Back to tournament action for L and her travel teammates.
Her ankle is still recovering from the sprain she suffered over a month ago. In our games Saturday that showed. She seemed sluggish and a step slow.
We lost the first game by 18 to a very good team. They were long, athletic, took and hit 3’s, and were just a tough all-around matchup. We killed ourselves by missing at least 10 free throws and not stopping them in transition on several baskets. They were better than us, but those things were the difference between an easy win and a tight game late.
In the second game we played a flat-out bad team. We won by 41 and it wasn’t even that close. There was a running clock the entire second half so we only scored 10 points in those 13 minutes. It was one of those games where you wondered why these girls are still playing. I guess to give teams like ours someone to beat?
L had a single bucket in each game. In the second game I could tell she was getting frustrated. She made a sweet move on one drive, lost her defender, got to the hoop, and then short-armed the layup. A few possessions later she badly missed an open shot. I thought an invisible player fouled her because it looked like she got pushed from behind even though there was no one around her. Just terrible form, in other words.
On our walk to the car after she was pissed. “I am so bad!” She didn’t say anything else so I let her stew all the way home, figuring whatever I said would be the wrong thing.
We had an early departure Sunday as the bracket games were an hour from home. She still wasn’t saying much so I didn’t either.
We played a bad, but not as bad as game two Saturday bad, team in our opener. We crushed them by 40. And L was awesome. 10 points on 4–4 from the field, 2–2 from 3. A bunch of assists and rebounds. Solid D. And that was all after she got absolutely wiped out on an illegal screen and did a half flip that landed her on her shoulder. She popped right back up, though. I guess I need to start hitting her in the shoulder before every game.
We had a three-hour break so headed to lunch as a team. In the car we finally talked about Saturday. I told her I understood her frustration, but that she needed to focus on process not result. That missed layup? That stunk. But she needed to realize she made a really nice move that beat her defender, attacked hard, and did 80% of the shooting right. Do the same thing next time, just hit the shot. Four of her missed jumpers were fine: open shot, within the offense, good form, and got the ball to the rim. Don’t sweat those. Sweat the shot when she rushed things, ruined her form, and had no chance of making it because of her process.
She told me that she feels like if she only scores two points a game, she’s not contributing. I told her that’s not true; she can score zero points but if she gets a bunch of assists, plays good D and gets some steals or keeps her girl from scoring, she’s doing a ton to help win. And I reminded her that our best shooter has a lot of 1–10 games, but she keeps shooting.
She agreed and then whipped out a list of things she came up with that she can do everyday to get better.
That night I told S that was the best example of how L is our daughter. When she messes up she gets pissed and won’t talk for awhile, which is a very me thing to do. But then she sits down and makes a list of ways to change her path, the way S would react.
After lunch we played another team from our program. These girls were really tough on D, had a great rebounder, but didn’t have much going on offense. We pulled away late in the first half to lead by nine at the break. We stretched it out to as many as 20, which was the final margin.
L wasn’t as good scoring – just knocking in four on 2–5 shooting – but was really good in every other aspect of the game.
On to the championship game, against the team that beat us in our opener Saturday.
Unfortunately I had to leave for another event (see below), but got updates. We were up by one late in the first half but gave up a run to go down by nine. Our girls played their asses off in the second half, or so the texts I got said. We lost by one. Later in the evening our coach said there were three or four possessions where we played great D, got a stop, then couldn’t control the rebound and gave up a put-back. Rebounding will always be our Achilles heel for a lot of reasons, and sounds like it was the difference.[1]
Still I think everyone was pleased with how the girls played. They looked like they hadn’t played in three weeks in that first game Saturday. Over the next four games they shook off that rust.
By the time I got home Sunday evening L was in bed, nearly passed out. She was exhausted, sore, and her ankle pain was in pain. She claimed to have scored “six or eight” in the championship game, which wasn’t a bad finish to a pretty solid day. If I give her credit for eight, that means she averaged 7.3 points for the three games. Quite an improvement from Saturday.
NHS
I had to leave basketball because it was National Honor Society induction night at CHS, which meant the seniors who had earned enough points got the cords they will wear over their graduation gowns. M obviously got those points, otherwise I wouldn’t be skipping a championship game.
It was interesting seeing the number of seniors getting their cords compared to the juniors who were being inducted. It looked like a good third of the kids who got into NHS a year ago did not earn their cords.
How you earn your NHS points at CHS is kind of a bullshit process. No, strike that. It’s totally a bullshit process. The teacher who runs the program has been doing it since S was in school and plays all these BS, power trip, mind games with kids and forces them to jump through hoops to get the 10 points they need. I think some kids, once they’ve been accepted to the colleges they want to attend, decide to check out on all that nonsense.
One of M’s classmates is going to Notre Dame and is almost literally a perfect student: she earned a full ride to Cathedral, the first girl from St P’s to ever be awarded that scholarship. One of just three class of 2023 CHS kids to get into Notre Dame. But she didn’t get her cord. We joked that she was probably too busy applying for scholarships to worry about showing up at exactly the right time to get her name on a list of limited spots for whatever points the NHS sponsor was throwing out each week. Or, more likely, she figured, “Fuck that.” Although she would never say fuck.
But M got hers, and it will look very nice over her graduation gown in – checks calendar – one month. Holy shit! She has 20 days of high school left!
We also planned on taking some graduation invitation pics afterward. She and two of her friends are doing a party/open house together. The other two girls are going to Miami (OH) and brought red shirts. M was going to put on her black UC shirt. I was tasked with taking some super cute pics of them that S would turn into super cute invitations for the party.
Only problem is the weather changed Sunday and it was cold, windy, and rainy. Which made M pout. I told her she needed to knock it off, we can’t control the weather, and we could still find a way to take a nice pic. Then she told me she was tired because she only got four hours of sleep and I told her it wasn’t my fault she and her buddies stayed up until 4:00 AM when she had to be at work at 9:00.
Things were going swimmingly.
Then a miracle occurred: the rain stopped, the sun popped out, and the parents grabbed the girls and hustled outside. Of course it was like 40 degrees and windy, so there was much complaining. But I was able to snap a few pics and one of them turned into a perfect one for the invitation.
Two more pre-graduation jobs checked off.
Weather
It had to end. One of the very best weeks of weather I can recall in my nearly 20 years in Indy ended Sunday morning when a cold front blew threw. After over a week where the temps were in the 70s and 80s with almost no humidity or clouds, we got a nasty reminder that there’s still plenty of time for shitty weather in the Midwest. It felt more like mid-December with wind-whipped rain that soaked you even in the quickest run between car and building. We heard there was snow at the middle school track meet. As I type this Sunday night there is a chance of snow over the next few hours until daybreak.
Then it’s going to be back into the 70s Wednesday, 80s Thursday, then another cold blast for next weekend.
The girls were begging me to open the pool last weekend. I actually texted our guy Tuesday and he said there was a chance he could be here Thursday, but that feel through. I think he’s going to swing by sometime this week, so maybe the girls will be able to get in one of those warm days. Otherwise it might be a few weeks before they get a chance again. I probably should have stuck with our traditional second week of May open date.
Size, ability, “want to.” We are short, have bad technique, and tend to watch the ball rather than go after it. My theory is our girls are too nice to be good rebounders, because you have to be a little mean to be successful. ↩
As happens when your kids are in Catholic schools, it was an extra-long weekend. CHS had a four-day weekend, while St P’s had early dismissal Friday and were out for Easter Monday.
Throw in C being home sick and L having her annual school service day on Thursday and it was even longer.
C has the “Punta Plague,” as M is calling it. It should be no shock that a big chunk of CHS came back from spring break sick. It took a couple days to reach her but has kind of wiped her out. She may have had Covid in the front, had a stomach bug in the middle, which may have been associated with strep that came on in the backside.
When we asked M if there were a lot of kids out sick last week her response was, “Bro, the entire school is sick.” Love it when she talks to me like I’m an idiot. She’s been coughing like a smoker but has no other ailments.
I guess that’s what mass travel in the post-pandemic age will be like: we all act like old people after a cruise and get sick for a week or so upon our return.
Like I’ve done every year, I volunteered to assist on the St P’s service day. That has usually meant going to some kind of donation center and sorting things, since there’s only so much these places can ask large groups of kids to do. Which really means I do a bunch of sorting while making sure the kids don’t do anything stupid.
This year L’s group got sent to an adoption center that had just changed locations and were tasked with organizing several rooms that were filled with donations. That was a bonus as there were a lot of diapers, wipes, lotions, bath soaps, etc that had that good, clean baby smell. And most of the clothes we sorted were either new or at least washed if used. Which made it a pretty pleasant experience, and far different from the year we dug through huge bins of donated items and found fun stuff like dirty diapers, broken glass, animal waste, porn, and drug paraphernalia.
Our kids weren’t super focused but they did more work in the four hours we were there than the lady running the place expected, so they left a good impression.
I got a hug from the St P’s teacher who organizes this day since it is my last time assisting. We joked that if she needed extra help next year she was going to reach out to me.
Saturday we spent the day getting the house ready for hosting our family Easter gathering. I decided the pool cover looked filthy after collecting crap for five months and spent nearly four hours cleaning it. For some reason I always forget how long that takes. I think my brain blacks out the memories.
When I was done I opened up the cover to do a quick inspection and get a head start on cleaning out the leaves and worms that worked their way in since October. There was a large frog/toad floating in the water. I tried to scoop him up and it slowly tried to evade me. I think the water was so cold it was still semi-hibernating. I got him into the net and when it looked like he was going to hop out, I flung him lacrosse-style about 30 feet to the grass. Not sure if he survived his flight or not.
