Jon & Mary Kay Run Away From Home

Okay, maybe not run away... but we did sneak off for a 13-day trip to Europe. Jon's cousin, David, kept the kids while we went to Rome, Siena, Venice & Munich. It was wonderful, fantastic, amazing, relaxing, beautiful, fabulous... There really aren't enough superlatives to describe it.

I'm ready to move to Rome and open an American breakfast restaurant (called "Breakfast Breakfast"). You can't really get eggs for breakfast in Italy, and I can't be the only one who doesn't consider a McDonald's Big Breakfast mouth-watering fare. I'm imagining the children speaking Italian, finding & immersing ourselves in the American expatriate community, spreading the scrapbooking gospel to another corner of the globe... I tried to get Jon to look for the English-language want ads while we were there, but he resisted.

Venice was terrific, too (hey! I found another superlative, tired though it is). It rained the whole time we were there, but it was beautiful anyway. We walked all over the city, on the tourist paths and off, and it felt so... safe. One night we had dinner in a little restaurant where three moms and their 6-year-old daughters were at a nearby table. The girls were restless and asked if they could go play outside. They donned their raingear and headed out the front door; when we (and the moms) were ready to leave I asked where the girls were, and one said "who knows?" I can't imagine ANY restaurant in the US where you'd feel comfortable with that. (Or maybe it's just Americans; one of the moms was Italian, the other two British.)

Siena was MIND-BOGGLING. It's a medieval town, built on a hilltop, with streets winding up and down... We didn't realy sightsee there, so much as we just wandered around, soaking it all in. The last night we were there, there was a sort of circus in the main square, Il Campo. There were trapeze artists, fire-jugglers... It was stunning. We watched the rehearsal, which was amazing enough, and then went back at 10:00 for the performance-- in the pouring rain. Those poor women dangling beneath helium balloons on trapezes! It was cold, but it was worth staying to watch.

After practicing our rudimentary Italian on everyone we met ("Sono vegetariana!" "Prego!"), we struggled a little more in Munich. German is just so much more... difficult. (Sorry, Michelle!) I'd look up a phrase in my trusty phrasebook, then when the waiter came up, I'd choke. Funny to think English is more closely related to German than to Italian. We went to the Olympic Park, though, and saw the fairgrounds where they put on Oktoberfest. And, of course, we had a (HUGE) beer at the Hofbrauhaus.

I was ready to get home by the time we left, but now (exactly a week later) I'm ready to go back.

I drank the WHOLE THING. (So did Jon, but that's really not much of a surprise.) Hofbrauhaus, Munich. 

Jon did a LOT of map-reading on this trip. Without him, I'd still be on some side-street in Rome. (This is one of the medieval streets of Siena.)  

A tripodless shot of Jon at Trevi Fountain.  

Not a great angle, but it proves we were at the Colosseum. 

It's a little hard to see, but Jon took this photo of our reflection while we rode a vaporetto ("bus" boat) in Venice. 

We had a two-hour stop in Florence, where we caught a train to Venice. Here we are in front of some church. ; )