Day 10: Day Off

12/29:Today we decided it was too foggy to really do any productive touring. We basically just sat around the house playing cards. Kyle made soup with a bunch of leftover stuff and sausage. It was good. That's really about it, just took a day off because of the weather. We ended the night by watching Eddie Izzard's "Dress to Kill" on YouTube. Hopefully tomorrow's weather will be better and we can drive 2 hours south and explore Rome!

Day 9: More Hilltop Excursions

12/28: Dad took Gregg to the airport at 4AM, so the rest of the family slept in and started the day late. We left the villa around 1-1:30 in search of more hilltop towns to spend the afternoon investigating.
We first ended up in Lucignano, a town Mom and Dad tried but failed to find during their summer visit. They had actually found a different town named Luciano with a sign saying "For Residents Only" and were told to leave when they started touring it! This Lucignano was the one in the guidebook though, and it was pretty neat. It was built as 4 concentric circles inside a fortified wall. We wandered the streets and into a few churches and other buildings. Even the churches in these small towns are really ornate. That surprised me. Most of the shops were closed, either because it was Monday or because we were there during Italian lunchtime, but Emily did manage to find an open pottery shop and bought some ceramics.
The next hilltop town we came across was nowhere near as interesting as Lucignano. Monte San Savino was bigger, but there didn't seem to be as much to do. Most of the shops here were closed too, but we still managed to wander in an out of churches. There were multiple churches in the same square, which is different than the other towns we had visited. It was about 4:30 and we were getting a little hungry. Emily found a restaurant that opened at 5, so we wandered a bit more waiting as the rain slowly started to come down. The weather had been pretty good for the day up until this point. Turns out the restaurant opened at 19:00, which is 7, not 5, so we just packed back into the car and headed back to the villa.
We decided to give Civitella a shot for dinner, as it is the next hill over from our villa. We pulled up at 5:30, and asked the man working the small grocery shop that we had been using if any restaurants were open. As luck would have it, he was friends with the owner of one of the restaurants, and we were told to come back at 7. We returned to the villa and played cards and sat about until dinner.
Dinner was fantastic! The restaurant, L'Antivo Borgo, (we speculated it meant the Old Mill since there was a giant grinder inside) was really small, able to hold 40 people tops. The owner was the waiter and his mother and I think wife worked the kitchens. He spoke excellent English and explained everything on the menu in great detail, which was very helpful. We started with a basket of bread and butter with bits of truffle in it. We had lentil dish on the house as an appetizer, then my first meal arrived: a beautiful lobster pasta, using home made pasta. Kyle's first meal was an absurd amount of foie gras. The look on his face was priceless. For the second course, Dad and I were going to split a bistecka like we did earlier. It ended up feeding all 5 of us easily, with leftovers! The medium rare was actually medium rare this time. The meat was like butter. I know people say that for really good steaks, but I've truly experienced a steak that really melted in your mouth. It was very similar to the foie gras, if you can believe that! For dessert, we had a complimentary creme brule and some complimentary after dinner cookies as well. Kyle also ordered a dessert, but I've forgotten what it was.
The owner was friendly and chatty, the atmosphere was amazing, and the food was to die for. If anyone winds up in Tuscany near Arezzo, go to Civitella and try L'Antivo Borgo. The prices weren't even outrages, it ended up being 250 euro for the 5 of us, with 2 bottles of wine. I think we are going back for New Years (which the owner kept calling "thirty-one" which I thought was interesting) and then watch the fireworks in the valley from the hilltop.

