Pisa & Aix-en-Provence

Is he pushing it over or holding it up? Only YOU can decide.

So, to continue with the Neverending Story...on our way back up through Italy we made a pit stop at Pisa. It's kind of touristy but still cool.

Know what else is cool? Running into Friendly Bird Lady outside the Leaning Tower. This modern-day Mary Poppins hails from China which meant that Don was able to bust out his Chinese, as was also the case in Rome and a couple other places.

Bird Lady seems like a very cheerful person and had lots of bread. Those pigeons loved her. Henry maybe not so much, what with his extreme stranger-danger phase he's going through right now...but at least he didn't burst into tears. And really, that's all I can ask for.

Luckily, Bird Lady thought Henry was cute despite his unrelenting scowl--which I'm beginning to realize is how he copes with new experiences. (It's also how he copes with old experiences, as well as everything in between.) Bird Lady: "Want a pigeon?"

Henry: "............."

That's my boy. Shyer than a wild animal. In any case we wandered in and out of the cathedral buildings at Pisa and holy cow get a load of this ceiling:If I were Catholic I would probably never pay attention to the church service, I'd be looking at their ceilings the whole time. Actually, Mormon chapels are not exactly known for their exciting decor (Protestant iconoclasm and all that jazz) and yet I still find myself gaping at the ceiling for minutes on end.

After Pisa we drove for hours up the Mediterranean coast into Southern France. Although we went right alongside and sometimes through cool towns like Monaco and Nice,unfortunately we weren't quite close enough to get any good pictures of the coastal area. But we could see that the next lane over probably did have spectacular views, if that helps at all. Ahem.

Spent the night in our hotel in Aix-en-Provence and woke up next morning to go to the local market. Aix's downtown is smaller than I had imagined it but very characteristic. It would probably look a lot more charming bathed in sunshine, but, you know...this fluorescent overhead light look you get in February is borderline acceptable.

So here are some shots of the farmer's market. They have a lot of local products made with honey and of course almost every stall sells Herbes de Provence--and who doesn't like eating lavender?! I tell you what, using flowers to spice your food is GENIUS. They do it all the time here.

We only caught the tail end of the market. I imagine it's probably in full swing by now; two months ago it was still respectable:

Somebody parked their bike next to the lettuce stall:Debbie and the ocean of flowers:We stopped by a local candy shop to try the famous Aix-en-Provence regional dessert: CALISSONS. They are small oval-shaped candies about the size of your thumb consisting of a soft, chewy fruit underside and a flavored candy shell on top.

Apparently calissons are a big freaking deal. They must be, considering they cost like 14 euros for a pack of six.

Umm, calissons are good, don't get me wrong--but they're not 14-euros-for-a-pack-of-six good. Seriously, are these things made of crushed diamonds? I would rather learn to make my own, thanks (not that I ever will.)

So like the total hobos we are, we ate their free samples and ran off.

Hee hee.

And um, what else was cool...oh yeah. Radioactively blue roses:Insert clever Smurf comment here.

Grandpa and Henry having lunch at an outdoor cafe. Yep that's a giant Gothic church just behind them; after a while you see so many that they just sort of blend into the landscape:

I have no idea what Henry's showing me here, but it better not be something he just pulled out of his mouth. Yum.

We took a post-lunch stroll through some cute picturesque streets and as I was coming in for a picture of this ginormous lion-head door knocker, an extremely friendly security guard who works at this building jumped into my shot. French people are so fun:

Also strolled past this scooter and could not resist:Handprints! Haha. And last but not least, Dustin's ever-deepening relationship with fountains. They bring out the, uh, "best" in him(?) Yep. Definitely liking this side of Dustin right here.

SlurpWell I think it's safe to say that at one point or another we all enjoyed Aix, especially Dustin, who would like to come back and go fountain-licking there again someday.

I really have no problem with that idea.

The Motherland

Another long evening of insane Italian driving.

These Italians, I tell you. Mario Kart of Death.

Also, our hotel was once again playing coy. We stopped at a late-night bar to ask directions and ended up garbling/speaking with hand signs to a group of rough-looking men and their long-haired bartender.

Side note: I will never understand why some of the scariest-looking people in the world also happen to be the nicest.

Using their all-but-nonexistent English and my throat-sounds-that-pose-as-Italian, they cheerfully told us that our hotel was really easy to get to and that we just had to make a couple turns and "go straight." Easy, so easy, so completely impossible to screw up.

Hahahahaha.

So, a couple hours and several helpful yet oh-so-unhelpful Italians later, we find the hotel.

How, you may ask? Well it was a lot farther off than we expected, and not exactly straight ahead by even the most fluid definition. We ended up following a policeman through a stadium parking lot and up a little side street to find it.

Yes, once again, it takes a policeman to get us where we're going. I hope this doesn't become a habit...

