Author: Jane

May 3

In an attempt to grab some cheap flights to Croatia, we booked our flights out of Rome. The train ride from Florence to Rome was so cheap and easy that it just made sense.

This was my mom’s first European intercity train ride!

Since we had about an hour in Rome between when our train arrived to Roma Termini station and when we needed to grab a train back out of Roma Termini, it gave us just enough time to rush over to the Trevi Fountain.

Michael graciously stayed with the bags while we grabbed an Uber.

Need to get those coins in so she’ll be sure to come back again… or marry a man from Rome… there is no way of knowing what the tradition is. But something good, I’m sure!

Back to the train station and off to Croatia for real this time!

May 1-2

After saying goodbye to our wonderful Airbnb in the countryside, we headed back to the Florence airport to return the car. On the way, we popped into Siena for a coffee and croissant. Another cute town, but once again, everything was closed, because May 1st is Labor Day in Italy. So. Many. Holidays. We did find a cafe that was open, but for the most part, the city was really quiet.

Upon returning to Florence, we had another successful and incident-free return of a rental car and headed on to our next Airbnb. Once we were checked in, we grabbed lunch and then mom and I went exploring. First we found this parade, presumably for Labor Day.

I’m pretty sure I use to work with this guy:

We also spent a little time shopping before meeting Michael for some food and a few beers at Brew Dogs Pub.

When we got home for the night, I let Michael cut my hair. True story. My last haircut was in Madagascar, and for those of you who are diligent readers, you may remember that it was a disaster. I spent some time “fixing it” when I got back to our hotel with a pair of tiny bathroom scissors. It has now been growing out for about 2 months and is still super short. However, the back was starting to develop a really great mullet, so with a pair of kitchen scissors and a few beers in him, I let Michael cut the back of my hair. All I wanted was half an inch to an inch off the bottom section, in a straight line.

It was stressful. I was concerned. Michael got really into it and had an excess of confidence, which I attribute to the beers. He got a little crazy and took a big chunk off one section. When I freaked, he said – “don’t worry, the other hair will hide it”. Mmmhmm. When it was all over, he said in a serious tone – “let me put in a few long layers”. Funniest thing to come out of his mouth all day.

The next morning after washing and blow drying it, I have to admit: it’s pretty good. Good enough at least. I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to the next professional that cuts my hair, but for now, it works.

Our airbnb host gave us two free tickets to the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, so the next morning, mom and I headed in that direction. On the way, we saw the Florence Baptistery of St. John:

And the Duomo:

And then we did a little bit of shopping!!!

And then, finally, we made it to the museum.

Note: that is not the real David. It’s a replica that sits outside this museum. The Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, which translates to old palace, is the town hall of Florence. Built in 1299, the palace has had numerous uses over the years, and as many names to accompany those uses. In line with many of the museums and palaces that we’ve visited in Italy, there are beautiful ceilings, beautiful statues and beautiful views.

This statue is an unfinished Michelangelo statue.

Plus another really cool map room (although the pictures don’t do it justice):

Me and mom with a bunch of fleurs de lis (I had to ask google what the plural of fleur de lis was):

And this painting that I thought was especially beautiful for all of the rich colors.

And this painting, the Nativita by Maestro del Tondo Miller:

So I just googled this painting to make sure I was calling it the right name since the name card was in Italian. Funny thing is that the common name for this painting is the Madonna of the UFO or the Madonna of the flying saucer. It has Mary and the infant St. John holding Jesus. In the back, right corner, there is what appears to be a man watching a UFO.

They don’t really know who painted the picture, but it is attributed to Filippo Lippi in the museum who is called the Maestro del Tondo Miller which is after the title of one of his last works. That is strange to me. Can’t we just use his name?

The reason I took the picture in the first place is because mom told me when we were looking at it that she believes her grandparents may have had a replica in their home. I now wonder if the replica also had the UFO!!

After the museum, we went to meet Michael for lunch at a really cool tiny place called Ristorante del Fagioli.

It was a sharing kind of meal and it was delicious. Osso bucco, pesto gnocchi, panzanella and fagioli. Panzanella is a popular Tuscan chopped salad of bread and tomatoes. Fagioli is a traditional Italian dish. This variation was very thick. I think some are more like a soup.

The meal was incredible. Everything was cooked and seasoned perfectly. Unsurprisingly, Italian food has not disappointed.

Fashion shots outside the restaurant:

Post lunch gelato:

And then a hike up to Piazzale Michelangelo to work off that gelato. Here are a few shots in the rose garden on the way up the hill:

And shots from the top:

That night, we had another great meal at Santarpia, a pizza place in a less touristy part of town. The most notable part of this dinner was when they misunderstood mom’s request for 2 ice cubes in her glass and instead brought her two glasses of scotch. Upon Michael’s prompting, the two scotches were consolidated into one ridiculously large glass of scotch:

Two days were not nearly enough, but we still have a bit of travel to do, so now it is off to Croatia!

April 26-30

After our quick trip to Rome, Michael and I jumped on a train to Florence. With so many rental cars over the past month or so, this was our first intercity European train ride of the trip. Yes! The trip was an easy hour and a half and we arrived pumped to spend time in Florence and pumped for my mom to arrive!

We headed off to check into our airbnb and then to eat (no surprise to anyone who is paying attention). Then I went out to the airport to greet mom. In classic form, it was a hurry up to wait kind of situation. I bought a bus ticket to take me the 20 minutes, but then missed a bus by just a few minutes and didn’t want to risk being late by waiting for the next one. So I took my paid bus ticket and jumped in a cab. Whomp. I got there right on time for her flight that ended up being delayed 20 minutes, only to be followed by 30 or so minutes of her trying to get through customs. Apparently the bus would have been sufficient. But it gave me time to jam out to the new T Swift album.

Just when I was starting to get worried and figuring out exactly how ridiculous it would be to try to page her through the airport security desk, she walked through the doors. Yes!