Day 8: Pisa

12/27: Today we toured Pisa. We got a fairly early start out of the villa, and arrived in Pisa about 2 hours later, with some slight trouble with roundabouts. Italian signage is just terrible.
I never realized that the tower was right next to 3 other landmarks. I had always pictured it standing (leaning) by itself, but it's right behind a duomo, which is right behind a baptistry, which is right next to another building that housed some graves, including Fibonnaci's, and some beautiful frescoes. We explored that baptistry first. Another example of the ridiculous splendor of the church during that time. It was a very dark structure, but the acoustics were something else. While we were on the second floor looking down into the baptistry fount, one of the museum guides came in and chanted something in Italian or Latin and it just filled up the whole place. Hard to explain in words, but it was a neat experience.
We walked around that fresco building next while waiting for our appointment time to actually climb the tower. We also attempted to tour the duomo, but it since it was Sunday there was an actual Catholic mass going on.
It was more challenging to climb up that I had imagined, and it was a little unnerving, for me at least. I made it to the top of the bell tower section, but did not go as high as Gregg, Em, and Kyle. I did not know that the tower was a bell tower either. The view of Pisa was amazing. You could see mountains in the distance, the small Italian buildings of the town, and the massive structures of the duomo and baptistry. It was incredible.
After climbing down, which was much easier than going up, we stopped for a late lunch. I ordered a salami pizza and tripe in tomato sauce, thinking the pizza was smaller than it actually was. I ended up sharing it with the family because it was a decent size. I also had some of Gregg's veal, Emily's pasta in boar sauce, Dad's seafood pasta, and Mom's pasta in wild hare sauce. And red wine to wash it all down, of course.
After lunch we finally were able to see the duomo. More splendor of the church on full display. The pullpit was nearly identical to the one we saw in Florence, and that was because the son had done the Florence one and modeled it after his father's work on Pisa one. The Pisa one had one major difference though, it showed pagan gods in the architecture, which was both interesting and odd. The ceiling was exquisite, but too dark to really capture well in a photo.
The last thing we saw was a museum behind the tower. It was full of the priests' vestments, sculpture of Roman gods, Egyptian hieroglyphics, a collection of huge prayer and song books that we had seen in other places, and more paintings depicting saints and such. The museum courtyard is supposed to have the best view of the tower, so we checked that out as well. I tried to do the cliched picture of holding up/pushing over the tower, but Mom just couldn't find a good angle, no matter how hard we tried. Oh well.
We wrapped up the day by buying a few souvenirs then headed back to the villa. For once, we had great weather the entire day!

Day 7: Boxing Day at Montepulciano

12/26: Today was pretty laid back, but we did manage to check out Montepulciano, the #4 hilltop town in Italy as rated by our guidebook. It was a nice day when we left the villa. It only took about an hour to get to the fortified hilltop town, and that's only because we got slightly lost by following signs to the motorway. We ended up going in a circle, but followed the signs correctly. Italian roads are screwy.
We stopped for lunch a few minutes away from the town at what turned out to be a fantastic restaurant. Dad ordered 2 bisteckas, steaks that were over 1kg each for the family. We ordered pasta and I had some sausage as well. We ordered medium rare for the steaks, but either that means something different over here or she only understood the rare part because they were very bloody. We topped everything off with vino rosso, just like with every other meal. We also had Vino Santo, a dessert wine, for the first time. I love sweet, dessert wines. I bought a bottle on the way out for home.
By this time the weather had turned sour and we drove up the rest of the hill to get a little touring done before the weather got really nasty. We ended up only staying an hour or so, but we did manage to see 2 churches and a fantastic view before the fog rolled in. We drove home in the rain, but the fog disappeared before we climbed the hill/mountain to our villa.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. Dad had a small tumble getting firewood, but it wasn't serious, and we spent the rest of the evening watching Muppet Show clips next to a roaring fire.

