Day of firsts - Tour of Rome

We covered some serious ground today. We basically did a loop of the city hitting the major sites. The highlights were all of Jeremy's firsts.

He went into his first European art shop where he got some supplies. He also had his first authentic gelato, Honey and Canella mixed from San Crispino. 'Tastes like Christmas' was his assessment.

We stopped by Sant' Eustachio for a delicious espresso which Jeremy actually joined me in. It's still not his favorite but he actually noticed a difference.

We watched the sun set on the Vatican and Piazza del Popolo from Villa Borghese.

For dinner we went with a classic, Otello right off of Piazza de Spagna where Jeremy drank a whole glass of wine 😳 and had his first zucchini flower. He enjoyed both surprisingly enough.

While meandering back to our apartment we stumbled on an augmented reality sort of show in the Forum where we were able to learn about the history Ina really cool way. They were sold out until the last show of the night leaving us a couple of hours to kill. It was during this time Jeremy got to experience his first vacation bathroom hunt which then lead to his first subway/auto sanitize bathroom. Yay.

Once back at our place we found an old Bond movie in English and promptly passed out. :)

Roma!

This morning we rose VERY early to leave Seville bound for Rome. We made it and found our apartment fairly easily. Downside is the wifi doesn't work and the toilet is in the shower... Going to be interesting. :) check Flickr for Neremys Cribs tour.

Now we're off to get a feel for the city and show Jeremy the highlights. I'm excited because I know there's San Crispino in my future!

Counting Down!

We're definitely in count down mode and working to wrap up all of those little loose ends that show up before a trip. We leave for Europe again in two days!!!!

This time we'll be starting off in Barcelona. From there we jump to Seville, we'll do a day trip in Cordoba, and then our last stop will be Rome for a few days before we come back home. Total trip will be two weeks.

We have all of our flights booked, all Air BnB's booked and a house sitter lined up so the important stuff is taken care of. Now on to the little details like packing and cameras and passports.

Packing photos to come shortly as I get to fit a fairly impressive stack of stuff into a backpack which Jeremy has generously offered to carry. :D

I'm especially looking forward to this trip since this is the first time my entire family has traveled together. Our group in Seville will be 9-11 people all of us friends/family for 30+ years. Over the past 10 years or so most of us have made it to Europe at one point or another but this will be the first time we've converged on a city "Pratt Mutius" style all at once - I hope Seville is ready!

Another cool thing about this particular trip is that it will be Hannah's first over seas adventure - SO many new experiences for her are ahead and we get to be a part of that, how cool!


Oh, and duh, the REALLY special part is that we all get to be present for Megan and Dani's Spanish WEDDING!!! Yep, so if you go back through my blog you'll see a trip from a few years ago I took with Megan, my pseudosister, to Paris, Barcelona and Seville. During that trip she met a guy who she got all cute and flirty with and they made eyes at each other all through Feria. But it didn't end there, they kept in touch through the interwebs and in July of that year he came to the US to visit her. THEN in September of that year she went to visit him and from there it was a done deal, they were hooked. Megan became one of my heroes when she quit her job of 8+ years, rented out her house, packed up her belongings including her dog, Sam, and moved her life to Seville to follow her heart. This picture is of her this past year at Feria dressed up in local, traditional duds. (I know, it's like a movie, I've already requested that P!nk play the role of me ^_-).

So here we are, just over two years later and they are officially and legally becoming a family and in the process giving all of us an excuse to travel, bond, explore and further solidify our deep, life long friendships. Can you tell I'm proud/excited/full of love for this whole scenario? :)

This will DEFINITELY be a travel adventure you'll want to experience vicariously!

Last night in Rome

Today I had to get some work done. While I did Fabio and Chris decided to rewire the entertainment system in an attempt to clean it up and make the iPhone stream video to the surround sound. It was quite distracting, it was amusing to watch them scratch their heads in unison. :)

While we were messing around in the living room, Adrian was hard at work in the kitchen. He recently finished Bartending school, so for an appetizer he made us Medditteranean Mojitos (with tomatoes and basil in them) and bruschetta with an herbed cheese and tomatoe topping. For the main course he made Carbonarra at Chris's request and for me he made something similar with vegetables, amazing as usual.

For dessert he made a homemade Fragole Tiramisu (Strawberry). It was layers of crazy goodness complete with Lindt chocolate spoons! I told him he is crazy. I also told him that all of the other recipes are perfect and ready to be served in our future restaurant, but this one I think he will have to test over and over and over, using us as the guinea pigs.... ^_-

It's very late near (after midnight) so now I must shut down the laptop, go pack all of our things and souveniers away and prepare to fly home. We had planned to fly through Atlant but if we do that it's likely we won't get first class on the way there so we've switched flights. Now we plan to go through NYC so we'll get first glass on both legs, but we'll get home later. Our flight leaves at noon, or 6am EST, we don't expect to arrive home until around 1am EST - it's gonna be a long long day.

