On The Verge of Tears

We hadn’t planned on going on a huge vacation overseas this year at all, but we couldn’t really resist when Monika’s family insisted that we join them on their trip to Italy.  I had been there once when I was 12, and Monika had never been there.  We couldn’t go for as long as the rest of the family, but we headed to the airport on Friday afternoon for our flight from Philadelphia direct to Rome.

We had to pack pretty lightly because all six of us had to share one mini van when we arrived and traveled around Italy. This was all our luggage. One checked bag a piece, and a couple of carry-ons.

By some insane stroke of luck, as we walked into the airport to check in, I ran into my first cousin, once removed, and his beautiful girlfriend Simona. They invited us to the private club for frequent flyers. This shit wash posh. Free food. Dollar wine and beer, and martinis (a lot of them)! They are awesome.

but don't think for a minute that that may have stopped us from the drinks on the plane. We had to sleep, because our usually time to go to sleep at 1 am was when we would be landing in Rome, ready for a long day of being a tourist.

We landed outside of Rome and were picked up by Monika’s dad and mom, and older and younger sisters.  We promptly left Rome and headed north, towards Grosetto. This was technically now the start of day two, since it was now Saturday.  We really didn’t have a plan on where we were heading.  I know that doesn’t sound like something I would do, or could do, but that’s how we rolled on this trip.  After a few hours of driving without a definite destination, we got lunch.

the waiter here was drunk, and that was awesome. He sang and danced and helped us stumble through our poor Italian. We had wonderful food on an amazingly beautiful, summer-like afternoon.

Finally, after 4 long hours, I had my first beer in Italy. And then a second.

The center of Grosetto, like every damn Italian city, is beautiful and filled with all kinds of historic buidlings and churches.

After some exploring in the castle and general hijinks, we found our way back to the car and headed to Livorno, a stop on the way to Pisa, which at lunch we cemented as our destination for the day.

We stopped at a roadside bar for a bathroom break, and found that the back deck had an amazing view of the Terranean Sea.

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Livorno had few nice things to see, but overall, it was just a pit stop on the way to Pisa.

So, we did drive around Pisa a bit aimlessly for a while, and after the first hotel was a dud, I took over driving.  In Italy you drive on the right side of the road and it’s pretty much the same as driving in any American city.  I enjoy driving and I wasn’t that upset that it took us almost half an hour to find a hotel we could stay in, and the one we found was amazing.

the entire hotel was wrapped in a glass shell that was illuminated from the inside and slowly changed colors.

and the interior was like the set of A Space Oddysey

We partied well that night.  We had dinner at a restaurant that was walking distance and had great food and drinks.  Later, we scored tonic water there and had Saphire and tonics in the hotel room with the duty free gin we got on the plane earlier that day.  It was an amazing first day.  We had already been in 3 different cities, had beer and cocktails, and we were spending the night in a hotel from the future in Pisa.  We slept well.

All of my pictures from the first leg of this adventure can be found here on Facebook.

This entry was posted on November 5, 2010 at 11:03 AM and is filed under Vacations with tags Italy, Pisa, Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.