Easter Day was super nice here. Sunny, pushing 70. Nearly perfect. We bought some pulled pork and I smoked a couple chickens to go along with.
We had 22 people in all. A very good meal, between the stuff we bought and made and all the contributions from the rest of the family. The five nephews had an Easter egg hunt after we ate, and we were able to sit outside and enjoy the ideal day. Easter is always better when it is warm and you can be out in the open.
The Masters
I watched as much of the Masters as I could, between prep, errands, meals, etc.
I was very glad that Jon Rahm won. He seems like a good, thoughtful dude and plays pretty amazing golf. For him to win by four strokes after four-putting his first hole of the tournament and then having to play in the worst weather of the weekend was quite an accomplishment. He could have easily doubled that winning margin.
Like a lot of people I had mixed feelings about Brooks Koepka’s early domination. I enjoyed his style of golf and brash personality at his peak a few years back, but was disappointed when he fled for the LIV Tour after insisting he wouldn’t. I get that a hundred million dollars, or whatever he got, can change a person’s point of view, especially when he was in the midst of a pretty serious injury recovery and questioned his golfing future. He may not have been villain #1 in the whole fiasco, but I still heap some blame on him.
That said, I couldn’t help but get sucked in by how well he played through the first three rounds. I was glad a lot of golf people that I follow were having similar mixed feelings; it was good not to be alone.
This was my favorite thread that came out of the weekend. It is also a reminder that occasionally there are still a few good things on Twitter. Tech Karen will probably ban threads like this soon, since they give people joy.
I took L into ortho Monday morning to have her braces removed. She set the family record of just 15 months; she was originally slated for 23. Other than a little gap when she struggled with her rubber bands a little, I think she did exactly what they told her so she could get them off as quickly as possible.
I guess she’ll have a six-month visit and then we’ll be done with ortho after seven and a half years of regular visits. Knock on wood.
A long week in the Dominican Republic to celebrate M’s senior class spring break. Not only did we take the whole family, one of C’s best friends came along with us. There was some drama, a few travel difficulties, but overall it was a pretty good seven days.
Location
We stayed at the Hard Rock Resort in Punta Cana. I never got an official headcount but around 70 kids from M’s class were there.[1] It is a huge complex, something like 120 acres, so we always had plenty of space and could get away from CHS people if we wanted to. There were students from at least three other Indy area high schools there, along with kids from Wisconsin and Michigan.
The draw for going to the DR was the drinking age being 18. As it is in Mexico, among other places, but for some reason the DR has been the “cool” place to go for CHS families for a few years. Which meant longer flights, fewer flight options, and greater expense. Joyous. We warned M and her sisters months ago that this was going to be about as much as we will ever spend on a vacation, so they needed to keep their shit in order while we were there.
Anyway, the Hard Rock was your typical all-inclusive resort. The food was decent; never great but never terrible. The drinks were watered down but plentiful. The service was a B/B+. We later learned from a friend in the travel industry that the DR has a reputation for not being as customer-focused as Mexico. We found that to be true. Most folks spoke English but some of them not very well. Most employees were very friendly but never in a hurry to complete your requests.
The biggest pain was trying to get change for tips. In Mexico we’ve never had a problem handing over a twenty and getting twenty ones in return. Or at least ten ones and a couple fives or a ten. That was extremely difficult in Punta Cana. Although the hotel website said the front desk could make change, we were often turned down. When we could get a bartender or waitstaff to bring change, they usually brought fives and tens. So we overtipped a lot. My biggest recommendation for others wanting to visit the DR is to take enough small bills to cover tips for your entire stay.
The complex had a ton of pools. Saturday was an awesome day as only a few of us were in town; most of the CHS crew was arriving in that day. We claimed a good spot at a pool with a swim-up bar, the seniors rotated in-and-out, and all was fine. Sunday almost the entire group had arrived and the kids kind of took over our pool. It was a little uncomfortable at times, between seeing them drink, them mobbing the bar so we couldn’t get drinks, watching kids who apparently didn’t pack sunscreen slowly turn red, and then some inappropriate behavior.
By Wednesday our core group of four families found a different pool were able to enjoy the day with the seniors only occasionally checking in.
The beach was ok, although we didn’t spend much time there. It wasn’t raked/plowed daily so you had to be careful where you walked. The water was beautiful, but once you stepped into it it was very rocky. And the surf was heavy all week – red flags more often than yellow – so even if I was a float-in-the-ocean person, I wouldn’t have spent much time in the water.
We never checked out the casino or any shows. We were usually coming in for the night about the time the seniors where heading to the club for their late night antics. M said the club was fun but what does she know?
Travel
Getting to Punta Cana was about as easy as we could have hoped for. We left our house at 3:00 AM for our 5:50 flight, thinking the airport would be a madhouse. I had been watching the parking lot numbers all week and was worried about finding spaces. But we found two next to each other in the covered area and were able to avoid the rain Friday morning. We had to wait maybe five minutes to check bags and enter passport information at the Southwest desk. There was one family in front of us in the TSA Pre line. Our flight was on time, we had a three-hour layover in Baltimore that allowed us a leisurely breakfast, then arrived in the DR as scheduled around 2:30. An hour in the immigration line then we pulled into the Hard Rock exactly 14 hours after leaving our house.
The trip home was a little dicier. We knew strong storms were forecast in the Indy area right around the time we were supposed to land. As we sat in the very warm Punta Cana airport Friday, we were taking collective bets on whether we would make it home or not. We got out of the DR fine, but since our plane didn’t have wifi we couldn’t track the Midwest storms or the status of our second flight.
As soon as we landed in Baltimore we learned the Indy flight had already been delayed from 10:45 until 11:30. That left us four hours to navigate immigration and customs – which was dead easy since we were the only plane that landed at that time – get dinner, and watch the weather. L and I also watched much of the Iowa-South Carolina women’s Final Four game.
We seemed to be boarding on time, albeit slowly, just before 11:00. We got on at the front of the B group, grabbed seats, and began to get settled. Then we noticed when the C group folks should have been getting on, the flow of people stopped. Soon the captain informed us that Indy was closing its airspace because of tornados and severe storms. Rather than have us sit on the plane, they were asking us to go back into the airport.
This seemed bad. There was lots of grumbling. Everyone was tired, sunburned, hungry, and ready to get home. For about 45 minutes we sat as the only people in the terminal, nervously flipping between Indy weather feeds and trying to figure out a plan B if our flight was cancelled. Our plan was easy: since there were no seats on flights out of Baltimore until Monday, we would rent a car and drive home. Problem was the rental car facility at BWI was closed for the night. And I was having a hard time finding a vehicle that could carry our six-person party. We joked about calling our friends who picked us up last year when our flight out of Sarasota was cancelled.
Luckily just after midnight they hustled us onto the plane again and we took off. Rather than fly the direct route and go through the storms, we flew almost to Detroit before hooking back around the front. We landed just after 2:30 then waited an hour for bags. We saw a number of people sleeping at IND. We are guessing their flights out were cancelled because of the storms. We pulled into our driveway at 4:10 AM. We made it!
Man were people assholes getting on the plane that second time! I was position B1, so could watch it all. The first time we boarded there were maybe 10 people in the family boarding line. The second time? At least 25, many with kids well above the age limit. The poor guy running the gate didn’t have the energy to deal with them. I can’t fault him, he was working late so we could get home. My girls were like five spots behind me and somehow at least 15 people squeezed in between us. We had rows 16 and 17 on first boarding. On second we were back in the high 20s.
Again, assholes.
Also, that Baltimore airport is dirty. Just like when L and I were flying out of there in October, the restaurants were running out of food in the evening. Fortunately we all got food or else things could have been even worse as we sat and stressed.
So so glad we didn’t get stuck there for the night.
Oh, and the storms here were legit bad. At least seven tornados in Indiana (as I write this) and several deaths. People were dealing with way worse than sitting in a dirty airport longer than we wanted to.
Nonsense
There was some nonsense of all levels over the course of the week. There was a parent-kid booze cruise that S and M went on. They behaved themselves, but S had to take care of a kid who was in bad shape after. He is a really good kid, just too much booze and sun and not enough lunch. He made sure he got a message to S later that night that he was thankful and loved her, which made us all laugh. Then the next day he found her and gave her a big hug.
Apparently some boys were pissing out the window of the buses on their way back to the resort after the cruise. Delightful.
S also had to take a look at a senior’s hand when we were waiting in Baltimore. He had it wrapped up and said it hurt. He wouldn’t admit it to S, but later we heard he had punched some dumbass sophomore several times.
A parent couple got in a huge argument during dinner one night. Like screaming and yelling and making the people around them super uncomfortable. Their kid was not around at the time (nor were we) but a lot of other CHS folks heard every word. Some friends of ours had the husband ejected from the restaurant. He also had some other serious issues over the course of the week. I’m really surprised he didn’t get his ass kicked by someone. I don’t know him, am glad he’s a stranger to me, and am thrilled our kids run in different crowds.
I know there was some kid drama, but it was fairly low key. M had one kind of rough night where it seemed like something was up with her and her friends. They next day they were fine, though. Teens gonna teen.
There was some other stuff. Like bad stuff. None of our kids were involved but they all heard about it. I think that’s all I should say about that subject.
We are lucky that our kids are mature, tend to follow the rules, and made sure they were always around friends. Still it was a stressful week. Mixing that many kids and alcohol in a foreign country has high odds of blowing up. Throw in a bunch of drunk adults and those odds go even higher. We are glad we survived our first senior spring break with our family all safe. I’m sure it can happen anywhere, but we were lobbying C and L for less exotic locations for their senior years.
Misc.
