Category: Travel

Okay — so we’ve been tired. So very tired. We go out in the morning, we see stuff, we have lunch, we come back, we zonk out for three or four hours, we go to the store, we come back and eat food from the store, we clean up, we go out for gelato, we…

This morning it was up at 5:50 a.m., dress, breakfast, coffee, hurry children into clothes, and hurry shivering in the chill of dawn to the taxi stand at the Largo del Torre Argentina. Mark and the two big boys got into one taxi, headed for St. Peter’s to see it first thing in the morning.…

Last night we finally accepted that the late-night Roman dinner schedule was not going to make for a peaceful night out with our four-year-old, and we vowed to switch to a lunch-out-dinner-in-the-apartment schedule. There was a really nice all’amatriciana involved, but Mark and I had to take turns eating it and coddling the baby out…

Sometimes you want to do something that’s difficult. Not necessarily because it is difficult, mind you. We’re not talking about things like, say, climbing a high mountain or running a marathon, things that would almost not be worth doing except that they are difficult to complete. No, I mean activities that have real intrinsic value…

    The 10yo wins for best flavor combo: pear and ginger.   Posted with Blogsy

This morning we woke up, had a leisurely breakfast and coffee in the apartment, and then ventured out around 11 am with a modest goal: 1. Get to the Campo dei Fiori 2. buy a snack, and lunch if necessary 3. get back to the apartment Dining room in Roman apartment. We told the kids…

For about half an hour today, I sat in the passenger seat of the trusty Fiat Scudo staring at Google Maps calling out things like, “In 70 meters turn left, it will be the second left, after the light — no not that one — oh man, this is hard — wait! it doesn’t know…

After a Friday spent alternately packing and shopping in town, and a Saturday spent climbing again at Les Gaillands — with a brief detour for me and the younger kids to McDonalds because they wanted to see what that was like — and Mass on Saturday evening in Les Houches — Sunday morning we headed…

Whenever I get away from my usual routine for more than a few days, I imagine all the ways I am going to return a changed woman. Distance from the ordinary tasks and duties makes all the little obstacles seem surmountable; exposure to new things makes me want to bring them home with me. Anything…

When I was a rather little girl, playing alone in my neighborhood, I liked to sharpen sticks. I sat on the sloping concrete ledge behind our fence, by the garage, and grated them against the rough concrete, turning them to shape a point. I would make several in different lengths, imagining I was a blacksmith…

The first day we were at Les Gaillands, while the oldest was climbing, I came back from the concession stand just in time to see some of my children tussling with some other children standing by with their mother, and Mark telling one of our children “You apologize to him so he can forgive you,”…