I'll post as we get on flights but this is the last fun one...until next time. :-D

Last Day - Errands in Rome

Today we took it easy. Fabio had some work to do so Adrian went with Chris and I to the City Center to wander around the tourist sites. Our first stop was the Pantheon, well, really Sant Eustachio Cafe for the best espresso in Rome. So incredibly good. I don't even like coffee and this is heaven.

The logo for the cafe is of the church in the piazza, not sure the history of Sant Eustachio but it seems that it has something to do with god and an anrgy 14 point buck. Kind of creepy.

After the Pantheon we went to Fontana di Trevi to people watch and then planned to go to Piazza di Spagna but instead went back to San Eustachio for even more coffee and to by supplies to bring home. Then on to Piazza Navona. There is always so much restoration that each time I visit the city I get to see something new. This time the fountain in the center of Piazza Navona had no scaffolding for the first time.

We then met Fabio at the 'bar' (or cafe) of their friend Luna, she opened this Bar six months ago and recently opened a restaurant nearby, though it is closed on Mondays.

It's a cute place, very tiny but makes very good use of the space (kind of Ikea like). We sat in the back and met all of their friends. We let them bring us whatever was best on the menu. I had Vegetarian pasta with Pistacchio Pesto, Fabio had the standard version which had Speck which we think is like smoked ham) and Chris and Adrian both had pasta with Salmon and Asparagus. The food was fantastic (the service could maybe be better our waitress was odd). The name of the cafe was Casa & Bottega which loosely means 'work in the home' which we think translates to 'mom and pop cafe'. The food was good, the prices were very fair and it's quite close to Piazza Navona, definitely worth stopping by.

Back in Rome

We're back home safe, though Fabio drove home in the 'Roman Way' we went 140mph at several points between the speed cameras. back in November I had a chance to do the Richard Petty NASCAR experience at Disney World, I was a passenger and we went around the track six times at speeds up to 140. Roman driving beats NASCAR hands down :)

Don't worry Mamacita, I warned him, if I died, you would hunt him down.

All is well.

Chiusi

Turns out this restaurant Fabio has been telling us about has 5 stars on TripAdvisor, it's typical for people to come from all over to Chiusi for this place.

It is called La Solita Zuppa which means Always the Same Soup but it's a joke because their menu is never the same. They serve only what is fresh, in season and available at the quality they approve. Because of this the owners (Roberto and Luanna) personally speak to every table about the menu, the details, make recommendations etc.

The view from our parking spot in Chiusi

The restaurant entrance.

Another view of Tuscany from elsewhere in Chiusi.

Inside the restaurant, Roberto us at the counter on the left and Luanna is doing the books at the table to the right.

One you choose all three of your courses they pair each course with wine. Everything was superb. They even made options for me as a vegetarian. Here is what we had:

Sara - Pear and Porcinni Cheese salad - Artichoke Soup - Vacala a fish dish, I think cod in a tomato sauce (wasn't my fav) - Apple Cinnamon Tart

Chris - Different cuts of spiced pork (Salami etc) with Syrah Allicante wine - Picci pasta with tomatoes, spices and duck - Thin sliced smoked beef from the Valley of Chianino - Saffron Gelato with Nanerone 2004

With our main dish they also brought a side of chicory (kale like), chikpeas and lentils, potatoes and cardoon which is like artichoke but the plant looks like celery and was really good.

After dessert they brought coffee with fresh whipped cream with cocoa powder on top that turned to melted chocolate in the cup.

You have to have a reservation. They only serve for a few hours, they will turn away business if people are rushed. They want everyone to be relaxed and enjoy. Tonight we were the only customers.

My brother and his wife are big advocates of eating local, naturally raised animals, self sustaining lifestyles and live as such (withrespectforfood.com) and I think they would really love this place. The owners are already expecting them and excited to have them, they even offered to help then find a hotel.

Pisa

After a hunt for cash to pay for the hotel and a quick ferry ride we were at the Mercedes and off to Pisa.

Round trip it was about 2,5 hours out of our way, West of Florence, worth it because of circumstances but I'm glad we didn't bother to take the train over on our honeymoon.

It's not really that tall, it's not leaning THAT far and it's €15 to climb to the top. But I'm glad to have seen it, so that is done.

Now to Chiusi for dinner at this restaurant we've heard of for over a year.

Chiusi pronounced like Q-C

Quote: this makes Venice look square.

Abbiamo lasciato Venezia

From the ferry in Venice.