It may have been a blessing that KU lost before we left. It was very difficult to find a place that had NCAA games on. We hung in a bar Friday night that had six TVs with only one showing the games. The others had recorded soccer and NFL games from a year ago. I never turned on our TV but figure I could have found a game there or just streamed it had KU still been playing.
I met a mom who was in the same pledge class as a girl I sat next to in fourth and fifth grades. Random and crazy!
I was able to impress our friends with my music knowledge several times. I wowed people by knowing that Philip Bailey was Phil Collins’ partner on “Easy Lover.” I knew that Susannah Hoffs sang lead on “Eternal Flame,” not Suzanne Vega. Duh. And one day at the pool we heard a string of early ’90s songs that I knew artist, song, album, and year for each. The capper to that run was knowing that “Ice Ice Baby” came from the album To The Extreme. Frankly I don’t understand why more people don’t know this stuff.
If only I could somehow monetize this useless knowledge.
I learned that Michigan State people wear their gear pretty much all the time. I swear there was a lady who we flew down and back with and every time I saw her she was rocking Sparty gear of one kind or another.
C’s buddy who came with us has celiac disease. We had confirmed ahead of time that the Hard Rock had lots of gluten-free options. We found out that wasn’t necessarily true. It was hard work to find her food each day. It really made us sympathize what she, and others with true celiac, go through.
M burned her back pretty good the first day. So did her prom date. We laughed that you could pick them out in the pool based on their sunburns.[2]
While the week wasn’t a complete, 100% success, we did avoid any incidents within our travel group. I think M had fun, which was the important part. She was completely wiped out and very cranky on the way home. I think C and her friend had a good time. They kind of ignored us unless we forced them to spend time with us. Poor L got the shaft. When we originally booked, we expected a couple of her friends’ families to be on the trip, too. However, they all chose other destinations. The families we hung with had either kids a year or two younger than her or sophomores, leaving her stuck in the middle. She brought a stack of books and read them all. There was a gym and an outdoor basketball court, but she realized on our second day she didn’t bring any shoes suitable for working out. I’m not sure if you asked her she would say this was her favorite trip of ours.
As for S and I, we enjoyed getting away, especially the time we spent with our little group. We knew three of those families well but one was new to us, and we all got along great, reserving chairs together at the pool each day and eating together most nights. That said, I don’t think this trip would rank as our best spring break ever. Nothing bad, just enough to keep it from being an A or even A-.
Last summer I mentioned that we had four big trips booked. The first was our family trip to Kansas City and Lawrence. Then was L’s eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. Thanksgiving brought our Italian adventure. And finally there was M’s senior spring break.
It’s been a fun and busy eight months. When we got home, S and I agreed if we are able to squeeze in one more trip between summer basketball and M’s departure for college, it needs to be a little more laid back. Not that all travel isn’t stressful, but we’d be fine with a long weekend someplace that is a car trip away.
A week ago L’s team beat some good sixth graders in the best game they’ve played all year. This week they played another sixth grade team and got crushed.
It was a 50–26 loss. And that was with us scoring six points in the last minute. The team we played made at least 7 3’s to our one. They worked us over pretty good on the defensive end. They dominated the boards. Nothing really went right for us.
L was feeling under the weather and looked like she had zero energy. We were missing our best player. We had another girl who hadn’t played with us all year and was clueless. And another girl who has played a couple times but never goes to practice showed up and had no idea who she was supposed to be guarding when we were on defense. Not that any of that made any difference.
Our tournament starts Thursday, the first game against a team that beat the sixth graders that just beat us. So doubting that L’s team will make a run.
In good news, we had our parent Zoom meeting for the travel team Sunday night. They will start practicing in two weeks. We will miss the first tournament of the season because of spring break, so L won’t get a travel game until April. She’s excited to rejoin those girls, though.
Jayhawk Talk
Whew.
I had a bad feeling about this run of West Virginia and Texas Tech back-to-back. It felt like too many people were chalking them up as wins and assuming KU would be playing for, at worst, a tie for the Big 12 title next weekend in Austin. I hoped the team was taking them more seriously than KU fans were.
I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, whether it was the KU guys not being focused or WVU just playing great, but it was too damn close of a game.
I missed the second half for a social event. I was extra stressed because I couldn’t find the broadcast anywhere on Sirius while we were driving. I checked the score when we stopped to pick friends up and was relieved to see KU up by seven late. A few minutes later I checked again and let out an “Oh shit!” when I saw it was a one-point game. Reminded me of almost exactly a year ago when we went out as the KU-Texas game was going on and my peaks at the score of an intense, close, low-scoring game made me want to throw up.
A dub is a dub, especially on a day that saw crazy ends to games in Tucson and Iowa City. With Texas losing to Baylor, the Jayhawks are one win away from clinching at least a share of the title.
Social Outing
S and I attended Cathedral’s annual fundraiser Saturday evening. We’ve gone once before, and that was your standard “dress up, drink, eat, and donate some money” type deal. But this year there was a Yellowstone/Western theme.
If you know me, you know I don’t have much time for the cowboy thing. So I bought a hipster Western shirt and a $20 cowboy hat from Amazon. That was enough to fake the look for a few hours.
It was a fun night. We hung with some friends we don’t see often enough. Saw a ton of St P’s people. It was fun to talk college choices with the others who also have seniors. S ran into lots of people she went to school with back in the day.
We did not bid on anything. Someone did take home a very cute puppy for $10,500. Catholics, man!
M was working the event to get National Honor Society points. One of her friends was tasked with walking around and showing the puppy off to people before bid time. M made sure that girl kept swinging by us. My response each time was that she is four and a half years away from being able to buy her own dog.
Afterward she agreed $10K was too much for a puppy.
I haven’t heard the final haul but several fancy trips also went for over 10K. Again, Catholics!
The Decision
I supposed I’ve buried the lede. As some of you know from direct messages or my Facebook post, M decided last Wednesday that she will be enrolling at the University of Cincinnati next fall. She is excited to have made her final choice and relieved the process is over.
Now begins the work on housing. She confirmed that she can only request one roommate, so she’s back in the pool “meeting” people and trying to find a match.
She got more good news Friday, learning that UC accepts credit from Semester at Sea. That is now on the radar for her junior year, following the path of one aunt and one uncle who participated in that program during their undergrad days.[1]
So she’s going to be a Bearcat. KU plays football in Cincinnati next Thanksgiving weekend, which may be a tough one to attend. The basketball Jayhawks should be in the Queen City sometime in the next two years as well. I already warned her I’m going to be super obnoxious to her on those days, whether I go to the games or not.
That aunt also went back as an adult and served as a counselor, guide, or whatever they are called. ↩
We drove down with one of M’s long-time friends, A, who was planning on confirming her enrollment at UC on our visit. At check-in we ran into one of their CHS classmates and her mom. When the parents were comparing notes on the college search process, I mentioned that M was waiting to hear from Michigan. She butted in and said, ‘Yeah, that’s not happening, we don’t need to factor that in anymore.”
Probably the smart move and the timeline just got a lot easier.
We began with a large general session for all the kids that were there – there were hundreds – then broke into smaller groups to meet with academic counselors. M was admitted as an exploratory student simply because she isn’t 100% sure what she wants to study and wanted the freedom to be able to adjust if needed.
Between the two sessions we got a solid overview of the enrollment process, housing, advising, and what to expect from freshman year.
Although it was a school holiday for M, it was a normal academic day at UC. It was nice to be on campus while there were some things going on, there were students eating in the food court, etc. A much better view of campus life than we got last summer.
The girls had two lunches. First the four of us wolfed down some Chick-Fil-A in the food court. Then M and A met a couple girls that M had been messaging about possibly living together. They went to a little restaurant for about an hour while A’s dad and I sat in Starbucks. Apparently their meeting went well and M is excited about the possibility of living with these two new friends and another girl.[1]
After that we toured a few of the dorms. They have some weird combos at UC. There is one eight-person option which was very odd. It’s two three-person room-lets and a double that share bathrooms. Very strange and seems rife for things to go sideways easily. At least when I lived with eight guys we all had our own rooms and were spread across the levels of a four-story house. A’s dad is a couple years older than me and went to both Purdue and IU, so we kept boring the girls with stories from our old-school dorms. A couple of the buildings at UC are not much better than my rooms in McCollum Hall.
It was also really strange to be touring rooms with kids actually in them. The RA guides would lead us into a room and there’d be students sitting there, staring at their laptops or reading at their desks. We wondered what these kids get for there to be constant streams of visitors on admitted student session days.
We tried to stop at the Study Abroad office to ask a few questions, but despite the website saying there were drop-in hours on Mondays no one was available to answer questions. M very much wants to do Semester at Sea and wanted to clarify if/how UC accepts those credits.
Finally, we made the obligatory stop at the bookstore. M got another sweatshirt. I eyed some shirts that I might be interested in if she decides to enroll at UC. We ran into one of their good friends from middle school who is also thinking about going to UC. And while we were on campus they saw another kid from their CHS class and two kids who graduated from CHS last year. Weird that on a campus of 45,000+ students they would have so many brushes with Indy people.
Checkout was in the enclosed dining area behind the suites at the football stadium. While A and her dad knocked out their paperwork and put down her deposit, M and I stepped outside and sat in the good seats, watching the football team go through their spring practice workouts below. It was a beautiful day and perfect for watching some football for about 10 minutes.
At one point M told me she didn’t think we needed to revisit IU. I told her that was fine, but not to rule it out unless she was sure it wasn’t going to be worth her time. CHS gives students five days spread over their junior and senior years to miss school for visiting colleges and she hasn’t taken advantage of any. Might as well use it, although I guess if she’s not as interested in IU it’s kind of a waste.
