Last night in Rome

 

This will be my last post from our trip. I can’t believe it has come to an end. There are probably so many things I missed putting in the blog, but i guarantee you will be hearing many more stories from all of us when we return home. 

A lot of people may think traveling with 6 people wouldn’t be fun, but if you get the right combination of people it can be a blast and be filled with many lasting memories for a lifetime. 

This trip is something that I will cherish forever, I got to spend some great quality time with my son Nick, I truly enjoyed it and I hope he did to, and my sister and her husband.   I really only get to see them once a year, if I’m lucky twice a year. We laughed so hard at each other.

And Kylie, I just don’t know what to say about her, she is one awesome young woman! Don’t ever change yourself! I had so much fun with her and really getting to know her! And I couldn’t forget Alexis, the person who made this trip happen! She had us so organized I don’t think any one  of us could have done it! Like I said spending so much time with each other, we really got to know each other, share our family stories and talk about old times. 

We didn’t want our dinner last night with Maura and Alfredo to end because we had to say goodbye. I know they felt the same way. A few little tears shed and lots of hugs and Italian kisses. 

I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board so I guess I will say goodbye to Italy! You never disappoint and I promise to return! 

Ciao! 

See you in Anacortes! 

Dinner in Radda

 

We ate at an incredible restaurant in Radda last evening! The name of it was La Loggia Del Chianti. Kylie looked it up on trip advisor and it had one of the highest ratings. 

It was so beautiful inside. When we entered there was a podium with a magazine article about the chef. The table settings are always different and so unique. Our silver wear was set up on a little piece of square marble. Nick said the next time I have the Family over for dinner he would like to see our silverware up on a little piece of marble. Ok sure, I can do that. 

So this young waitress comes to our table and we had decided on a bottle of wine that we wanted to get. She said  in broken English oh no, I need to take your order first and then the sommelier will come over and help you choose a wine to go with your meal. 

Again we had 3 corses. 2 orders of crisp octopus between us we had duck ravioli, some sort of garlic spaghetti and . We also split orders of trout and sliced steak .Always fresh bread on the table. We always have to get a tiramisu because everyone makes it different and we got some sort of chocolate dessert. It was probably one of the best meals we have had. 

So the owner is actually the sommelier. He comes to our table and sees Alexis holding the wine menu, he tells her to go with him to pick the wine. This all done in broken English. They return with a bottle of wine and he proceeds with the process. He collects all our wine glasses. Pours a little wine into a decanter, lets it breath, then from the decanter he pours a little in one glass , swishes it around and then pours that wine into another glass and swishes it around until all our glasses have been swished (I’m sure there is a name for that).

He then takes the decanter and fills our glasses. What a show and all of us really enjoyed it. Now remember we always  have our reservations at 7:30 because the restaurants don’t open until then. 

Tip: if you haven’t had lunch by 2pm, you won’t be eating until 7:30.

Anyway our courses started coming out and every now and then the chef would come out to see if we were enjoying everything. Yes we were! The service was outstanding and the food amazing! We ended our meal around 10pm. Our dinners last about 3 hours because of all the corses.

Again we had an evening filled with laughter and sometimes making fun of each other. 

Tonight is our last night. We are in Rome and meeting up with Maura and Alfredo. I get a little emotional thinking about them, the fun times we have had, making a lot of memories with them and just getting to know them better. Sure wish we lived closer. 

 

       

Lucca (one of my favorite towns)

 

OK, this day started out a little different than some of our other days. We did go to breakfast but when we woke up, it was really cool and it looked like it was going to rain. We checked the weather in Luca and it said about 35% chance of rain. Well Alexis was feeling really tired and said she really didn’t want to go. Lial was exhausted. He didn’t want to go and Kylie decided she was going to stay back. 

This has been one of the towns I really wanted to go probably because my grandson’s name is Luca. I hadn’t been here on my last trip and I really was counting on going. Well that left my sister Janet, myself and my son Nick. As you know Janet and I can’t drive because we don’t have our international drivers license and so we asked Nick if he would take us. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes away. Being the great son that he is, he said he would take us.

Well, what a day we had first off we left after breakfast and as we were traveling on the road for about a half an hour it started to rain. No let me rephrase that it came down so hard you could hardly see the car in front of you. It kept on and on and on. Janet was in the backseat. I was in the front seat. Nick said, “I hope you ladies are prepared to shop in this”. I thought to myself, good thing I brought my rain jacket, hope Janet brought hers. Nick just kept shaking his head. I didn’t think my rain jacket would help. 

Well we were about a half hour out of Luca and all of a sudden it stopped raining. I was thinking my lucky stars the closer we got to Lucca the better the weather was. I thought to myself thank you Jesus! We have always had a difficult time finding parking in these little towns, but when we entered Luca, it was very easy to find parking which I was thankful for. I think Nick stop shaking his head.. 

