Epic Date Night in Venice

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I got the sitter lined up and decided we were doing a date night to Venice. We had gone with the kids in the summer when we first arrived but it was hot and crowded and we said that we will come back for a date when it cools off. Boy, was it cool that night! When we were about halfway there, a really thick fog rolled in and we could barely see anything outside the train. When we arrived and boarded the vaporetto (the public boat buses) I was actually slightly worried for our lives. We were standing at the front of the boat, right next to the captain's little room and could see his radar. He was steering the boat completely by radar as you couldn't see anything in front of the boat. Lights and other boats appeared about 40 feet out and that's it. The heavy fog and darkness kept a continual loop of "yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me," going through my head. It was super erie. But we finally arrived at our stop near St. Mark's Square and we had no plan for the date other than to visit our Landlady's son, Claudio, at work. And then maybe find a pizza place, and just wonder around a little. Claudio works at a famous bar called Harry's Bar, that has been open since the 1930s and was where the Bellini (nectar of a white peach and Prosecco) was invented. Claudio treated us to a few free drinks and some appetizers, then asked what our plans were and we said "we'd like to find a place to eat, have any recommendations?" He told us to hold on and disapeared for a few minutes. When he came back, he told us, "I will take you to my friend and he will take care of you! Follow me." After several minutes of winding through alleys and over canal bridges, we arrived at this charming little place, Restaurante da Ivo. Claudio introduced us to his friend Giovani, who proceeded to treat us to the best free meal of our lives: 4 courses of food, 3 courses of dessert, and 2 different bottles of wine. Did I mention it was all free? Claudio is a great man to know!

 Top: us on the train. Bottom: at the fancy restaurant.

 Top: the restaurante had a canal entrance the size of a large window, where you could get off your gondola and come in for a bite (or 7 courses). One couple arrived this way, fancy!

 Above: The appetizers and the bottom right is pasta with truffle sauce and shaved truffles on top. It was amazing! And also cost 75 euro a plate! We ate two plates of it. We stopped counting when the next course arrived and it was steak.

The 3 desserts. Left side: vanilla gelato with fig jam. Top right: totally tucked into it before taking a picture. Okay, this sounds gross, it was white strawberries, sugar, red wine vinegar, and black pepper. A weird combination but it was soooooooooo good. I might have licked the bowl. Bottom: some totally insanely good chocolate cake that made me feel like I was going to explode if I ate another bite. Everything was amazing! The best date night we've ever had by far!

 

So, if you are ever wondering around in a gondola in Venice and get hungry and happen to have a spare 300 euros laying around, ask your gondolier to take you to Restaurante da Ivo! Maybe try telling them you know a guy named Claudio!

Nom Nom Nom {Part Two}

Yep, I'm the crazy person who takes pictures of her food. I try to refrain from posting it on Facebook, cause that makes you certifiable Cray-cray. But in my defense, Italian food is the most delicious food in the world. (The kind made in Italy, not the Olive Garden kind). Let's dive in, shall we?

 Top left: grapes from our landlady's garden. Top right: thin, baked bread slices in Tuscany, kinda reminded me of bagel thins, only they aren't bagels, and they were oily and salty and crunchy and delicious. Bottom left: ham, pear, walnut, and cheese salad. Not remembering right now what the cheese was called (maybe a burrata?) but it was yummy. Bottom right: Gnocchi, potato dumplings with white sauce, I just learned how to make these, watch out world!

 TL: Wine in Tuscany, Chianti, Steve's favorite. TR: Spaghetti Carbonara of course, this is Brian's go-to pasta dish, also just learned how to make this. BL: Steve's steak from the restaurant in Montepulciano (see the post on that town for a funny story). Normally when I'm photographing food, Steve gives me these looks that says "stop taking pictures of your food, you are embarassing me!" but when this steak arrived his look said "take a picture of my meat!" and my look said "gladly!" BR: Pasta Arrabiata, sort of a spicy sauce, made with hot peppers. Very flavorful but not that spicy to me because I grew up around spicy Mexican food.

 TL: Cappucino and a tiny sweet for breakfast. I honestly don't know how Italians just have coffee and a tiny sweet thing for breakfast. On this diet, by 10 am, I'm famished and angry. TR: Brian eating his breakfast donut just after losing his first tooth! Bottom: a gelato delivery truck!!!

 Top: A bakery in Tuscany with glass case after glass case full of delicious nummies. BL: the most amazing apricot and chocolate cookies ever. BR: some sort of creme brulee and fruit desert.

 TL and Right: I hosted a wives breakfast coffee in November and went crazy at the local bakery on little sweets for the coffee. BL: Bruscetta, yum!

