An All American Visit

So....I kind of quit blogging there for a while, but I'm back and committed to attempting to get things updated at least once a week.  Starting where I left off...which was our really fun visit to the US over the summer! First stop: Alexandria, VA and the DC area to visit Kate, Andy and Cora! It was hot, so they had the blow up swimming pool ready for lots of summer time action.

We were so happy to finally see where the Hoefers live and to be able to snuggle up all together with Cora on their couch!  Just before we arrived, there had been really big storms, which knocked out a lot of the electricity in and around DC, so we were feeling grateful for the fact that there was not only electricity at Kate and Andy's, but also at the hotel where we were staying.  After we got through the inevitable obscenely early waking of phase of life (jet lag with kids), staying in a hotel was really fun and the girls enjoyed going down for breakfast and picking out what they wanted every morning.

On the Fourth of July, Andy made sure we had a truly American experience and we all headed to see the Washington Nationals play.  It was the girls' first baseball game and they were excited (or as excited as young children who don't know what baseball is actually can be). 

The Metro was super air conditioned. London, take note!

Baseball hats were all the rage:

And luckily we had great seats in the SHADE! 

Evie and Mille are American hot dog fans!

Cora was happy to show them the ropes and how to be an All American Girl!

After the baseball, we headed back for a fun evening of eating too much delicious food and fireworks from the steps of the Mason's temple in Alexandria.  We could see all the fireworks going off all around the city. And since we didn't go to bed until about 11, we actually slept past 5am!  Bonus!

After growing up in the heat of the deep south, I never thought I could be such a wimp about heat, but when we decided it would be a good idea to walk through Arlington Cemetery and around all the monuments in 100+ degree weather, I think I was definitely the whiniest of all.  IT WAS SO HOT.  It's definitely hotter these days than it was when I was a kid and I'm not used to it anymore and with jet lag...it was hell.  And poor Millie nearly melted in her stroller.  Still, we persevered! But not without a lot of bellyaching (mine, mostly).  Here we are, sweating to death on the bridge that goes over the Potomac.

And here we are dying of heat stroke in front of some monument.

And next to the tidal basin near the Martin Luther King Monument (which I didn't take a picture of for some reason!!!! AARGH!), which might look cool and shady in this picture, but really, really wasn't.

 

We pretty much had blisters on our bottoms after posing for this nice picture on the banks of the tidal basin:

Finally, some relief outside of the Lincoln Memorial!! 

After spending a good forty five minutes basking in the air conditioned ranger's hut and refilling our water bottles several times, we decided to throw in the towel (I think our original plan had been to end up at a museum, but since we were slowly wilting we decided to skip that). But before we went home, the girls had a play in the shade of a big tree near the Washington Monument.  It was very hard to leave the shade off that tree...

But we rewarded ourselves with some delicious and refreshing popsicles on the way home and sensibly stayed indoors and in the hotel pool for the rest of the visit!

Roma

On our final day at the farm, Millie was sick and miserable, so it was a good thing we had decided to have a quiet day anyway.  After a day of taking turns comforting her and Evie watching My Little Ponies five times, we were worn out and felt like we needed another week in the country. 

The next day we drove to Rome without a hitch (Jim made sure he knew where we were going, except that we ended up driving down a pedestrian only street. Whoops!) and arrived in the area of Trastevere, which is where we were staying. It’s very charming and bohemian and less touristy than other parts of Rome.  There are delicious bakeries and gelato, a small square, yummy restaurants, lots of little shops with fun jewelry and clothes and pastry shops.

Gelato in the square at the very popular (with the girls) fountain:

 

 A chat with Pinnochio:

We pushed our luck a little bit on our first night after wandering around the local Piazza di Santa Maria and eating gelato, by crossing the river and visiting Piazza Novono, which is beautiful and full of fountains and people trying to swindle you out of your money.  A man blew bubbles at Evie and then handed her a toy, which presumably we were to pay for, so we had to take it away from her and give it back to the guy who insisted that we buy it. There was a several minute grapple, back and forth, as he kept handing it to Evie who was crying because she wanted it and then it was taken away.  A nasty trick!  But we prevailed and the swindler didn’t get our money.

