Church of the Holy Introvert: Emilia Romagna, day 1

In the last few days the apartment got a halfway-acceptable straightening, I cleaned the floors, and Dan cleaned the bathrooms. So some progress was made on the house front. On the weekend I did some urgent work projects and tried to get some quality time with both kids, because then this morning I was off again, feeling super mommy-guilt-y and also kinda panicky because...I'm going on a trip with 44 Swiss retirees?

Ok to be fair there are a smattering of other under-65s, so maybe only 40 Swiss retirees.

But still I feel kinda silly.

Though on the other hand, it's hard to argue with 5 days of real Italian food.

Today the whole coach full of us left Zurich promptly at 8:10 am, stopped at the Gotthard rest stop for coffee and a peek at my very favorite rest stop chapel, crossed the border in time for a 5-course lunch, visited a Cistercian abbey, and arrived at our hotel in Correggio in time for a drink and 4-course dinner.

They may have to roll me home.

The interfaith...chapel? at the last rest stop before the Gotthard tunnel on the Swiss side. I think I've talked about this before. The "stained glass" windows are made from broken bottles sandwiched between clear glass panes. Pure genius. Here are some better pictures of this.

The beginning of lunch. If I'm going to become a professional travel photographer I am going to have to learn to take pictures of my food before I start eating it. The glass on the right contains Campari jell-o (!) - it arrived inverted over the ham. All of it was delicious.

Approach to the Abbey of Chiaravalle della Colomba. You probably already know all about the Cistercians? But just in case you are like me and missed all of European history, they are a religious order that spread rapidly across Europe in the 12th century, famously aided by the mystic Bernard of Clairvaux.