 

Below: All along the Autostradas (highways) in Italy are these great little cafeteria style restaurants, sort of like rest stops, but better cause it's fresh Italian food, not fast food. Every now and then you see one over the road and your 5-year-old freaks out about the absolute coolness of such a thing and insists you must eat over the road. So, my fondness for Italian rest stop cafeteria food and Brian's obsession with over-the-road food places means this was a must stop for our family.



American Military Cemetery in Florence

On our way home from Tuscany, we stopped at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial (it happened to be Veteran's Day) to pay our respects to the 4,402 Americans buried here who were killed in action during World War 2. I've seen Arlington, and Steve and I have been to Normandy and seen the WWII cemeteries there but we are always in awe of the beauty of our overseas cemeteries and sad for the massive numbers of white crosses and stars. I feel like it is my duty as an American living overseas to seek out these memorials and spend 30 minutes of our day walking through them and remembering how grateful we still are for the sacrifices of these men who were sons, and husbands, and fathers, and friends. It is important for us to show this to our children and begin the childhood-long conversation with them about service and sacrifice and gratitude.

 

"Time will not dim the glory of their deeds."

-General of the Armies WWI, John J. Pershing, First Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission

Akward family cemetery photo! I had mixed feelings about taking a family picture here but I think it's good we will have this to show the kids. Oh and look at the giant leaf Brian is holding, those leaves were everywhere and the kids enjoyed collecting them during our walk.

Tuscany {Montepulciano}

Day three of our Tuscan adventure was devoted to Montepulciano. It was slightly more than an hour drive from San Gimignano. And it was yet another beautiful old Tuscan hill town. I wanted to see it because it was the town where scenes in the Twilight movie New Moon were actually filmed. We walked around town on a Saturday and there were vendors selling cheese and salami and wine and chocolate and all kinds of other stuff all along the streets. When we finally made our way to the town square there was some sort of market going on there too.

 

After we checked out the sights from the movie, we found ourselves in this amazing little restaurant, Osteria dell'Aquacheta for lunch along with just about every tourist in town. It was family style, meaning we all sit really close together at the same long table and my family bugs the shit out of your family during your meal! Family style, yay! Other than the stress of keeping the kids quiet and calm and not letting them steal food from the plates of total strangers (Emily), the food was amazing. They are known for their steaks. The owner comes over to get your order, there are 3 steak choices. Once you decide, he cuts your steak off the slab of meat, brings it back over for your approval, and then cooks it 7 minutes on each side over an open flame inside a stone oven. Steve got the steak and the kids and I got pasta because there was no way the kids and I would have finished a whole steak, they were huge and cost more than $40 each. But we all tried Steve's steak and it was amazing!

 Below: Twihards will recognize the clock tower and door from New Moon. In the movie, there was a giant stone fountain in front of the clock tower, but they must have built it for the movie, because in real life there was no such fountain.

 Emily and I waited around in the square while Steve and Brian checked out the Duomo (church) and I started to wonder where they were after about 10 minutes. They finally came out and Brian was talking a mile-a-minute, something about Jesus and crosses and windows and candles and how I just had to go inside with him. So we all went back into the church and he dragged me over into the corner and pointed and said "Look!" Then he stood totally transfixed by Jesus on the cross. Now, he knows the story of Jesus and although we haven't been taking him to church regularly (need to get on that), he went to a church preschool last year and Steve is really good about telling him stories from the bible and answering all his religious questions. But I guess he's never seen a depiction of Jesus on the cross, so this stirred up many, many questions and conversations that lasted for days. He was so taken by this little section of the church that I gave him a euro coin for the donation and he lit a candle for Jesus and then insisted on lighting all the other ones that had gone out already. Once we were finally able to pull him away from the church, we headed to lunch, where we shared a table with two American ladies, and two Italian ladies (one who spoke excellent English). Emily, who had previously seemed reverently quiet in the church (extremely unusual for her unless she is planning some shenanigans), breaks out of her silent shell, stands up in her chair, and proceeds to give our tablemates a dramatic reenactment of Jesus on the cross, complete with a full verbal description. We were of course afraid of her offending someone so we were trying to get her stop, when the Italian lady wanted to know what she was saying, so we told her. She translated to her friend and they both laughed and said that Jesus is in her head and this is good. Everyone thought it was adorable, and thus Italian-American religious relations remain unharmed! 

 Above: the pottery shopping in Tuscany was amazing. All Italian pottery is gorgeous, but the Tuscan designs were the best I've seen. Below: I just loved this little entrance to this house, it's so Italian with the chipping plaster walls, and brick patio, and wood door, and wrough iron, and vines, and plants.

