Home Again

We're back home, semi-coherent at best. Having gotten approximately seven hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, I'm just about shattered and am going to kick off to bed soon. Last night I went to sleep pretty easily, but then woke at 1:30. Just as I was knocking back off asleep at 4:00 am, the kids woke up. {sigh}. Jet lag sucks. Next time I swear I'm going to try the melatonin thing.

But, our trip was just wonderful. Rome, the biking, Tuscany, Firenze (Florence), Siena, Pisa, the Cinque Terra, all just marvelous. Well worth the jet lag and then some. I journaled every day we were there, and took about 3,500 photographs, so I decided I will just type in my journal entries here along with photos as I sort through them. So I can share our journey in a time-delayed fashion, since we didn't bring a laptop along to blog along the way.

So after two days back in Oregon, here's just a few observations about things I really loved about Italy and things I missed about home:

Loved:

The train system. Totally amazing. No doubt about it, the US needs to be moving in this direction. The trains were on time, fast, smooth, efficient, easy to get tickets for, and very reasonably priced. Even the Eurostar, which we splurged on for our last leg of the journey only cost us 80 Euro for our whole family from Florence to Rome (and at 155 mph as clocked by our GPS, it was worth it for the "wow" factor!)

Missed:

Free toilets and drinking fountains. Toilets cost as much as one Euro per person (making a pee stop for a family of four into an almost $6.00 affair with the exchange rate what it is)! Drinking fountains are almost non-existant except some spigots in the piazzas.

Loved:

Italian drivers were the epitome of courtesy to us as we were cycling. Actually, I love the whole way that traffic flows seamlessly there with the drivers aware of what others are doing around them. It might look chaotic at first to an American eye, but it makes total sense. In 165 miles of biking, we never had a driver be anything but polite to us.

Missed:

Roads without traffic. Other than the dirt backroads that we took, most roads had far more cars on them than rural roads here.

Loved:

Fresh local produce everywhere. The nectarines were to die for - right off the tree and so ripe.

Missed:

Real breakfast. I can't exist on a croissant and black coffee, especially not when biking four hours a day!

Loved:

The agriculture integrated into every little nook and cranny. Kitchen gardens, even in front of apartment buildings with huge trellises of tomatoes and rows of herbs and peppers. Fence lines covered with grape vines. Olive trees everywhere.

Missed:

Trees in the city. The cities there are very densely populated, which makes them compact and very easily walkable, which is great! But I missed the trees that cover our town. Coming back, our city just looked so incredibly lush and green and lovely, especially now that many trees are starting to turn.

All in all, it was hard to come back, but I was looking forward to it as well. Italy is a lovely country with warm and friendly people and gorgeous scenery, history, and culture. I hope to return some day, for sure. But we stayed just enough time to start getting homesick and I'm glad to be back with our garden and animals and friends here too.