"La fame e' una brutta cosa."

On Easter morning, I put on my nice button-down shirt and brown shoes, grabbed the cookies I had bought for a gift, went to the station to catch an early train, watched the train pull away, bought another ticket, and got on a second train an hour later to meet my relatives in Milan.  Ettore (EH-tor-ray, the Italian version of "Hector") and his siblings are my third cousins; we share a common pair of great-great-grandparents (my mother's father and his father's mother are cousins).  I stayed the weekend in the apartment outside Milan where he lives with his mother, sister, and brother.

Now, having visited more than enough churches in these few months, and after having experienced the Palm Sunday from hell in Seville, I expected Easter with the relatives to be a major affair.  It wasn't.  I was overdressed for the occasion, which was merely a standard Sunday meal for them with some special desserts and special guests (Ettore's cousin Antonio (also my third cousin), Antonio's girlfriend, and myself).  My family's Easter in America is a much bigger affair (though our typical Sunday dinners are much less significant).

Ettore's mother (who I am not related to) has on their fridge the following card:

Hunger is an ugly thing.  She applies this philosophy to everyone who enters her domain.  Everything you've ever heard about Italian mothers is true, if not an understatement.  I ate myself sick, with her constant encouragement, and then collapsed into a two-hour food nap.

That night Ettore and his sister took me on a tour of Milan, but it was dark and rainy.  We toured Milan again on Tuesday, so I'll post pictures of the city then.

On Monday (what the Italians call "Pasquetta," "little Easter") we drove through the winding mountain highways to Genoa, where we met Antonio, his girlfriend, and my other third cousin Gaetano.  Genoa was nice: there is a substantial marina there, and the whole city has a significant crush on hometown hero Christopher Columbus.

CASTLE!  YES!  To get up the hill to the castle, we took a really neat elevator that moved into the hill horizontally on a track before being pulled up by a magnet.

From Genoa we went to a nearby beach town.  Gelato may have been involved.

At one point, while we were standing on a rocky ledge near the shore, an unusually large wave struck, showering my back and making me damp for the next half hour or so.

We went back to Genoa and went to a bar for aperitivi- a drink + cold food deal that my friends and I often take advantage of in Bologna for dinner.  After we ate that, we got into the cars again.  After a while, I finally asked where we were going.  Dinner.  Apparently, aperativi weren't enough.

We went to a great seafood restaurant they knew of in Genoa.  Here's a shot of everyone I was with:

From left to right, that's Antonio's girlfriend Antonella, Antonio, Ettore's sister Gabriella, Gaetano, and Ettore.  Everyone pictured except Antonella is a third cousin of mine.

They ordered a massive mixed seafood dish for us...

L

La fame e' una brutta cosa.  (We shared that.)

We drove home to Milan after midnight, speeding and swerving through empty cliffside highways, with a few glasses of wine in Ettore's system.

The next day we explored Milan in the daylight (though they never woke me up, and waited for me to rise about noonish).  We visited a nice park, the outside of a major castle, and climbed up to the top of the gothic-style Duomo:

The Duomo was the first thing I was allowed to pay for all weekend, and only because Ettore ran out of cash and I quickly took advantage of the situation and bought the tickets.  He seemed ashamed of the incident.

And that's all I have to say about that.  My parents are here this week so expect reports on that soon, plus I've got plans in the pipeline for Cinque Terre and London!