Day 6: Christmas at the Villa

12/25: Buon Natale everyone! We spent Christmas at the villa, opening presents in the family tradition. Emily, as the youngest, had sorting duties, and then we each took turns opening our presents. We had some weird weather for about an hour, where it was nice, then poured, then was really windy. Gregg took off for a run while Mom and I walked the dirt road around the mountain. Kyle cooked what we thought was a Christmas goose, but actually turned out to be a duck. Oh well, it was still delicious.
This year, my "stocking" was a Guinness pint glass celebrating the 250th anniversary of the brewery. It was filled with kangaroo jerky, a block puzzle, a Cadbury bar, a Greek alcohol called Ouzo, Guinness luggage tags, and Smarties! Under the tree I got two T shirts from Mom and Dad, one of Carcassone and one of the first newspaper advertisement for Guinness, an Ohio Places calendar from the McGinnis family, the New Super Mario Bros for Wii from Gregg, a Wiimote charger from Emily, a $50 Visa card from Auntie Mona and Uncle Rick, a $50 Papa's gift card from Uncle Alan, and a black pepper shaker in the shape of a bishop chess piece as a lagniappe gift from the parents. Most importantly, I got a trip to Italy! Dad received Bob Dylan's Christmas album. It is fantastically terrible, he and I enjoyed listening to it but I think it got on Mom's nerves quickly.
Dinner was delicious. Kyle cooked us duck, potatoes, leeks and beets (which I didn't care for), and brussels sprouts. For desert, the villa owners had left as a pannnetoni, which was like a raisin cake. Mom and the bright idea of soaking it in brandy and having Kyle lighting it on fire. It was really anti climactic. Instead of a big flame, the cake just absorbed the booze. The cake wasn't very good, but was also had champagne and Christmas biscuits to finish the meal.
It was a very laid back day.

Day 5: Florence

12/24: We got a good start to the day and left the Villa a little after 9. It was my turn to lay down in the boot, which is good because my back had started to hurt and sitting in the middle would have been unpleasant. Our first order of business was another airport stop to check for our lost luggage. Kyle and Emily got their bags in 15-20 minutes, and we rejoiced, but the airport told Gregg that his luggage had arrived, but was not in the lost and found. We waited another 40 minutes or so for them to find the final bag. It actually came through on a flight while we were waiting, so that was lucky. We finally had all our bags! Dad took the luggage back to the villa with the plan of meeting us at the square where the statue of David is, and the rest of us took a cab into downtown Florence.

We started our Florence trek at the Uffizi museum, where the famous Birth of Venus, or as Dad refers to it, Venus on the Half-shell, painting by Botticelli resides. We tried to absorb a lot of culture in a short amount of time, so we didn't get to fully appreciate everything. We also got burned out on seeing countless renditions of the Madonna and Child. I was excited to see some of Raphael's work too. He is my favorite painter. After our museum tour, we had a light lunch at the museum rooftop cafe.

Next, we examined the statues in the square outside the Ufiizi, especially the replica statue of David put in the square in 1910 (the real one is in the Academy Museum in Florence, that we didn't get to see), a statue of Bacchus, and an awesome statue of Neptune. There were a few other mythological statues as well, like a centaur being killed and Medusa being beheaded.

Dad was still stuck in traffic on his way to the villa, so the rest of us headed over to the Ponte Vecchio, or Old Bridge.

We wandered in and out of small shops on the way to the bridge. The Ponte Vecchio was also lined with touristy shops and Mom told us it was similar to what London Bridge was like before it collapsed.

Dad was still in transit when we finished with the Ponte Vecchio, so we hiked over to the Duomo of Florence. It was massive, and carved of beautiful green, pink, and white marble. The outside just kept going and going, I think its the largest cathedral I've ever been in. After seeing the ridiculous splendor of the outside, I had high hopes for the inside. They were somewhat dashed however, as the inside was far less impressive than the inside of the Siena Duomo. I guess all the funds were used making the outside extravagant. You can really see why the Reformation happened after viewing all of the Church's splendor in person.

Dad finally met up with us at the Duomo, and we headed back towards the car in the rain. The weather had been gloomy but the rain held off until late in the day, so we were kind of fortunate. He had parked near a fort, and if there was time we were going to take a look around

We ended up wandering into the person church of the Medici's instead, with parts designed by Michelangelo and Donatello. We saw the final resting place of one of the Medicis. We also bought a ticket to the crypt around the corner, which had holy relics, including a bone of Saint Peter. Pretty neat stuff. It was too dark to see everything surrounding the church though, and we ended up missing Michelangelo's staircase, which is in the guidebook as a thing to see. Oh well.

