Second, I love hot weather. Truly, I do. Again, this is part of the reason we chose Rome instead of a town in the North BUT 100 degrees AGAIN. Seriously, this is too much. Maybe if it were "acceptable" to run around in a tank top and shorts. But all these Italians, I mean men and women, are dressed. How can that be? I'm melting.
Third, our villa. It has such great potential. It is enormous by Roman standards, but at the same time, it's a bit run down in a bohemian kind of way. Just not the standards of cleanliness I'm used to in the good 'ole US of A. And we haven't really even begun to unpack yet so we're still living out of bags and boxes.
Finally. Our kids. It's not easy keeping 3 kids entertained in 100 degree heat when you don't have a body of water around the corner and you don't want to stay inside and have them watch movies all day. After all, if we did nothing, how could they possibly not kill each other, and be tired enough to go to sleep at a reasonable time. Yet again last night Charlotte and Olivia "were not tired" until well past 1 am.
So today I had a bit of a moment during lunch in a Parioli cafe. Josh was commenting how great it was that we were surrounded only by Italians. We had just come from the task of purchasing our kids' school uniforms. Sounds fairly simple, right? But of course the shop keepers did not speak any English and me being me, I had questions. So now, I need to get my husband involved every time I want to speak up. For anyone who knows me you can imagine how difficult that might be.
Having seen the uniforms on line, I was prepared for their boxy, unisex appearance. With a one size must fit all approach, you could fit 2 Charlottes or 3 Olivias in the width of the one shirt that would have the right sleeve length (even so, the sleeves were too short)....and I thought the U.S. was known for obese children. We're in Italy for gods-sake. Couldn't they come up with more stylish clothing for school uniforms, especially at these prices! (I think we'll be doing laundry nightly).
Once I composed myself, we were off to our afternoon excursion. A drive to Tivoli to see Hadrian's villa (in Italian, it's Adrianna's Villa - he had a girly sounding name). On the drive, I studied my notes from my Italian class. I obviously need a refresher.
The grounds are enormous but the ruins are just that. Not the most well-preserved ruins we've seen - you really had to use your imagination. We're getting spoiled for these 2000 year old relics. But the size alone was incredibly impressive, the setting beautiful, and since these were the first ruins that our kids have seen, they thought it was cool. Kind of like a big jungle gym for Avery.
We had planned to see the Villa d'Este afterwards. Also in Tivoli, this Villa is from the Renaissance and apparently has some amazing waterworks that the kids would've liked. But we were all a little soggy (read: hot) after Hadrian's so we decided to pack it in and return to the Villa d'Este fountains another day. Tivoli is only a 30 minut
e drive, so easy enough to make another excursion.
We ate dinner at "home" just as we did last night on the wonderful patio surrounded by trees. It's relaxing and the kids can really let loose. Last night, we had a dance show, and tonight Avery and I played cards after dinner.
Then we had our first real scare. The electricity went out and while we could care less about the lights or the phone, we had no Air-conditioning!!! It was a real panic. Brilliantly, Josh figured he could use the laptop to skype call the houseman who came over to show us where the circuit-breaker was located. Disaster averted. Kids are now asleep. Yeah!
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