Saturday, October 8, 2016

Friday, October 7

We finished our first full week of Spanish school.  Overall, the morning schedule works really well.  We leave the house at 7:40 to walk the mile to school.  They have one-on-one instruction with their teachers for two hours, and then I meet them for their 30 minute break.  Andrew has found a spot up on the roof that he has claimed for himself, where he plants himself down to read a book and be left alone.  He and Chloe bring a snack from the house (chocolate covered graham crackers) and Mason and Katie buy something to eat at school.  The chocobanas run 1 quetzal (13 cents) and the tacos are 3 Q (40 cents).

That means I end up walking to Spanish school, then run a couple of errands, walk home, walk back for snack, do some errands, walk back to pick them up, and then walk home.  I have been averaging around 11 miles a day of running and walking.  I was pretty tired this morning, so I'm feeling it. Especially since a lot of that time I'm hauling things like food and laundry.

Chloe's teacher has a husband that is a private Spanish instructor.  He's going to be Ryan's tutor for any of the weeks he can spare the time to do it. It's the most time efficient way to do it, so we were glad to find someone.  Plus he tries to talk to the people who come in and out of the house, like gardeners and Maria.

It took me about an hour and a half to figure out how to download and order from the Dominos app for Guatemala, and I ended up walking to Dominos to make sure I got my order right before I placed it.  I was afraid it couldn't tell I was in Antigua and was going to deliver the pizza in Guatemala City or something.  But it was all worth it to get 50% off my pizzas by using the app.

Tonight we went to an FHE kind of night at the church that the Young Women's president told me about.  At first we weren't sure how it was going to go.  We were one of the first ones there, and spent some time talking to one of the members.  It totally reminded me of my mission. Then a few more people filtered in and they started the meeting.  There was a short spiritual message and then they had a song and prayer and then played a game.

Finding your place in a new group is always sort of awkward, but tonight was a lot better than Sunday.  We at least know a few people now and tomorrow we will go do a service activity at the church which should help us get to know a few more people. It's hard for our kids to really enjoy a lot of it since they don't speak Spanish very well yet, but they enjoyed the game we played tonight (the frog assassin and the hunter) and could at least have the feeling of being glad they were there.

When we got home, Katie and Chloe found a moth the size of a bird in their room.  Yikes! It took about 5 minutes for us to coax it out. Having the mosquito nets over their beds has been good for all of them, since I think it makes them feel a little more protected from all of the little critters that pop up.  There actually aren't as many as I would think for how much the doors are open to the outside, but it's more than they have at home.









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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Antigua, Day 1

 Our first full day in Antigua was spent just trying to figure things out.  We started out by going to breakfast, since we had no food whatsoever.  We ended up seeing a Dunkin Donuts first, and we were hungry enough that it sounded perfect.  My kids weren't quite ready for a breakfast of frijoles and tortillas.

The city is filled with beautiful churches.  This is one we passed along the way.


Grocery shopping was kind of a fiasco as went around trying to find things that looked familiar.  I don't even like to grocery shop with my kids at home, so when you're crammed into a little grocery store with tight aisles and a lot of things you can't exactly identify, it makes it even more crazy. We found the kind of bread that they love as well as some cereal and other staples, and put it into the plastic bags we had to buy and headed back to the house.  Along the way we passed by the Santa Catalina arch, with is the pretty yellow arch seen in almost every picture of Antigua.


The view from out our front door:


Our front door.


Chloe's friend, Ignacio, who lives at the house with us.  He loves Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies.  He's hysterical.

Katie and Mason went with me to check out Spanish schools, and we found one we really liked that they will start tomorrow.

We are still trying to get our bearings and all of the kids are adjusting in their own (sometimes emotional) way.  It will be better to have more to do, so hopefully Spanish school goes well tomorrow.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2016

The Only Way Out Is Through

I used that phrase a lot the last time we did something like this.  There are so many details to put together that by the end you just want all of the preparation and planning to be OVER.  And it's hard to believe it's all going to work out. But quitting isn't an option (well, it is, but it's a pretty lame option), so the only choice is to keep pushing through until there's no time left and you just have to DO it.  Buckle in, since the point of no return has long since been passed.

We were able to use frequent flier miles to get the tickets, but we couldn't get them all together.  I flew down on a 6:00 am flight with my 3 younger kids and Ryan flew down at 2:00 pm with Mason.

To catch a 6 am flight, you have to wake up at somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-night o'clock to get there on time, so don't plan on sleeping.  I laid in my bed for about 4 hours, and then at 3:30 am, it was time to get up and get going.

