First Full Day - Sept 20

I was briefly awake to hear the church bell ring 2:00am but otherwise slept soundly through the night. I again heard the church bell at 6:00am and decided to get up and write a little before dad awoke. Around 8:00am I decided to head to the shower and dad awakened as I entered his room where the shower is. We were ready to head to breakfast with Vittorio and Giusseppina's around 8:30am. Vittoria had readied the typical bread and cheese breakfast as Giusseppina was a physical therapy for her knee replacement.

It was a wonderful day of visits including with Rein, Marco and Emma, and Claudio and his wife Teresita. In the evening we drove to Someo (a few miles up the valley) to visit the cemetary where many related Tognazzini's are buried. We made our way to an ATM in Ascona, stopped at a local market and arrived back at G & V's to find Fernando there. We had a great visit with him extending until we headed to bed at about 10:40pm. We both were ready for the pillows when we finally turned the lights out about 11pm.

Dad did an amazing job with the language -- especially considering he has had little use for it in the many years since his last visit here. We enjoyed good laughs all around comparing English to Italian on words like stubborn and jokes. Thankfully, Rein and Fernando are expert English speakers and their visits gave me an opportunity to understand every word. With the others I increased my knowledge of Italian as a good listener.

On a personal side, it still seems a little like I'm living a dream being here with dad...and driving around and seeing again the beautiful, movie-like scenery -- only adds to dream-like qualities.