We jumped on the bus back to the city and I got to use that one ticket I’d already paid for. The airbnb was only a few blocks from the train station where our bus dropped us off and in those few blocks, mom was already scouting a new purse and haggling with the shopkeeper.

Welcome to Florence! With a few days to shop around, we arrived back to the airbnb without any purchased goods.

It was pretty late and mom was coming off about 30 hours of flying, but she still wanted to head out to dinner. So Michael found us a great little local place and we had a delicious meal to celebrate mom’s arrival.

The next morning we were on the move again. No rest for the weary! We packed everything up and headed back to the airport. But not before some coffee!

This time it was to grab a rental car for our drive out to Tuscany. We still have some issues when renting a car since Michael doesn’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have an international driver’s license, I don’t drive manual and these rental car companies typically don’t rent automatics. So it is always a song and dance to get the car rented and then figure out what is the most responsible way to navigate the waters. They wouldn’t put Michael on the rental agreement as an extra driver but also reminded me that if I get pulled over by a cop that I’d get hit with a large fine for not having the international driver’s license. That’s better than Spain who claims you “have to have it”, whatever that means. Under a very close eye, there was no way Michael was driving that car out of the lot. So that left me. Ugh.

I didn’t stall the car as the rental car worker watched on. But I did rev the engine in a pretty dramatic fashion. I got out of the parking lot and immediately was thrown onto a fairly busy street with a lot of traffic circles and merging. I survived. I did well on the highway and I even did fairly well at the two tolls even though there was a lot of stress involved. The drive was about two hours to get to Montalcino and upon entering the town where we were having lunch, I entered a traffic circle, on a hill, with a bicyclist that just cut right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and killed the engine. Luckily, there was a restaurant that overlooked the traffic circle and a dozen or so people watching as I tried to get the car started again while on the hill. It took a few times but I finally got it. We drove uphill a bit more before deciding we needed to turn around. When trying to pull off, I killed the car again. Ok – nerves are shot. The car is hanging out on the street right off a curve. And that is when I put on the parking break and got out to make Michael take over. Truthfully, there was zero chance I was doing anything productive at that point. We didn’t get hit by some act of God and I was done with my driving stint.

Time to get out of the car and eat something delicious.

After a quick bite, we popped into a winery so we could get a sip of the reason we are in this area: Brunello di Montalcino.

Brunello di Montalcino is 100% Sangiovese. The climate is one of the warmest and driest in Tuscany and create some of the most delicious (my opinion) and expensive wines in Italy (not my opinion). There are about 3000 acres of vines in Montalcino compared to nearly 41 thousand acres of Chianti in Italy. The soil is a mix of limestone, clay, schist (you’ll have to ask Michael what that is), volcanic soil and marine deposits. This diversity adds to the range and complexity of Brunellos. The aging requirements for Brunello are at least 2 years in oak and at least 4 months in the bottle before release, although the wineries varied on this quite a bit.

Our first winery was Fattoria dei Barbi and it was a great place to start. We tried a few different years so we could taste the difference in the ages. We also got a chance to try a Vinsanto which was a pleasant surprise to me. For some reason, I though Vinsanto was exclusively Greek. Not so. Apparently there is some level of disagreement between the Greek and the Italians as to which country Vinsanto really “belongs” to.

After Barbi, we headed into the historic town of Montalcino to walk around and see what was going on. Yes… and to also have another glass of wine.

Mom gets her wine straight from the barrel.

Then we were off to our Airbnb. It was a bit farther out of town that I had anticipated, so I was bummed about that, but within a few minutes of our arrival, I was over it. The place was amazing.

The home was a small complex with room for a few families. The stone building was supposedly over 200 years old and was just beautiful. And beyond being beautiful, it was full of anything we could need – full kitchen, lots of places to sit and relax both inside and outside in two courtyards, and a super modern bathroom. Amazing mix! All the feel of a historic home but all the comforts of modern living. It was just like Under the Tuscan Sun, but without all of the construction hassles.

After welcome drinks and snacks from our hostess, we…. did… something. As I’m typing this, all three of us are on a bus heading to Bosnia and none of us can remember what we did that night. After a lot of back and forth, we’re pretty sure we we went to the grocery and Michael cooked at the Airbnb.

Moving on. The next day was our big Tuscany cooking class! This we remember. We arrived and were treated to a coffee from our host, Alessandro who, along with his girlfriend, taught the class. We also took this as an opportunity to ask how to use the coffee maker shown below so we could make coffee the next morning in our airbnb.

We also walked around the beautiful grounds of the restaurant which includes a garden and a vineyard.

The class was great. They started with us out in the garden and talked through the types of vegetables and herbs that are important in that region’s cuisine.

They also spent some time talking about their history and how after the two of them traveled around the world, working in different countries, they decided they wanted to come back to their home and open a restaurant with their family. So they bought an old farm house and did a huge gut reno to create the restaurant with enough space to also do a small cooking class in the kitchen.

First thing’s first when we got into the kitchen: PASTA! Michael has made pasta from scratch a time or two but not recently and this was definitely new for me. It is also something that all three of us were really excited to learn.

A little beet purée makes pink pasta!

I could tell you that it was really challenging, but that would be a lie. They gave us a very simple recipe that was easy to follow and easy to replicate. Also, they showed us 6 or 7 different pasta shapes that we could make without buying any tools, which makes it that much nicer.

There was one tool that we used – a pasta guitar – that made perfectly sized spaghetti. It was cool, but it wasn’t cool enough to necessitate buying it instead of just cutting our spaghetti and linguine.

Here is Michael making some Ravioli!

And the whole crew hanging around:

Pasta making is definitely the type of activity that, if done properly, can take a bit of time. However, the extra effort created really beautiful pasta. This is a skill that all three of us are planning on using in the future, so everyone should get excited to come visit and have meals with us.

Besides pasta, they taught us a simple sauce, a rolled turkey dish and tiramisu. The sauce was fine – super easy, but not our favorite. The rolled turkey dish was delicious, but probably not something we’d really make again. But the tiramisu!! Yes! This is another recipe that is not terribly difficult, but seeing first hand how to make the dish was really helpful. Now once we settle back in the US, we’ll have to find a place to source these ingredients! I’m sure it won’t be a problem.

