When We Went to Italy.....

I think I've been delaying this post because my pictures don't do it justice. It was amazing.... AMAZING! Thank you Rick and Chris for bringing us together and making it happen. Holy Smokes, where do I even start?

We flew in from Madrid and met the Jensens and the Mickelsons in Rome. We spent the day there and didn't take many pictures for some reason. Here we are looking a little hammered at the famous Trevi Fountain. 

And then to the Vatican and St. Peter's square and the Sistine Chapel.

 Michelangelo's Pieta

 The Swiss Guards at the Vatican.

 The Rome LDS temple under construction.

Then we headed to Tuscany to La Foce (in between Florence and Rome) - an incredible old Italian estate/farm where we bunked up for the rest of the trip.

We slept in every day, and then we would eat some carbs for breakfast, play regular tennis or foot tennis, get some good magazine reading in, eat some carbs for lunch and then go explore one of the amazing hill towns. Sounds awful, right?

This is the main house where some of us stayed.

The famous switchback Tuscan road....right outside our room.

 Lunch!

It was a little chilly some days...Sarah playing in style.

In the cemetery at La Foce, most of the headstones have pictures on them. I liked this little lady....

This might be one of my favorite pics of the whole group. How could a trip not be fun with these people?

We went to Florence on our first day all together.

I like how Italian guys walk around with their hands clasped behind their backs.

 So many things to like about this picture, Ponte Vecchio, the lounging man in the background, and me looking like I need to use the bathroom.

 Piazzale Michelangelo looking out over Florence.

All the ladies - Kristen, Chris, Me, Sarah, Erin, Mandy, Lauren.

Sorry that I was shouldering you out of the picture, Sar.

Sunset over Ponte Vecchio. I love my husband.

We were all loving Scotty's skin colored, under-his-shirt money belt that he wore. Someone dared him to pose in front of this copy of the David statue with shirt off.....within 3 seconds a polizia was there and was not happy. But Scotty looks dang good....

Lulu at the Duomo.

Almost every afternoon we visited a hill town and explored for a couple hours. Since I've waited too long to post these I can't remember which town is which....I think this is Montichiello. See little Todd in the blue shirt? We also visited San Gimignano, Piensa, Montepulciano.

Rick, Mike, Scott, Ryan, Mick, Todd, Sverre

Grocery shopping for the week. Do you see the piles of bread and pasta?

This is about the point where we were tired of taking pictures and someone proclaimed there were no more normal poses allowed.

Shoe shopping in Montepulciano. Rick's haggling in the background.

 The prettiest flowers....

Poppies..

Rick in his green rain get-up enjoying? some gelato. If I had a picture for every time we ate gelato, I'd be blogging for a week. Yum.

Siena

That lady was cutting slabs of meat off the pig's rump and putting them straight onto those rolls. Kind of kills it for me.

Did I mention the carbs yet?

Those shoes are totally his style....shoe shopping in Siena.

The Duomo in Siena was definitely my favorite building this time.....those striped walls are awesome.

Kristen giving a tour via her Rick Steve's book.

 The Basilica of San Domenico in Siena houses the head and thumb of St. Catherine, the patron saint of Italy. We were fascinated by these artifacts...

Every night we played Idiot - a card game that only has one loser. That loser had to jump in the freezing cold pool and got to choose a companion to swim with them. Todd and I never had to swim, thank the Italian heavens.

Sarah was the loser this night....she only smiled for one more second and then tears were shed.

We cooked most nights in the kitchen at La Foce. One night Lauren even made an actual fire in the little oven behind me in the pic and we cooked pizza over the fire.

Chris and the cute lady who cleaned the house every day....she was super friendly and put on her serious face only for the picture.

And our final gelato. We stayed the night in Fiumicino near the Rome airport. It was a sketchy place, but the gelato was extra good so it made up for it.

Then we arrived in SLC to see these cute little people who had the time of their lives with their cousins while we were gone.

This trip was beyond words....thank you, again, Rick and Chris for the fun, fun memories.