Author: Jen

The first few weeks of October, after Nicole & Dustin visiting and getting ready for my parents’ visit, we laid low. Stayed home, watched Declan’s army crawl turn into a real crawl and he started standing up. He loves to squat in front of the window and watch our bird on the porch. We went antique market shopping and found some cool things. The boys enjoyed their “squishy blue bath” from aunt Nicole.

The branch made arrangements with a winery to do a grape stomping. I love the harvest season and all of the very traditional festivals that Italians celebrate it with. The best festival of all is the grape stomping. Every vineyard does some kind of old fashioned grape stomping. There are lot’s of different kinds of grapes, a lot of the ones used to make wine are not very tasty, but these ones were.

 

They did a little tour of the wine making process and passed around some cups for everyone to taste. The kids got the first cups and some of the Moms started freaking out, they did not hear the guy say that it was today’s squeeze…which means it was still sugar and not alcohol in the contents. That was when it came out that we were a bunch of mormons, it was quite funny. Luckily they had some grape seed oil lotions and cooking wine that we could all purchase to support the stomping.

We tried for three weeks to get to this hike called the three chimneys or Tre Cime. Due to it being August we got stuck in traffic twice and then the third time we got smart and got up at 5am and made it without traffic. (Italians all take vacation in August and on the weekends the highways pretty much don’t function, ridiculous.) The hike was GORGEOUS. We were all a bit exhausted from our early morning though so there was definitely some tantrums and crying…I won’t say who. We stopped to take a nap in a meadow…but only one of us ended up catching any Zzzz’s (see the photo). We camped over night and enjoyed an alpine slide the next day (Probably the MOST excited I’ve ever seen Jonah in his life. We told him we would ride again and he jumped up and down screaming YESSS!) And then on our way out of town had to stop and watch a parade because they closed down the main road for it, ah Italy.

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August…Declan starts taking baths with big brother. Nick finds an Armani suit for a steal of a deal. And Jonah loves him some biking and lizards.

The kiddos and I headed out with a bunch of ladies from the base to do a tour of a Parmesan factory and a balsamic factory. We learned a lot and of course ate some too. 

 

It all starts with a HUGE copper vat (291 gallons!) of fresh milk. Then they add a little stomach acid (from baby cows) and let it curdle. Break up the curdle and let it sit a bit then gather it up with a muslin cloth and put it in a mold. Each huge vat will make two wheels of cheese.

The cheese spends two days in the mold and then is stamped with a plastic mold with the name and some numbers telling when it was made and which batch. Then they are in brine for 20 or so days. 

 

 

Next they sit around on some shelves for about a year. And when they are ready you will be able to tell how good of quality they are by the sound it makes when you hit it with a little hammer like Jonah got to do.  The good quality wheels are worth about $600.

 

Next, balsamic. And we are not talking about balsamic vinegar here. I’m talking REAL balsamic. Did you know there was a difference? Me neither. Balsamic is made by boiling and then fermenting and condensing grapes until there is just a syrupy substance left. It takes at least 12 years. It sits around in these wooden barrels and they rotate it to a smaller and smaller barrel each year. Sometimes the different kinds of wood of the barrels can give it a unique flavor. Because it condenses and condenses smaller and smaller and it takes so long to make it is really expensive. We’re talking 100 dollars for a very small jar. But it is seriously delicious. We got to try TINY spoons of different ages, and the older it is the sweeter it is. You could seriously eat it on ice cream, and they do. (If you can afford that kind of thing anyways!) This area is the only place in the world that makes real balsamic. They have some in their “personal collection” that is SUPER old.

 

 

 

 

Nick doesn’t get much Italian language exposure so in an attempt to remedy that we have been going to Italian branch. They had an awesome activity up in Asiago with a BBQ and a hike. We really enjoy the Italian branch, they are all so kind and welcoming to us even though we fumble for words.

So I go on vacation and this is what I come home to…at least they had fun (minus Nick being in pain from having a tooth pulled…not just pulled but REALLY yanked on because it had been root canal-ed too many times and fell apart, oh army medical…don’t even get me started, at least it’s free! That gives me a thought, maybe the hair had something to do with the pain killers…)

And speaking of play, Jonah played soccer this year. I use the term “played soccer” in the loosest of senses. Next time I sign him up for a sport I am going to wait until he asks to do said sport, lol. Nick accidently got roped into being the coach after the other coach quit 5 minutes before practice. YAY Coach Lloyd!

And of course the fans. Me and my friend Meg. She’s the best…coming out to watch four year olds run around? Seriously, the best.

Driving home from the ferry to Sardegna we couldn’t help but make a quick touristy stop to prop up the leaning tower and then go see the beautiful Firenze.