Here are our beautiful tiramisus!

Then, for the best part: lunch!

It was delicious and it gave us some time to chat with the Australian couple that had been cooking with us.

It’s a hodgepodge of shapes because we wanted to try all the different designs they showed us. The bow ties are my favorite.

Here is the rolled turkey dish. Delicious, but not as cool as learning how to make pasta.

After a wonderfully slow Italian meal, mom finally got to try grappa.

It wasn’t her favorite. Anyone who has sampled grappa can understand why.

Then we headed back through town to hit up the grocery store. Michael cooked some steaks for dinner that night and started a bolognese for Sunday dinner.

All of us loved our hustle and bustle Sunday schedule. We got up, went from town to town searching for a mass. Many of you know that you can find mass times online through a handful of different websites, often including the parish websites. This was not the case for these small towns in Tuscany. Each town had at least one church, but with no info online, we just woke up, jumped in the car and stopped at each church to see what their situation was. We found a couple of churches that only do Saturday masses. So we missed the boat on those. Then we found a few churches that were open, but no real time masses occurring. We did happen upon one mass in Montalcino that had about 4 minutes remaining when we arrived. So we got a closing prayer in Italian at least! Better luck next week.

After mass, we grabbed coffee and a pastry before heading back to the Airbnb. And then, we did almost nothing for the rest of the day. It was wonderful. Michael got in a run while mom and I sat in the sun and read for hours.

This little butterfly hung out with us for awhile.

Then we put our new skills to work and made some homemade pasta for Sunday dinner. It was awesome. We completely nailed it.

Plus, Michael’s bolognese blew the professional’s sauce out of the water. This pasta was legitimately my favorite pasta of the last six months. It was amazing!

Then after dinner we played some cards and relaxed some more. Just a wonderful relaxing day. Also, here is a picture of mom pointing at something that night. The moon? No way of knowing.

On our last day out in the country, we went into town and hit up two wineries. The first was Siro Pacenti, a relatively new producer of Brunello.

This was our first experience with a Rosso which is similar to a Brunello, same grapes, same area, but with less time in oak and less time in the bottle. So they are newer, younger wines that don’t need to be aged to be delicious.

Our second winery was the favorite for all of us in Montalcino: Baricci. Google maps dropped us off at a small building without signage. We had come to a moment that we know fairly well from these past six months: do we bolt or do we awkwardly knock on this random door and see what happens.

Thankfully, we knocked. And by “we”, I mean Michael. He bears the burden of these kind of interactions pretty frequently on our behalf. It definitely makes my life easier and is something I’m grateful on this trip. So Michael popped in to see if we could do a tasting, and if this was actually even a winery and sure enough, we were in the right place.

Baricci is a family winery, started with the grandfather

The husband of his daughter then took over and now second generation works with his two sons to run the winery. It is a very hands on family. While we were there, the second generation spoke with us about the terroir of Montosoli which is a specific hill in Montalcino that all of their vines are planted on. Montosoli is the only area that produces the grand cru of Brunello and the higher quality grapes can be attributed to the marine deposits in their soil.

While the second generation was moving some of the wine from steel tanks to barrels along with his winemaker son, the other son talked through the history of the vineyard and, of course, gave us the tasting.

What’s cool about the family? Well, when Montalcino began organizing itself back in 1967 a small number of families began coming together to determine the rules to be applied to the wine and created an organization called the Consorzio Del Vino Brunello Di Montalcino. This organization now has hundreds of wineries, but originally there were just a dozen or two. As each winery joins the organization, they get a number that they are then tracked by. Baricci was the very first winery and as such was assigned number 1. I think that’s awesome.

What is also awesome is how delicious the wines were. Their Rosso, which they call their Baby Brunello, was fresh and easy to drink and their Brunellos were complex and delicious. Michael asked why they don’t just make Brunellos since it’s the same grapes and you can sell them for so much more than bottles of Rosso. And the man told us that they don’t make the wine to maximize profits. The Rosso is a good guide for how that harvest will taste as a Brunello in a few years. Also, he said that it is much harder to make a good Rosso than a good Brunello. Since the Rosso gets produced so quickly, if it doesn’t taste right, you don’t have any time or way to “fix it”. Whereas you can leave a Brunello in oak longer or adjust the blending if it isn’t exactly right because you have several years to taste. I thought that was interesting.

What we enjoyed the most was how important family was to the group. It was just a really feel good ending to our Tuscany wine tour. Montalcino was a beautiful town and we enjoyed traveling around the area, eating and drinking.

One final note before we leave Tuscany. With the hard boiled eggs that mom and I ate on the last morning, we used the last of our black pepper that Michael and I had acquired in Chile months ago. We have consistently seen a black pepper deficit in the airbnbs and restaurants over the past 6 months and this pepper has come with us everywhere except Antarctica. You have been a great companion. Thank you for adding flavor to our lives. We will miss you.

April 24-25

After leaving Spain for the final time (this time around), we flew to Rome. Rome is one of Michael’s favorite cities in the world and it was one of the cities that we didn’t think we were going to be able to swing, but we checked out trains between Rome and Florence and realized we could squeeze two days. So we did!

For anyone who reads this on the internet, we have a tab that you can click on that lists out all of the countries we’ve been to. I qualified that for the countries listed that we’ve “both” been to, we hadn’t necessarily been together. Vatican City was the finally country that we had both been to, but had never visited together. That is no more! Now, any country that Michael and I have both visited, we’ve visited together. I like that.

Our flight from Barcelona on the 23rd was delayed about an hour and a half and it was already an evening flight on top of a very full day of driving. So by the time we got our bags and headed out, we had already determined we would have to take a cab. Our hotel has a midnight limit on check in and we were going to be cutting it very close. Who knows what happens after midnight, but the threat was there. We shared a van with a family from the Netherlands which reaffirmed our belief that people from the Netherlands are genuinely the nicest people in the world. We don’t know what causes that, but everyone we’ve met has been awesome, eager to talk and very kind.