The next morning we woke up at a non-early hour, got into a slight scrabble over Vesuvius vs. Family Heritage Extravaganza, and somehow ended up at the dock buying ridiculously overpriced ferry tickets to Ischia. Or in other words, the island where Great-Grandpa Cenatiempo grew up.

Naples seems third-world picturesque, and really crowded. I especially dig their castlery (a term you may have not heard before because it did not exist until just now.) This is some kind of crazy castle right across from the ferry dock. And this, as you may have already concluded, is a picture of Don and Henry. By this point Henry is obviously okay with grandpa. And perhaps grandpa is noticing that Henry's cheeks are dangerously on the verge of a fat explosion.

And this is proof that your posterity may even go off and have its own posterity someday:The Mediterranean was blue, blue, blue. Even in February.Here we have Dustin's head and Debbie's left elbow discovering LANDAnd this is one of Debbie's shots, pulling into the harbor at Ischia.We took a regional bus to get to the town of Barano. It's a fairly small island but there are five little villages on it, and TONS of lemons. Seriously, gobs. Pics:


These are not exactly in order but I've never been known for my patience in uploading and arranging photos.

In any case, we wandered around for quite a bit. I trailed annoyingly behind and took pictures of lots of inanimate objects.

Towards the end of our visit we even found a little park where Henry and Dustin had a good time together while the rest of us sat on the bench wondering where they get their energy from.

It was dark by the time we took the ferry back to Naples and what I'll go ahead and call the Thoroughly Hidden Hotel. Next morning it was off to the French Riviera!

So, stay tuned for that and see you in Marseille.

ROME #2

I believe last time we left off at Trevi Fountain.

Not sure if I ever mentioned the Castel Sant'Angelo. Which of course would be a crime. So here's me not committing a crime: it was originally Emperor Hadrian's tomb, later became a papal fortress and prison blah blah blah and here's a picture:
While we're at it I guess now is as good a time as any to throw in some ruins, since we wandered past them at several points and it's all one big brain soup up there, so enjoy:
Sometime shortly before or after that (I have trouble remembering what I did two minutes ago let alone two months ago) we headed over to the Pantheon.

On the way, we saw Bernini's cute chubbly elephant.

Compared with our puny French town that only dates back to the Renaissance, stuff like the Pantheon is just unbelievable. Caesar walked here! The street level has risen around this building throughout the centuries! And I don't know if you caught the fact that OMG Caesar walked here! It's......really OLD!!!Stunning. Anyways, now because the Pantheon is...what was my technical term for it again...oh yes, really OLD, it was under restoration when we visited. 2000 years of crud getting scraped off the side or getting re-attached to the side or some such enterprise.

Why they couldn't have done it a week earlier or later, I'll never know--all I know is that we're fated to run into scaffolding wherever we go. And it's an-noy-ing.

No segue from that comes to mind, but here's me gaping at the Oculus:
The Pantheon was neat. I liked how there are benches inside so you can sit down. That always improves my opinion of any historical monument. Never underestimate the laziness factor.

But if I have to get up and walk around, the Vatican Museums are a pretty good place to do it in. Here's the entrance:No way can one blog page, let alone my brain, handle all the stuff inside the Vatican Museum. But here's the Apollo Bellevedere being a generally gorgeous man-statue:And here's Laocoon having a not-so-good time:And because pictures are prohibited in the Sistine Chapel (along with breathing too loudly and making eye contact) enjoy the School of Athens instead:And I just found this fun picture of Nero's giant purple marble bath tub...more like an oversized bird bath really, but just try picturing crazy Emperor Nero in there. I guess you'll have to do so in your head.

When you picture it in your head you could maybe put Nero in a swimsuit if you wanted to, I know I would--but it's your head, so ultimately it's your party.

After the Sistine we reeled out of the Vatican Museums in a fuzz of joy (well I did) and headed over to St. Peter's.
Many thanks to Debbie for the excellent and in-focus picture of Michelangelo's Pieta, since my photo of it was...well...none of those things. Dustin and I remember very little of St. Peter's apart from the floor, since that's what we looked at while scampering after Henry for a good hour while he roamed around eating crackers, grinning ear to ear, and getting personal with some nuns.

Oh and then, lest I forget, some guy in a red sweeping robe pops out of a small door in the wall and just about knocks Henry over. How many cardinals does the Catholic church have? Cause one of 'em has gone wild in St. Peter's and he enjoys toddler-bowling.

Whew! There it is, that's the end of Rome. Wow. I was wondering if I could get all that into two blog posts. To be fair, I probably skimmed over/forgot a lot of details. But it still took almost more time to write about all those things than it took to actually visit them.