Ryan drove us to the airport, and we got everything checked in and headed through security.  Chloe and I made it through just fine, Katie had to dump a bottle of leave-in conditioner and a thing of sunscreen, and Andrew's backpack got flagged as well.  I couldn't figure out what he had that would have triggered the sensors, and then saw that as his one toy/game he could bring, he chose a big metal box of dominoes, that weighed probably 5 pounds.  I questioned his choice until he and Chloe spent an hour in each airport we went to setting up domino tracks to knock over.
I was pretty much catatonic for most of the flight to Miami, and my kids were kind enough to leave me alone while I sat there in that not-asleep-but-not-awake state that is the best that can be done when you're flying coach.  Which is every plane trip ever for me.  I could tell I was doing that open-mouth gaping kind of thing while I "slept" and I didn't even care.

We had a layover in Miami followed by an hour sitting on the tarmac waiting for Cuban airspace to clear.  Aren't we over this yet, Cuba?  But Andrew got to sit in the cockpit and we flew over some amazing islands that made me second guess my choice to go somewhere in the mountains.

We landed in the middle of a downpour, and got our ride to Antigua.  It was slow going with the traffic, and it was dark and gray outside because of the rain.  And we were tired.  And I was a little stressed.

We got to the house, and met the family that lives here and takes care of the house.  We did a quick tour of the house, and I came to find out that none of the rooms are actually connected to each other.  Every room empties out onto a courtyard in the middle that is kind of like an outdoor living room. So nary a hallway to be found.  Ryan and I have a bathroom that attaches, but my kids have to leave their rooms and basically go outside to get to their bathrooms.  The whole thing kind of threw me off.  Once it gets dark at 6:00 pm, it kind of feels like you're camping, since there isn't a lot of light in the rooms, and you spend a lot of time outside going from room to room.  Who doesn't love a 2-month camping trip? I'll post photos of the house later.

It was a rough first night as we waited in the dark for Ryan and Mason to arrive.  The house stressed me out, I was tired, my kids were sad that we were going to be gone for so long, and the rain wouldn't stop.  I knew intellectually that things would be hard at the beginning, but it's difficult to really prepare yourself for the mental challenge of losing the world you're used to and starting a new life somewhere so different.  And being the mom, I get to absorb all emotions that gush out of my children and hold onto them. Lucky me!

I felt that as we prayed about and prepared for this trip that it was the right thing to do, and I felt very sure about the house we rented. So that was going to have to carry me over until life settled into something that felt a little less overwhelming.


A few photos from the trip down:



 The view over the Caribbean

 First stop after landing was the bathroom.  Each stall we went into greeted us with this:


After we left, we realized we were supposed to have grabbed some toilet paper as we walked in.  Obviously.


Just waiting for our ride in the rain.  Katie's shirt says "Say Yes to New Adventures".  Very appropriate.


Seeing the Walmart sign in Guatemala City made me a little homesick for Crestwood.  I never knew how much I could love a Walmart until the best Walmart in the country moved in right down the street.


It was a downpour our whole trip from the Guatemala City airport to Antigua (about 30 miles away, but 1 1/2 hours with traffic and rain).  This is a view of our street.  Turns out it becomes a river when it rains a lot. Anyone got a canoe?


We were starving by the time we got to Antigua, so we went out with our umbrellas in search of food.   We could have been adventurous, but when you're tired and have three tired kids, something familiar and fast is the way to go.  Wendy's hit the spot.  They said "con mucho gusto" ("our pleasure") after everything I asked for and carried our trays to the table for us.


This is the wall across from our house with beautiful bougainvillea  trailing over the top.


So, landing day wasn't our best, but we had hope for the future.
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"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.
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"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.
Posted by at No comments:

"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.
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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Rome and Florence

We lucked out on our second day of Rome to get a personal tour guide.  A friend of Megan was working as an English tutor for a family in Rome, and had a good lay of the land and some free time to take us around.  
We started at the Trevi Fountain, where we made sure to toss a coin in to ensure we return some day.  Andrew got his first whistle from an Italian policeman for getting a little too adventurous on the edges of the statues.  To be honest, I’m surprised it took him a whole day for that to happen.
From there we walked to the Spanish steps.  Along the way, our tour guide Emma showed us how you could plug the end of the water spigot to make a drinking fountain.  We loved the fountains before, but they were even more fun when they were spurting arcs of water to drink.  It was so nice to not have to carry water around, since it seemed like any time we needed water we’d find a fountain within a couple of minutes.  

