AJ's Online Journal

Italia- Campioni Del Mondo!

Two weeks in Italia are in the books! It was a good holiday...even though it was HOT. "How hot was it?", you ask. Well, it was so hot that we had to cool ourselves by the fire. Ok, that was pretty weak. Forgive me. In any case, let me see if I can sit here and hit the highlights of the trip.
We made it to the airport in plenty of time and of course our flight was delayed. While wasting time in Gatwick airport I decided it would be a fine time to hit the old McDonalds. Hey, I take American fast food anytime I can get it! And mmmmmmm was it good! It would be the last non-Italian meal I would have for 2 weeks. While in line I was holding Ella and realized she was really hot."How hot was she?", you ask. Ok, not doing that again... she was running a fever. She seemed fine and acted fine so we gave her some drugs and left it at that. Baby drugs that is... we didn't give Ella a crack pipe or anything and say, "Smoke up!" We have a rule... no crack until she's at least 5. When we finally arrived in Florence we quickly realized they had lost Julie's dads bag. Luckily it only took a week, 3 trips to the airport, and hundreds of phone calls and emails to track it down. Julies parents were traveling with us since they were already in London for Wimbledon. We were meeting the rest of the family in the Tuscany Villa we had rented where we would spend the first week with family before departing on our own to explore Italy for a week. The first night we were there Ella's fever got worse and she became more noticeably upset by the whole matter. Since she didn't seem to have any other symptoms we decided to check her teeth and sure enough she had 2 new ones trying to break on through to the other side. The next day the fever got even more worse and remembering back when I was a kid and had a super high fever I did what they did to me. We gave Ella a cold bath. Now this came under MANY protests that it was a mean thing to do, but to be honest she was in the bath like 3 minutes tops. When I was a kid they made me stand in a shower for 20 minutes with ice cold water. At least I wasn't that mean! And just like it did for me when I was little... the fever broke and Ella started feeling better. Well, until that night. Where do I start with this story? Ok, so the house had a pool table. One of those large old fashioned tables with super small pockets. The kind that you can play 1 game for hours because you have to be perfect to get the balls in the pockets. The problem was that the table was like maybe 2 feet smaller than the room it was in. Needless to say you couldn't really play. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. They had sawed a pool stick in half to help battle the problem but it was as accurate as a blind drunk guy aiming for the urinal. The only person that liked the table was Ella. We put her on the table and she would roll the balls around and put them all in the rack and stuff. I know what you are probably thinking... why let a baby play on a table? Isn't that dangerous? Well, yes it is... yes it is. In our defense we had a person stationed on each side of the table and we were keeping a close eye on her. Julies sister left for a second and I immediately thought to myself, "I better go over to that side and play a zone defense". I take maybe a half of a step and notice Ella standing by the open edge so I increase my pace. I take maybe another half step and see her to start to lose her balance. I then start to bolt around the table... after all it's a pretty huge table. I get about 6 feet from her and I can see she is about to take a Nestea plunge off the table and onto the concrete floor. At this point I panic and scream "Oh Shit!" and dive over the corner of the table to try and catch her. I stretched out like I was making the winning TD catch in the end zone of some football game. I was in midair when I caught Ella in my arms and I must say I was pretty amazed. Then I thought to myself, "Hmmmm now whats going to break our fall?" My right elbow took most of the weight with my knees taking up the slack. The problem was that I had one arm under her knees and one arm behind her back so when we landed her head snapped back and hit the floor. Now if my arms had been fatter that wouldn't have happened. Another bad thing about being slim! Luckily she was ok. Just a small bump on the head. I came away with some pretty nice looking bruises though. But alas this isn't a story about Ella... it's about Italy.
The house we stayed in was pretty nice. 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, pool table, swimming pool, and lots of space. The only problems were that the house had this amazing view but because it was summer they keep the windows boarded up to keep the house cool. Italians don't believe in air conditioning I guess? And as hot as it was the pool was ice frickin' cold. I don't think I swam for more than 15 minutes the whole time. We did get out almost everyday to visit some of the local towns and do some wine tasting at some various vineyards. That's one of my favorite things to do... that was the main reason we decided to holiday in Italy this year. And that's probably the reason we got married in Napa as well. We're just a couple of wino's! We only brought back 5 bottles of wine but we could have brought back much more. We went through a lot just sitting around the house at night playing cards and talking. The main town we were near was called Greve in Chianti. It was a town of maybe 10,000.... tops. The night of the World Cup Julies dad and sister and I decided to go into Greve and see if we could find a place to watch the big championship game. Oddly enough everyone gave us different advice to where we could actually watch it so my idea was to follow this guy who was walking down the street carrying an enormous Italian flag. So followed we did. Eventually he disappeared into some generic building. We stood out front like, "What do we do now?" Then some guy says something in Italian and the only thing we recognize is the word "Football". So we shake our heads yes and say, "Football". He then takes us into the building. It turns out that the building is the towns assembly hall slash movie theatre slash stage. They had the game projected on the screen so most of the locals came to watch it on a huge screen in nice comfy plush seats... with air conditioning! We were definitely the only tourists in the room and when Italy won it was like being in the stadium itself. Fireworks were set off (even in the theatre) people storming the streets cheering, cars honking, and everyone chanting "Viva Italia". I must say it was a lot of fun. Italians are very passionate people and it was nice to be among them when they won. I must say that I really like their way of speaking as well. It seems every word has a vowel on the end just so they can make every sentence sing songy. And add all of their conversational hand gestures its like an art form in language.

