the summer and Italy

Very busy summer. It creeped by and then before I knew it, it was over. It involved a lot of traveling. Those kids are destined to be truckers of some sort because they have already covered a lot of miles. We went to Asheville for the 4th of July. The boys paraded in the Biltmore Forest parade from town hall to the park. Sam decorated his tricycle. I unfortunately managed to get a lot of sunscreen in his eyes and he couldn't really see for the journey (he's not squinting at the sun in the picture, he can barely have his eyes open =(. Poor thing. But in the end it all worked out and he ran around in the fire truck spray for the most of the time.

We went down to the beach for 2 weeks. It took a while for Sam to get used to playing in the waves again, but before we knew it, he was a surfer again. Oliver never really got comfortable with the ocean. There's always next time...

In August we went to Italy. Joel's family rented a sort of villa compound about 5 miles outside of Assisi. It was wonderful. Joel flew the boys over to England on his own (pretty impressive I thought) I made an emergency trip down to Asheville. We both flew out of Dulles and were able to get through security together, which is probably the hardest part. My flight was uneventful, but on his flight, Oliver cried so much that another passenger offered Joel a baby sedative. It didn't last long though and Ollie slept most of the way after that.

I joined them 2 days later and we spent our lovely week doing day trips to Sienna, Spoleto, Ovieto and Assisi. The boys were real troopers. When you take into accoun the fact that they couldn't care less about a beautiful duomo or walled city, the were fantastic. We're just really lucky that there is gelato around every corner. I think that it was the only food Oliver ate. Sam nearly turned into a spaghetti noodle.

After we left Umbria we spent 2 days in Rome. This was hard. I have no idea how people live in cities with children. It felt like everywhere we went was some sort of hazzard - cars, breakable things, too many people, child snatchers (that last one was really only in my head). At the end of each day they looked like street urchins (sort of like the original Oliver), they were filthy.
On our first day we thought it would be a smashing idea to do a Rome bus tour - disastrous. Don't recommend it. It's best to adjust your expectations and try not to do so much. The bus was fun for the first stop or so, but we had to pick and choose carefully about what we wanted to see. We were on the top of the bus taking pictures of things as we drove by so that we would look them up later when we got back home. Clearly, this was not the plan to have. The boys fell asleep and we decided to get out at the colosseum, not the brightest move. The colloseum is in the middle of nowhere in the Rome sense and unwalkable to our hotel and we struggled to squeeze onto the bus so that we could get back to where we were staying. Good thing is that people take pity on 2 dirty, exhausted and obscenely irritable tourists pushing a double stroller of sleeping kids and they let us squeeze on. That was something - there were a lot of kids in Italy, but you never saw someone with 2 of them. They always had 1 kid or the kids were a lot older. I will remember that in the future, no kids in the city (or 1 nanny per child).

After we left Rome we went back to sunny England, which was actually 65 and rainy). I went straight to London to meet up with my dear friend Roz and spend a lot of money on Kensington High Street. Joel got to meet up with some friends and we all got to unwind before heading home. We flew (delayed) safely home and waited for fall. It was a great summer!

Some good pictures

Argentina

For Joel's 40th birthday present my brother hooked us up with 2 buddy passes, anywhere that Delta flies. We'd be standby, but we could go first class if there was room. Our thinking was - we should fly somewhere that ishard to get to and also, somewhere that requires a long flight since we haven't ever done the 1st class thing we should do it for as long as possible. So, in Richmond we got on board and we got first class!!!! Clearly, it was exciting.Sadly, we only had first class from Richmond to Atlanta, but at least we got free beer and some goofy pictures out of it.

We landed in Buenos Aires and checked into our very adorable hotel in Palermo Viejo. The first night we went to a football match and saw Velez V Boca Jrs. You always hear about people talking about how everyone gets so worked up about soccer and that it's just crazy. I like soccer but am not from one of those countries that really plays outside of high school you just don't get it. Joel gets it more since the UK is pretty geared up for it. But those Argentines are lunatics. They have organized decorations and they have a band.

Boca Jrs (the favorite team in Argentina) was the visiting team and they had a small section of the stadium, but the did not stop singing or playing the instruments the entire time th game went on. They never stopped! They weren't clever songs either. They were something like...Go Boca, you are the best, we love Boca, yeah,yeah,yeah! (Obviously, those are my words, but it's a pretyt safe guess from the music that there weren't any complicated lyrics. The point is - not very exciting stuff). When the game ended (it was a draw 1-1) the Boca side had to be let out first and taken away in police escorted buses to stop any riots, standard practice apparently.

The next day it was off to see the sights of BA. We did a walking tour recommended in our guide book that pretty much would show us the whole city in a day. It was exhausting and spent way too long in boring areas. But we did see some great stuff. We saw the road 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world. I think it's 14 lanes. I am not a very good street crosser and you had to hoof it to get to the middle stop before the light changed and then start all over again. We went to the San Telmo street fair, there was also a little march going on and the spirit of Che Guevara still lives on in BA. as do Evita and Maradonna - both were mentioned a lot) So I was pretty insistent that we find some tango. They have tango clubs (milongas) that you can go to. I didn't want to goto a tango show - seemed a little too much. So we went to Salon Canning, a huge conference center type room with heaps of people in there. It was very interesting. First, we got there around 12:00 am and it had only just gotten started. Everyone was in little tables around the edges of the dance floor and people would just dance with whomever, there was no couples thing. Nobody seemed to dance with the same person. They would have about 3 tango songs and then a little different music for a minute or so and everyone would clear the dance floor. Then it would star again. Etiquette says that you when you make eye contact with someone, you are then paired up to dance. I didn't look at anyone. I was so scared, there is no way you can wing that dance. There were no amateurs there. It was serious business. I wanted to take some pictures, but it felt like someone might have come over and taken my camera to protect the privacy, it was almost like a secret society or something. We left around 2:00 and on our way out some 75ish guy was walking in. If you are a pervy older tango guy with a touch of insomnia - Salon Canning is the place for you.

We got on a plane and went to Mendoza, the home of the Malbec and the foothill of the Andes. We stayed in a nice little place and we ate well and drank some very good wine. We woke up to snow and headed up to some hot springs in the mountains. Was cold but beautiful. Then we left for a drive through the Andes. I didn't know very much about the Andes. I always think of those little rectangular mints in the green wrapper that you get at restaurants and hotels. They were better than those. I knew they were beautiful, but they are astounding. It was hard to stop looking around. You just wanted to drink it in. It was hard to ride in the car because you just wanted to walk around, but it was seriously cold, so we'd have to settle for the view. On our way back there were 2 condors really close to the car. Our driver, who could have been considered to be irrationally excited, said that that had never happened before and that he had never been so close to one. I don;t know much about condors, but I trust that that's a big deal. We headed back to Mendoza where we encountered a lot of people who were very serious about their wine, with good reason though - it's good stuff. We had some great food there. What's not to like about a country that specialized in wine and beef?