer Fiorenza who is helping me to get my knee stronger after my skiing accident in January. Still can't run for a bus though, luckily I don't take the bus.
Art Class has wound up for the year with a morning of 'plein air' drawing at the Lido di Casalecchio now dont get excited the Lido is not what you think, it was lovely in the shade drawing a structure on the riverbank but its basically a park with people bringing along their banana lounges to sunbake along a murky river, bit strange.... I remember when I first started going to art classes with Antonio two years ago as an excuse to improve my italian, as I am no artist.  I bought along some friends from the International School and it started a group of us that has expanded and now English seems to be the flavour down our end of the studio. I do love this morning with cups of tea and cake and Cookies that the die hard Italian Signora's have baked, that have been frequenting for years.
My last picture was of a sculpture at Certosa Cemetery, I think this was a dark period in my life just after my skiing accident, will now move on to brighter things after the holidays with new inspiration after we will have visited Basel, Puglia, Spain, Paris and London.