Florence, Italy - Feb 18, 2018

Our first full day in Italy, we woke up to a dreary, overcast day. The birds were still happily singing a very beautiful song outside of our window. We drove into Florence - accidentally utilizing some of the back roads instead of where the GPS navigated us. The Tuscan countryside is very beautiful with rolling hills, beautiful Tuscan villas and very few trees to block the visibility.

We arrived in Florence and found a parking spot outside of the old town Florence. As we were walking, we were searching for coffee for me. Coffee is tricky in Italy and I never really mastered it. Next time, I will know some Italian - at least enough to properly order coffee. I did manage to order 2 macchiatos, but they were really tiny and cute. I could have used about 5 of them. The coffee is very good, with a smooth flavor.

Cute cobblestone street - this was our first of many

A lot of the old cities have walled exteriors with a huge gated entryways. These areas are park of the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato) where only those with permits can drive. We had read that you do not want to drive in the ZTL without a permit, as the fines are very steep.

Porto Romano. This is the gate into Florence - compare to the size of that car

Porto Romano

Roundabouts are everywhere - this is one in front of the Porto Romano. I think I will do a complete separate post about the driving in Italy. John did a fabulous job!

Beautiful Italian street

Throughout Florence old city (and the other older city centers), there were beautiful streets that we would consider a typical Italian street everywhere! At every corner, there was another surprise that we would want to capture on our camera!

The doors!! Such cool doors.

My three on the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge) over the Arno river.

We walked the streets, dodging the few cars that are allowed to drive through the old town. They don't drive slowly :) There are also a fair number of motorcycles zipping through. We walked over the Ponte Vecchio - an old Roman bridge over the Arno river. It is lined with expensive shops like Rolex and others. The shop "windows" were very cool. Wooden pieces and shutters locked up the goods when the stores were closed. The store owners would unlock and store the wooden covers during their open hours.

Exterior picture of Ponte Vecchio

   

Inside this gateway, to the right, the statue of David is displayed. The line was long!

Piazza

This picture just captures the beauty of the day. Wet, but still beautiful!

So many cool textures

Piazza della Signoria

The doors!

Peek at Cupola del Brunelleschi.

We continued walking the streets towards the Duomo. It was drizzly and rainy, so I bought an umbrella from a street person. Hadden liked the brownish building on the left in the foreground in the above picture. We were very hungry by this time, so we stopped into a trattoria (or ristorante) in Florence for some pizza. There was a lady at the entryway encouraging people to come in to eat. We had learned prior to going to Italy that they do not eat pizza with their fingers, so we donned knife and fork to enjoy the pizza. Although a lot more work, it was tasty!

Brick oven pizza! Very thin crust - yummy! 

After lunch, we walked the streets some more and found a street market. Savannah is very good at bartering, and the boys both needed a beanie to keep warmer. She seemed to have fun finding the right vendor to buy from. Let me just warn you - she is good.

A funny, but not so funny side note. It was very warm in Alabama when we left and somehow between the two of us, we didn't bring John a coat!! He managed with just wearing 2 shirts everywhere. Florence was a heat wave compared to what we encountered later.

Everything is beautiful

Street market. Savannah bartered for 2 beanies for the boys.

We then went to visit the church of St Mary. The attendant wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy - she informed us that we needed a ticket, even though it was free to visit. We enjoyed the beauty of the place, just the same. Grand courtyard, arches, frescoes with intricate detail that it amazing to think how much time and care was taken to build and paint.

Cool stairs

Amazing detail, and beautiful ornamentation.

Frescoes

The detail and work that went in is amazing.

More frescoes

Side room off of courtyard

The above picture was a side room off of the main courtyard. I loved this space with the lights and shadows playing on the ceiling. Even though it is all made of stone, it was warm and inviting with the soft tones and interesting lines.

Cute, little, old car on the street

Lamppost - the Arno river was running high and muddy.

It had been raining before we arrived and the Arno river was very high, running fast and muddy.

Funny parking space. I am sure there is a story with this one.

I had pinned the location of the car at the parking spot before we adventured off. We made our way back to the car and returned to Susanna's farmhouse in Noce. We just ate snack foods that evening and rested. The kids were hungry and needed more than snack foods. Lesson learned.

ITALY 2018

We have recently returned from a 2-week trip to Italy and I want to remember our experiences. This blog has been a good tool for recording memories, and although it has been silent for a good long while, I am going to use this to store my experiences from Italy.

The day we were scheduled to travel, Friday, February 16th, we woke up to a notification that our flight had been canceled! Temporary panic set in until we called the number listed on the notification and discovered they had scheduled us for a Delta flight instead of Lufthansa. All worked out well. We had a shorter layover than originally planned and traveled through Stuttgart, Germany rather than Frankfurt.

The plane!

Nissan XTrail

We arrived in Rome, Italy early Saturday afternoon and picked up the rental car. I was thankful for a 2x upgrade on our rental plan that put us in a Nissan XTrail. Confession: I had prayed for an upgrade because I wanted us to be comfortable driving all over Italy. Most rental cars in Italy are manual transmission and diesel and John was up for the challenge! More on that later.

Our first stay was in Noce, Italy so we traveled from Rome along a coastal path on what we thought might be a more scenic journey along the sea. The landscape was fairly flat that direction, so the view was not very spectacular, but we enjoyed the drive. We stopped at a coop (grocery store) along the way to get some snacks and food items for breakfast. Arrived at our room at a 1600's farmhouse and got settled in.

