attitude shift in sesto calende

the day after my favorite "moment" of our adventure... i was paralyzed. ok, not really. but it sure was hard to walk, let alone bike! my butt was not happy. when i woke up that morning, after getting over the initial shock of my broken muscles, i thought to myself, "no more mountain passes!"

of course that wasn't the case. many mountains followed that first day. we were, however, able to scoot around a few via train. what a treat! anyway, back to the biking. within the next couple days we ended up in sesto calende, a supposedly gorgeous lake town, which was actually quite homely (not HOMEY). we quickly found our hostel, which was called la pagoda. la pagoda was run by a japanese/italian family. i do not need many words to describe it. the place was a dive. i'll spare you (but mostly me) the details. the only thing you need to know about it is that kate had dreams about mice running over the bed all night... it is unclear if this was a dream or not.

however, there was ONE good thing about sesto calende. the hometown pizza place we found (my mouth is watering as i type). not only was the pizza marvelous, the place was a wonderful little family joint! mom and dad prepared the pizzas while their two daughters (about 8 or 9 years old) took our orders and rang up the check. so cute. so italian. so perfect. we then enjoyed our pizzas along the lake shore as the sun went down. sesto wasn't all that bad... until we went to sleep!

the next morning we woke up and headed to genoa, one of my favorite stops of our trip. but you'll have to wait to hear about that :) in the meantime, think about this...

we were initially disappointed with sesto calende when we arrived. when we left, we had great memories and stories. we referred to la pagoda for the rest of the trip. for example, "at least this is better than that pagoda place!" and we smiled fondly. this is what i learned- my attitude toward something, however disappointing that something may be, will determine what i remember and how i remember it. somehow i managed to ride away from sesto calende with fond memories and i attribute that to my shift in attitude.

if you need a positive spin on something disappointing in your life, maybe all you need is an attitude shift. or as they say, the glass is always half full! oh the lessons of biking through italy ;)