After that we walked towards the car in search of a restaurant to eat dinner. We didn't find one and just drove home in the treacherous fog. It was quite an ordeal driving up the foggy mountain that the villa is on in the dark, but we made it in one piece thanks to some navigating by Gregg.

We had our traditional salmon pickings for dinner and opened one present for Christmas Eve. I got a very nice hand made coffee mug from Tip City, Ohio, courtesy of the McGinnis family

Day 4: Siena

12/23: *side-note: I keep forgetting to blog this, but I think the most underrated thing about Europe is the Fanta. It's like Orangina, but better. A simply incredible beverage. *end side-note*

Today we audibled to a trip south to Siena instead of doing some sight seeing in Florence and hitting the airport on the way home. We checked for flights coming in from Amsterdam or Rome, and they weren't until late in the evening or at night. Tomorrow we'll hit Florence and the airport. The 6 of us piled into our 5 seater, with Emily hiding in the seatless boot, and took off for a day trip to Siena.

Siena was only about 50km away from the base of our hilltop villa, but it took about an hour to get there since we took a scenic route on country roads. Siena turned out to be 1 of my 5 favorite cities.

The town of Siena is built into a hillside, and spirals downwards. The roads and city are actually curved, which was really neat to see. We eventually found parking at the top of a hill and meandered down towards the Piaza del Campo, the famous square in Siena. There are horse races around the square and recently it featured Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace. The curved streets and buildings presented some really fantastic architecture as well. The town hall/museum building at the edge of Piaza del Campo was really neat. It had a 400 step clock tower to climb up, but when Gregg and I got to the second level, about 50 steps up, we realized we had to pay to advance further. We retreated, but in hindsight I would have liked to have seen the view and square from way up there.

After that, we split up and wandered the city little before meeting back up at a cafe on the edge of the square. Tuscany is a region known for its pottery and ceramics, and they were everywhere in souvenir shops. Not tacky and actually quite expensive, but very gorgeous works. I ended up picking up a Vespa shaped coffee mug for myself, and looked for some gifts to bring home.

For lunch, we met up at a cafe and I had a pretty simple salami sandwich. It was good, better than most salamis in America. The Italians sure have figured out hams and sausages...Nobody ordered anything crazy except Kyle's liter of beer.

After lunch, we hiked up the streets to the Duomo, a magnificent cathedral. The marble work was incredible, outside the columns alternated pink and white, and inside the columns were striped black and white. The marble on the floor showed illustrations, but some of them were covered up by cardboard (including the Slaughter of the Innocents), for upcoming Christmas Mass. In part 2 of our tour we saw the original statues and gargoyles from the cathedral in a separate building. The ones on the cathedral are actually replicas. Part 3 brought us to a building that was supposed to be part of the cathedral, but was never finished. Inside there, we found some relics and bones of saints and just cool, ornate artifacts. We also climbed up a tower to get a fantastic view of Siena. Finally, the last part of the tour brought us to a baptistry. The artwork on the ceiling was unique because there is an alligator "hiding" someone in it. Kyle spotted it first.

After our 4 part tour, we wandered the streets some more, popped into a few more shops, and then tried to find our way back to the car. We got lost, of course, but ended up stumbling into another massive church named San Francesco. It was huge, dark, and a large section of it was empty. I don't think it was a real touristy church, but it certainly was massive.

We finally found our way to the car, after popping into a few final shops, and then headed back to our villa.

Finally, a full day of touring that the whole family enjoyed.

Day3: Vinci and another airport trip

12/22: Today we had a lateish start, but it seems as though I have overcome jet lag, which is good. It had been rainy all night, so when we woke up most of the snow had been replaced with fog. It stayed foggy and rainy the whole day, which was not pleasant to drive in, especially with the Italian lunatic and their road systems. We decided to head out to Vinci, Leonardo's birthplace, to see the Leonardo Da Vinci machines museum. First, there was an accident on the road that delayed us about 30 min, then we found a nice restaurant to pop in for lunch. We ordered some appetizers and ended up with a cheese pizza, some weird meat paste that we suspect was boar (looked like chili/dog food), some bread, and some proscuitto. For the entry, I ordered a wild boar dish. It was really good.