As we rolled into the city, we saw the colosseum lit up and Michael just kept saying “I love Rome”.

We got checked in to our hotel (11:58! Boom!) and slept hard. But there was no way Michael was letting us sleep in. We got up and went for a run in Villa Borghese park. This is an outdoor sculpture park that Michael loves and I hadn’t been to before.

(Editor’s note: when I say that I have or have not seen/done something in Rome, I must note the last time I was in Rome, I was on a family vaca and I was exhausted from being a new New Yorker and working crazy hours leading right up to the trip. There were many things that we did or see that I may not remember or that I physically slept through like that train ride through Cannes. So I could be wrong when I say that I’ve never been to Villa Borghese.)

The run was beautiful – more of a stop and smell the roses type of run where I spent more time gawking at the art than actually running.

Turtles:

Bolivar – famous everywhere:

After the run, we cleaned up and headed to the Vatican museum. Both of us have been before but as anyone who has been there knows, there is so much to see that you could spend days there.

First, we found Eataly in Italy:

On our way we stopped at Pizzeria Bonci (which apparently has a location in Chicago now). It was delicious! They make these huge sheets of pizza and cut off sections at a time when you order. Then you pay based on weight. Really delicious plus interesting combinations. And Pop Beer!

And then on to the art! We did not do a tour or get a skip the line pass. What we learned while standing in the line to enter when confronted by the 20th or so vendor trying to sell us a skip the line pass:

Man selling things: Where are you from?

Mike: United States

MST: Oh!! You’re American!!! Great! No American’s stand in line!

Mike: we do

MST: no way! American’s don’t wait in this line! You have so much money! You spend all of your money!

Mike: we’re going to just wait in this line. Thanks, though!

MST: but no American has ever waited in this line

Mike and Jane laugh.

Jane: well then I guess we’ll be the first

MST: no, but seriously. I’ll give you this deal – there’s no way you’re going to stand in this line.

This went on for about five minutes with him certain that we’d give in. The line was only about ten minutes longer than the amount of time we spent talking to him. Ridiculous.

Now… finally… the art!

Some men lounging:

Some people standing in long, beautiful hallways:

Lots of gorgeous ceilings:

The Raphael rooms are a favorite of ours:

This guy was my favorite. I think the official title is “Egyptian Dog Head Politician”. No need to fact check that one.

Here were some women working on renovating a portion of this room which I thought was cool. I can’t imagine how much work goes into keeping even the unofficial art, like these walls, taken care of in a museum so large.

Map of Sicily for GDM from the map room.

After all of this, we hit up the Sistine Chapel. It was amazing. No pictures allowed, so none to post. Feel free to google it if you want a reminder. It was nice to have the headset and just spend some time being reminded of all the incredible things in the room. Detail by detail of all the panels and each section of the ceiling. It is definitely a delight, but it was also really crowded and loud. The guards kept yelling at people to stop talking and kept doing the “shhhhhh” that you get in grade school, but most people just didn’t care and kept on yapping. That meant that in addition to the noisy tourists, you also had the noisy guards trying to quiet them. Oh well. Best to ignore and get absorbed into the art.

The next time I come to the Vatican, I want to skip all of the Greco-Roman stuff. Michael and I spent about 2.5 hours looking at it. The last time I was at the Vatican museum with my family, we did about the same, possibly more. And then, we get past the Sistine Chapel and you have a ton of more recent art work. We were exhausted and just skipped all of it. So next time, straight to the chapel and then off to see new things.

I did remember specifically seeing and loving this huge piece both times that I was at the Vatican museum:

After the Vatican we were exhausted and in need of some water, as soon as possible. But first thing’s first! We had to grab our invites to our private audience with the pope!

THEN… off to grab some meats, water and wine!

We did get a chance to pop into the Pantheon – one of the few remaining pagan temples that was converted into a Church.

Lots of us in that picture… not a lot of the Pantheon. But we all know what it looks like, right?

Also, it’s where Raphael was buried:

One more touristy thing to slide into our day:

Trevi fountain!! The internet gives mixed information on what coins need to be thrown by which hands over which shoulders. We threw coins and regardless of whether we got the tradition correct or not, we’ll be back for sure.

That night, we took a bus out of the touristy area for dinner. It was really easy getting there, but we ran into a bus issue on the way back. Apparently, the bus stop that we were standing at for 30 minutes is only the bus stop on Sundays… so we were one street off. Thanks for the heads up, bus signage! So we missed the last bus of the night and had to grab an Uber back.

But the food was worth it! Delicious legit Italian food:

With the bus fiasco leaving us stranded until well after midnight, we had a tough time waking up for our appointment with the pope the next morning. Then we got on the subway and realized that we screwed up by wearing shorts. Rookie mistake. So we went back to the hotel to put on pants and try again. This meant that we were not early for our 10am meeting. But, as it turns out, Pope Francis was 30 minutes early. That meant that we were just through security as the pope mobile was driving by. We missed our close up!!

We joined the crowds and actually ended up getting a pretty good angle to see the stage. Far away, but it was great. Oh – did I not clear up this little misunderstanding? It wasn’t a private audience. We were in St. Peter’s Square with thousands of our closest friends. What a cool experience! The crowds were amazing – packed in to get as close as they could to the Pope – to hear him and to see him.

Once the ceremony started, Pope Francis did a quick opening prayer and then there was a short reading. The reading was done in Italian and then another 10 or so languages, including English. I didn’t realize that they were going to do anything in a language other than Italian, so I was pumped! The reading was from the Philippians: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.