She’s obviously a strong UC lean at the moment. I think she was excited about the prospect of living with those girls she met.[2] We asked about requesting roommates and were told you can only request one with no guarantee of joining with other groups. That could be a snag, as the two M met with are probably tied together and M would have to gamble by living with the fourth girl who she hasn’t met face-to-face. Housing at UC is kind of a mess at the moment, as with apparently most schools. I think she has some concerns about not being able to live with these girls, or close to either them or A and her future roommate(s) if her lottery draw goes poorly. One of those girls she met with Monday is going to call and get a clearer answer on requests. If they found out today those four girls are guaranteed to live together, I think we’d be signing M up tonight so we can get her on the housing list.
But we shall see.
It was a long-ass day – 12 hours door-to-door – but I think it was productive. No hat ceremony yet, but we’re getting close.
M and A are really good friends, but would prefer to not live together. Which made the lunch a little awkward, although A has been talking to another girl who wasn’t in town Monday about rooming together. ↩
One is from Cincy, one from Cleveland. The fourth girl who was not visiting Monday is also from the Cincy area. ↩
It’s back to semi-normal today. L returned to school after her Christmas break. M and C still have one more week of J-term, so they go in a little later and get out a little earlier. But all three have to get up in the mornings again.
Last week I had to get up to make sure C was up, so my alarm was 7:15 instead of my normal, school-day 6:55. Still, it was a little weird coming down this morning and finding the house dark instead of two Christmas trees already turned on filling the living room and front office with their soft light.
We took all the holiday decorations down Saturday. Since they went up earlier than normal and stayed up a little longer than normal, this was our most decorated Christmas ever.
We all have dentist appointments this afternoon, which wraps up a busy run of visits to health professionals over the past few weeks. I’ve been to the orthodontist three times, optometrist, sports medicine, MRI center, physical therapy, and had my annual physical.
I’m good, all that middle stuff was for C. She’s been having back pain for a few months, and even resting it plus a few visits to a chiropractor last fall didn’t help. Walking around in Italy was awful for her, and she was generally miserable at the end of each day, and progressively worse as the week went on. We finally got her in to a sports medicine doc three weeks ago. X-rays were clean but her MRI showed two interesting things. First, she has a bulging disk, the likely cause of her pain. Second, she is missing a vertebra and one set of ribs. That diagnosis got S into super medical research mode and she found about 4–5% of the general population has this issue. Weird!
The sports med doc said while there’s no research that would definitely tell us the bulging disk is directly tied to the lack of that vertebra, she also said it sure didn’t help. She also said it likely cost C an inch or two of height, which makes her topping out at 5’2” while her sisters both made it to 5’4”-ish make sense.[1] She took some teasing for that.
She started physical therapy last week and will do that for a month or so, with the hopes that helps her avoid anything more invasive to correct the issue.
Big 12 Hoops
Another crazy-ass weekend in the best conference in the country. Three teams are tied for first place at 3–0, all three getting there on the strength of two road wins. KU is not a huge surprise to be in that group. Kansas State and Iowa State, though? HUGE surprises. These were picked 8th and 9th in the preseason polls!
I think it’s too early to draw broad conclusions about any team. Especially in a conference like the Big 12. The Wildcats and Cyclones might be mid-tier teams a month from now. But they are off to great starts, and those road wins are huge bonuses in a conference that will likely be tightly bunched much of the season. 14–4 is always my default answer for what it takes to win the Big 12. Could this be the year that something like 12–6 guarantees you no worse than a tie?
More Jayhawks-centric talk later this week.
Pacers
The Indiana Pacers were expected to win right around 20 games this year. They just played their 41st game of the season, the exact midpoint of their schedule. After grabbing two more close wins this weekend, they stand at 23–18, good for sixth place in the Eastern Conference.
It’s been a remarkable first half. They are hella fun to watch, as my friends in Cali might say. Tyrese Haliburton is a legit All Star, and plays with a joy that is infectious. Buddy Hield leads the league in 3-pointers made, connecting on nearly 20 more than the second-most prolific shooter. Rookie Bennedict Mathurin is going to be a star. Second-round pick Andrew Nembhard could be one of the steals of the draft, an ideal backup to Haliburton who can also play next to him. Aaron Nesmith is beginning to show why he was a lottery pick two years ago.
But the biggest surprise is Myles Turner, a player most expected to have been traded by now. Turner is playing the best, most complete, most inspired ball of his career. I’ve always thought he was a little immature and disinterested in doing the hard work it took to be a star. At least for now he seems fully invested. To the point where the Pacers have made him a contract extension offer, attempting to capitalize on the big chunk of salary cap space they still have open. Turner has, for now, said he’s not interested.
That will set up an interesting game of chicken. Can the Pacers really trade their second-best player when they are in the running for a playoff spot and far too good to have a realistic shot at the #1 pick if they suddenly decide to tank? Can Turner turn down more money than any other team will be able to give him next summer no matter how badly he wants to end up in LA?
A year ago I would say the sides will come together and find an agreeable extension before the trade deadline, and Turner will quickly get injured. He’s always getting injured, and it would be just the Pacers’ luck for that to happen after they lock him up.
I think the Pacers’ luck has changed, though. So I think they either re-sign him and he stays healthy, or they can’t agree to terms, he plays out the year, signs with another team over the summer and that inevitable injury pops up in training camp. Meanwhile the Pacers use all their cap space to plug some other holes and immediately turn back into the solid 40–50 win team they usually are.
cLots/NFL
What a finish to the regular season! The cLots began the season with that humiliating tie in Houston, one that required a furious comeback just to get to overtime. They ended it with an even bigger embarrassment, losing to the Texans at home in the final minute of the game. Houston had a 10-point lead three times, but the cLots rallied to take a seven-point lead late in the fourth quarter. The Texans, who should have been satisfied with the loss and the #1 pick in April’s draft, for some reason decided to play full-out, converting on fourth and 20+ two different times on their final drive, including the touchdown that cut the lead to one. Then they went for two and the win and got it.
Amazing!
In the process they allowed the Bears to jump them for the #1 pick. The Texans’ owner was on the sideline after the game and he seemed to be the only person not celebrating. A few hours later he fired coach Lovie Smith. I like to think Lovie and his players knew what was coming and the final drive was a big Eff You to ownership.
The L could be good for the cLots. The Bears don’t need a quarterback, so perhaps they will entertain flipping that pick for Indy’s #5. Or at least that’s what speculation is around here. The Bears can certainly use the top pick to select someone other than a QB, and the cLots will have to hope either they can get a decent candidate in their fifth slot, or focus on one of the teams between them and Houston to swap picks with.
***UPDATE***
I heard at least four times yesterday that the cLots’ pick will be #5. Turns out they snuck into #4 thanks to Denver’s win.
I don’t know. It sure feels like the cLots will be stuck at five, reach for someone who is not ready to be an NFL QB, and remain mediocre, at very best, for the foreseeable future.
Not that I’m convinced either Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud are sure-things. Maybe it’s better not to pick them.
Our holidays come to an end today. M and C go back to class tomorrow, although CHS is once again having a two-week J term filled with electives, so they don’t have “real” school for awhile. L has another week off but I will still have to start setting an alarm to make sure her sisters are awake tomorrow.
A rundown of how we ended 2022 and began 2023.
New Year’s Eve/The New Year
Our postponed Christmas Eve family gathering was rescheduled for this night. It was big, loud, a little crazy, but fun. It helped that it was about 50 degrees warmer than it had been a week earlier.
We were back at our house around 9:00 – except for M and C who went to friends’ homes to celebrate – played a couple games before L and her cousin and S and her sister petered out around 10:30. I stayed up to watch football (more on that below).
New Year’s Day was uneventful. Monday morning we woke to heavy fog and five deer milling about in our back yard. One of those fuckers got a little too close to our pool. That’s all we needed to start the year: a deer falling through the cover, tearing up the pool liner, and probably having to call for assistance to get its dumb ass out.
Our youngest nephew turned three Monday, and his family stopped by for birthday cupcakes.
In the evening the seven of us did an escape room thing. It was my first time doing one. A little weird, especially since we had one kid (take a guess which) being a little bossy and uncooperative. But we made it out with 13 minutes to spare.
My sister-in-law and niece were supposed to fly back to Denver around 10. Their plane was also coming from Denver and kept getting delayed because of the weather out there. It finally took off two hours late. I dropped them at IND around 11:45. Looks like they made it home after 2:30 Denver time. I bet it was fun to clear the snow from their car at that hour.
Our drive to the airport was very weird. We were again under a thick layer of fog. Moments after dropping them off a big storm rolled in. I spent about the first 15 minutes of my drive home on the interstate going no faster than 40 mph with my wipers on high and hazards flashing. There was intense, bright, blinding lightning that was a lot of fun when I was already struggling to see the road. Fortunately there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic at midnight on a Tuesday morning, and I made it home safely.
With family visiting we didn’t get to taking down the Christmas decorations yet. I’ll pull the plug on the outdoor lights today and take them down if the rain clears out. But the inside tree will probably stay up until either Thursday, S’s home admin day, or next weekend. Don’t worry: the Christmas music was retired on Christmas Day!
KU Hoops
What a stupid, wonderful, infuriating, magnificent beginning to the Jayhawks’ Big 12 season. Playing like absolute dogs in the first half and letting a mediocre-shooting Oklahoma State squad light them up from outside to go down by 15 at the half. Followed by a brilliant eight minutes or so to eliminate that deficit and leave us with 12 minutes of knock-down, drag-out basketball that was probably a pretty good teaser for how this Big 12 season will be.
It was the third time in the 2022 calendar year that KU came back from 15 or more down at halftime. I guess they knew the football team came up just short Tuesday and needed to lock in one, last crazy comeback for the year.
