Summer Summary

Summer got super crazy and I didn’t take time to write. Mi dispiace. Sorry.  We spent a lot of time on the boat, our own boat, and it was wonderful. I loved it. Except for the part of being trapped on it with four small children and working 24/7. But even those parts weren’t that bad because when I really got restless I could just jump off the boat. Problem solved.  Pictures of the boat will be uploaded soon. And most of them weren’t taken by me, thanks goes to Laura.

The first ten days of July a friend from school, Lauren Travis, came to visit. We had a blastly blast and I was delightfully exhausted when she left. This was her fourth time to Rome so we didn’t spend much time seeing the sights and doing the touristy thing so it was kind of fun to do some A-typical things with a friend. Actually everything was A-typical for a tourist in Rome but pretty typical for just hanging out with a friend. We went to Florence over night and that was fantastic as always. I bought my first real grown up lady purse from San Lorenzo market. I considered it an investment since it’ll probably be my only purse purchase for the next several years. I’m not much of a bag carrier.

After Lauren left, I spent another week on the boat. We mostly sailed around Ischia a small island close to Capri. It’s pretty similar but less touristy. It’s the Italians little island paradise. During this time we also celebrated my 23^rd birthday. Last year I spent it in Searcy, AR, this year I was on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Not too shabby. The family did a nice job of making it feel like a special day and I really appreciated that. They even got me a cake J and did you know instead of making your birthday wish when you blow out the candles, in Italy, they blow out the candle then make a wish and break the candle. It’s good luck. So I was told.

After the birthday boat, I came back to Rome and my mom was there! I spent some afternoons with her while she was still on tour but then she wrapped that up and came to stay at my house! We had a nice relaxing time. We made an overnight trip to the hilltop village of Orvieto in Umbria. It was the quintessential 3000-year-old Italian village complete with duomo and fantastic views of the surrounding countryside.  We ate at a little trattorria recommended to us by the front desk guy at our hotel. If you’re taking the time to read this you probably know me well enough to know how important food is to me. So let me just tell you, HOLY COW! Possibly the best meal I’d had in my entire six months in Italy. I can’t even remember the name of what I got and even if I could exactly it’s in Italian therefore not of much importance to you. But it was only long pasta with wild boar. But good grief, my mouth is watering just remembering it. Anyway, it was such a nice change first of all to be traveling with someone and secondly, to not be staying in the shadiest/cheapest lodging possible. We spent the whole next day shopping. I’ll repeat that, my mom and I, the haters of shopping, spent the whole next day shopping. I don’t know, it just happened. I blame it on the task of getting souvenirs.