After lunch we hit up the museum. What a neat place! There were models of his machines and video demonstrations of how they worked. I never realized how many of his machines were either designed to aid in the construction of cathedrals or were very military focused. After the museum we decided to swing by the Florence airport for a third time to see if Gregg's, Kyle's, and Emily's bags had arrived.

Getting to the airport was quite an ordeal. We hit rush hour traffic, especially where the toll booth goes from 13 or so lanes down to 2! We also had a rough time going through the round abouts trying to get to the airport because the other end of the round about spit people onto a major highway. It was a really dumb and poorly designed road system.

We finally got to the airport, and only had a 10 minute or so wait before a very nice man (unlike our previous encounters) told us that all the flights from Amsterdam during the day had been canceled, so our bags were still stuck there. He was nice enough to let us around and have a look, but we didn't find anything. Europe is in the middle of a blizzard that they are not prepared for, and bags (and hundreds of others) are taking the hit. Hopefully they will be there tomorrow.

Tomorrow our plan of attack is to call the big museum in Florence and see if we can schedule a tour. If yes, we'll head to Florence for the day and end with another airport run. If not, we'll drive a bit further and head out to Pisa, where we can be unique and hold up the tower...or push it over...

The weather is nasty for the next week, which is unfortunate. Mom is not very pleased, but it is supposed to rain through the rest of December. This is very odd weather for the region at this time of year, and we are just stuck with. Hopefully the bags come in soon and we can focus on actually spending our time touring instead of planning around airport runs.

Florence Airport, take 2

But first, some light village hopping. We started the day off with a trip to the small village of Civitella. It was an ancient walled city dating back to the 1300s, but wasn't really touristy, which was nice. We bought some groceries from a very small shop and wandered the village for a little. Next, we tried to drive to another small nearby village to find some lunch, but abandoned that plan when the roads got too bad. We turned around and found another small village and picked a restaurant that turned out to be the local hotspot. Dad, Kyle, and I all ended up ordering the same meal: a chicken, duck, and rabbit, which was excellent with the roasted potatoes on the side. We still had a lot of time before Gregg was scheduled to land, so we took another car ride to Arezzo, the closest "big" city. There was some history to see, but the traffic was terrible and it took too long to get to the city to actually get out and wander for a bit, so we just did tourism by car, then headed back to the villa.

I took a 3 hour nap, then Dad, Emily, Kyle, and I went back to the airport to grab Gregg and hopefully our luggage. Here's where the nightmare starts up again...

Kyle and I get in the baggage lost and found line while Dad and Em waited for Gregg to land. We waited for about 30-40 mins in line before finally be able to talk to someone, or so we thought. ..we got up the window, and the lady took a break. The lost and found closes at 8, and it was 7:20 when she decided to take a break. After 10 minutes of waiting and not knowing what to do, another attendant came by and tried to tell me through sound proof glass that it would take another 10-15 minutes before someone could help us....awesome. Finally a 3rd lady came and handled our claim. By this time Gregg had landed and his bag was also missing in action. Kyle and I found 1 out of our 3 missing bags while Gregg filed a claim for his bag. 2 bags down, 3 to go.

We got back to the Villa and Mom cooked spaghetti. We had wine and then talked for awhile, all of us in one room for the first time in awhile.

Starting things off with a BANG! *sarcasm*

12/19-12/20: Another Christmas, another trip! This time the Graham fam (and Kyle) are spending two weeks in Tuscany in a small town called Civitella. Getting there in one piece, however, proved to be difficult.

For starters, we weren't 100% sure we had a ride to the airport, but that was only through a miscommunication and the Cloughs were more than happy to take the three of us. We met Uncle Alan at the Cloughs for lunch before heading to the airport. Thanks for the Pappas gift card!

