vercelli

on our way to turino from varenna we made a pit stop in vercelli to spend a few hours with one of jeremy's mission companions, matteo simonccini.  it was a blast.

we hoped off of the train and started walking through the small town.  15 minutes later, we head a little "meep meep" and there he was.  we threw our bags into his little car and he took us to his parents home where his mom had prepared lunch for us.  this time, even less of the conversation was in english but the simonccini's were so animated, it wasn't hard to understand bits and pieces of the conversation.  we were laughing the whole time.  

at one point, matteo's dad took me into the family bathroom to look out the wimdow.  (i couldn't understand one word coming out of his mouth and yet it felt like i was having a normal conversation with my grandpa?)  he pointed out to the mountains in the distance and told me (as translated by jeremy) that the next time we were in italy, we would rent a camper and go up to those very mountains.  

i wholeheartedly agreed.

after lunch, there was a lot of huggin' and laughin' and we headed out into vercelli with matteo so he could give us the grand tour of his home town...

vercelli didn't have a ginormous lake or a world famous duomo, but just like livorno, it was really difficult to say arrivederci.