Italy: Cinque Terre

I absolutely fell in love with Cinque Terre when I visited with my family in 2005.  I vaguely remember spending the flight back to the USA figuring out a plan so I could move there for the summer.  Needless to say, I was pretty obsessed.  Once we decided on Italy as our destination for this trip with Cam's family, we knew we needed to spend a day in Cinque Terre.  It was my favorite stop on this trip, and I think everyone else loved it, too.  It was nice and quiet since it's the off season.  We all got major workouts in, climbing up to our hotel which was near the top of Manarola.  (But the view was 100% worth the climb!) The weather honestly couldn't have been more perfect.  It was too warm for our jackets, and the sun felt glorious.  I think I'd forgotten what sun feels like. As far as what we did: there's not much to do in Cinque Terre besides wander around and marvel that what you're looking at is really in front of you and is not just a picture you're looking at.  There are five little cities: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso.  In the summer you can walk the trails between the cities, but the trails were closed for us since it was the off season, so we had to rely on the trains that run between the cities every hour or so.  We visited Manarola, Vernazza, and Monterosso all together on friday; Cameron, Brendan, and I went to Riomaggiore in the evening for a great dinner while Greg and Kathy generously kept an eye on sleeping Andy.  Saturday morning was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip.  Greg, Cameron, Andy, and I got some incredible cream-filled pastries and then walked near the water and on the path that curves around the north side of Manarola.  It was perfect.  I've decided Manarola is definitely my favorite of the five.  Now, a bunch of pictures, all out of order because they're from three people's cameras: 

Manarola. Stunning, right?

Adorable Andy on the train ride from Florence.

The view from our room.

Andy got to play on the beach in Monterosso.  He loved throwing the sand so much, he was pretty devastated to leave.

Vernazza 

Morning view from our room. 

Manarola in the morning

Monterosso's Beach

Andy loved the playground at the beach in Monterosso.

Vernazza

Vernazza.  You can see Monterosso off in the distance.

We stopped by this amazing (and cheap!) pizza place in La Spezia  twice: both on our way into Cinque Terre and out of it, too.  It really was that good.  Here we are with our sweet waiter. 

Italy: Florence

We took a trip to gorgeous Italy with Cameron's family from Dec. 26-31.  It was incredible.  We spent the first two days in Florence, then did a day in Cinque Terre, and then finished with two days in Venice.  The post is dedicated to Florence, which was most of our favorite.  I'd been there before and for whatever reason didn't love it last time; I absolutely fell in love with it this time.  We rented a great apartment for us all to stay in together and really lucked out--it was right next to the duomo, was really clean and nice, etc.  The only hiccup to our stay in Florence was that Alitalia lost Kathy's luggage.  The poor thing spent so much time trying to figure out where her bag was, and they were clearly giving her the runaround, making up stories and everything.  Luckily her bag finally came the second night we were there, which was a good thing since we were leaving for Cinque Terre the next morning.  

Anyway, what we did: We spent most of our time wandering the streets of beautiful Florence.  Every little detail is just stunning.  It was relatively quiet while we were there, and everything just felt so authentic.  Not touristy at all, which was nice.  We soaked in the "warm" weather and ate gelato twice a day.  We ate great food--lots of pizza and pasta, of course.  Our first day we wandered around the duomo and surrounding streets.  We went to see the David.  Everyone but Andy and I enjoyed a delicious dinner.  (I stayed back and put the tired little guy to bed.)  That night, Brendan, Cam, and I wandered around and fell in love with Florence at night.

Day 2, we headed to the Pitti Palace/Boboli Gardens.  Palaces and their gardens have turned into our favorite thing!  We can't get enough.  So beautiful.  The views of Tuscany were breathtaking.  We headed to the Uffizi Gallery that afternoon.  We (Cam and I) tend to enjoy 18th/19th century art more, but it was still incredible to see masterpieces by Botticelli, Michelangelo, etc.  That night we headed to Zaza Trattatoria for a delicious dinner.

Now for some pictures:

We know the Lost & Found Desk in the Florence airport a little too well.

Stunning Duomo

Brendan snuck a shot of the David, which is so impressive in person.  It's huge!

I had to include this picture, because poor Kathy got seriously yelled at for taking it!   We felt bad for Kathy, but it was pretty funny how seriously the security guard took her job.

From our evening stroll with Brendan

Pitti Palace

Boboli Gardens 

The view from the Boboli Gardens.  Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?

Andy was napping in the stroller and missed out on this one.

The Old Bridge

Cute Greg and Kathy

Dinner at Zaza: the awkward sister-in-law/brother-in-law picture

December in Amsterdam & Christmas with the Lees

December was full of fun activities.  We love living in a place where there are always so many things to do.  Some things we did in no particular order:

• We celebrated Sinterklaas Day on Dec. 5.  We had a nice dinner, we each got a chocolate letter (tradition) and a little present.  Andy got a car, Cameron got a few diet cokes, and I got a bubble bath ball.

