Arriving in Treviso about 6 hours later than we had planned, Pete (as I call Pierpaolo) was there awaiting us. With big hugs and the Italian style kiss of right then left cheek, we loaded into his car and headed straight to his parents home for a huge Italian lunch (our first meal of the day!). The car ride was spent reminiscing about a trip we took with a big group of people to Colorado and then we got to catch each other up on all the gossip and news that we've been hearing about all of our old IHouse friends.
Arriving in the town Cedon, Pete took us first to his sister's apartment. Which, by the way, is gorgeous and huge and we got all to ourselves during our visit because she was on holiday! Ah it was so nice, a perfect peaceful place to get to go home to! We were already feeling spoiled.
We cleaned up quickly and then Pete took us over to his parents house to meet the family and eat! With hugs and introductions to his brother Stefano, mother, father and grandmother (more on her later!) Pierpaolo translated the question-and-answer session about our trip as we made our way right to the dinner table. This was the first of many absolutely incredible meals that we got to enjoy per Pete's mom and there will be a post just on these meals coming soon!
Now, the language barrier made it tough for everyone to understand each other, but Pete is a great translator, Stephano (the brother) understood basic English, and then we added in a lot of hand gestures and some Spanish (many similar words with only a slight difference in pronunciation).
Pete's dad has his few English lines, "Hello", "How are you?" and "Nice to meet you." which he always says to you, and then keeps going through the phrases about 3 more times before he moves to Italian, giving you some pats on the back and filling the room with lots of deep Italian laughter.
His mother is another story, with no English at all she, usually the director of every movement in the house, had a tough time getting control and having everyone sit down. But boy she is in charge, something evident by the command in her voice that puts the three men into immediate action when she starts pointing her finger.
Now, granny was the highlight of all of this. At 90 years of age she doesn't do particularly well with change, new people, or remembering things so when we happened to sit down with them at the dinner table she went into a frenzy of questions and pointing, joking and all sorts of Italian babbling. It was completely, amazingly hilarious (or maybe amazing and hilarious). She was a total character this woman!! First she freaked out because Jackie wasn't wearing any shoes-she even told Pete to go get a pair of his for the poor gilr, "what was she doing without shoes anyway"! Of course we understood nothing but could hear the demands in her voice as she asked who and what in the world were these two girls.
The family likes to joke with granny, so in the numerous occasions we met (only the last 2 encounters with her did she remember having met us before) we were from America, Africa, Ukrain. Or we were going to be staying in her room with her, or maybe that we were both Pete's girlfriend. Oh any number of stories they told her, sometimes she'd seem to believe it and others she knew they were messing with her. Anyway, she was completely and absolutely spectacular. A fiery soul, a mouth like you wouldn't believe, very agile, and a total jokester.
And guess what, on the last day when we visited for lunch she remembered who we were :)
So many thanks to the Cendon family for their incredible kindess, their food, giving us keys to their home, and completely spoiling us with their generosity and pizzaz!
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