So the first week ended and everyone except Julies parents left to go home. We all got in the car and drove up to Verona where we had tickets to see the opera Aida. We stopped in Modena (Home of Balsamic Vinegar) and Bologna (Not the home of Oscar Meyer sadly). Both were typical cities and not among my favorites on the trip however. Verona was very cool though. The city seemed old and quaint. They even have an old mini coliseum that dates back to the first century. It just so happened that this is where they had the opera. It was a VERY big deal as the town was full of people there to see the summer opera. Tickets were like 200 bucks a piece so it better have been a big deal. I have to thank Julies dad for picking up the tickets though. He is the ticket master! He's the one that got me 2 tickets for every Wrigley field playoff game in 2003. In any case, the Opera was HUGE! They had a 50 foot tall revolving pyramid, 20 foot high Egyptian statues, and a cast of almost 400. It was very very very cool.... even though I don't speak Italian. Luckily I knew the story so I could guess what was happening. Verona is also famous for Romeo and Juliette, which you can go see Juliette's house and even her tomb. We went to the house and saw the balcony and all of that. The funny thing is that there is a statute of Juliette in the courtyard of her house that it's traditional to go up and rub her breast for luck in love. I even had Julie take a picture for your enjoyment.

You can see by the wear and tear that I was not the only one doing this! I know what all of you are thinking! Anyhoo, from Verona we headed to Milan to take Julies parents to the airport. We did spend a day and night exploring the city center. It's a big city though... I much more enjoyed the little places. Like for example our next stop... The Cinque Terre. It means the 5 villages and it's basically a place on the Italian Riviera that is along a stretch of mountainous coast where people built these villages long ago. The terrain is so tough that up until 10 or so years ago the only way to visit these 5 villages was by boat. They eventually put a train in that goes straight through the mountains making it much easier for tourists to visit. You still can't even drive into 4 of the 5 villages. We actually stayed in a great B&B in Levanto, which is the closest place you can go to train into the Cinque Terre.

We spent the first of 3 days sitting on the beach. Ella didn't really want to go into the water she just wanted to sit with a bucket full of water just splashing around. Later that day we packed Ella in a baby backpack and put her on my back for a 3 hour hike from Lavanto to Monterossa. It was really hot and we basically had to go up and over some pretty big mountains, but we made it! We even helped a lost Italian family make their way back down the hill. They had made the mistake of trying to make the hike without water. We finished the hike, had dinner, and trained back. That 3 hour hike took 4 minutes on a train. Sad huh? The next few days we stuck to training it to the villages. As the owner of the B&B put it, "You on holiday and you walk to Montorossa? Crazy!"

After our stay in the Cinque Terre we packed up to head back to Florence since our flight was out of there 2 days later. We stopped in Pisa to look at the leaning tower. And just so everyone knows... it leans. In Florence we shopped for 2 days and just hung out and enjoyed the last few moments of our vacation. All in all it was a nice break. It seemed like we were gone a month. It's nice to be home. Until next time... Ciao!