A nice shot of David’s bum. What??I like big butts!

 

Last gelato in Italy next to the Florence duomo, bittersweet. Wait no, make that just sweet. So delicious.

For the last few days of Dustin and Nicole’s visit we decided to hit the beach. Sardegna (or Sardinia in English) is a large island off the west knee of Italy. We took an overnight ferry ride to get there and let me tell you, it was the ride of a lifetime due to a little wind. The boat was almost as big as a cruise ship and it was tossing and turning like a row boat. None of us dared go outside to look, we all just laid in our beds wondering if we would see another day. But we survived! Here we are ready to get off the boat…

We headed first for the famous Emerald coast. And it was beautiful. White sandy beaches and crystal clear blue water. In my mind when I think of beaches, I think tropical and palm trees. But Sardegna was quite different in that way, it was desert. You would never guess the beaches would be so beautiful when you are exploring inland.

The next day we rented a big blow up boat and Captain Dustin took us around the gulf of Orosei exploring the beautiful caves, cliffs and beaches there that are only accessible by boat or crazy hikes.

We had some difficulties with the anchor, while I investigated Nicole decided to take some photos…

 

There were a lot of jellyfish in the water, mostly out away from the shore thank goodness. But other than the jellyfish and a few little fish, there wasn’t really much to see. We snorkeled some, but there wasn’t much there. Just clear beautiful water.

We had an interesting experience with a B&B that we were supposed to stay at…Sardegna was settled by Spain for awhile so while they do speak Italian it is sort of a Spanish dialect of Italian and the old people were especially difficult to understand. When we arrived at our B&B it was just this crazy old lady who the only thing I could understand her say was “you don’t understand me, do you?” We were supposed to wait for someone else to come and meanwhile we awkwardly stood with this crazy lady so we decided to just leave and find somewhere else to stay. I felt bad about it, but sometimes language barriers can make things a bit uncomfortable and we were all tired and I think we had just had enough.

 

We found a cute little city on top of a pointy mountain capped by a castle. It was really fun to wander the little streets.

Sardegnans identify themselves first as “Sarde” and then as “Italian”. One of them told me that they love where they are from and when I said that all Italians say the very same thing, he responded “but we love it more.” And they do seem to. They have a different culture and therefore a different food. Lot’s of seafood and a weird bread that looks and kind of tastes like cardboard…

On the last day there, it was a bit windy and cold. So we went to Porto Cervo to check out the fancy yachts. This here yacht is one of the biggest in the world and is owned by some Russian dude…

Then we went and explored Olbia before boarding our ferry back to Italy. Olbia was interesting (I didn’t get any photos apparently, but it was kind of a seedy city)…here we are in the parking lot making some dinner. Yes, we do this everywhere we go (ask anyone that has come to visit). Yes, I know it makes us look homeless.

Pompeii is one of those mandatory stops in southern Italy. It is crazy to me how they have chipped away at, and un-buried this whole city that is so amazingly well preserved. And they are not even done digging, even after over 200 years of digging. I thought there would be more perfectly preserved and creepy bodies (morbid I know) because that’s what you always see pictures of, but there really weren’t many bodies. Mostly it was a whole city that you could wander around, it would seriously take you all day to walk every street.

I loved stepping stones in the road to keep your feet out of the dirty street water, perfectly sized and placed for the wagons to go over. You could tell how many lanes a road was by how many stepping stones there were. It is crazy to me how far back things like highways, sidewalks and general traffic rules actually go.

 

 

In some of the roads you could see very deep wagon ruts. This one you can see the ruts abruptly end, which tells you that they were in the process of replacing the stones on this road. Along the roads were shops and then behind and above the shops the people who owned them would live.

What good roman town doesn’t have an arena? 

 

Here’s something you may not know, Romans considered penises with wings to be a symbol of good luck. They are all over Pompeii.

Here we have a bread store, complete with wheat grinders and an oven.

Who knew the floor in our apartment looks exactly like one in Pompeii? Crazy!

Dancing with the dancing faun, because well, why not?

Dustin ordering him some fresh baby from one of the fast food restaurants in Pompeii. Apparently these people ate out for all their meals. They didn’t have kitchens. I like.
Not only did they not have kitchens in their houses, they also didn’t have baths. So they went to public bathhouses. There were some neat things about the bath houses like a locker room and a ceiling with grooves in it to make the water run down instead of dripping on your head.
The infamous bodies were in these rooms with all kinds of stuff piled in baskets on shelves, seemed strange to me. I thought they would be displayed a little differently.

 

 

And of course there were some temples to various gods.