No fleas, but a good lunch

Today we attempted to go to the Porta Portese market -- a huge Sunday flea market where anything and everything is sold. Unfortunately, we got a late start. Then, between the traffic near the market and the inability to find a place to park, we aborted our plan. This is the first time we've ever been shut out with respect to parking in Rome.

It was 1pm and the kids were not going to happily drive around for much longer and then walk through a flee market before being fed. So we skipped the market and went to Trastevere for lunch. We found a restaurant called La Scala and it turned out to be great! If only Avery could sit still for more than 10 minutes, we'd really rejoice. Still, we walked around a bit after lunch and through the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. Then it was homeward for nap time.

There has definitely been a different dynamic working in the house without Charlotte around this weekend. Not better or worse, just different. Olivia and Avery have to rely solely on each other for entertainment...not that they don't usually play together, they do. It's just that Charlotte is not around to break it up. Last night when we got home, Olivia and Avery were in Avery's bed together like two peas in a pod. Just looking at their little faces in the dark, they looked like twins.

Judging from the number of times she's called (not), it seems that Charlotte is having a great time in Grosseto with her teammates from Aniene. Traveling to meets is a real professional undertaking with this club. They hired two coach buses, booked the hotel and assigned rooms, organized the meals, and of course the transportation to and from the pool each day. This meet is a three day meet with two sessions each day. Whether or not you have a race, you go and warm-up with your teammates and then stay for the meet to cheer for those who are swimming. There are apparently 70 kids from Aniene competing in the meet. Unlike the first Italian meet Charlotte swam in, this meet has three age-group categories:

1. Ragazzi - kids born in 1996 or 1997

2. Juniors - kids born in 1994 or 1995

3. Assoluti - open to any age but generally populated by swimmers born in 1993 or earlier

This means that Charlotte is still (just as in the prior meet which was only Assoluti) one of the youngest athletes competing in the meet. There are other meets held around Italy for younger athletes. This is actually a brilliant system, because if you are the parent of a 14 year old swimmer, you don't have to sit through all the events of the 10 and under crowd as you do in the States where every meet has every age group competing. That is, if you go to the meet.

In any case, this hasn't been Charlotte's best meet - no surprise given her lack of training these past two weeks. She swam 50m Free and 200m Breast on Friday afternoon in the 2nd session. Her Freestyle time was pretty good but the lack of conditioning showed in the longer distance.

Then, she swam 100m Butterfly and 200m I.M in the 3rd session on Saturday morning. Both of these times were slow. Finally, she swam the 100m Breast in the 5th session on Sunday morning. In this race she at least matched her time from the prior meet here in December and she took 3rd place - her only top 6 finish of the meet. She texted me to say that she thinks the bus will be back around 9 or 9:30pm so we'll hopefully hear more about her experience then. Unless of course, she decides she doesn't want to talk about it.