• The most important event of the month was Cameron's glamor shots he had taken at Dell.  They show off his successful November beard.

We went to an event titled "Turn on the Lights," in Dam Square.  We weren't sure what it was until we got there.  It wasn't very Christmas-y, but it was so cool!  Very modern and Amsterdam-esque.  It's hard to describe it all, but some of the coolest parts were when a crane lifted this singing lady above the entire crowd and then later lifted a man riding his bike and playing a violin with all these angels (they were fat, man angels...weird) around him.  Yeah, I'm not doing the best job describing it.  But it was very cool.  It all culminated with the Christmas lights at de Bijenkorf (a big dept. store) turning on.  

The end of November and beginning of December were pretty freezing cold.  We even had some snow for a few days.  It doesn't snow every year here, so this was a big deal. 

Claire had me over to her place for a delicious dinner.  She's the best cook!

We made a trip to the market with Amadine. 

Amandine had Andy and I over for lunch.  I spent most of the time chasing Andy around stopping him from destroying everything Amandine owns, but it was still great to see Amandine and little Faustine.  

Andy and I took a trip to the Nemo museum, and also went back to the Stedilijk Museum to see the top floor.  

Andy tried out a Little Gym class and loved it.  Too bad his parents are too cheap to pay for a weekly class. :)  

Andy and I took a trip to TunFun (a huge underground playground) with Amsterdam Mamas and had a blast.  It was amazing to see how much stronger and braver Andy got within just one month from our last visit there!

Andy and I continued to go to our two weekly storytimes at the library and the English Bookshop.  We got to know our new friends Stephanie and little Ashley and had fun lunches with them a few times.  We might be taking a break from our English Bookshop storytime for a while until Andy can get over his obsession with climbing their stairs and grabbing books off the shelves, which is not allowed.  

We had Dave and Abby over for a games night.  We had a lot of fun playing Scattergories and Rummikub. 

We visited the Sissyboy Christmas Market.  We thought it would be bigger than it was, but it was still fun.  We got some great ornaments and little knobs for a dresser.   

Cameron and I finished a wonderful BBC miniseries called "The Paradise."  It aired this past fall in England, so I don't know if/when it will get to the US. If it does: watch it!  I also watched a lot of "The Middle," which is quickly turning into my favorite show. 

We made our neighbors cookies for Christmas.  Neighbor gifts aren't really something they do here, so everyone was very surprised.  "Wow, no one here does anything like this! How nice!"  It was fun and made it feel a little more like Christmas.  

 

• When Cameron was in London, Andy and I went to Christmas boat parade on the Prinsengracht (one of the main canals here).  It was beautiful and so festive! Andy loved seeing all the lights and loved pointing at the boats. 

• It's not really something we did, but the most important event of the month was the birth of our first nephew, Samuel.  We love him so much already.  He and Andy will be best buddies!  

Of course, all the fun activites in December culminated when Greg, Kathy, and Brendan arrived.  It was so fun for us to all celebrate Christmas together.  A little synopsis of their time with us in Amsterdam:

They all got here on a friday; after a little nap, we all (Rachel, too) went to dinner at Va Piano's. Saturday we did the Christmas Markets in Cologne, which I've already blogged about.  Sunday, I dropped Rachel off at the airport, we went to church, had a pasta dinner at home, and then went out to see the Amsterdam Light Festival.  It's the coolest thing.  It's this path you walk on through Amsterdam that has about 20 different points you stop at that have creative light displays.  A lot of them are interactive.  It's here just for the month, so we're glad Cam's family got to see it, too.  Monday was Christmas Eve.  Greg treated us to a delicious breakfast at Esprit Cafe, then we headed off to the Hermitage Museum to see all the Van Gogh.  That afternoon, Greg, Brendan, and Cam all took a bike ride to see Cam's work while I prepped for our Christmas Eve dinner.  We had a nice Christmas Eve spending time together at home.  Christmas morning, we had a yummy breakfast casserole.  There weren't many presents to open--we'd all agreed to do a "no presents" Christmas because of our big Italy trip.  However, Kathy and Greg spoiled Andy with tons of presents; he loves every single one of them.  We went on a boat cruise that morning, relaxed in the afternoon, and then Greg treated us to a fancy Christmas Dinner at Humphrey's.  The next morning we left for Italy, which is a story for another post.  We had so much fun showing Cam's family around beautiful Amsterdam! We didn't take enough pictures, but here are a few.

Amsterdam Light Festival:

 Christmas Boat Ride:

Christmas Dinner: