Slovenia Italy Tour 2019 - 1

Dad/David said this would be the best way to let you all know how our Salt Lake Singers tour went, so here goes nothing...

We had our Bon Voyage concert Thursday night, Sept. 20, shaky as it was. The choir had just over 2 months to get ready, and some really took that time seriously. Others didn't, so they polished their music on tour. :)

One of the best things about this whole thing was the Aunt Lynnie went with us. Here are a few of the pics from the Bon Voyage concert at St. Olaf church in Bountiful.

The concert was a bit rough, but went well enough.

We left the next morning early. The three of us flew into Rome for a 5-day adventure before the rest of the choir came the following Thursday morning.

We were able to get to the Rome temple in time for our reservation to do an endowment session that early evening. It was a beautiful experience to hear it all in Italian - it just rolls of their tongue so easily. ;)

 

I took  several videos of the Visitors' Center  during the evening light so we'd have some idea about lighting when the choir sings there before our concert (I know I just switched tense in there, but I couldn't figure how to say it...).  I did take a pic of the waiting area in the temple - give you a small idea of what it's like.

It's such a beautiful place.We drove to Montecatini Terme where the choir will stay. We hadn't seen the hotel yet - when we came on the advance tour in April they had booked a pretty spartan hotel for the choir. We got back and asked them to see if they could get a different place. The "new" hotel was actually a bit of a charming old throw-back. There were these 2 old guy mannequins in the lobby we couldn't resist. It was later that we saw the sign not to touch the "manikins."

You felt like you walked into your grandmothers tapestry-laden living room. It was charming, though dated.  We were happy with it, and felt good about bringing the choir there later the following week.

 One of the highlights of this time with just the 3 of us was listening to the GPS say the names of the cities. Montecatini Terme was "Montecadeney Term" The other hilarious one was Pisa Nord - North Pisa - that came out as "Peesanord.")  I guess you had to be there. We laughed ourselves silly.

Sunday morning we drove to Pisa for church - the branch there was a delight. These twin sisters sang a duet, the talks were in Italian. :)  It was a wonderful sacrament meeting. We visited with the twins after, then headed to see the leaning tower.  I guess it's not the only leaning tower in Italy, but it is the most famous. Just ask all the Asians taking selfies.

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After Pisa we drove to La Spezia and took a train to Cinque Terre - Vernazza specifically. These 5 small towns are built into the cliffs on the coast, and it's very difficult to have a car there. Trains stop at each village, and there are paths to hike from one to another. It was raining, and the paths were to dangerous , so we didn't have that adventure. We stayed in Vernazza for the afternoon/evening exploring. It was really something.

Vernazza was a beautiful place!  On to Lake Como...