Road Trip: Days 4 - 10 Tuscany

We packed up early on Saturday to make the long drive to Italy - almost 400 miles. We met our friends from Belgium, Paul, Rachael and their 2 sons. We stayed at Le Torri, a 700 year old villa owned and run by a family. They make their own wine, olive oil, lemoncello and pesto, among other things. Everyweek, they host an arrival dinner for all of the guests on Saturday night. All of the food is cooked by the host's mother and it was amazing!

Sunday, we visited San Gimignano and Volterra, both walled towns. Monday we saw Siena, which was probably our favorite. The kids spent hours in the main square while we took turns with Paul and Rachael seeing things without the kids. I think Colin chased every pigeon in town. We visited Florence on Tuesday. I really enjoyed seeing David and Craig thought the views from the Duomo were great. We visited Lucca on Wednesday, but it poured almost the whole time we were there. We decided that we would have dinner at the villa that night. Just like Saturday, all of the food was handmade and outstanding. They even prepared special meals for the kids including individual plates of bruscetta, prosciutto wrapped breadsticks and asparagus toasts. The kids weren't even sure what to do with it. Thursday we drove to Pisa and climbed the tower. I don't know how many times I have seen pictures of it, but it was leaning more than I could have ever imagined. I really thought that I could have slid out the side of the tower when I was close to the top.

Chloe and I were glad to leave Tuscany because we were both getting car sick while driving on the winding roads. By the time we had left Italy for Switzerland, we had already driven over 1,500 miles.

Road Trip: Days 1 - 3 Bavaria

We started our road trip in Bavaria, staying on the same farm we were at the week before Christmas. We had plans to take a cable car to the top of a mountian and to ride the Luge, but the weather did not cooperate.
Instead, we visited a few towns including Oberammergau. Oberammergau hosts the Passion Play, telling the story of Jesus. They have performed the play every ten years since the 1600's. We were in Oberammergau the day before the play opened and were surprised at the number of visitors. It is a small village and we were not even allowed to drive into town, but were directed to a parking lot and had to take a bus into town. By the time we left, there was a line of cars a half mile long to get into town.
We went back to a local German restuarant we had eaten at in December. It made me so happy that Colin choose the schnitzel and spatzle over the chicken nuggets and fries! Even though our trip to Bavaria was low key, if was worth the trip to find some of our toys under the couch we had left there in December!

Road Trip

There are several bank holidays over the next few weeks so we will be going on a 2 week road trip. We will be leaving on Wednesday morning for Bavaria and staying on the same farm we stayed at just before Christmas. Saturday we will be making the drive to Tuscany. We are staying at a villa in the region and will be making day trips to Florence, Pisa, Siena and San Gimigano. Our friends from Antwerp, Paul , Rachael and their 2 sons, will be meeting us in Italy for the week. On the way home, we will be stop in Switzerland for 3 nights. Although we are making less stops, it looks like we will top the milage from our last 2 week trip which was 1749 miles! If I can get internet connection, I am hoping I will be able to give some updates along the way. We also now have a Twitter page. Follow us on Twitter or see updates along the side of the blog!

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Happy Mother's Day

Colin brought me home the best presents from school. All of the children helped make strawberry jam, which we ate on bread afterschool for a snack. It was very good and I was impressed. He also made me this wonderful calendar. Colin painted pictures for every month but I thought I would share my 2 favorites.

January:

January is filled of quotes by Colin like "Her job is to go to the super market" and " She likes to clean" or " I love my mum because she lets me watch Scooby Doo". My favorite is " My mum Lauren is 14 years old". Yeah!

June:

This is our family, I am not sure why we are all naked or why we look like Tammy Faye Baker, but it is very cute!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day! Sending love to Oma, Mom Mom and Grammy as well as Colin and Chloe's Godmothers today!

Busy Weekend

Two of Craig's fraterity brothers came to Belgium last week for a beer tour. His one friend, Matt, is a beer enthusiast and planned this trip to celebrate his 40th birthday. Craig met up with them on Friday afternoon and got on there bus to visit a brewery outside of Antwerp. They spent the night in Gent and the next day went to Westvleteren, one of the trappist breweries. Westvleteren is difficult to get, even here in Belgium. They do not sell through third parties and cases can only be ordered on specific days during certain hours. You also need to give them your license plate so they can match it to the car you are driving when you come it pick it up. I managed to get 4 bottles of it through a friend of mine to give to Matt for his birthday. I traded her a box a Betty Crocker cake mix and a tub of chocolate icing for them. It really felt like a drug deal.

We picked up Craig that afternoon at the brewery so we could go see a friend of mine in a play in Antwerp on Saturday night. We had an awesome dinner at an Indonesion resturant with friends before the play. It was a good night.

Sunday, we went over a friends house whose daughter is in Colin's class at school. They have an huge house with a large yard with grass! I think they have one of the largest yards I have seen in the city. They were barbecuing and it was so good.

It was a long and tiring weekend. We have been so lucky to have had beautiful weather here, but itbecome cold and windy the past 2 days. I just hope it warms up for next weekend.