Rome was fantastic and I'm glad we got the chance to go. We crammed a lot of stuff into less than two days of sightseeing but ultimately got around to everything we wanted to see, so pat on the back for us. We left St. Peter's in the late afternoon, walked back to the car and headed off to Naples.

I bet you can't guess what the next post will be about. Possibly the Cenatiempos' Italian heritage and how they visited the island where it all began?

Like I'd ever drop such an obvious hint.

ROME #1

Obviously writing even one blog post (if not many) about Rome is going to be...what's the word I'm looking for here...oh yes, INTIMIDATING. Not even sure how you cover a city like Rome with one weedy little blog page and no history background to speak of. Oh, well. Blissful ignorance never stopped me before, so why start now, right?

Needless to say, after we left Siena it was not exactly difficult to find Rome--they ain't kidding when they say all roads, let alone road signs, lead to it. We rolled into Rome in the early afternoon.

First thing to do was locate our bed and breakfast. Dang thing was positively hiding from us but we knew it was somewhere in Chinatown.

I'm not sure how long it took us to realize that the bed and breakfast was crammed into a tiny space on the sixth floor of a nondescript building that looked just like the others. A long time. But sure enough--eventually we stumbled upon a teensy-weensy tag on a teensy-weensy doorbell that led us up to the Domus Elisa.

So. The Domus Elisa B&B turns out to be part of a Roman couple's cramped apartment. Seriously, the guy's ancient grandmother sleeps next door to the elevator. An elevator which under the best of circumstances could probably fit two children or one overweight teenager. Additionally it has a claustrophobia-inducing cage on it that must be unlocked to exit the elevator, for which reason I chose to tackle six flights of stairs with gusto rather than bother.

All four of us were in the same room. Here's a picture of Dustin in the bedroom, where you can see the two twin beds together and then the bunk beds off to the side (which Debbie and Don gallantly took):But apart from size constraints it really wasn't half bad; everything was spic and span. The owners Carlos and Maria seemed pleasant. We printed our bus tour tickets off their computer and ran out the door.

Practically the whole beginning of the tour was a ten minute pit stop at the Vatican, so here are some obligatory shots of St. Peter's:

Then we swung back around and went along the Tiber River:
Passed by the Victor Emmanuel monument, on which more later:
And then, since it was getting dark, we got off the bus and had dinner. Afterward we stopped by the Colosseum for a little haunted sightseeing. As any rational human being would have done in our place.
Next morning we packed up, checked out of the hotel and left our luggage in the car while we went back to see if the Colosseum was any less freaky by daylight. And yeah, it was.
Aha! Here we are again at the Victor Emmanuel monument. A really stupefyingly decorative building that I wish were edible. Chomp.
Last but not least, Trevi Fountain. Magnifico. Okay boys and girls. Per my previous suspicions we're going to need more than one post to get through this, even with my minimal approach to storytelling (a picture's worth a thousand words, heh heh.) So meet me back here tomorrow, same time, same place--don't quote me on that--and I'll slather more Rome all over your interwebs.

Ciao!

Siena and Tuscany

Not to gloat or anything, but...once upon a time, we went to Tuscany and this is a picture Dustin's mom took by the side of the road. GLOAT.
Then we get back in the car, and--"Hey," says Dustin's mom, "let's go to Siena."

So that's what happened. Between Florence and Rome we took a couple hours and roamed around Siena, a medieval Tuscan town that's got some really intense charm going on. Seriously. If you're headed to Italy, you're not a history/monuments buff, and you've got limited time to work with--choose Tuscany. (And maybe don't go in February...maybe try any other season except winter.) Siena, and all of Tuscany actually, is idyllic. Maybe even stereotypically idyllic.

In fact "idyllic" could sum up this entire post; I could just copy-paste the word over and over again, thus driving you all insane with the point I'm trying to make. But I guess I'll just follow the usual pattern of picturing and captioning and generally making a fuss about my life experiences with many words, rather than one--because that's just as effective when it comes to driving you all insane with the point I'm trying to make. That point being...that we went to Siena, and it was really cool. And that you SO should have been there. But unless you were, you totally weren't. Bwahahahahaaaa.

Ahhh, I'm terrible. But getting back to Siena, let me assure you that there is almost nothing Italians like better than a little wolf on a stick:

The Siena cathedral. Marble stripes are pure, unadulterated genius.
What time is it? It's scooter time.
Me taking pictures of Don taking pictures. I know, right. I'll give you a moment to scrape your brain off the ceiling.
The town square, where some kids were blowing bubbles
Another gold-painted mime, I'm loving these guys!Obvious alert: Italian flag.

(Cue Teen Girl Squad voice) I'm in looooove with every waaaaall.
And, last but not least, my MIL practicing the ancient Italian art of well-sitting. Cute, no? And let's not forget, it was her idea to visit Siena, so everyone please be aware that Debbie scores a million-gazillion brownie points.