Looking back, in 2022 KU hammered Villanova in the Final Four, beat North Carolina for the national championship, came back and beat Duke in the Champions Classic, destroyed what has turned out to be a pretty damn good Missouri team, hammered Indiana, and then had the two mega comebacks against Kansas State in November and Oklahoma State on Saturday. I saw a thing Monday that showed Quad 1 wins for the calendar year. KU had nine more than Baylor, which had the second-most in Division One.
Seems like a pretty good year. I have the shirts to prove it.
CFP
As soon as the KU game was over, I had to scramble to get ready for our New Year’s Eve gathering. Our hosts are not sports fans and do not have cable, which meant I was following the TCU-Michigan game on my phone. As was my sister-in-law whose husband is a Frog. Fortunately for him, he and their son were at the game. Looked like they had fun.
Really glad TCU is the school that got the Big 12’s first-ever CFP win. Not that I am a big Frog fan or anything, but it makes it better that it came after Oklahoma failing for years and Texas never getting there.
M was very astute and asked what I would do if it had been a KU Final Four game that was at the same time as a family gathering and I would not have access to a TV. I told her I would probably have skipped the event, which would have earned me a dirty look or two from S but really would have been better for everyone. No one in the family needs to be around me when I’m watching a stressful KU game. Hell, the girls were making fun of me for screaming during the OSU game Saturday. Can you imagine if it was a game in April?
I was able to watch most of Georgia-Ohio State, which was filled with wonderful momentum/mood swings. Ohio State’s potential game winning field goal sailed left just as the clock struck midnight here in the Eastern time zone. Our Christmas tree automatically turns off at 12:00 AM, so as the ball knuckled into the air, the lights clicked off behind me and the fireworks kicked in outside. It’s like it was all planned to happen that way.
Georgia-TCU should be an excellent game, and I’d be fine with either team winning. Just glad it won’t be Michigan or Ohio State, to be honest.
NFL
I was going to write something about how weird it still feels for there to be regular season games two weekends into January. But after what happened in Cincinnati last night, that feels wrong. I’m glad I wasn’t watching. I’m glad the teams seemed to show way more awareness and empathy than the NFL showed. And I’m really hoping that Damar Hamlin makes a recovery that allows him to live a meaningful life.
It’s been a crazy couple of days. That will happen when a massive winter storm is predicted to arrive just as the biggest holiday of the year arrives.
M and C finished finals Tuesday. They seemed pleased with their performances. We’ll find out in a few weeks.
L wrapped up school Wednesday. It was pretty much a useless week, as all tests and assignments were completed last week. She cracked me up by wearing a Santa hat to school each day, then again when we went to the gym on Tuesday.
I have been to grocery stories 150 times this week. OK, that’s not true.
I did the normal weekly shopping on Monday.
Tuesday I stopped into a store right after dropping off L to try to get a bunch of stuff for the holiday weekend before the storm-induced panic buying began. I made a decent dent in that list.
Wednesday was my big shopping day. I dropped L off at school and had a window of 8–8:30 to pick up our ham. So I popped into the store next to the ham place to see how well they were stocked. Turned out they were not stocked well but I did get a few things before it was Ham Time.
Next it was onto another big grocery store that was very well stocked. I got 90% of what I still needed there.
On the way home I wanted to stop at a liquor store, but it didn’t open for another 15 minutes, so I ran into the grocery store next to it to work on that last 10%, and maybe avoid a trip to Costco.
I was unable to avoid the Costco trip so after taking C to ortho, we headed that way. When we arrived, at about 11:15, the parking lot was packed and there were literally dozens of people parked on the grass. I told C if it was really this crazy we were going to skip it. But we went down one aisle, immediately had three parking spots to choose from, and headed in. We just needed a few things, but the checkout lines were backed up through the entire store. I made sure to get into the one targeted for the self-check machines and we were out in 15 minutes.
Then Thursday morning I ran to our neighborhood store for a few more things.
So that’s six stops at grocery stores, plus Costco, liquor, and ham.
Ridiculous but had to be done as I think the entire city is going to shut down tonight into Saturday morning between the snow, wind, and cold. The windchill here is forecast to be 25 to 35 below zero Friday morning. That’s no good for anyone, especially people making last-minute grocery runs.
The girls are currently off having their annual Christmas breakfast/cookie-baking party with their grandmother. S is normally home on Thursdays but has to run into the office to help see some patients that were re-scheduled from Friday. Once everyone is home we’re going to hunker down, crank the heat up, and hope the power lines in our part of town survive the winds until our first family gathering Saturday evening.
I’ve enjoyed watching the forecast adjust over the past week. As with any winter storm there is all kinds of uncertainty. The weather app I use on my phone, Hello Weather, has a cool feature that allows you to pick between one of eight different sources for forecast information. In the winter I love toggling between them, as some make a very conservative calculation and others take the worst-case option. Last Sunday, when this storm first got pulled into the seven-day view, these forecasts varied from a prediction of two inches of snow to 22 inches. That’s quite a range! As it stands now, we are in the 3”–6” window, and it’s starting to look like the lower half is more likely.
Regardless, it appears that this will be our first truly white Christmas in at least four years. And that one was just because of a dusting of snow on Christmas morning.
I know this storm is affecting most of my readers, so I hope all of you get through it safely, with heat and power, and that you are able to make all the gatherings on your calendar.
M and C start their first semester finals today. I’m pretty sure that CHS has changed their finals schedule all four years that M has been there, which she finds annoying. This year the days are split between two morning exams and two afternoon review sessions. So, technically, finals began yesterday with two reviews after lunch. We’ll see what the girls think of this schedule when they wrap up next Tuesday.
This could be M’s last time taking high school finals. CHS seniors are excused from second semester finals in classes they have A’s in. She has one A- in nearly three and a half years of classes, so she’s pretty confident this is her last go. The senior-itis has started to kick in, though, and we’ve already started reminding her that she can’t slack off too much between January and May.
I freaked the girls out a little last week when I told them that I loved finals in college.
My friends will recall that I wasn’t the most focused student in my extended college years. But finals week always got me locked in. I loved getting the exam schedule and sitting down to plot out the days I had tests, when there were review sessions, when I had papers/projects due, and when I would be done. There was something about that tight schedule, without regular classes, that got me super-focused. I was stressed, to be sure, but it was the good kind of stress. I know I wrote some of my best papers then, sitting down at the typewriter with a general idea of where I wanted to end up and, two-three-four hours later, finishing with something I was excited to turn in.
I shared this with the girls in an effort to relieve some of their stress. I wanted to try to get them to view the week the way I did: as a chance to prove that they learned something over the semester rather than just another set of tests that can affect their grades. Finals, and the essay questions that came with them, were an opportunity for me to dazzle my professors not just with my knowledge, but with my writing ability. I know there were years that B’s turned into A’s because I could organize and clearly communicate my thoughts, while I had friends who couldn’t make the same leap because their essays and papers were a mess.
I’m telling you, if college was nothing but finals, I would have graduated on time with straight A’s!
I don’t think any of that worked. The girls looked at me like I was crazy. M especially seems stressed out. She is very smart, smarter than I ever was, something she for sure gets from her mom. But she also got her mom’s tendency to stress out over tests. I’m glad M got my writing ability; her teachers are always telling her how good she is at it. I just wish I could have passed on some of that finals zen to her, and her sisters, as well.
It was kind of fun for me to have her come down and sit by me last night while I watched the Pacers beat the Warriors. She said she needed a change of scenery. As I watched the Pacers try to blow the game, she was on the other end of the couch with her AirPods in, banging away on her final paper for her English class. It made me think of those nights I was cranking out papers late into the night. It was also a reminder that this time next year she’ll be doing this in a dorm room or at the library on whatever campus she is living on.
What follows is an epic, old school breakdown of our Thanksgiving week trip to Italy. I spent almost all day Sunday working on it, so I hope it is coherent and interesting. I’ve broken it into sections so you can read in chunks or skip around as you like.
Departure/Chicago
The trip began a little ominously. I woke up feeling terrible last Saturday morning. All three girls had been sick over the previous few weeks, one with a stomach bug, but it seemed like I had avoided all their germs.
But there I was, throwing up for the first time in years, unable to keep even bland food down, and having a hard time getting out of bed. On the freaking day I’m going to Europe for the first time in my life. Wonderful!
Fortunately throwing up for the third time did the trick and I rallied to get ready. Thank goodness I was 95% packed, didn’t need to accomplish a lot that morning, and we didn’t have to leave our house until noon.
Our fight to Paris was out of O’Hare, so we had a three-hour drive to begin our adventure. It was cold, windy, and bright in Indy. When we got up around Merrillville, IN it started snowing. As we passed into Illinois the snow because so heavy it was hard to see at times.
Luckily these were just isolated squalls, and after driving through heavy snow for five minutes we would pass into clear skies and bright sunshine. Weird.
Parking at O’Hare was a bitch. Although we had plenty of time, it was still a little stressful to cruise around for 15–20 minutes and not see a single open spot. We finally found one on the roof level of the garage, parked, and stepped into a wind chill of 11. We were not dressed for that temperature so it was an unpleasant walk at our quickest pace to the nearest elevator.
We got TSA Pre clearance for the entire family a year ago for our Hawaii trip. We didn’t really need it on that vacation, but it paid off big time in Chicago. The security lines in O’Hare were outrageous. Even arriving 2.5 hours before our flight, we may well have missed it if we didn’t have TSA Pre. It took us maybe 15 minutes to sail through that line
I wonder if some people on our flight were stuck in those lines and contributed to the delay we experienced. More about that later.
Rome
It’s hard not to speak in cliches about Rome. The amount of history collected in a relatively small area is staggering. Diving into it can be overwhelming.