Trastevere is also the site of a very hopping bar scene and we were lucky to be across the street from one of the loudest and most raucous bars of all!  Sleep was not something that we got a lot of in Rome, what with the all night party across the street and the all night sweating that we did when we finally closed all the windows combined with the early morning in-house wake up committee. Next time we will do the city first and then the country.

On our first full day in Rome, we were out the door by 9 and headed across town to The Forum, which are well preserved Roman ruins.  In Rome, there are ruins all over the place, constantly being excavated and renovated.  We went to the Coliseum, where there were throngs of people and a line an hour long to get in…so we just enjoyed it from the outside and took some pictures with a cute gladiator and then weaved our way past and up Vittoriano, which is a monument built for the first King of Italy and which also houses the Unknown Warrior (an unknown soldier from WW2) with an eternal flame. The girls enjoyed running up and down the monument, until Evie was asked by a security guard not to hang on one of the cordoned off parts…drama ensued!  After she stopped crying, we weaved our way to the Pantheon, which was full of the devout and more.  And then, tired and hungry, we straggled our way back across the city to our neighborhood for lunch and what we hoped would be a nap by both of the girls (no luck with that. Evie was ‘just not tired.’) 

Unfortunately, we forgot to bring our camera on our visit to the botanical gardens which were near where we were staying.  They were also full of ancient fountains and plants from all over the world and it was a nice, peaceful way to spend the late afternoon.

On our final day in Rome, our 8th anniversary, we headed to the Vatican.  On the way there, we walked along the river and met other Americans and people from all over the world who were also en route to visit the home of the Pope.  Luckily Jim had the foresight to get us tickets ahead of time, so we were able to go right in...when we finally got there! The Vatican is HUGE and it felt like we were walking for miles just going around it to get to the entrance. And once we were in, there were still hordes of people, but not so many that it was unbearable, unless we were walking up a staircase or having to squeeze through a tight doorway.

With two small children in tow, lingering in the enormous and overwhelming Vatican was not a priority, so we tried to focus on the things that we loved as we rushed through.  I'm not sure I LOVE this gold globe-like ball thing, but it was impressive...and shiny.

We all enjoyed the animal room (full of animal sculptures).  Evie posed next to a dog, which was an interesting choice for someone who was, at that point in her life, completely terrified of dogs.

Even the non-Michelangelo ceilings in the Vatican were incredible. (We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel and we weren't supposed to talk, but no one--besides us-- was really paying any attention to either of those rules and the security guards were busy shushing everyone and yelling "NO PHOTOS! NO PHOTOS!" I'm sure God was ok with people enjoying themselves and appreciating great art, but rules are rules).

There was an amazing hallway full of ancient maps, which got Jim and Evie very excited:

 

And when Millie woke up from her long, hot nap, she enjoyed herself, too.  Outside of the Vatican, we were able to refill our water bottles and enjoy some uncensored time during which the girls could be free and silly.  And then we walked down to see St. Peters up close.  The lines into it were ridiculously long and after a full day of Vatican, we were fine with the view of the outside. 

 


Back in our hood, we celebrated our anniversary with some Bellinis and fresh squeezed orange juice, which soon went crashing to the ground into a million pieces.  Evie and Millie proved to be great breakers of glass wherever we were in Italy.  And the Italians still loved them and brought them replacement orange juices, despite their bull in a china shop mentality.  Luckily, Jim and I had finished our Bellinis before the disaster.

Before our super romantic anniversary dinner with the girls, Evie took this picture of us:

And it was actually a lot of fun having our last delicious Italian meal with them.  After all, they are a very important part of our relationship, so why shouldn't they celebrate with us?

I think it's safe to say that we were all depressed to leave Italy, despite being lucky enough to be going back to someplace as wonderful as London.  I hope that we'll get to go back many more times!