Adrian and Sara on the ferry.

We have left Venice.

And now, Pisa!

(quotes for yesterday, ""careful, buttone and buttona sound similar but the meaning is very different, you don't want to call her a prostitute...."and 10 min later "shut up you prostitute!")

Standing in Line

Fabio has an app for restaurant reviews by Michelin and there was a very highly recommended place - Trattoria Alla Madonna. It had the Michelin Man next to it which means it's worthwhile to go out of your way to eat there.

Fabio called to see if we needed a reservation but they said to show up so off we went. We found the Realto bridge easily which is impressive in Venice but it took us a few tries to find the right piazza, we kept finding just the other side if the wall.

Finally we arrived to find a line, maybe 25 people waiting. It's all in the experience right? The photo is a "where's Chris" from when we were waiting in line. Just as we were nearing the door an older couple sauntered up right behind us, nearly pushed us over and managed to skip a lot of people - very Italian.

Inside was nice. I have pics on the camera. The service was so-so. Adrian and I both had fish 'In the Venetian Way', Chris had pasta with clams and Fabio had steak. Honestly, we weren't to impressed. We decided it was not worth a trip... But the build up was fun. :)

After dinner we hunted down a primo Gelataria with many flavors including....MANGO! Totally made up for dinner :D

No idea the actual plan for tomorrow but I do know we plan to have dinner in Chiusi. This is a very small village about an hour North of Rome that has one amazing restaurant in it. It sounds a bit like a place my Mom and Daisy went to in Savannah. You show up at a certain time, pay a fee and the owner feeds you. But they assure me that once she knows I'm pescetarian she will take care if me. But until dinner, who knows what we will do.

Murano

Shopping!!!

Murano is the island of glass blowing. They have demonstrations but only on weekdays :(

We had a plan. Fabio wanted to look for some glasses with a simple shape in bright primary colors. I wanted lots of jewelry.

Glass sculpture in the center of Murano.

Glass parrots in a shop.

Fabio found options, but nothing he liked enough to buy. His top choice turned out to be €72 per glass (most places the price was for a set of 6).

Glass flowers in a flower box over a bridge.

A wooden sailboat on the sidewalk outside a shop near the Fon. Nove ferry stop back on Venice.

Adrian, Fabio and Sara walking down a narrow (typical) street in Venice, near the hotel.

Now we are resting at the hotel before we go out to shop more near Piazza San Marco and eat at a well reviewed restaurant.

Una mattina en Venezia

The morning view from our room.

Us at the Rialto.

The Fenice Theater.

Gondolas in the canal.

Inside San Marco Basilica.

Now we are waiting for the ferry to Murano for lunch and shopping.

We arrived, safe, in Venice

Finally, after our delayed start, around 8pm we arrived at a garage next to Venice. We parked and found the ferry.

We already booked a room at a B&B that had decent reviews on TripAdvisor. The hotel told us to take the ferry to the Fontanette stop and, because it's impossible to give directions in Venice, they would meet us to guide us to the hotel.

Well, we had some ferry challenges (mamacita - speaking Italian didn't help, it is still a confusing system) and wound up in the other side of the island bear Piazza San Marco. They came to us anyway and thank God! Our guide was this little tiny woman (makes Megan look tall) and she walked super fast. We were winding through the passages so fast, left, right, through a tunnel, over a bridge and on and on. 12 minutes later we arrived at a dead end into water with a little diving board, on the left was a door and two flughts up was our 'hotel'. It is really the guides apartment with three rooms (one is hers) and one bathroom/shower to share. Already the bathroom is busier than Termini. (according to Fab)

We found dinner nearby around 9:30p. It was good but the desserts were the best. I had a marmalade cake with chocolate chips and lemon sauce (think super moist carrot cake) and Chris had Chocolate Gelato plopped in a warm shot if espresso. Delicioso. Our waitress was interesting, provided great conversation ;)

Again, I have pics but not on this phone :(

Now we sleep. Tomorrow La Fenice, Bascilica San Marco e Murano.

Quote for the day by Fab "eh, I don't know how to call, you know, the upstairs comma?"

A Venezia

Today has been very "Roman".

We started by going to Fabio's brothers car dealership "OnlyExclusiveCars". To get to the shop we went from the South West if Rome to the North East traffic was heavy and Fabio weaved, ignore lights and got up to 200 kph. I love Roman traffic.

We left Fabio's 1986 Fiat UNO at the shop and "borrowed" a Mercedes C200 CDI from the inventory. This took some time arrange so while we waited Chris dreamed. As you can see he got comfy in a Lamborghini Murcielago. We were finally about to leave when the office phone rang and we were delayed - a potential buyer for the Mercedes would be there in 15 minutes. No idea what the buyer thought but we finally got on our way in the comfy Mercedes.