After the reading, Pope Francis gave a homily in Italian. Then for each of the ten or so languages, the priest who proclaimed the reading in the respective language approached Pope Francis and told the Pope that all of the people who are represented by that language are so happy to be in attendance and wish his blessings on them. Afterwards, the priest responsible for each language gave a synopsis of the Pope’s homily. The main message? That through baptism we are strengthened with the oils of Catechumens which are meant to help us turn away from evil and sin. Then Pope Francis welcomed each group of people (in Italian which was then translated), telling us that he was so pleased that we were in attendance and that he was blessing each and every one of us. In addition, he was extending that blessing to all of our family and friends back home. That’s you all! You’re welcome. Also, he extended an extra blessing to the old, the sick, the young, the pregnant, and the newly married. So if you fall into that category while reading at home – an extra blessing!!

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/img_9199.trim_.mov

Two things. First, the cool thing about Pope Francis welcoming us was that he named countries. So when he welcomed the English speakers, even though he was speaking in Italian, we knew that he was addressing each English speaking country – he listed Great Britain and Canada and the US and a handful of Asian countries that I think they lump into English because not every Asian language was being translated. The strange thing? He forgot Australia. Whoops. But it was cool hearing him personally welcoming us from the United States.

Second, when the Pope addressed people from Spanish speaking countries, it was the only time that he did not speak Italian. I thought that was really touching and cool for him to communicate in his own language.

So how was Pope Francis? Amazing. We love him. The crowds love him. And you can definitely feel an energy when he is around. It was a really cool experience and I would recommend it to every person who visits Rome. It’s free and easy to get tickets and it was very moving.

Afterwards, we wanted to go visit St. Peter’s Basilica, but they don’t open it on Wednesdays until the Pope gets a little distance, so we went and got the Best. Pizza. Ever. It’s true. We had it at Emma Emporio. Michael’s pizza was good.

Mine was the best. Both of us agree that it may be the best we’ve ever had.

Fresh burrata cheese and prosciutto. Amazing.

Afterwards we headed back to the Vatican to visit the Basilica.

Still crowded, but mostly just lined up to get into St. Peter’s.

Beautiful doors.

Yes – that’s carved into a door in the picture below.

And of course, a beautiful dome:

But most importantly? The Pieta.

Isn’t it amazing? This is my absolute favorite thing in all of Rome. I have loved the Pieta since I was a little girl and my grandmother would take me to the shrine in St. Louis that had a replica. Seeing the original by Michelangelo in person is overwhelming to me.

After St. Peter’s, we headed to a bar that had great craft beer and met a couple from California that we chatted with for a few hours. It is strange to be back in countries with so many tourists from the United States. After our time in South America and Africa, it is nice to have some random folks to talk to at a bar.

And that was it for us and Rome… or is it? Off to Florence tomorrow!

April 23

Today is the last day with our rental car. It has been a trusty little Peugeot (here’s hoping I didn’t just jinx us since I’m typing this with two hours left on our drive). We’ve had the car for 24 days and started this puppy at 5290 kilometers on the odometer. It is now at 12,431 kilometers. Keep in mind that we had a different rental car when Johnny was in town and drove that mini for about 1280 miles (didn’t check the odometer on that one so we’re estimating). Converting our 7,141 kilometers on this car to 4437 miles, plus Johnny’s van, we drove 5,717 miles over the past month. For some context, it is 2,793 miles from New York City to Los Angeles. So we more than made it across the US two times in the last month. That’s a lot of miles.

It has been a ton of driving but such a neat way to see these countries and their beautiful landscapes. 9 countries in total. We’ve had so much flexibility and we’ve been able to see a ton with it. That said – I’m ready to be done with the car and Michael mostly is as well. It was more expensive than we were expecting. There are a lot of tolls that we’ve had to pay and many of the cities were expensive to park in. But there are a lot of places that we would not have been able to visit without a car. So grateful, but ready for some public transportation! Bring on our trains!

A final errand had to be run before we take our next flight. We have accumulated some “stuff” since we left the states almost six months ago and while that’s easy to truck along in a car, it’s hard to carry on your back. So we packed up a huge box and we’re shipping it back! I bet a few of you special readers just groaned and want to know if it’s coming to your home. Time will tell if you’re the lucky winner or not!

The box is packed and we had a post office picked out by the airport. When I went to map to the post office, google maps let me know that hours may be different because it is the feast of St. George who is the patron saint of Barcelona. What!? Oh no. So we changed our plans and starting trying to find post offices in cities outside of Barcelona. Zaragoza? Nope – the entire town is shut down. So I started calling the locations in Barcelona, hoping to get one that was open. Nope. On to fedex and ups. Finally we found one fedex that is open today. Thankfully.

Two things to note about this.

1. When do these people work!?!?!?! I get it, better quality of life, more family focused, less stressed, etc, etc. But seriously – they never work. Stores will just close down at random times for no reason. They are just coming off a week and a half with all of their stores closed for Easter! Many things don’t open until after 10 in the morning and then will take a 2 or 3 hour break in the afternoon. How do they pay bills? How can they afford all their fancy stuff?

2. When I called fedex, the recording was in Spanish and instructed me to press one for Spanish or two for English. I know that some people in the US get annoyed that they have to press a button to get English, but I will attest that this is just amazing customer service, especially when you are already panicked that you cannot find anyone to ship your box. And to take this thought one step further, we have traveled for six months and have rarely struggled to find someone who will either speak English with us or find a way to communicate. Often they apologize for their broken English. I hope that people in the United States are that kind and helpful to non English speakers that they encounter.

So now we’re off to Rome! We have two days before we meet up with my mom in Florence!

April 20-22

A short drive North from Lisbon landed us in Porto, a town that we were both really excited to visit. We had heard good things about the town and it’s the home of Port wine. Since we’ve been about four days since a wine tasting, it was time to get back to business.

First thing’s first – the highlight of the city for me was our dinner the first night at Cervajeria Gazela. We had seen this restaurant on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and Michael actually remembered it. So we went – it was up several hills and through some random dark streets. When we came upon it, it was a very small grill packed with people eating at the counter, eating while standing behind the counter and eating outside.

Awesome.

It has a full menu, but there is really only one thing to eat: the cachorro. It is sausage and cheese sandwich grilled to perfection with spicy sauce on top.