Tuscany {Volterra}

Day Two in Tuscany, we took a 30-minute drive to Volterra, another beautiful, old Tuscan town, set atop a hill. The drive between the towns was gorgeous and we stopped several times just to click the camera over the rolling hills of olive trees and grape vines. Volterra is best known (to me at least) as the fictional town in the Twilight books/movies where the enemy vampire clan, the Volturi, live. We made it out of Volterra with all of our blood intact, but not before we saw some Roman, and even Etruscan ruins. Below (top picture) is the ruins of a Roman Bath that the Romans built using the stones from the ampitheatre (bottom two pictures). At some point, the townspeople actually said to one another, "Culture and art....or......warm baths?" The warm bath won and down went the theater!  

 Below: Left, a typical Italian street scene of scooters. Top right, baiting the Volturi, nothing happened. Bottom right, some pretty old church.

 Below: just some random shots of this beautiful old town. The clocktower above city hall where fictional Edward, fictionally tried to commit vampire suicide.

 Left 2 pictures below of an Etruscan arch, built in the 4th century B.C. and the only Etruscan city gate still standing today. It used to have the heads of Zeus and his two sons, but now they just look like blobs. 

We were walking along and Emily sees this yellow car and starts screaming "It's Luigi! It's Luigi,"a character from the Cars movies who really does look just like this car, so we had to take her picture with it. 

Tuscany {San Gimignano}

 In the middle of November, Brian had a 5-day weekend due to teacher conferences and Veteran's Day, so Steve took some leave and we went down to Tuscany. We stayed in San Gimignano, just a short drive away from Sienna. It's a beautiful old walled town perched on top of a hill, surrounded by olive groves, vineyards and cypress trees. San Gimignano is best known for its tall towers, that were erected before the town walls were built and they were used to fortify homes and provide refuge during times of battle. There used to be 72 towers when the city was in the height of its power, but the plague wiped out 2/3s of the population in the 1300s and Florence moved in from the north to take over the town during its moment of weakness. The Florenians tore down the towers and redirected the main trade route away from San Gimignano, throwing the town into centuries of poverty. The town is well preserved in its 14th century look because there was no money for renovations. It has become quite the touristy little town and during the day, even though it was off-season when we were there, busloads of tourists were wondering the main drag through town and filling the restaurants, shops, and gelaterias. We stayed just outside the walls, in a small apartment with a great view of the countryside and could easily come and go into the town through an old arched gate. The food and wine in Tuscany were amazing. We had some Chianti that was the best we'd ever had and we brought a few bottles home. The pottery shopping was great here too and we managed to get some Christmas shopping done.

 Above are just some random shots I took as we were driving from San Gimignano to Volterra, from the side of the road, looking back at the town (top, left) and at the surrounding countryside. Everywhere you look in Tuscany, it really does look like this: rolling, green hills, olive groves, vineyards, cypress trees, beautiful old stone villas. It's just insanely gorgeous and peaceful. Which means the kids were bored. Not much to do for kids in Tuscany. They enjoyed walking through the towns but aren't much for sightseeing and even walking around gets boring after a while.

 The kids did enjoy climbing up to the top of town wall for a 360 degree view and the town and countryside around it. They also enjoyed breakfast every morning as Italians don't really do big breakfasts or even cereal. Brian had an orange juice and sugar donut every day, he was in heaven. One morning we were getting ready to go to breakfast and Brian had had this super wiggly bottom tooth in his mouth for weeks, so he gave me permission to pull it out (it was ready, it pretty much jumped out) and so he lost his first tooth in Tuscany! At breakfast, we were talking with a nice Italian lady at the cafe about the tooth fairy and she said the Italian kids put their tooth under an upturned glass on the kitchen table before they go to bed, and when they wake up in the morning, the tooth fairy has left them a nice monetary treat. I liked this idea better than the under-the-pillow plan the American tooth fairy follows. As the saying goes: when in Rome...........

L-O-V-E

 

 

Here is Emily singing her rendition of L-O-V-E. Steve sings this song to her almost every night at bedtime. He also sang it to Brian when he was small (and still does) so this is popular around our house. She also launches into some prayers at the end of the song. She knows the prayers well too, but tends to whisper the last line and amen. This is our spunky little 2.5-year-old. She's wild and fun and sweet. Our landlord recently said to me (through translation by her son) that Emily is going to give some man a hard time one day. I sure hope she does. Give 'em hell girl! She's a nice girl, just has a stubborn and sassy side to her. She's developing quite the sense of humor too and when people ask her what her name is, sometimes she replies "Sophia!" We've decided Sophia is her Italian alter-ego. I also get comments on her curly, blonde hair daily and someone even asked me a few days ago if she was mine! She is, I was there. She just got 99% of her DNA from Steve.