We arrived in Rome six hours later than expected, so rather than take the food tour of the Trastevere neighborhood we had booked, we went straight to our hotel and found a little restaurant down the block that had good reviews. We ordered pizzas, wine for S and I, M had her first spritz of the week (she was very excited to be drinking legally with her parents), and tiramisu. It was all very good.
Monday we had an eight-hour, Rome In A Day tour booked. We didn’t see everything the city has to offer, but we sure got a lot of it. We started at the Vatican – a 15 minute walk from our hotel – touring the museums and walking through the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. Just. So. Much. Stuff.
M was endlessly fascinated about how we could walk out of Italy into a completely different country simply by crossing the street.
That was the first two hours of the tour. We crossed the street back into Italy, hopped into vans and headed towards downtown, where we walked through the Pantheon and braved the crowds for the obligatory Trevi Fountain pics. I desperately tried to recall what my college art history instructor told us to do if we ever visited the Pantheon, but couldn’t come up with the memory.
After a break for lunch – pizza and pasta for all – we hit the Forum and ruins area. I had seen pictures of the ruins, but they kind of look fake. Then you walk through them and realize, “OK, this is really real.” You can’t help but be floored by how long ago some of these buildings were constructed. Thousands – plural – of years. We get excited here in the States when we find something that is 200 years old. The breadth of human experience on these locations was as impressive as the buildings themselves.
The tour ended at the Colosseum. Again, you see pictures but it doesn’t really come together until you see it from a mile away, then a block away, and then you are actually walking into it across materials people were crowded into centuries ago. Our guide mentioned the cliche “If the stones could talk, they could really tell some stories.” It certainly applies in Rome.
One humorous highlight of our tour was a couple that was in our group, an older Asian woman who spoke very poor English and her 20-something daughter from California. I’m guessing there was a 40-ish year age difference between them; the mother seemed a bit overwhelmed by everything and the daughter may not have been the most mature person in the world. A couple times the mother got confused and thought she had lost her daughter, only to be told they were standing 10 feet from each other.
After the lunch break we noticed they were staying far apart, the mom often going out in front of the group with the daughter straggling behind us. We wondered if they had argued over lunch. A couple times the mom started talking to one of our girls, thinking they were her daughter simply because of their size. A LOT of stifled giggles from our girls when this happened.
As we approached the Colosseum the mom became distraught when she realized her daughter was nowhere to be found. We all looked around, our guide called for the daughter on her headset, but she didn’t appear. So the mom and guide went back towards the Forum hoping to find her. We could hear our guide muttering on her microphone that we were going to miss our time getting inside the Colosseum. They tried calling her, but the mom couldn’t remember the daughter’s phone number. After like 15 minutes the daughter appeared. We never heard where she had wandered off to. Maybe she was just trying to ditch her mom?
Our guide, Monica, was awesome. Super knowledgable, very friendly, and with lots of sly comments not everyone would pick up on. She pointed out how ancient art was often propaganda for whoever was in charge, and while we should admire it, we should realize that sometimes the accepted stories behind them don’t reflect reality.
She also told us how interpretations of buildings and art we’ve held onto for centuries are being challenged with the use of modern technology. The Colosseum, for example, may have functioned differently than we have assumed. I liked that she shared these stories. We may know the broad strokes of history, but getting the details correct thousands of years later is likely an impossible task, yet one that is worth pursuing.
My favorite comment of hers was when we walked by the Italian Senate building and she gave us an update on their political situation.
“We just had our first female prime minister elected. Which was a good thing…even if she wasn’t the one we wanted.”
Several of us chuckled at that. If you keep up on your foreign affairs you may understand why.
It was a terrific way to see a ton of the city in a relatively short span. The weather was perfect, in the upper 50s to lower 60s and clear all day. If you only have one day to see the city, this was the way to do it.
We squeezed into a taxi to get back to our hotel. I don’t think we got the full Roman car experience, but it was still a rather fraught 15 minutes. Especially since I was the one pressed against the front passenger door with other cars inches away.
After an hour or so of recharging it was into another taxi to head to Trastevere for our rescheduled food tour. This was one of the highlights of our trip, and we were so glad we were able to move it to Monday.
Our guide was an Italian-American woman who now lives in Rome and is married to an Italian. She studied cooking, has a masters related to where food comes from, and works for a group that focuses on sustainable food.
Over the next three hours we strolled through the trendy neighborhood sampling various foods.
Our first stop was at da Enzo, a little family-run place that is mega popular. We were sliding in before official opening and there was already a line at least 30 people long. When we left it had doubled. Here we had appetizers, a glass of wine, and C and I shared some tiramisu (Her goal was to eat it as often as she could this week).
Stop two was Spirito Di Vino a wine-focused restaurant in a building with an amazing history. First the chef, who I think can safely be called eccentric, came out to greet us. He asked where we were all from. When we said “Indianapolis, it’s near Chicago,” our standard overseas answer, he exclaimed, “I’VE BEEN TO GARY!!!” I would love to get that backstory! Maybe he’s a big fan of the Jackson family?
One of the other couples in our group was from Columbia, MO; he is an attorney, she is a pediatrician.. We thought that was hilarious. They were nice. M decided to tell them how I hated Mizzou. Smart girl, but doesn’t always read the room well.
What made this restaurant special was its wine cellar. It was built at least 2300 years ago. You could literally smell the history when we went down to tour it. When the cellar was excavated in the 1800s, a very famous statue was found that dated to the building’s earliest days. That statue is now in the Vatican museum and we had seen it in the morning. Today it is a humble eatery.
We drank more wine and had a pork stew that was based on an ancient recipe the chef believed close to what people were eating 2500 years ago.
Next we had some street pizza at Pizzeria La Boccaccia, including one that had potatoes on it that was surprisingly amazing.
Fourth was to a little meat shop run by a father and son that specialized in these amazing pork sandwiches. I could have stayed there all night.
Our final heavy food stop of the night was Rione 13 where we had two of Rome’s most famous pastas: cacio e pepe and all’amatriciana. These were the two best pastas I’ve ever had.
We wrapped the night up with some gelato. M was very proud that she had read up on how to tell what the “good” gelato is, and our guide agreed that her research was right-on: avoid the stuff that is super bright and piled high in its bins and go for the gelato that is more muted in color and rests lower in the pan, often covered when the shop isn’t busy.
This food tour was fabulous and worth every one of the 130 Euros they charged us to reschedule when we couldn’t attend the Sunday session.
Florence
Tuesday we woke to rain, which we expected. We Uber-ed to the Roma Termini train station and headed up to Florence for our second city of the week.
By the time we arrived in Florence it was pouring. We all donned rain jackets, pulled hoods over our heads, and marched about 15 minutes to our hotel. After we let the girls take a quick nap we took John N’s advice and went to the Mercato Centrale for lunch.
The Mercato serves as Florence’s central market on its main level (duh) and has a large food court on its second level where you can grab a seat and then pick-and-choose your meal from various vendors. It was a bit packed because of the lunchtime rush, and some folks even stole our first seats, but it was fun to try different things and watch the crowds.
It was still raining lightly after lunch but we stopped at a small coffee shop for hot chocolates and coffees, and I got to experience the joys of the Italian coffee bar. Look it up on YouTube. It was EXACTLY like every one of those videos, which I loved.
Later we decided to try the roof bar/restaurant at our hotel for an early evening snack. The rain had switched to mist, but still only the indoor seats were available. The views were still wonderful. We ordered the evening special, which was a drink and “snacks.” The snacks were a bunch of small bites, which we expected, but they included an oyster, beef tartare, some smoked salmon, and other raw-ish foods. I figured, when in Rome – or Florence I guess – and downed everything but the oyster. M tried the oyster and couldn’t finish, saying it tasted like a fish bowl. The other girls picked at theirs and focused on the chips and mixed nuts. Ninety Euros down the drain for their picked-over plates, but at least the view was nice.
We began at the Accademia for the obligatory viewing of Michelangelo’s David. I loved this little museum. One of my favorite college classes was that Art History course, and, as with the Vatican museums, it was amazing to see these old pieces of art and how styles changed dramatically during the Renaissance.
L thought the David was “overrated.” I tried to explain why it was so important but she wasn’t having it. I mean, I kind of get it. It’s just a statue of a dude. But often the importance of art is as much about the history that led to its creation, and the way things changed after its appearance, as the piece itself. Maybe she’ll take art history in college and then understand.
After that we slowly worked our way through the city center, spending some time around Piazza del Duomo, passing Dante’s home, making our way to Ponte Vecchio, and ending at the Palazzo Vecchio. The Duomo is outrageous. I’d seen plenty of pictures of its dome. I don’t think I had seen pictures of its marble exterior since college. Again, a little overwhelming trying to understand how it was made when it was made, and how it has lasted this long.
After lunch – pasta for all – we wandered the city streets and did some shopping then returned to the hotel for some down time. After about an hour I was itchy to not waste time on my first trip to Italy, so took a long walk on my own. That’s when I fell in love with Florence. The sun was setting, there were already Christmas lights out, and without a hood over my head or my eyes focused on the map on my phone, I just wandered and took the sights in.
You see these movies filmed in old European cities with their narrow, crooked streets, and think “That’s just part of the city.” But Florence really is this wonderful maze and every turn brings a new surprise. I was amazed at how much shopping there was. How many art stores. How many tiny, neighborhood cafes and bars. Even with all these strange, odd-angled streets, you quickly discover how easy it is to get around once you identify the landmarks.