We also got fries and beers, but the real star was the sausage. Amazing. Plus!!! We got a seat at the counter, which was very lucky and gave us a chance to overlook all the activity.

Our first port stop was at Kopke – which is the oldest port house in Porto… you know because they wrote it on the building. It was a great first stop where we learned a bit about port and the process.

We knew very little coming into this visit and I wasn’t always the biggest fan, so it was great to get more info. For example, did you know that there is white port and rose port? Me neither. Also, most ports are either classified as Ruby or Tawny. The difference is that Ruby are fermented for only 2-3 days which allows them to keep their ruby color (hence the name) and a lot of berry flavor. Tawny ports are fermented for more days which turns more sugar into alcohol. Then they are barrel aged for extended periods of time which changes the color from ruby to a rusty color. Also that barrel exposure will mean you could taste carmel or vanilla or other flavors besides the berry flavor which is also toned down with more time in barrel. The longer tawny ports are in barrel, the lighter their color while the longer white ports are in the barrel, the darker their color.

There are also some ports that are bottled without being filtered. This allows the port to continue to age within the bottle indefinitely. These you can keep for 100+years without drinking (although I’m not sure I see the point of that). But once you open a bottle of unfiltered, you have to drink it within two or three days. For any filtered and blended bottle, apparently there really isn’t a reason to age it in the bottle, so you’ll want to drink it anytime in the first couple of years after it is bottled. Once open, a filtered bottle can be kept for three to nine months depending on other stuff.

Also – ports are fortified with brandy which stops the fermentation process before all of the sugar is turned into alcohol. This also boosts the alcohol content. About the grapes – I assumed there was a specific type of grape but there are actually over 100 different grape varietals that are used to make Port. None of the cellars made a big deal about the varietal. The important thing is that they’re grown in the Douro River valley that has a microclimate that is optimal for port grapes.

More info – if you get a 10 year tawny, that is a blended bottle of port with an average age of 10 years. Their intent is to blend so that their 10 year always tastes the same from year to year. Same with the 20 year and the 30 and 50, yada yada. Some vintages, if they are really good, will do a port specific to that year and that’s when you’ll see a specific year on the bottle. The interesting thing here is that they’ll keep that vintage in barrels until there is a demand. So a 1961 vintage that is bottled in 1980 will be much different than a 1961 that is bottled in 2018.

Our next stop was Churchill’s – no relation to Winston – that is a newer cellar with very delicious ports. Apparently since it’s younger it does things like pop up bars in London and festivals and other “hip” things that the older cellars would have a distaste for. Great ports – definitely some of our favorites.

Our next tasting was Calem which was a great tour of their cellar plus Michael booked us for the port and chocolate tasting. Bonus! Out of the thirty or so people on the tour only one other couple did the chocolate tasting with us – a couple from Texas: Bill and Mary Beth. They were celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We had a great time getting to know them and went on to do a second tasting and then dinner with them.

The highlight of dinner? Three things – round two of the goose barnacles. For the crew that hung out with us in San Sebastián… round one was much better.

Still a highlight, but they just didn’t have the right pizazz.

Highlight two – Mary Beth and I shared the salt cod. It was salt baked. So it came out in flames that they scooped off with the extra salt. What!? Also in this picture you can see the tomahawk steak that Michael and Bill shared.

The final highlight is that the wedding anniversary got the entire table free champagne and chocolate cake. Boom!

Our last day in Porto was quiet time after so much commotion the day before. I cranked out a few blog posts, Michael cooked dinner and we watched movies. Just the type of quiet day you need every once in a while.

April 18-19

Driving from Seville to Lisbon, we hit our first new country in what felt like a long time. Portugal! We are definitely getting close to being burned out on all this driving. But we only have a few more days with our rental car and we need to take advantage of it!

The city was really cool with a lot of people hanging out. We mostly stayed in the old city which had beautiful buildings and a lot of hills. It reminded me a bit of Valparaiso and reminded Michael of San Fran.

Stopped along one of the hills for some beers and sunshine:

Plus there was some delicious food! This pizzeria allegedly has the Rolls Royce of Italian pizza ovens. It looked cool, but more importantly the pizza was delicious.

We also hiked up to Saõ Jorge Castle which is a Moorish castle on the highest hill in town, overlooking the city and the Tagus River.

It gave us some beautiful views of the city as well as a little time with some peacocks.

And since it had been a little while, we popped in for some Peruvian food at A Cevicheria.

Our last morning as we were heading off to Porto, we popped into this bakery for some famous pastries.

About these pastries: the bakery opened in 1837 selling “pastel de Belém” which are based off a secret recipe from the Jerónimos Monastery which was next door at the time. They sell a lot of standard bakery stuff, but the egg tart pastry (pictured above) is their specialty and the reason that busloads of people visit every day… including us. They were delicious and definitely the kind of pastry that makes you wish you had ordered three times more than necessary. I want ALL of the pastries.

Our trip to Lisbon was short but sweet with a ton of great food!

April 16-17

When planning out this road trip, we had originally planned on heading to Portugal first from Barcelona. But somehow we found out that Seville had a week long flamenco festival called Feria de Abril. Yes!! So we adjusted our trip to be in Southern Spain to coincide with the festival. On arrival into the city, I was incredibly excited by the horse drawn carriages heading down the highways.

Michael was less enthused as he attempted to drive while I was reaching over him to get pictures.

Almost immediately we saw our first woman in a flamenco dress. I was super excited but more excited when I realized in just a few minutes that they were EVERYWHERE.

There were a few main components of the festival. One is “Hell Street” which is the carnival built right next to the festival grounds that looks similar to a huge parish picnic that you’d see in St. Louis, which I’m now learning did not happen at parishes where Michael grew up. This has led to a great discussion on parish picnics and county fairs (which I’ve never been to). This was not like a county fair – perhaps similar to the carnival ride section of the Monroe county fair per Michael, but there was no livestock or art being judged that we saw or politicians campaigning.