Coop in Italy

Some cool produce

Old aqueduct on the way to Noce.

1600's farmhouse where we stayed

View from our window

Book recommendation

I picked up "1000 gifts" by Ann Voskamp from the library recently and have been enjoying it. The poetic writing can lose me unless I am paying close attention to what I am reading, but the challenges hidden there have changed my way of thinking.

Her main focus is being thankful in all things. Taking time to notice, to be thankful brings about joy. All nice and easy to say, altogether another story when we try to walk it out in the frustrations of the day, in the mundane of daily routine, in the difficult times we face.

I have been practicing thankfulness. I really have. And as life happens, I was challenged this weekend by the attitudes of teenage girls. This time, it was not my girl, although in hindsight, that would have been a LOT easier!! I had to correct the team captains on the soccer team and it was very difficult. However, the resulting backlash was much worse because the parents chose to stick up for their child's disrespect and bad attitude instead of supporting my authority in the situation. Thankfulness momentarily took a back seat.

I have recovered, things have been smoothed over and I am back to practicing thankfulness ... again.

I am considering starting a public list ... we will see if I get that far ...

Beach trip 2014

Thankful that we were able to get away to the beach this past weekend. Leading up to the weekend, the weather looked very iffy, but we decided to go ahead and risk it. So glad that we did, because we had 2 good days at the beach. The first day was nice and sunny. The second was cloudy, but still very nice.

I really like this shot - my family in the water with the beautiful clouds and sand.

Beach hair!! Ha!

This is a remake of a much earlier picture to compare how much the kids have grown.

We don't eat in the rogue, so John is enjoying his McD's fries outside. The rest of us don't eat McD's - he is the only holdout :)

I have been reading a very good book called "One thousand gifts" by Ann Voskamp. I highly recommend it!

Long overdue post ... hoping to get back at it ...

It has been a long while since I have updated the blog. The bad thing is - we miss it. This is a fairly easy way to document what has happened in our family, and it is fun to look back and reminisce. I am planning to attempt to get back into it - for our sake.

Brief update:

John: He recently switched software jobs and is enjoying the new challenges. He is now in a contract position for Alabama Power and enjoys his colleagues and his new work. He also continues improvement projects on the house. He has been teaching the kids (and me) how to play tennis. He and Hadden enjoy playing frequently while Savannah is at soccer practice.

Me: My time is divided between homeschooling, helping run a home school co-op, taxiing Savannah to soccer practice and working with clients. Occasionally, some house cleaning happens. I acquired my personal trainer certification earlier this year and love helping people become healthy. 

Savannah: She is a full-fledged teenager! She continues to play competitive level soccer, but is on a new team. She is working hard and becoming a better player. We went to a tournament in South Carolina over the past weekend and her team won all 4 of their games to bring home the medals! She had 2 assists in the last game. We made some fun memories and had a fun time together.

Hadden: He is growing up! He is enjoying helping John with projects around the house and enjoys playing tennis. He also still loves his legos. He is currently taking a break from baseball (fall ball) and I am not sure if he will play in the spring or not. He had a miserable all-star season a couple of years ago and hasn't really recovered his passion. Really stinks that adults can't just let kids play ball. (That could be a few blog posts, but I will spare you.)

Newest addition:

After almost 15 years of marriage, John and I ventured into new territory ... car shopping. He did an amazing job researching what we might consider. We test drove a couple and ended up settling on the Nissan Rogue. And, he was kind enough to let me choose the color I wanted - red!! I love it!

Dogs:
We have 6 now. Not sure where we left off last time. They continue to eat a lot, but bring a lot of joy. John and Hadden built a nice fenced area for me to park so that the dogs can't scratch the Rogue.

Spring season sports wrap-up

Spring soccer has finished for Savannah’s team. They have learned a lot this year and have improved drastically from last fall. They won a game this spring and scored several goals in other games. Last fall, they only scored 2 the whole season, so definitely improving.

Spring baseball season finished last weekend. Hadden’s team won the tournament championship! Hadden was on the winning tournament team last year, as well, so he has 2 in a row!!  We have started the allstar season, so we are busy with practices for that.

Family photo celebrating Hadden’s win! John was the assistant coach, so he had a big part in it, too. Love my family!!

2 “Half”s make a whole, right?

When it comes to marathons, I hope this is the case. I am not sure I could ever run 26.2 miles all at one time :)

Last Saturday, I finished my second half marathon and I survived. This time, training was sketchy and I didn’t feel as prepared as I had for the Mercedes Half back in February. My time reflected that I wasn’t as prepared, either, because I was 3:52 behind my last finish. I still finished under 2 hours, which was my goal for the day. My final time was 1:58:11.

 

Almost there!

Really almost there! If you are wondering how I closed that distance in 0:02 seconds … here is the reason. Thanks to technology, the bib numbers have an electronic chip in them. There are strips on the ground that pick up my actual start time and actual finish time using the chip. The “gun” clock is what you see on the time clock, so my official time is slightly different because I didn’t cross the start line right as the gun went off. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Caffeine!!! On race days, I don’t drink coffee before the race, so I was enjoying a coke after I finished. This was a very well organized run – their inaugural event. The funds raised went towards Team 413 ministry and you can read about them here.

At this point, I am going to take a break from running and do some cross training mainly due to the heat increasing and the time needed to train for races. John took my bike to get a tune-up and I am hoping that we can get some rides in on the weekends. I do MUCH better running when the weather is cool, so I am hoping to train again next fall and winter for some more half marathons. I think I have the bug :)