Ninth Day in Italy: 04-27-08

Venice...what can I say...it is an amazing city. The weather was absolutely amazing...I believe it got up to 26 degrees. Rather than bore you with stories I will let Trish's amazing photos tell the story:











Here are some great pictures of India and Amara playing with the pigeons in San Marco's square:







Here is a wonderful shot of Trish and Amara:



And one of Amara on her own:



A rare family shot:



And some pictures of our apartment:





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Eighth Day in Italy: 04-26-08

The town of Chioggia was very interesting for us. When Trish found it before we left it was described as Venice for the everyday Italian. It had some canals and was affordable. It pretty well lived up to its reputation. It certainly was not grand like Venice but it did have alot of character.



The day turned out to be beautiful...we walked around and Trish, once again, took some amazing photos. Below are some of my favourites:














We also captured some great shots of the girls:







All in all I am glad we stayed in this town.

Seventh Day in Italy: 04-25-08

There are no pictures from this day because we were busy travelling from Borgo Sicello to Chioggia which is just south of Venice....will have to wait for our 8th day.

Fifth Day in Italy: 4-23-08

Ahhh Sienna...

What an amazing town. We had beautiful weather and all the girls seemed to be in excellent moods. Besides numerous streets of dazzling architecture, this town is well known for its twice annual horserace called the Palio. This race takes place in the town's largest piazza. Here are a few pictures we took of the square:





I found a video on YouTube which shows the race...watch it below...it is amazing:



Here is a picture of a beautiful church we just happened to walk by:



Here we are having lunch:



A picture of the family in front of the church:



Later on in the evening we stopped the town near our villa called San Donato and Amara and I were walking up the street and a lady came up and grabbed Amara's hand and walked with us. She didn't speak a word of English but like all Italians they just love children:



Here is a great photo that Trish took of an older lady looking out a window:



And here is a great shot of London and India:



We found this great door decoration of a scary face...see below:



We then asked the girls to make faces like the one on the door:



Trish took an awesome photo of a small fruit stand outside a store. The colours are so vibrant:



This was a fantastic day! See below for a screen show of all the pictures from that day:

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Fourth Day in Italy: 04-22-08

Florence

Our fourth day in Italy was spent in beautiful Florence. Our landlord at our villa explained for us a way to park for free and take the bus into the heart of old Florence. What an amazing city!!



It is hard to imagine a time when cities were built with this kind of attention to details and majesty.



This was by far our worst day of weather in Italy....we got fairly wet early on in this day. However this was no deterrent for our girls (and the Ford girls)!



Here is a great picture of Trish in one of the piazza's:



Also in this piazza was a beautiful merry go round which India in promptly got on.




The day, unfortunately, did not lead to many great photos but there are a few gems in the collection. Click below to view.

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Third Day in Italy: 04-21-08

We started off the day with no intention of going to Pisa...however with Justin leading us that is exactly where we ended up...and it was great.



The weather was quite mixed that day but thankfully our hosts at the villa, who happened to have two daughters the same ages as ours, provided us with some extra jackets. Here is Amara in her styling red ensemble:



There is a large grass field here as well and after an hour and a half in the car, London and India decided they needed a run.







The piazza is quite amazing. People are quite focussed on the leaning tower but it is actually just the bell tower for a massive church that sits beside it.



Trish being the ever helpful person that she is, decided that she would chip in and help hold up the tower:



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Second Day in Italy: 04-20-08

Coordinating 3 families was quite a feat on our second day. We headed off to a small town not far from the villa where there was a market on.



India and London were having a great watching the fish in the pond in the town's piazza. We were truly experiencing the small town market and it was quite amazing.



Here is my buddy Justin wearing my MEC sunglasses...I have to say he makes them look good ;-).



Afterwards we headed back to the villa to soak up some sun by the pool. The kids got into their bathing suits and played in the water.





Here is a great shot of Shale:



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First Day in Italy

Apparently our first day in Italy was a bit of a haze. Considering we took over a 1000 photos on the trip and apparently only managed to click three on our first day is pretty sad. The other two couples we were meeting to did not arrive until the evening of our first day. We were all incredibly jet lagged but managed a nice day in Chianti and picked up some groceries. We made dinner for everyone that first night. Here are the 3 pictures we took that day in all there glory:

First Night in Italy

Well this is the first in many posts I will have on Italy. We finally arrived in Florence at 2:00 pm but it felt like 6:00 am to us with a night of no sleep on the plane. We retrieved our rental car and proceeded to drive the 40 km to our villa at Borgo Sicello. The weather was slightly overcast but it could not hide the beauty that surrounded us.



We found our way to the villa, checked ourselves in, and then proceeded to have dinner at the restaurant across the street.



What an amazing meal....the food and the people were incredible. This was definitely going to be a life altering trip.





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