Another component of the festival is the carriage parade. These carriages were traditionally used to show economic status and often competed with each other in garments and decorations to be the most beautiful. Apparently this happens every day of the week long festival.

My favorite part of the parade was this little girl riding side saddle in a traditionally male outfit complete with the cordobés hat. Typically, the women wear a flower and a comb on top of their heads as you’ll see in other pictures. Tell me she’s not awesome.

The next component is bull fighting. We saw the bull fighting arena from an aerial view the cathedral, but otherwise did not see any bull fighting in this trip. The tickets to see the bull fights sell out months in advance. We’re pretty sure it’s the stadium about halfway into the distance, center, in this picture.

The final component is the night time celebrations. There is drinking and dancing until 3am when the lights are turned off. Most of you know that Michael and I don’t stay out until 3am, but we did make it past midnight the second night. The interesting thing about the fair is that despite the fact that everyone is out in the street partying, it is very much for locals. One reason for that is the dress. Most of the local women wore traditional flamenco dresses or very sleek pantsuits. The men wore very well tailored expensive suits. Apparently few men wear the traditional clothing which consists of tight pants, high boots and the same wide brim hat the girl above is wearing. I’m not sure when they switched to suits, but in general, I like the decision as the men looked sharp and was a nice complement to the beautiful dresses the women wore.

Although I wore my nicest dress and Michael work navy pants and a collared shirt the first night, we were clearly outsiders. The tents are reserved by families, so you cannot enter a tent without an invitation. That meant we were not going into any tents. There were apparently a few public tents that would serve alcohol to anyone, but we never saw these tents. It wasn’t a big deal, being the classiest of classies, Michael and I brought two small water bottles filled with French wine along with us the first night. We knew there was drinking in the street, so there wasn’t a concern about getting in trouble for it. There was one moment where Michael was taking a drink out of the bottle when a very fancy woman and her very fancy 10 or so year old son dropped their jaws with shock and embarrassment that they happened to be standing so close to a man of such horrible character and breeding. But other than that, most of the crowd completely ignored us.

I did ask a few women if I could take their picture. It’s a little creepy, but more so if I just take their picture without asking, don’t you think? Everyone I asked seemed legitimately shocked that I asked. I just checked my Spanish on the google machine to make sure I was using the right words… I was close enough. “Puedo tomar tu foto” when it apparently should have been “Puedo tomar su foto”… my Spanish scholars can chime in. For the most part they just couldn’t believe I wanted their photo and almost all of them laughed and then pulled someone else into the photo with them – other girlfriends or a date. I was surprised at how almost shy or embarrassed they acted while wearing such bold and confident clothing.

There was some dancing in the street and some dancing in tents that we watched. Many of the tents had adult women dancing inside with partners while younger girls danced in their streets with their friends, practicing for when they get invited to dance with the adults.

Also, I liked this group of girls which included one girl dancing in the four without a flamenco dress on.

Also, the lights!!

Besides the festival, we also spent some time walking around the city. We got a run in and took a selfie on a bridge that our Airbnb host told us we HAD TO TAKE A SELFIE on. She told us that if we didn’t get the selfie, then we cannot say we really experienced Seville. We’re not totally sure why the selfie bridge was so important, but we did it, because heaven forbid we screw up an entire visit on something as easy as a bridge selfie after our run:

Also, we went on a tour of the Cathedral de Santa Maria de la Sede aka the Seville Cathedral, which is UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here’s what we learned:

The Seville Cathedral became the largest cathedral in the world in the 16th century, overtaking Hagia Sophia, another cathedral that Michael and I have visited in Istanbul and love. There are now two churches that are larger: Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida (which probably also holds the record for longest church name) and St. Peter’s Basilica. But since both of those churches are not the seats of bishops, Seville Cathedral is still the largest cathedral in the world per Wikipedia. Now I had to research a bit further, because I thought St. Peter’s was the seat of a super important bishop. But Wikipedia is telling me that the seat of the Pope is actually the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which I probably should have known from my visit to St. Peter’s Basilica a few years ago. When clicking on that link to make sure I was understanding correctly I found out that the full name of that cathedral is The Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran, which disproves my above thoughts on record holder for longest name.

Now as I’m writing, Michael told me that per the audio tour the two bigger churches were St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Paul’s in London. But when I looked into this a bit further, St. Paul’s is an Anglican cathedral, not Catholic. So my info here probably ok. Take it all, as usual, with a grain of salt.

Now back to the cathedral at hand. It was obviously beautiful and ornate.

An altar dedicated to St. Teresa:

A few things that were cool or strange:

1. This was one of the pieces of art in the building. It’s John the Baptist’s decapitated head. This is not a rendition of John that I think I’ve seen before. Later on there was a second decapitated John the Baptist head, but I didn’t think you needed to see two.

2. This is a huge crown that is brought out once a year on the feast of Mary’s Assumption and put on a statue of Mary that is paraded through the streets. It also has the second largest pearl in the world.

3. This is the main altar. It tells the entire story of Jesus starting in the bottom left hand corner and working its way all the way up to the top right. This redefines the word elaborate.

I know what you’re thinking:

4. A bunch of bishops are buried here but apparently Christopher Columbus is also buried here. He’s here in this tomb being held up by these four people (Angels? Soldiers? Knights? I have no clue).

Now here’s the issue with the Christopher Columbus burial. Three issues actually. First that few of us actually consider him a hero anymore as we’ve evolved in our thinking of what the “discovery” of the Americas means since it involved slaughtering a ton of people and taking land from people who already lived there. Plus CC wasn’t a very good person. That said, he’s a hero in Spain. Second point is that it is in dispute if his body is actually in this cathedral or if it is in the Dominican Republic. My third issue is that the audio guide got very confusing at this point and I go distracted and so I didn’t realize what it was. I saw the huge ornate tomb, but didn’t hear the story of who was buried there. Later Michael told me that was his favorite part of the cathedral and I had no idea what he was talking about. Oops.

