Spello, Italy

Spello, Italy. Ever heard of it? I hadn't either... but our friends who used to live here several years ago insisted this was one town we HAD to visit during their flower fest, Le Infiorate.

A flower fest isn't exactly on Jamie's top things to do, not compared to wine tasting, boys Oktoberfest trips, etc. Two friends and I decided to go check it out; for my friend Kristin, it also happened to be her last weekend living in Italy. What a way to say "ciao!" to Italy than seeing Le Infiorate. 

Le Infiorate is an exhibition of local artistic talent which only lasts two days. 

The petals from flowers are trimmed, cut, shredded and arranged along the streets of Spello and represent religious scenes.  Weeks of preparation, and teamwork lead to a long night of hard work, and then finally, a religious procession through the floral carpets laid out throughout town for "La noche de Corpus Christi".

Think: color by number. Only with herbs, cut and shredded flower petals. A lot of love and labor go into this. 

The entire experience was spectacular! We were lucky enough to have arrived in Spello on 'day one" of the fest.  All the town residents were cutting and trimming and shredding flowers in doorways, garages... there were "maps" getting glued to the cobblestone walkways. To watch this town go from quiet little hillside town to the end product was such a cool experience.  We were out until 1am walking the town, watching how this all comes together.

The next morning, I felt like a 5 year old on Christmas morning - dying to get out of bed to see what was waiting for me. Kristin, Stacy and I got up, got ready and headed out.

Words cannot describe the detail. Picutres do not do it justice.

Planning a trip to Italy? You should definitely try to schedule it around this!

Oui, oui, oui, mesdames et messieurs, je fais l'amour France!

Translation: Yes, yes, yes, ladies and gentleman, I do love France!

We have been so lucky to have had friends living in Toulon, ones that have been submerged into the French culture, and they let us come visit. Again. This time, we took advantage of a military flight, aka Space A (Available), that was departing Napoli and going to Toulon for a Memorial Day service. Space available for the four of us, yessss! The kids - Zachary and Lincoln, Lily and Riann - picked up right where they left off last time. They have SO much fun together!

 We started our first night in Toulon off - just the adults - with a concert at an old opera house. It was a warm evening, almost too warm, and the French don't really have air conditioning so it was even hotter sitting up in our seats.

The ambiance was lovely - truly a beautiful night in a beautiful opera house, our friends really know how to show us the less touristy parts of southern France which are actually my favorite parts. We wrapped up the evening with dessert. Jamie and I fully relied on Sarah and Phil ordering for us, and being our full-on translators. Oh wait, except for the occasional "Merci!" or "Bonsoir!" with terrible accents.






Sarah and I had made plans to leave the guys home with the kids for a day trip to Aix en Provence. It was another lovely day for the drive, and for walking among the French through the city, strolling through the market, window shopping and then enjoying a relaxing lunch - sans kids and husbands. Aix is beautiful!






The following day we took a day trip to Sanary sue Mer - a gorgeous coastal town along the Med. Sarah and Phil were actually babysitting two Irish boys who tagged along with us. The kids all seemed to enjoy the outing, especially when we found ourselves in the middle of a Pirate Festival.

Memorial day weekend was coming to an end and it was almost time to leave. Only we didn't. Our plane had some maintenance issues, so we spent an unexpected extra two nights in Toulon. Sarah and Phil were gracious enough to re-welcome us back at their house.








Jamie, Sarah, all 4 kids and I went to Cassis, another picturesque French town! We started our visit to Cassis with the "Petit" tour of Calanques - the steep-walled, (limestone) inlets from the sea along the coast of parts of southern France. Crystal clear, incredibly blue water - surreal! France doesn't get much better than this!! After walking around the town, enjoying a quick lunch, Sarah treated us to an unbelievable scenic drive - Route des Cretes. Cliffs that make you go "gulp", views that make you never want to leave... amazing!

Amazing food, great hosts, generous friends - we have certainly been spoiled by seeing parts of France most people don't even know exist. This time it was really time to go home. Fortunately, we had a new military flight come to our "rescue".

April fun!

Before Spring Break, we were busy enjoying the different ways to entertain oneself as an American living in Italy. My friend Sara and I like to go on adventures, the two we went on this past spring was to look for demijohns and we hit gold! Well, first we hit some trash, and saw some interesting, yet typical sights you see living in Italy, then we hit gold...

snapping photos of what Italian cemeteries look like...

And this is how we find demijohns...

We can also "find" them by having date-day and going up toward Benevento to Solopaca to fill up demijohns with wine at a pump...

All this wine... what about beer? We found a local microbrewery too!

After our Spring Break adventure, life continued to more swiftly too - rarely is there NOTHING to do. Those days are rare but hey, we live in Italy for only a short time, so we have to enjoy it! Jamie's cousin, Tess, who was studying abroad in Wales, was on her spring break and got in touch with us. Jamie treated Tess and her friend to a day adventure in the rain in downtown Napoli: cafe at Gambrinus (the old, famous cafe), pizza at Da Michele (made famous by Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love), and then brought them to our house for a non-hostel evening of home-cooked food, a washer and dryer, some limoncello and a comfy, clean bed to sleep in.

I took off on a girls trip with my friends Molly and Kara - we headed first to one of my favorite finds for fun, refurbished Italian furnishings near Siena.

We each left with some ideas and treasures before heading further north to Ochiobello where we stayed overnight, and dined on some fantastic Italian dishes and some wine. Off to Nove, Italy for some fun shopping. Nove is known for their ceramics, specifically ceramics that are made for Lenox, Tiffany & Co, Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, Anthropologie, etc.

We had fun, got a little overwhelmed, made some good purchases and moved on to another night "off", uniterrupted dinner at a restaurant back in Orvieto - a bit closer to home.

From there, our days were filled with gymnastics performances, surprise 40th birthday parties, and Mickey Mouse kids parties before the four of us were heading back northward to Orvieto. This time, we were meeting Unc & (Aunt) Debi - Jamie's uncle and aunt from Syracuse - they were in Italy for Unc's company's Presidents Club annual conference that took place in Rome. They extended their Italian adventure to spend part of it with us. We thought they would enjoy Orvieto, and then a side excursion for wine and olive oil tasting. It was a fun visit, although a short one.

All this fun had to come to an end eventually. And so PCS season began. PCS?? What's that?? The wonderful world of the military has, what seems to be, about one million acronyms. PCS is the acronym for Permanent Change of Station, and it's a term you hear, especially here, every day. People begin the moving process once orders are in hand, of course. Once those papers are in our hot little hands, we can schedule movers for our HHG (House Hold Goods), schedule the temporary furniture to come in, make TLA (something about temporary lodging) reservations at the base hotel for your last days before you hop on the Rotator - the regularly scheduled military flight that gets people from one duty station to the next. My first sad day came when I volunteered to drive to Rome airport with my friend Kristin, to take their dog, DJ, so she could fly back to the states before the hot temperatures arrived and animals can no longer fly for the season. See, they did not have orders yet, they had already waited as long as they could before they had to make special arrangements for their fuzziest family member to get stateside. It was a fairly easy process considering how expensive it was, but it was awfully sad to say good bye to DJ as we saw her through security checks, paperwork stamping, cargo loading, etc. The good news was, DJ made it safely to Atlanta to spend several weeks with her, ummm, grandmother.

And before another O'Leary family adventure was about to begin, we had to send off another friend to the states... My friend Molly, her husband Andy, dubbed "Googleboy", and their two girls, Claire and Ellie. Lincoln and Claire were like an old married couple - one minute they adroe each other, the next they are bickering, then they are best buddies again and then back to "He/She's not letting me talk!"