In the photos below, I talked three kids into posing for me on the steps.  The other one had better things to do and rolled his eyes at me.
On the Spanish steps, we counted our way to the top and found the “House of Monsters” at the top.  We kept up our walk to the Piazza di Popoli (I think that’s what it was), which was where we found the Statue of Liberty.  Well, sort of.  We also did our best to spot as many obelisks as we could.

We finished our tour by going to the Pantheon.  The size of it was amazing.


I’m not sure how far we walked that day--but for our crew it was pretty substantial.  When we went back to where we were staying, we hit the pool for our one warm day of swimming on this trip. The photos below show our tour guide (on the left), and just how tired we felt (on the right).
Our last day of Rome began with leaving Chloe and Andrew with Ryan and going to Ostia Anitca.  It’s a old Roman city that was basically abandoned over time when the river shifted.  The first 30 minutes of ruins were pretty interesting, and then we realized that we had only seen about ten percent of the city. 
After that we became a little less fascinated by each and every room and put things into overdrive, which ruined things for Mason since he had claimed he was going to see “every nook and cranny”.  That would have been fine had he intended to spend the night there, but since he didn’t, he had to abandon his plan. In another hour we had made it through as much of the city as we could and called it a day.  Compared to the ghost towns from back home in Montana, this was like NYC.
We all agreed that it would be the ultimate hide-and-seek location, but we were too hot and tired to actually give it a try.  Maybe another day.
After getting lunch at home, we all went in to the Vatican together.  We started in Saint Peter’s and saw Michaelangelo’s Pieta.  After that we went on our hunt for the Sistene Chapel (or as Andrew called it, the “sixteen chapel”). For the record, Chloe thought we were going to the “dentist” when we went to Venice--and she still seemed excited to go. But I digress.

The metro rides in were often crowded, and somewhat long.  So Ryan would bring a book to read to the kids, and they would make themselves as “comfortable” as they could.  Yes, it’s pretty gross to think about sitting on the floors of the graffiti-covered trains, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  
The Vatican museum was further away than I had been led to believe, but we eventually made it to where we needed to be to get in.  The best part was that there were NO LINES--hooray!  We had followed the advice in “Rome for Kids” to go in the afternoon, and it paid off.
After we went in, we found out that even though we intended to go straight to the Sistene Chapel, the Vatican had other ideas for us.  It felt kind of like we had gone to IKEA--where they wind you around and around and it feels like you’re never going to get to the end. We kept seeing signs for the chapel, but right when we thought we were going to get there, it seemed even further away.  
I’ll give credit to the Vatican for having a seriously amazing collection of art, which we saw much more of than we had planned.  We eventually made it to the chapel, and enjoyed staying there for the 5 minutes our kids would allow ("Silence Please!").  And then we headed out.  And since I couldn't take photos of the ceiling ("No Photos!"), I added in some photos of other ceilings we saw when we were there.
Our three days in Rome weren’t enough to put a dent in all there was to do, but since we threw a coin in the Trivoli fountain, we know we’ll have another chance to see the rest some day.


We drove from Rome to Florence on Saturday to spend the afternoon in the city.  You could easily spend a week there, but we take what we can get.
We stopped for our daily dose of pizza, and I ventured out and got a Napoli (or something like that) style pizza.  I have always wondered what a pizza with anchovies tastes like, and I figured there was nowhere better than Italy to try it out.  You know how sometimes the first time is also the last time?  Thus it is with anchovies on pizza.  No one else wanted any, so I finished off what I could of my fishy pizza and left the rest.
Then we headed over to the duomo.  The cathedral is beautiful with the exterior designed in green, peach/pink, and white marble.  From a distance it looks painted, but then you get close up and see the amazing detail.  
The kids climbed the bell tower, which was funny only for the fact that Andrew was the one who wanted to climb it, but spent a lot of the time on all fours saying how scared he was to be climbing to the top.  But they all made it up and back down.


We left Megan with the three younger kids in a park while Mason, Ryan and I went to see the David.  Wow.  We couldn’t take pictures of the real David, but they did have this version of it that was available for photos:
Glad to see someone has a sense of humor.  It was amazing to see the array of items for sale on the streets of Florence that have David’s genitals plastered on them.  Enough said on that topic.
Ryan and I even squeezed in a date in the evening, going out to dinner in a lovely restaurant looking out over the Tuscan mountainside. 

And just for fun, here's one last photo.  I think it's to show you where kids are likely to be crossing the road, but I think it's more like, "Quick, sweetie--we need to run across the road because these cars aren't going to stop for us."  Compared to the rule-following order that embodies Switzerland, Italy has been a whole other ball of wax.  
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