No, this is not a belated St Patricks Day posting.
We just arrived in our place for the week in Florence Italy. This is an Italian keyboard so its doing funny stuff. Its 1am and Ryan just had to get in and try the jacuzzi tub. It is only like 1/3 full of water but OVERFLOWING with bubbles - a bit overzealous ya think?! He called me in there and said, I dont think jacuzzis and bubbles mix. Knowing him, it is probably more a quantity control issue :)
This place we are in is very old, built in the 1600s, so it totally smells real old and is pretty darn rustic. We found it on the Vacation Rentals by Owner site vrbo.com - it is worldwide and I love it! The jacuzzi tub here is what sold me since I know we will be walking our tails off carrying kids. We hear strollers do not work well round here with all the cobblestones, stairs and what not. Once I packed the car up today, I also discovered our hefty double stroller would not have fit anyhow. How will I survive without my daily companion??? I will come back so buff from this trip, or perhaps in a stretcher - we shall see!
The drive down took us 9 hours which went real smoothly, thank goodness. The kids did great with our sack lunches, enough snacks and two movies. We left Stuttgart snowing! We should have 60s this week here in Tuscany. We drove through Munich on down to Innsbrook Austria and on south to Italy. Austria is mostly valleys between tall Alps. The northern half looked a lot like Germany but as you get halfway through, it begins to have Italian looking words on buildings and so forth AND TONS of vineyards on the sloping hill faces. Quite surreal! And castles or churches perched up on mountains overlooking towns. Too bad it was starting to get dark and is still pretty wintry - bet it is gorgeous in bloom!
When I asked Ryan what we should listen to on the way down, he insisted it had to be something that taught us about Italy. He found us an audiobook about the history of Rome which was pretty interesting, although we are now only up to 100BC!
Tomorrow we are off to explore and take it all in kid stride! Michaelangelos David is here in Florence, his home town. Ryan had a stroke of sheer genius by finding us free audio tours online for our ipod so we dont have to be tied to tour guides while wrestling our kids and being acclaimed as parents of the year. I am just so beyond excited - who would have thunk we would be in Italy right now?! My life boggles my mind when I sit and think about it!
