Ciao from Italy!

We've been in Italy for the last week and I'm finally feeling relaxed - just in time to leave!  Here's what we've been up to:

Thursday - left the house at 8:30.  Three hours later we had gone twenty - yes, 2-0, 20 - miles.  The word is that an American tank accident caused the autobahn to be shut down.  A horrible start to what turned out to be a very challenging travel day.  We didn't find the right kind of gas station (one that takes our coupons) in Germany so we ended up low on gas in Switzerland and had to *GASP* pay local prices for enough to get us into Italy.  After gassing up there, we hit a brand new traffic jam and didn't get to our hotel until 11pm.  We had expected to arrive around 6.  Argh.  We stayed at the Albergo Al Cacciatore in Desenzano del Garda.  Our room is the one pictured on the website.  Neat.

Friday - we had a fabulous day at Gardaland and a lovely dinner at a British style pub near our hotel

Saturday - after even more traffic jams, we arrived at Camp Darby.  We got ourselves settled into our room at the Sea Pines Lodge.  That evening, Mike took Jillian to the carneval that was on base.  She was thrilled to be on the bumper cars and, even more so, to get to eat a "real" nutella crepe.  It would seem that crepes in Italy taste much better than the ones  I make.

Sunday - we attended church at our old chapel and were surprised to find some familiar faces.  Afterwards, we headed to the Vechio Livorno restaurant in Livorno (as if it would have been somewhere else!)  We met our friends Linda Forniciari and Andy & Anne Marie Gifford and had a blast.  Is there anything better than getting together with old friends?  Mike got to enjoy the Livornese specialty cuccuchio.  The girls and I are endlessly amused at the weird things that he'll ingest!  Later that afternoon, we found Jillian's best friend from Ms. Moses's 1st grade class, Erin.  It was a total fluke meeting that could only happen at Camp Darby.  We stopped by the MP station where her dad works to see if they would help us contact them and, lo and behold, the whole family was in his office.  Totally wild!

Monday - Since Jillian is now the proper age, we had to get her to the Leaning Tower so that she could climb it.  And climb it she did!  Go Jilli!  Marisa and I found lunch and took a "nap" in the shadow of the Basilica.  A different kind of fun, but fall all the same.  Later we girls went to the pool to meet up with Erin and her mother while Mike visited folks at his old office.  Marisa had to make due with the only swim ring I could come up with - Batman.  She was reluctant, but finally decided that she'd rather swim with a boy ring than not swim at all.  She then got over-confident and started taking the silly thing off in the middle of the pool.  Heart-attack city for me!  In the evening, we went to Lucca with the intent of biking around the wall for awhile.  This was nixed when we realized that the kids were pooped.  So we had dinner in the famous oval-shaped piazza and called it a day.

Tuesday - When in Italy, buy wine, right?  We went shopping at our favorite grocery store and stocked up enough good wine to last till Christmas.  We also found lots of other little treats that we used to enjoy.  Mmmmmm.  For lunch, we went into Tirrenia and discovered that three of our favorite places were closed - Gullivers, La Scalia and the Gnocchi Place (this one has a real name, but this is what Leslie always called it and it works for me!).  So, we headed back up the street to La Cavielare Nero and had a fabulous meal.  There was pretty much nothing vegetarian on the menu, but they whipped up a nice penne with mushrooms for Jillian and a spaghetti pomodoro for me.  Of course, Mike had lots of seafood, including his favorite orata fish.  Marisa begged alot of it from him.  She's daddy's little girl!  Our plans for hitting the beach this afternoon were spoiled by clouds and wind, but I guess we'll survive.