5. We were able to climb to the top of the bell tower which was formerly the minaret of the Almohad mosque which was built in the late 1100’s. The mosque was “Christianized” after Ferdinand III’s conquest of Seville. This converted bell tower is now the city’s most well-known structural symbol and is 104.5 meters high.

6. The mosque’s sahn, which is the ablutions courtyard where the Muslims did their ritual cleansing before entering for prayer was also maintained and turned into the Patio de los Naranjos because of all the orange trees.

I would say that the selfie bridge is probably less of a “have to visit” than this cathedral.

We loved Seville and I would definitely recommend it. It is added to the list of places that we’ll need to come back to in the future… maybe with some fancier clothes.

April 14-15

Our next stop on this road trip was Sagunta, a beach town about 20 kilometers north of Valencia. Weather was looking beautiful for a day at the beach, so we booked two nights and relaxed.

Also – these were the shampoo containers in the hotel.

First thought was how amazing they were. Second thought was how there has to be some child poisoning issues associated with making shampoo look like those yogurt and apple sauce containers.

April 12-13

After our time in Alsace, we were ready to broaden our horizons away from all the wine tastings… to more wine tastings. But we were switching from deliciously dry whites to deliciously complex reds. Variety is the spice of life. We drove southwest to Hermitage, a small hill in the northern Rhône region that is known for exceptional Syrah. This was another area that the documentary, “Somm, Into the Bottle”, had directed us towards.

Some interesting history about Hermitage. The wine region surrounding Hermitage is quite large, but wines labeled exclusively “Hermitage’ speak to 140 hectares of vines on a south facing hill outside Lyon, France. According to legend, an injured knight in 1224 was given permission by the Queen of France to live on the hill while he recovered. That knight never left his hill and lived as a hermit – hence the name hermitage. However, at a winery we visited, the man doing the tasting talked about a battle between Gaul and the Romans in 121 BC (thank you google for that year). Apparently the Celts (had no idea of the Celt/Gaul connection) had significantly more troops than the Romans, but the Romans brought elephants which where incredibly exotic at the time and terrified the Celts. The Celts fled via a bridge they had constructed over the Rhône and the bridge collapsed, killing a large number of the troops. The hill was then apparently given to a Roman commander as reward and he began farming the hill.

The hill:

Now about the wines. We tasted wine from the region and wine specifically from the hill. The stuff on the hill – the Hermitage appellation – is significantly better. And that analysis is from someone who likes drinking wine but would not call herself an expert by any means. I struggle to define what I’m tasting when I taste it. I’m getting better (practice makes perfect), but for the most part, I can only tell you what I like. I like Hermitage wines. So apparently the five tasting notes of a standard Syrah is cherry, leather, pepper, licorice, and a fifth one. We don’t remember what the fifth tasting note is from our tasting yesterday. It may be lavender, but whatever it was, I was surprised that he said it and I don’t think I have ever picked that out. Definitely cherry, definitely pepper… and the rest? I’ll trust the experts on what they think. But I can tell you, with my limited experience, that when you taste a Hermitage wine next to wine produced from the next appellation over that the Hermitage is noticeably better.

Of the 140 hectares, a quarter are Marsanne and Roussanne white varieties. These are wines we had never tried before this visit. They were fine – but tough when compared to how good the Syrah is and how good the whites were that we had just tasted in Alsace.

On to the Syrah – it is bold and spicy and wonderful. The hill has granite soil with alpine glacial deposits. This produces heavy tannic wines which allow them to be aged for a long time. We drank mostly 2014 and 2015 vintages and both wineries told us we could keep them in a cellar for 10-30 years. That’s a long time.

We visited three wineries while in the area. The first was actually the same winery of the bottle we drank in Alsace – Domaine Des Remiziéres. We had the 2005 Cuvée Emilie and were pumped when we met… Emilie.

She is the winemaker’s daughter and did the tasting for us. Without a common language between the three of us, it was a quiet, but delicious tasting. Google translator did its job more than a few times to get through the 30 or 40 minutes. She did recommend a few other wineries for us to visit in the area.

We headed directly to one of her suggestions in St. Joseph – Domaine Pierre et Jerome Coursodon. St. Joseph is the next appellation over and this tasting was proof that the wines were just not as good as the Hermitage. They were fine, really delicious, but we had been spoiled now.

The following day, Michael found Delas, a small producer of Hermitage for us to visit. The guide spoke English, which was great because he had a lot of information for us. Besides the history that he shared regarding the area, we also got a (slightly snobbish) opinion of new age wines. Basically, if it isn’t French or tastes just like French, this guy isn’t a fan. It made me laugh on the inside as he was telling us this. Michael does not agree with how I remember this part of the tasting. It wasn’t a big deal and I liked the guy a lot, but I thought it was a peak into a bit of the old world wine snobbery.

So we now have a new issue: how are we going to ship about nine bottles of wine back to the states. None of the Hermitage or Alsace wineries would ship for us, so we didn’t buy much, but we did buy a few. It is too much to ask anyone to carry back after a visit, so we’re going to try to ship over the next week or so.

One food item to mention: we had lunch yesterday at a pizza place. We ordered a pizza to share and an arugula salad. The salad came with a 8″ by 4″ pastry baked to soft perfection and filled with melted cheese. That’s what we get for trying to order something halfway healthy for lunch. It was an amazing surprise.

I’m typing this while we’re driving South to Seville. It is a 13 or so hour drive, so we are stopping after 9 hours for two nights North of Valencia, Spain. As of right now, my weather app is telling me that we’re going to get sun and 70 degrees in this beach town, so I’m looking forward to sitting on the beach tomorrow and doing nothing.

The roads from Hermitage to Valencia are mostly highway and not that much different than views you’d see in California, but one thing is different… the rest stop food.

This is the croissant we had this morning for breakfast. 1 Euro and it tasted as good as anything we’d had in a real restaurant. How do they get their rest stop food so fresh?! No McDonald’s breakfast burritos here. (Editor’s note: McDonald’s breakfast burritos are delicious and I love them).