Italy with Lauren and Betsy

Lauren and Betsy came to visit. We started with three days in Southern Italy. We flew from Paris to Naples and stayed in Sorrento. We used Sorrento as our home base and took the ferry and a bus for day trips to Capri, Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Pompeii and Naples. Ravello and Positano were our favorites, mainly because of the beautiful views and the feel we got from each place. Each of the beach towns fall out of the Italian hillside into the most beautiful beaches and oceans, except Ravello - this is above Amalfi in the hills. Apparently the cruise business is booming because these towns were overrun with cruise tourists during the day. Luckily at night they all returned to their boats and sailed away so we got to hang out with plain old tourists.

The morning we visited Pompeii was so hot that I couldn’t take out my camera to capture anything as I was too focused on avoiding being run over by the aforementioned cruise tourists and finding shade to escape the blazing heat. After our morning in Pompeii we took the train into Naples and played human Frogger with the traffic. I have never been anywhere, especially in a really busy city, where pedestrians simply cross the street and hope for the best. While there we ate at the pizza restaurant mentioned in the book Eat, Pray, Love. If you’ve read it, you’ll know what I’m referring to. If you have not read it, you should. The pizza was probably the best I have ever had, or ever will have. I would love to repeat the trip someday in September or October as I think the weather would be a cooler and the cruise tourists wouldn’t be as prolific.

After Italy Lauren and Betsy spent five days with Steve and me in Paris. They walked the city during the day when Steve and I were at work, and we met up each night for fabulous meals and night time fun. Summer is here and we are so enjoying the fact that the sun doesn’t go down until after 9pm and it doesn’t get dark until after 10pm. Last week was the Fete de Musique which was so interesting and fun. It happens each June 21 when musicians fill the streets and perform. There was a band or a DJ almost every other block throughout the entire city.

Here are Italy pictures and a few recent Paris photos.

Food. Church. Beach.

These three things pretty much sum up our visit with Maeve and David, as you'll see from these pictures.

Vacation

We have just finished a fun filled ten days of vacation. We started in western France with Maeve and David and finished up with five days in Tuscany with eight friends. We went to Brest, France to explore, and attend the wedding of the son of Steve’s French family. The wedding was fabulous – full of lots of good food and wine, and really genuinely nice people. The reception took place right next to the ocean and was amazingly beautiful.

In Tuscany we rented a villa with eight American friends, four who are living in the US, two who are in the navy in Sicily, and two who are living in Marseille. The week was full of fun, good food, wine, friends, games, and laughs. We visited Sienna, Bologna, Pisa, Lucca and Viereggio, and their surrounding regions. I had been to Sienna and Pisa before, but it was great to see the cities again, and Bologna, Lucca, and Viereggio were all interesting, beautiful, and full of history and good gelato. One of the trip highlights was a tour and then a tasting lunch at Castello di Verrazzano (Verrazzano as in the Verrazzano bridge in NY). The food and wine were some of the best I’ve ever had. We also had a local cook prepare dinner for us during two nights in the villa. The woman did not speak English, couldn’t have been nicer, and made one of the best meals I have ever eaten. We all thought about her with a smile as we attempted to finish off her tiramisu the next morning for breakfast. Here are some very so-so pictures that do not even begin to capture how pretty Tuscany is this time of year.