We had an "Arreivederci" party for them, but we also had a ladies night of bunco playing to send Molly off in style. I couldn't post them here, but in true Molly-fashion, we did her vogue-like series of photos as the camera was set in timer mode to take 10 shots. This was the *best* one of us all:

Spring break, Italy style

Spring break 2012 - It was way better than any tropical destination as we were headed to the northern parts of Italy to meet up with my sister and our three nieces. They spent their first days in Venice, they had an amazing time exploring the canals, and the nooks and crannies of the beautiful city of Venezia!

With some time to pass before meeting up with Gretchen, Paige, Molly and Megan, the four of us spent a few hours in the town of Riva del Garda, the northern-most town on Lago di Garda where we ended up in the middle of a youth sailing event. Sailboats from all over Europe and many other countries including the USA. The lake quickly filled up with hundreds of boats, and we were happy to just walk around the lovely, picture-perfect town of Riva del Garda.

Off to Malchesine to meet up with G & the gang - it's always nice to see family, especially when you're living far away in Italy! After hugs and greetings, we took a funicular-type "ride" up to the top of Monte Baldo. Up above the clouds and drizzly skies, we could see the lake and the valley below when there were breaks in the clouds.

Afterward, we checked out the town of Malchesine, had some Italian sweets lake-side, then headed south along the lake a bit further to the town of Garda where we ate some piping hot pasta dishes. We checked into our agriturismo, got settled and called it a night. The next day was Easter so we started with a short drive to the peninsula town named Sirmione. Sirmione is on the southern most end of Lago di Garda. We visited the archeological site of Grotte di Catullo (Grottoes of Catullus).

It was a busy morning with trying to see some sights of Sirmione, but we had to make our way back to the agriturismo as we had reservations for Easter lunch, Italian style. The food was outstanding, the wine was great, the room we had all to ourselves was fantastic and cozy, but in Italian fashion, we were stuffed and had to get moving.

We had a fun time letting the kids have a few Easter egg hunts on the property, the kids ran and had a ton of fun. The skies were sunny to one side and so grey to the other side, we were lucky to find no rain but a vibrant, long-lasting rainbow. It made for a wonderful afternoon of colorful eggs and fun picture-taking. After all that busy-ness, we headed back to Sirmione to walk around some more and to end Easter Sunday with a scoop of gelato.

As requested by Paige and Molly, we headed to Verona - the city known for the setting of Romeo & Juliet. We saw some of the main attractions, including the balcony claimed to be (but not REALLY) Juliet's.

Later that afternoon, we drove from Verona to Pisa, another "must see" request by the Hoffman girls. We arrived to our hotel, then got to the main sight - The Leaning Tower", of course, as it was all lit up for the night.

The next morning was an early one, very few people were among the Piazza dei Miracoli (field of miracles) as the Hoffman girls took their tickets and headed to the top of the Leaning Tower.

Jamie, Riann, Lincoln and I hung out at a nearby bar sipping on cappuccinos and eating pastries for breakfast. When the Hoffman girls were done, they kept Riann and Lincoln for us (you have to be 8 years old to climb to the top) so that Jamie and I could walk those crooked stairs and get to the top of that leaning tower.

It was really cool and a fun opportunity to take! Having some fun in Pisa, and do as all tourists do, we all took our turn holding up the tower for photo opps.

After our few hours in Pisa, we were on the road again. Next stop was Assisi. We walked all over Assisi, which is no small feat, as it is a hillside town, and it was a bit warmer than the other days. The pinkish brick that most of the buildings are constructed with is beautiful, the cobblestone streets, stairwells, etc make this town a fun but tiring one to visit. We ended our evening with a superb dinner at a local ristorante highly recommend by our favorite, Rick Steves.

Our fun adventure with cousins and Aunt Gretchie had to come to an end... It went by so quickly but we had so much fun. They still had a few more days to spend in Rome before flying out, so from Assisi, they followed us to Rome. We got them situated with their rental car checked in, and into a taxi headed to their apartment where they continued their Italian adventure. Two hours of a drive for us and we were back home, just enough time to get ready for the school and work week to begin.