Our itinerary was to leave KLM from Houston at 4:30pm and arrive in Amsterdam around 8:30am on KLM, then breeze through the security checkpoints and make our connection to Florence at 10:15am on Merridiana, a regional Italian airline that was partners with KLM, but Mother Nature had other plans. The Houston- Amsterdam leg was almost perfect: we had some slight delays in packing up the bags or something, but we were off before 5. Flying KLM is always great, it's a shame Continental left that alliance so we didn't collect any miles. It was a slightly older plane and only had a few big TVs instead of individual ones in the seats, but I was close enough for it to not matter. We watched The Simpsons, 30 Rock, The Time Travelers Wife, Mr. Bean, and Up. The food served was pretty fancy for an airline. I had some salmon fusion dish that was actually pretty good for dinner. I didn't really care for the breakfast sandwich that came about an hour before we landed, but it was very nice to have the service anyway. We caught a glimpse of things to come as the plane started its decent, only to pull right back up and circle the airport for another 30 min or so. It was snowing in Amsterdam and they weren't quite ready for us to land... but we deboarded about 9am.I also had some light light conversation with a Dutch man heading home and a girl making a connection flight for the holidays. All in all, a good flight. Gregg's flight out of New York got cancelled from the blizzard hitting the whole Northeast...

We weren't so lucky once we made it through security though. The Florence trip had been delayed until 11:40. At 11:20 I checked the posting again and found out it had been pushed back again to 1:45, *sigh*. We milled around the airport and I tried to get some sleep, but that didn't really work out. It had started to snow a pretty decent amount at this point, coming down in bursts. The workers outside had even made a snowman.

Our plane arrived shortly before 2PM. It unloaded quickly and we skipped the board by rows thing and everybody just got on. Then we sat on the tarmac for another 2 hours. Awesome. At least I had some extra leg room courtesy of the exit row. To make matters worse, we had the most obnoxious family on board. 4 boys, ranging in age from 5-9 probably, were constantly running up and down the aisle, screaming hysterically. Not in a scared way, just a really annoying one. Every now and then the mother would faintly shush them, but she also took pictures of them being ridiculously obnoxious. The flight attendant was nowhere to be seen through all of this, naturally. It was a pretty short flight from Amsterdam to Florence, but the extra 2 hours of just sitting there almost put me over the edge.

The plane landed at Florence's surprisingly small, rinky dink airport, at 6:30PM. We deboarded and had to get on a bus to take us to the terminal. I'm not sure if that was because there was too much snow and the plane couldn't get closer to the gate, or if there were no gates at all. It was a really small airport.

Luggage started trickling through after 7, and luckily my bag was the 4th one to come out. Unfortunately, it was the only 1 of our 4 that made the trip. I waited about another 30 minutes for Emily's and Kyle's bags to come before heading through customs, which was literally walking past a man in uniform who didn't check anything, (I guess they don't care since we came from an EU country?) and finding mom and dad waiting for us. They had been there 6 hours since the airport was only updating our departure time from Amsterdam every 30 min!

Long story short, the other bags never came. We ended up filing a claim with an inept lost and found person and finally got out of the airport after 8:30PM. I am disappointed with the whole Italian air service so far, I know the weather played a big part, but there was a distinct lack of efficiency and knowledge of what to do in a situation like this.

Our villa was on top of hill overlooking a village. I bet the view is spectacular during the day, but I wasn't able to see much except the village lights, which was pretty in its own way. Mom said the ride to the airport with the snow everywhere was gorgeous.

The villa is massive, and very oddly designed...there are 5 bedrooms scattered throughout. 3 bathrooms, but only 1 downstairs, 2 dinning rooms liked to each other, complete with dinning room tables and chairs/benches, and 3 living rooms.

For dinner we picked at some AMAZING Italian sausages, cheese, wine, bread, etc...very similar to the smorgasborgs we enjoyed in Copenhagen 3 years ago. I went to bed shortly after eating, probably close to 11:30...but woke up at 5AM, ugh I hope I get this sleep schedule under control quickly.

Gregg flies in at 7PM to Florence *fingers crossed* so I suspect tomorrow will be pretty uneventful from a touring standpoint.