The year started off with a bang! After celebrating New Year's Eve with friends, we woke up bright and early on the first day of the new year, loaded up the car, and headed back to Italy to explore Siena, Florence and Pisa. As is often the case in life, the journey is many-times as exciting as reaching the destination, and in this case the journey absolutely earned it's reputation for being noteworthy. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons.
Apparently, when you stick some sleepy kids in the car at 7 am, they immediately start playing video games, and you are driving on very curvy mountain roads….car sickness seems to be an inevitable problem. Poor Luke didn't even feel it coming, and after about 2 hours into the trip he looks up from his Nintendo DS, coughs once in a tone that have Chris and I scream in unison: "don't do it, Luke….open a window…get a bag…no no no no no no no…" But there was no stopping it. In our well-intentioned determination to keep our car organized and clean for the trip there was NOTHING we could grab to contain "the explosion". Seriously???? Not even ONE bag/baggie/wrapper/blanket? And, with him being stuck between his brother's car seats in the middle, he couldn't get over to the window. Happy New Year! With Chris careening off the the road--with no where to really pull over as we were on the side of a mountain, we face the dilemma…is he sick? Will it happen again? Should we head home to detail the car and then start over? Scratch the trip? Chris looks at me in disbelief and says, "can we just roll him around in the snow to start the clean-up"? No, we can't. Poor shaking, embarrassed, ashamed, freezing little Luke with his heart of gold feeling awful about it almost made me not care it happened. To make a never-ending story just long, we pull into the one open gas station we can find, and proceed to detail the car (and Luke who completely destroyed his winter coat, pants, shoes…). Chris-being as thorough as he is in his approach to life-spent close to two hours cleaning the back seat, doors wide open, all of us FREEZING. As we were finishing…but still finding a little splash here, or a soggy crevasse there, I couldn't help but think, how does a kid's body turn a small bowl of oatmeal and a glass of milk into an entire back seat of disaster? I wish we could feed them money!! Here son, eat this change, and then puke me up 10,000 dollars…wouldn't THAT be nice. I keep thinking that when I look back at these years they will be labeled in my mind as "the projectile vomiting years"…interspersed with some fun in between.
With a very clean back seat, and all video games safely stored, we continued on our way to Siena. The whole trip was lovely. As any of you who have been reading for a while know, we are addicted to Italy. The highlights for me included:
-The whole town of Siena. It was really like stepping back into the middle ages…the entire town has maintained it's medieval historical authenticity. Impressive and beautiful.
-The Duomo in Siena is huge, but most impressive is it's black and white marble stripes. Incredibly cool! Luke, Isaac and I climbed up 300+ stairs to walk to the top of a wall to get a great view of the city and countryside. Fantastic.
-Florence was spectacular in all of the impressive sculptures, paintings, and architecture that represent the numerous renaissance masters that worked and lived there. We saw Michelangelo and Galileo's tombs at the Basilica of Santa Croce which was impressive.
-Luke, Isaac, and I again climbed (468 steps, this time) to the top of the dome of the Duomo in Florence. I was proud of their ambitious spirits for wanting to take on the climb. Luke took every single steep (but tiny) stone step, and Isaac climbed at least half with some help from me in between. When we got to to top of the inside of the dome to see the painting up close, Luke and Isaac got very serious and a little freaked out by the depiction of judgment day and hell. Luke looked at me with a solemn expression and said, " I thought hell was just a really long desert with no water". I said, lets hope we never find out, and try not to worry about it!
-After walking through the Uffizi Art Museum, Luke retorted, "wow, these people really liked the baby Jesus"…and it's true…it seems like 80 percent of renaissance paintings are titled, "Madonna and Child"…we saw a lot of them!
-Finally, my absolute favorite piece of art/architecture I've seen so far was in Florence--and was of course, the Statue of David. There were no pictures allowed, which is a good thing-because photography just can't do him justice. That statue truly lives up to and exceeds his reputation and the anticipation of seeing it. Well, for me anyway. Little Isaac wasn't as impressed. He was like, "it's just a really big naked guy, it's not awesome Mom". In retrospect, maybe I hyped it up a bit much for a 4-year old.
-And last but not least, it isn't often that we as a family have bundled up in the middle of winter to wander around and tour cities outside (note that Luke scored a new cute peacoat due to earlier mentioned disaster). But it really was nice to avoid super crazy tourist crowds, and to make the most out of a winter break!