I spent probably an hour walking without any real plan. I found a couple cool churches not included in our tour. I got into the Palazzo Vecchio’s courtyard. I stumbled onto a very oddly dressed Asian couple who were apparently taking wedding pictures. I got back to our hotel just as the sun was setting and stood above the Arno River taking in the gorgeous view.
We hemmed and hawed and dug through our guidebook and Trip Advisor for at least an hour trying to find a spot for dinner. As we grew more frustrated we threw up our hands and decided to walk towards the city center, hoping we found something. If not, we’d just got back to the Mercato.
Which is what we ended up doing.
It was significantly less crowded than the day before. Joe Bastianich has an American Barbecue restaurant inside. We laughed about it on Tuesday. As we walked by Wednesday evening the lady working flagged us down and offered a sample, “These are burnt ends, have you ever heard of those?” We all started laughing. “Maybe you know them then?” she asked. I accepted the sample. It was not Kansas City quality.
M and I got pasta. It came from a counter where they whipped up your sauce right in front of you. Mine had pumpkin, sausage, cheese, and then a Parmesan cream sauce over everything. Fantastic. M’s had a truffle sauce, which she loved. She’s kind of become a Truffle Person. The rest of our crew got sandwiches and pizza, and S got the pulled pork sandwich from the barbecue place, which was actually pretty good.
On our way home we crossed paths with another American couple, probably in their late 60s. We heard the man say, “OK, we are not moving here, but we can come back.”
I really hope I can return to Florence one day. It was my favorite stop of the trip and I would love to spend more time wandering around the city, plus getting out into Tuscany proper.
Venice
Thanksgiving morning brought a train ride across the country to Venice.
My view of Venice was purely from movies. And I’ve never really understood if the entire city is canals and islands, or if that was only part of it.
So spending two days there was certainly an eye-opener. While Rome and Florence are full of history and charms unique to each city, I don’t know if there is another city like Venice anywhere in the world.
I realize this is not exactly an original observation.
To be honest, Venice kind of doesn’t make sense. Even after spending two days walking around the city and now reviewing my pictures, my constant thought is either “Why?” or “How?” I wonder how many cities with its level of influence on world affairs have the same questions surrounding them.
Our hotel was in the Cannareggio area, which is a quiet, un-touristy part of town. It was a little unsettling to walk the streets of the district and have there be almost no noise. When you remove cars from the equation it reduces that basic background noise level to almost nothing.
We laughed each time we saw a UPS or Amazon delivery boat glide past us.
We had a tour booked for Friday so wanted to just see part of the city while we searched for a lunch spot.
We ended up near the Rialto Bridge and stumbled into a little trattoria that looked promising. While the owner and one of the waiters spoke decent English, the man who took our orders spoke almost none. This made things interesting. But it all worked out wonderfully.
As we studied the menu, the non-English speaking waiter would bring a pan from the kitchen, ladle out a few scoops of whatever was leftover from making other people’s orders onto the girls’ plates. They got to try gnocchi and two pastas this way. C and L both ordered gnocchi after the sample. He put on a big production like we had done something outrageous and then nodded ok and walked away.
S ordered the seafood risotto. When told that feeds two people, I agreed to share it with her. One of our best choices of the trip. The risotto was delivered in a small boat placed in the center of the table. I don’t know, maybe that was kitschy and cheesy, but it delighted us. It helped that the risotto was amazing.
Last year we celebrated Thanksgiving on Kauai with a rather traditional meal in a non-traditional setting. This year it was seafood risotto in Venice. Living right I guess.
Our tour on Friday ended up being just us and our guide, which was a nice change. We took a boat through a good portion of the islands, ending up near our hotel for the walking tour. It was a little more laid back that our other two city tours, less focused on seeing, say, the Colosseum or David, than on providing a general understanding of how Venice works and the history of the island. We spent time in the old Jewish Ghetto. We walked through a secret garden at a home for retired nuns. It was a very different vibe than the other tours but a nice way to wrap-up the week.
Our guide told us how a high tide was supposed to have hit the day before, but the expected waters had not arrived. I believe I linked to a video about Venice’s new floodgates sometime last year. Apparently they worked this time. Much of the island was forecast to be under water, but it remained dry. Lucky us!
Our guide suggested another hidden spot for lunch that ended up being wonderful. The girls and S all had pasta while I had roasted eggplant with marinara sauce.
Following lunch we made the obligatory trek to Piazza San Marco. We were glad we were not visiting in the heart of the summer, when it is jammed-packed with people. We could move around relatively freely and waited in line less than five minutes to get into the basilica.
Venice has a similar vibe to Florence with all the curious streets and alleys that have been there for centuries. The obvious difference is the water that can interrupt you path. We found Apple Maps to be very accurate, but a couple times it did send us down streets that ended in water, forcing us to double-back on our path. Some of that could have been more because of network issues and my phone thinking we were one block away from our actual location.
Our only self-inflicted misses of the trip were our two dinners in Venice. Several factors went into this.
We were staying well-away from the areas where most restaurants were clustered. The front desk of our hotel recommended a couple places that were just minutes away, but they were both closed on Thursday, and we thought them too small for our group on Friday.
Restaurants seem very small in Venice, with a focus on sitting outside. It was chilly and not every place was able to squeeze a table of five in.
Our girls aren’t into seafood, which complicates things in a city known for seafood. And they were getting sick of pizza and pasta.
Maybe this was just our bad luck, but Venice also seems a little less English-friendly than the other two cities. It was the only city where we ran into people who seemed flustered when we asked simple questions in English.
So both Thursday and Friday nights we ended up in tourist traps. Thursday’s had the potential to be bad, but ended up being ok. Friday’s choice was not good. Everyone was tired and grumpy and uncommunicative and no one wanted to walk back to where we had already been twice that day in hopes of finding a good restaurant. So we ended up in a spot that took entirely too long to make crappy food.
Oh well, at least it happened on our last night and not our first. Our Rome food tour was expensive, but if you don’t have someone to guide you and are unable to make reservations ahead of time, I can see the value in doing that in multiple cities just to ensure you get good food.
Travel
We booked our trip through Costco. Highly recommended. We did this last year for our Hawaii trip and it seems like a good deal. This booking included all the airfare, our train tickets, lodging, and transfers on each end of the trip.
In general our travel was quite good. As mentioned in the Rome section, we arrived six hours late because of a slight delay with our flight from Chicago to Paris. We had a very tight window to make our connection in Paris – only 70 minutes – which I had been worried about since we booked the trip. But we also figured Costco would not have suggested those flights if that was not a reasonable amount of time to catch a connection at Charles de Gaulle.
My first tip is you really should give yourself at least two hours between flights in Paris. Even had we arrived in Paris on time, we would have had a very tough time catching that connection to Rome. There’s the matter of deplaning on a massive Airbus A350, which took a good 20 minutes. There is navigating from the inbound international terminal of CDG to the outbound terminals, which includes clearing immigration. Coming back that process took us a good hour, and that was early on a Saturday morning.
Fortunately, while we were sitting on the ground in Chicago, I sent our flight info to my sister-in-law who spent years in the travel industry. When we landed in Paris the next morning she had got us seats on a flight to Rome later in the afternoon. There were a couple earlier ones so she suggested we go to the Air France counter and see if we could get on one of them. Those flights were full, but the lady assisting us was very friendly and helpful and adjusted our re-booked seats so we were all together rather than in the scattered seats the AF agent my sister-in-law spoke with put us into.
Thus we sat in Charles de Gaulle for nearly six hours last Sunday morning.
About 30 minutes before we landed in Paris a man had some kind of medical issue. I saw him stand up and walk to the restroom, then his seat mate jumped up and seemed to be kneeling down, assisting him on the floor. Soon all the flight attendants were gathered around him and a call went out for a doctor. Someone near them immediately popped up. S was relieved because the guy who went down weighed at least 250 and might have been out of her area of expertise. Not sure what happened but they didn’t bring a wheelchair or medics onto the plane when we landed.
Air France was pretty great. The food was good, they serve wine and champagne with everything, and the fight crew was super nice. When we stepped onto our plane in Chicago I was greeted by a steward with a jaunty “Bonsoir et bienvenue, monsieur! Welcome aboard!” (Apologies if I’ve bungled the grammar; I never took French.)
The girls and I loved the plane views that were available on our video screens. One was from a camera on the jet’s belly, the other at the top of the tail. These were rendered kind of useless since our flight to Paris was overnight (although we saw some spectacular shots of the sunrise over France) and our flight back to Chicago was over clouds for most of the flight. Still fun to watch takeoff/landing.
Another slight issue was on our return trip through Paris. When we landed we checked the board to confirm our flight to Chicago, but its departure was just beyond the time window being displayed. So we headed to the gate indicated on our tickets. We processed through immigration – taking about 35–40 minutes despite the sign saying it would take 10–15 – went to our gate, and set out to find some food. Our flight still wasn’t popping up on the board so I checked online and discovered it had been moved to a completely different terminal. We were still a good two hours from boarding, but I had a moment of panic when A) we couldn’t figure out how to get out of the terminal we were in and B) I feared we would have to pass through the immigration and security lines again.
After about 15 minutes of wandering/panicking, we finally found someone who pointed us in the proper direction to catch the train to terminal M. We did have to go through security, but that was quick and we found a quiet place to sit for the remaining 90 minutes of our layover.
Sleeping on planes? Surely you jest. I don’t think any of us slept for more than an hour at a time. Going to Paris there were three little kids behind us that were absolute maniacs. The kid behind me was kicking or grabbing my chair constantly. Their parents were across the aisle, not giving a fuck or sleeping, depending on when we looked back.
Coming home we woke at 3:00 AM Saturday Venice time, or 9:00 PM Friday in Indy. A few catnaps here and there, but no extended sleep along the way. We pulled into our garage at 9:00 PM Saturday night. We were in bed and asleep within 20 minutes. We all felt pretty good Sunday morning.