Lucca is the town that is surrounded by a wall. It’s very interesting to look at and it’s probably one of the easiest towns to get around. It is all flat. Most of the other towns we have visited you’ve had to walk up and down hills. I was very thankful for that also. 

So we started walking around and shopping around they had some very interesting stores they’re known for some of their clothing. Pucini was also from this little town. All was going well until we lost Janet. Nick says to me where is your sister? I’m like I thought she was following us. After about 15 minutes, we finally found her walking up and down the street. I said Janet you need to stay with us. 

I thought the shopping in this town was great. They had many really unusual shops and Lucca is known for their clothing shops. We picked up some sandwiches for lunch and continued to walk around and explore.  We had a great day in this little town. I would definitely put it on your list if you visit Italy. 

We made it back to our apartment safe and sound! ( I do think my sister and I drive Nick nuts).

Tonight we are going to have dinner in a little town called Radda. I’m making a separate post for that because it was out of this world. 

We are checking out of our apartment in about 5 minutes, heading back to Florence to drop off the cars, and take the train back to Rome where we will have dinner with Maura and Alfredo. 

Ciao for now! Next post when I’m back on the internet. 

Montalcino

 Today we are venturing to a little town called Montalcino. It’s about an hour away from Badia. It is plentiful with many wine shops and restaurants. Of course it has a Duamo. It’s a beautiful little place. We walked around for just a short time and decided to head back to our place ! Not much happening today. I don’t think I would put this on my list of towns to visit. 

I know this post is boring but I can assure you we always have some great laughs and a good time. Remember we are in wine country!

 

Cooking class

 Finally our day of rest….but we’re doing a cooking class today. Alexis,Kylie, Janet,Lial and myself will be cooking. Nick said he had errands to run.(errands in Italy?) just kidding, he has to gas up the cars. He will be joining us for the eating portion of the class. 

We enter the kitchen, oh my, so gorgeous and Linda, our chef, said everything you see is from the gardens on the grounds. 

We are all given aprons to put on, which we get to keep! We will be making tempura. You may think we will be doing veggies, nope, we will be doing zucchini, sliced thin, zucchini flowers and sage leaves. Oh my, the tempura is so light and wou ever thought sage leaves would taste so good. 

Next we started making our biscotti! We decided on almond and chocolate. Oh my gosh the delicious chunks of chocolate we chopped up to put in our dough. This biscotti recipe is way easier than the one I have at home. I’ll be making this a lot more. Great gift idea!

Moving in to making dough for the ravioli. Well I sure learned a lot making this dough. She uses half all purpose flour and half semolina flour. Interesting huh? What a different texture. That gets put aside until we make our filling for the ravioli. Filling made, Now, to the pasta machine. 

I’m sure you get the idea. Below is what we made and ended up eating!

Tempura, ravioli with ricotta and spinach topped with fresh tomato sauce, pork fillet,vegestable gratin with besciamella and 

Biscotti!

We had so much fun with chef Linda and her assistants and we learned a lot about making pasta and different noodles. She even told us how to store and freeze our noodles. 

If you ever come to Italy for a visit and have a chance to take a cooking class, do it. It’s a great experience, we even got a diploma! 

Mangia and Salute!

Cinque Terre

 Hey, is anyone tired yet? Well I think we all are and this is going to be a very long day for us. We have to get to the train station in La Spezia, which is 2 1/2 hours away. We have to leave at 6:30 am…Me-“ugh” I’m really tired! 

The place we are staying was nice enough to prepare us little breakfast bags of goodies and juice and water that we could eat in the car. 

My car consisted of Kylie driving, Nick navigating and me as Nick said, she slept, ate, slept and ate agin. Oh well, I said I was tired! 

The other car had Alexis driving, Lial navigating and as Jant says, “ I kept the conversation alive. (Sure she did).

Made it to the train station, yikes there are hundreds of people. It’s incredibly crowded! 

TIP- Don’t book your tour the same day as the cruise ships drop hundreds of people off.

Met up with the tour guide, Lisa (pronounced Liza). First stop was Riomaggiore. Words can’t describe the beauty of it or the landscape. This was a 3 minute train ride. The terrain was very steep in this little town and many steps up to a view point. Of course there is shopping! 

 

Back on the train, next stop Vernazza

This is the little town we had our limoncello tasting! It was yummy! This was a smaller town, starting to get very hot! This town was not as steep. They had this delicious fried calamari that of corse I had to try! Great fun little shops. 

Next stop was Monterosso! Our favorite among all 6 of us! Beautiful beaches and our tour guide told us they were known for their pesto sauce. She gave us a great restaurant recommendation. We had more time in this little town to explore so we decided to eat here since we would be getting home late. It was yum, yum yummy!

Well this is the end of our wonderful tour, which we all enjoyed. If you ever get a chance to visit these towns, do! It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. We are all exhausted and we need to catch the train back to La Spezia, get in our cars and drive back to our place 2 hours away! 

Nick said he’s coming back to spend 3 days here another time! 

Ciao!