Home at Last

I am back home. I didn’t mention where I was going. I was in Italy last week on family vacation and had a pretty good time all in all. Now, I’m catching up at work, spending time with my cats, and going through my photos. I am very excited to share the food I enjoyed, but for now, here are some of my favorite non-food photos.

I stood out as a tall, light-haired person. My feet hung off the ends of the beds. During the entire trip, I only saw one other redhead. And I was looking. I had Alex take this photo of me under a hanging light that I thought was about an inch over my head, but this photo makes the distance appear almost reasonable.

This photo looks crazy, but I like it. We’re waiting in the courtyard for Alex’s mom to get ready for supper after a nap on our first day in the country. Alex’s sister and her boyfried are laughing at Italian curses in a phrasebook.

We started our trip in a small town in the hills on the Adriatic coast, with a pretty little compact town and farmland all around. We saw lots of parasol pines, grape vines, and olive trees. The scenery was more beautiful than I could have imagined, and I enjoyed some mild weather until we headed up north.

And on the public transportation, other kinds of beautiful scenery.

Alex, his father, and I were the “dream team” as the family divided down the middle for much of the trip. Below, Alex and his dad on the banks of the Arno River in Florence, and then me and his dad after we climbed all the stairs to the very top of the Duomo.

We ended the trip with a visit to Alex’s aunt and uncle’s beautiful home, and on our tour of their gardens this cat kept climbing trees. Here’s Alex’s mother taking a photograph of it.

We were also stuck in a snowstorm and in the car for 23 hours. More on this separately.

I’m trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts on the food. Something like, “Can you really get tired of Italian food?” Or, “How much pasta can one person eat?” Maybe it will be, “I learned the word for eggplant and used it every chance I got.”