Next, we stopped for lunch at a "truck stop". The food was amazing, they had ricotta fresca, ricotta cheese made fresh that day. We sat right next to the grille, they had super fresh meat that they grilled right there. We all had bruschetta and pasta - belicimo! I took photos of all the plates but I can share with you until we find wifi.

From the truck stop it was back in the car, past Florence and then through Bologna. This part of the trip had crazy traffic with a road full of big trucks. It reminded me of I-75 through Cinci. Only in Italy no one follows lanes, there were times that I actually thought either we would collide with a semi or the semi would hit a guide rail. It was exhilarating!

Through all the excitement I still managed to get in a few hours of studying and learned how to conjugate ire, are, ere verbs into three tenses in Italian.

Sono felice nel mio stomaco

I am happy in my tummy.

Adrian cooked. Enough said.

We started with asparagus wrapped in procutto with pepper crackers and prune jam.

Then on to pasta with cream sauce stuffed with zucchini, peppers, garlic, onion, eggplant and scamorza cheese. Amazing.

We finished we a bunch of ridiculousness. Spicy pepper chocolate mousse layered with strawberries over homemade port-soaked ladyfingers topped with ammoretti and nuts as well as melted chocolate and chocolate chips. Accompanied by homemade whipped cream, ammoretti cookies, strawberry and fresh mint. Like I said, ridiculous.

I asked Adrian to marry me somewhere between the pasta and dessert but he reminded me of the challenges to that proposal so then I threatened to kill him and he went off to layer the dessert. :)

Domani andiamo a Venezia e staremmo all' L'Amoro bed and breakfast!

We have arrived!

The flight was uneventful. I had pasta, Chris had steak. We watched the King's Speech together (great movie) and slept for several hours.

Now we're at our Italian home making hotel reservations in Venezia. Life is good.

Damiano is a friend of Fabio's that Chris, John and I have met. He's a talented artist and added a burst of color to the condo with the new art piece in the background.

Tonight we will feast in Chef Adrian's cooking. Yay!

Off to Rome

We made it to JFK and are now in 4C and 4E. First class to Rome.

There were a few scary moments but off we go!

Sent from my iPhone

Home

So, we made it back to the states with surprising ease. Delta added an extra flight to the schedule so we were able to not only get on the flight, but we got first class back to Atlanta which was an unexpected but sweet surprise! :)

The problem came when we arrived to Atlanta. There was some sort of cheer leading convention at Disney this weekend and some sort of weather issue which left us with a mess in Atlanta. In the end we had to go to Daytona and bribe Mini Mama into driving out to pick us up. She said if Adrian's brother Marcello can drive 15 hours from Rome to Paris she should be able to handle 1 hour from Orlando to Daytona.

Overall it was fairly painless considering the crazy situation, but we did get home incredibly late.

We've agreed that thanks to the Volcano our vacation took a turn we hadn't expected and wasn't nearly as relaxing as we'd hoped. However it was still really nice to get away and fantastic to FINALLY make it to Paris. The people in France were far nicer than we'd expected, everything was much larger than we were prepared for and we would both definitely like to go back soon.

We're all unpacked, doing laundry and both getting ready for work on Monday. Life has a lot of challenges and change in store for us over the next few months and we have no idea what the rest of 2010 has in store for us so at this point we have no additional adventures planned. But with our lives, things creep up and you never know. :)

The pictures are up on Flickr here and we took some videos that I've put on YouTube here.

Sara

12:00pm - Orlando

Day 7 - Historic Center

Today Adrian and Fabio had to drive to Genoa in Northern Italy to pick up a car so Chris and I had the day to ourselves. We slept in and then took the bus to the City Center. All of the postcards/pictures of the Spanish steps show it covered in flowers but I've never actually seen this. Today, there were flowers!

We happened to stumble on some sort of ceremony, we still can't figure out what it was but we're guessing that it was some sort of ring in the spring deal. There were soldiers with flags and a full marching band playing all sorts of festive tunes.

After the ceremony we wandered up to Villa Borghese for one of our favorite Roman past times - I creamed Chris at Peanut :) Then it was back to the condo where we made ourselves dinner and found a movie on in English. Next I have to go pack because it looks like we're coming home tomorrow. Delta added an extra flight to the schedule tomorrow so we might even have a chance at first class! It leaves at noon so we'll see. It would be really crazy to end up coming home only at day late after all that's happened.

Sara

10:15pm - Roma

Pictures are up

We used Fabio's computer to download our camera. We put some of the better ones up on Flickr already - you can check them out here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/butterflysunshine/sets/72157623774816619/

Today we went to the City Center - pictures of that to come soon.