Monday and Tuesday, Florence and Siena

So, I'm back to 55+ hours per week and have no time to post. Coupled with the fact that you are probably not as amused by my vacation photos as I am, I have selected a few from each day of the rest of the trip :)

Church in Florence that I forget the name of. We caught the sun coming up behind it at just the right time!

Our little 'jaunt' on Monday morning turned into a cardio workout. Adam bounded to the top like a puppy while the rest of us huffed and puffed our way up the stairs.

I like Florence better from up here :) (Adam not such a fan of heights...)

It was so peaceful up on the hill above Florence. No tourists, just us and the smell of Cyprus (?) trees.

Ha.

Our next stop on the trip was the walled city of Siena, about an hour's drive from Florence (this is not our car). Siena was clean, less crowded, and in some places looked like it hadn't changed since Medieval times...we had finally wandered into the Old World...

Fantastic! We wanted to buy and cook everything we saw.

Amazing gelato with the fam

Hangin' with dad

We kept seeing these masks everywhere and never figured out why

Every street in Siena had character

Adam and I spent about half an hour just looking out at the hills. I fancy a career as an olive picker. I bet I could wear overalls everyday if I wanted.

This dinner at Osteria di Nonna Gina ties for the best meal I have ever had (other best meal was in Paris at Moissonier or whatever it's called). The menus were all handwritten and all in Italian. We were able to decipher most of it! Pam and I had gnocchi with secret sauce (we think it was a walnut pesto of some sort). I scraped my plate clean.

Holiday road, Italy

Our family always jokes about being National Lampoons on vacation and we always have fun, despite our, let's call them adventures.  :)

To recap a few of my favourite 'holiday road' moments over the years:

Camping trip to Myrtle beach, 1995
Five of us (four Ives + one brave guest) piled into our Wally Wagon (giant blue station wagon). Wally towed the camper, had three bicycles on a rack affixed to the rear window, a cooler bungee corded to the back of the camper, and our luggage + four lawn chairs - in garbage bags - strapped to the roof. People were slowing down on the expressway to see who was driving this car, which wasn't mortifying AT ALL to my 16 year old self

Train trip to St. Ives, 2010
Five of us (four Ives + Adam) embarked on a 36-hour excursion to Cornwall. (12 of these hours were spent on the train :). My brother, at aged 29, still tends to get fussy after long periods of travel and began to whine about 3 hours into the journey back to London. Pam tried to appease him with whatever she had in her bag:

Pam: 'Timmy, what do you like to read to read?'
Tim: 'Apart from porn? Nothing.'

It was a loud conversation on a quiet train, and Ed Miliband, the leader of our Labour party was sitting two rows in front of us, so I'm sure he enjoyed every minute of family time with the Ives.

Nevermind. :)

So we knew the big Italy trip that we've been planning for months would be yet another Holiday Road for three Ives + Adam (hard to believe he keeps coming back for more). We all flew to Milan together on a plane packed with very excited Italian teenagers, who applauded when the plane landed. (Adam, who hates flying, asked me 'Do they know something we don't? Did we almost crash?')

Upon landing, our first order of business was to rent a car. Dad finally found the Dollar rental counter after we trawled most of the parking garage looking for it, and they were all out of cars! The helpful gentleman offered my dad a nine-passenger van. Perfect for navigating and parking on the narrow streets of small Italian towns! Augh. Luckily we were able to break the contract and negotiate a deal with Avis, who rented us a respectable little four-door for 300 euro cheaper. :)

Driving in Italy is...interesting. I applaud my dad for even being brave enough to attempt this. We had brought Anita with us (we named our GPS device). Anita was confused at first but then realised she wasn't in West Chester, OH. However, listening to her voice was like hearing a first year Italian student (on the first day of class) pronounce things. She just never got the hang of the accent.

Milan was FLAT and we saw field after field of pear trees. Just before dark, the terrain got hillier and hillier (sort of like West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania) and then we just started going through tunnels. Anita's pink line of where we needed to go next looked spaghetti.

I looked in the backseat and Adam and Pam were hanging on for dear life, occasionally suggesting that we might slow down, to which Dad would reply 'I'm just keeping up with traffic!' And he was! People were whizzing past us! Italians are mad drivers.

We finally made it to Hotel Dali in Florence after about four hours, ditched our bags, and made a beeline for wine.