A walk up the hill

There is a large hill behind our house.  Mark has run all the way up it in the past (there is a small trail), and he discovered there’s a tiny church at the very top called Col di San Martino.  Last weekend we decided to check it out (although we drove most of the way up on a different road).

(A view of our little town on the way up the hill.)

The walk up to the top was pretty steep, but we tested out the BOB on non-paved ground for the first time and I’m in love with that stroller.  It really is great!

The views from the top were really pretty.  Unfortunately it was kind of hazy so the pictures didn’t turn out the best.

I have no clue how old the little church is, but it was really neat to see.  I wonder how long it took someone to rearrange all those rocks.  I think they might hold a festival up there once a year. 

Abbie had a great time hauling her pony all over the place.  Like most 2 year olds, she loves to run around.

Ben chilled in the stroller while we explored and I took pictures.

(This ivy was EVERYWHERE!  It covered everything.)

(Abbie and her pony taking a quick break.)

It was a lot more fun walking back down the hill, than it was walking up it.  We hung on tight to the stroller because that thing would have taken off and Ben would have been in for the ride of his life.

It was such a pretty day.  I can’t get enough of Italy in the spring.  We’re excited to explore more of our area once we get back from the States.  (And no, the stroller isn’t half as big as the SUV, it just looks that way…)

Apparently the pony wanted to look out the window on the way home.  Luckily Abbie didn’t drop her.

More views of the countryside.  I’ll miss living by the mountains when we move.  They are gorgeous.

A walk around the block

Before Mark left, we took quite a few walks around our neighborhood and had fun messing around with our camera.  Here’s a few shots from one of our walks.

Abbie waiting for Mark.

A few of our neighbors houses.

Carefully avoiding a puddle.  =)

Views from behind our neighbors house.

Heading home.

A view of Sarone from our landlords yard.

I miss him.

Springtime in Italy

The Spring is by far my favorite season in Italy.  The Italian countryside is just gorgeous and so vibrant with all the colors.  Italians LOVE flowers and that was one of the first things I noticed about Italy – everyone here has flowers.  Most houses have at least a couple window boxes full of flowers and most yards are beautifully landscaped with flowers of that season.  Our neighborhood is a perfect example.  Since the weather has been so nice here lately (high 60’s almost every day and sunny), I’ve been wanting to get out and shoot the neighborhood.  I finally took Abbie for a walk one afternoon and took pictures of the neighborhood flowers.  Abbie obviously enjoyed the walk because every day since then she’s been asking “Heppa mommy see fowers?”  She’s cute.

This is our neighbors front yard.  He does a great job with his flowers and changes them all out a couple times a year.  I LOVE the colors of these!

Another neighbor has a HUGE hydrangea bush, that I just notice they completely trimmed down.  But now it’s getting large buds on it again.  I wish I was going to be here to see it bloom.

Roses are big over here.  Ours aren’t blooming at all yet, but these ones were.

I don’t know what these flowers are, but they smell good and they’re really pretty.  They’re cascading down another neighbors fence.

These are pretty, but I was mainly just playing with my camera.

Abbie loves smelling the flowers.  She’s funny because it doesn’t matter what she smells, she’ll take a big sniff of it and say “MMMM.”  And she points at all the flowers and says “Oh piddy!”  (Pretty)

This tree is what I wanted to take pictures of mostly, but by the time I got around to it, half of the flowers had fallen off already and the ones still on the tree were wilted.  But I still think it’s beautiful.  I thought it was a cherry blossom, but friends here have been calling them tulip trees.  Anyone know what type of tree this is?

A little old lady tends to this huge garden.  She spends a LOT of time in it during the summer, and I saw her out there getting it ready to plant a few times.  Or maybe she’s already planted it, I’m not sure.  But I love all the daffodils around it, and I saw a few tulips also.

Here’s the road leading to our house.

I just can’t get enough of this weather!  Hopefully Abbie and I don’t get sick when we go back to the States.  It’ll be at least a 30 degree temp difference, if not more.  I’m going to try to bring some Springtime weather home with me.  We’ll see how that goes!

Air conditioning?

As I posted about before, we moved our bedroom upstairs in our house.  I love having our room up there, but I am VERY nervous about spending the warmer months up there. 

This part of Italy gets VERY hot and humid in the summer, and last summer, when we were downstairs, with the A/C unit right outside our door, I had issues sleeping because I was so hot.  Now that we’re upstairs, I think it’s going to be even hotter, and we won’t have the A/C unit right outside our door.  I’m wanting to get an A/C unit for our room upstairs, but Mark doesn’t seem to be that interested in getting one.

There’s no such thing as central air/heat in Italy.  Most, if not all, houses are heated by radiators, unless they’re heated by a wood-burning fireplace.  We have one TINY A/C unit, that they installed before we moved in, to cool off our entire house in the summer.  As you can imagine, that doesn’t work out so well.  So I’d really like to get another one for upstairs, but I’ve heard that they can be a real pain because of the water they give off and also you have to vent them somewhere.  If we had to vent it out the window that would pretty much defeat the purpose of having an A/C unit upstairs because the windows here open from the center.  I can either swing both sides of the windows open completely, or I can tip the top of the window open about 8-10 inches.  They don’t have windows here like they do in the States, that mostly just slide up and down.

So what would you do?  Ask the landlord to put in another unit (but we’d have the pay for it), get a portable unit ourselves that we could sell when we leave, or just suck it up and deal with the heat?

New arrangements

 

The weather switches between to the two conditions above multiple times a day here in Italy lately.  But this is the view from our front porch.  I love the fall colors here.

As I mentioned before, we switched three rooms in our house around and I finally got around to taking pictures of them.  Abbie’s old room is now our office/ craft room.

And our old bedroom is now Abbie’s new room.  Looks MUCH bigger without all our large, dark furniture in it and I think she loves having her toys in her room.

And here is our new bedroom, which used to be the office/craft/play room.  I love having our room upstairs because it seems like our own little haven, away from the rest of the house.  Mark and I both really like the new arrangements.

 

And here is our TINY master bathroom.  But hey, at least we have our own bathroom now, which I love, even if you can touch all 4 walls while standing in the middle of the room.

And here is the view from our new bedroom window.