That’s one way to avoid jet lag.
As our flight from Venice approached Paris, we flew over downtown and were able to see the Eiffel Tower, backlit by the rising sun. That was awesome. It was also cool to see so many people on our side of the plane leaning towards their windows to get their glance at it.
All the European airports seemed clean and nice. I’m not sure how they did it, but our bags were waiting for us when we reached the luggage carousel in Rome. We were near the front of our flight, so off quick, and made a short restroom stop, but it took us less than 10 minutes to get from the gate to baggage claim, yet there they were.
Riding the train in Italy was awesome. I’ve never been on a real train before, so riding a high-speed one through the Italian countryside was fantastic. The Frecciarossa trains are clean, quiet, comfortable, and fast. Italian train stations were cool, too. I wish I had more time to wander around in them but we only had about 10 minutes between arrival and our departure each day.
On both of our train rides S and the girls had four seats that shared a table on one side of the car while I was in a single on the other side of the aisle facing another single seat. From Rome to Florence I sat across from a businessman who worked on his laptop and took a few calls.
On our second ride a man was already seated on my side we boarded, but he got off in Bologna. When the doors closed and we began moving again without anyone taking that seat, I stretched out my legs to enjoy the extra space for the last 90 minutes of the trip.
A few moments later the door from the next car opened and a rather dazzling looking woman entered and took the empty seat. I’m telling you, a lot of my good friends would have loved seeing how uncomfortable I was facing this woman, especially with my wife and daughters three feet away!
She talked on her phone the entire ride to Venice. From the little Italian I remember from 25 years ago, I think she spent at least 30 of those minutes trying to book another series of train trips. She got disconnected once and was not pleased. She also called, or took calls from, some business colleagues and may have talked to her dad. She spoke to someone else in very halting English, tapping her nails on the table as she carefully enunciated each word.
And then she talked to “Antonio.” Not sure who Antonio was, but at one point she let out this long, slow sigh and said, “Ohhhh, Antonio.” I couldn’t tell if it was filled with longing or sadness or some other emotion, but it was one of the most erotic things I’ve ever heard. It was stereotypical of how a sexy Italian lady should talk. Again, my wife and daughters were three feet away and I could not enjoy this in the slightest. Don’t tell S, but I will never forget how that lady said those two words.
Another thing I had stressed about since we booked was our transfer in Venice. Actually the stress didn’t kick in until about a month after we initially booked, when our flight time from Venice to Paris changed, meaning we would miss our connection to Chicago. I got on the phone with Costco and within an hour they had re-booked us onto an earlier flight out of Venice. The only issue was this was a 6:25 AM flight, meaning we would have to leave our hotel super early.
I think it was Tuesday I realized, “Hey, there aren’t any cars in Venice. How are they going to pick us up?”
I figured this isn’t a new problem and had been resolved years ago, but to soothe my stress I shot an email to our transfer company. They assured me they would be there, and clarified we would hop on a private water taxi before taking a car.
I was still worried they would really be there at 3:25 AM. As usual, I was stressing for nothing. The water taxi was waiting outside our hotel door when we came down to the lobby. Big thumbs up!
Europeans do not know how to board or deplane aircraft. The lines to get onto each of our flights were needlessly slow and long. People in row 12 taking two minutes standing in the aisle getting all their carry on gear situated while 400 people stand behind them and wait. As we de-planed from each flight people from behind us came charging forward without saying “excuse me” or pretending they had a connection to make. As I yelled at L’s classmates on our DC trip when they tried to charge up the bus aisle, “We are living in a society, people!”
Coming home we were surrounded by French people who all seemed to know each other. Many of them stopped to chat with the man sitting directly in front of me. One guy talked to him for literally an hour. I was trying to watch a movie (and keep my eyes open) and he was really stressing me out.
Other Comments, Observations, and Tips
We read/watched all kinds of “things to be aware of” posts/videos over the past few months. Maybe it was being out of the busiest of the tourist season but we were never really accosted by anyone. We didn’t see any gypsies until we got to Florence, and then only a couple. We saw more homeless people – not very many – than gypsies or travel scammers combined.
Pretty much everywhere we went in Rome and Florence, people spoke good English. One cab driver was a little rough but everyone else immediately spoke English to us, even when I didn’t notice any of us wearing clothes that screamed “We Are Americans.” I had made some meager efforts to recover un pochino of the Italian I learned in college, but when I tried to use it, I often got it jumbled up with Spanish and sounded like an idiot.
I did find the old adage that if you make any effort to engage people in their language, they will try even harder to engage you in yours. I know a few key words and phrases, and I hope my pronunciations were solid, because everyone I used them on seemed thrilled I was trying.
I LOVE how people are constantly saying “Buongiorno” and “Buona sera” to each other. It is delightful.
I was pretty pleased with how I managed our cash. I think I got a total of €350 in cash over the week. We arrived home with €4.30 left, all in coins.
We were all kind of bummed at how the EU messes up your passport stamps. We got stamped both times we landed in Paris, but got nothing in Italy. I would have preferred two stamps, and an Italian one over the French.
The jetway failed to work when we arrived in Paris from Venice so we had to take the stairs down to the tarmac. M, knowing I have weird travel rules, said now I had to count France as a country since I was walking on actual French earth. Trust me, if you get a passport stamp you count the country, even if you never leave the airport.
We’ve all heard how Europeans eat light breakfasts, often just a coffee and roll. Thank goodness our hotels cater to Americans. It wasn’t exactly an old school Shoney’s buffet, but there were plenty of proteins to fuel us up for our daily adventures.
The big storm that blew through on Tuesday dropped a lot of snow at higher elevations. As we went through the mountains on Thursday the peaks were all bright white.
How awesome was it to be in Italy during the World Cup?!?! Well, not very awesome since Gli Azzurri missed their second-straight WC finals. The games were all on RAI2 and I had them on anytime we were in the hotel. You could usually see them in bars and restaurants. Over there the games are on from 10 AM until 8 or 9 PM, which was great. But no shops full of Italian national team gear.
I thought about getting a Fiorentina jersey, as they used to be awesome. But I couldn’t find one that matched those they wore in the ‘90s when I paid close attention to Serie A. Since my favorite Italian team is Juventus from Turin, I didn’t think it was a good idea to get one of their jerseys, even if they are the most popular team in all of Italy. And since my last favorite Italian player, Alessandro Del Piero, retired like 16 years ago, finding one of his jerseys wasn’t easy. Oh well…
Far be it for me to give the Italians advice on how to present their historic buildings, but I think a few spotlights on Il Duomo at night could do wonders.
Our hotels were all very nice. We had two rooms in each, always either next to each other or just down the hall. Each one had their own little quirks, though. In Rome we couldn’t figure out how to get the wand for the shower to work no matter what combination of buttons we pushed or handles we twisted. In Florence both the bathtub/shower and toilets were set on extra high bases. I was the only one in the family who could touch the floor with my feet while seated on the toilet, and it was a long step down from the shower. We never quite figured out the lights in our room in Venice, and there was a decent chance someone else would turn the lights off while you were showering because they accidentally hit one of two master switches hidden amongst the others.
L was the only person who admitted to trying out the bidet. She said she was going to make a video of it for her friends, I’m assuming from the neck up. I never asked how that turned out because I didn’t want to know.
There were air dryers at most public restrooms. But they are woefully underpowered. Even after a minute of use my hands were always still wet. And I thought their voltage was higher than ours.
The lady who checked us into our Venice hotel’s name was Shadi. S wanted me to ask her if she was the real one.
S was shat upon by a bird twice, once in Rome, once in Venice. I told her Italians believe that is a sign of good luck but she wasn’t thrilled with it either time.
As mentioned, Apple Maps seems to work really well in Italian cities for walking directions. I couldn’t help but think how that changes the traveler’s experience. It’s really hard to get lost, and certainly an iPhone is easier to read than an unwieldy map. But you also spend a lot of time staring at your phone. I made a conscious effort to find a waypoint on the map and then slide the phone into my pocket so I could take in my environment as we walked, not checking my phone again until we hit that next spot on my mental map.
We each took a small, carry-on friendly suitcase plus a backpack. We ended up checking the suitcases, because we didn’t realize there’s a 22 kg total weight limit on Air France what you can carry on. Those suitcases were all packed very tightly but it seemed to work well. I was nearly perfect in my clothing choices, so I would be happy to give you packing advice for your next trip.
M and C both bought some clothes and/or jewelry as their souvenirs. L found some Nike Dunks she had never seen in the States and picked them. That took some creative packing to make sure we could squeeze another pair of shoes in.
La Fine
My friends know I’ve had a long love affair with Italy. Most of that had to do with cute ladies I knew (or wanted to know) in my 20s, but eventually it morphed into something bigger. In the summer of 1995 I tried to spend a few months in Florence studying as part of my extended college experience. My parents nixed that for multiple reasons. I figured I would still get there one day. I didn’t think it would take nearly 30 years to finally do it.
This was an excellent week. I would make a couple minor tweaks if we were re-planning the trip tomorrow. I would add a day or two, as I would want more time in Rome and could spend another full day wandering around Florence. That’s tough to do when you’re traveling with kids during the school year. I’d also avoid that tight connection in Paris and the risks it poses to the rest of the itinerary.
Or, as I said above, I’d be fine taking a Tuscany-only trip, getting into the countryside and maybe even popping over to Bologna.
But those are minor quibbles.
We have M’s senior spring break coming up in March, but after that we may never have another trip like this as a group of five again. I’m thankful we were able to go to Italy as a family, and hope the girls will carry memories of it as good as the ones I will carry.
