Spoleto - Day 2

Today was a big swimming day. Charlotte would swim in preliminaries in the morning and then, assuming she qualifies, finals in the afternoon. We hurried out of bed in time to have a quick bite for breakfast before heading to the pool. Charlotte swam her first race, 100 breast, and finished 4th with a personal best time. Now we had a bit of time before her second race, so we returned to the hotel so we could relax and enjoy another coffee in the courtyard. We returned to the meet at 11am, which turned out to be much too early. Charlotte didn't swim her second race, the 100 fly, until around 12:30pm (almost 3 1/2 hours after the first). This time, she qualified for the finals by finishing 8th, but she was 2 seconds slower than her time of 2 weeks ago. She was disappointed.

Because the swimmers needed to be back at the pool at 2:30pm for afternoon warm-up, the team never left after the morning session, but rather opted to eat lunch there. Josh and I left the pool to return to the hotel in order to pack-up and check out. We didn't feel like sitting down to a long, and large lunch. Instead, we picked up some varieties of pecorino, prosciuotto, and pizza bianca at the market and had a picnic.

After our picnic (on the newly varnished benches) we still had time for a drive up to the hills beyond Spoleto. It was absolutely beautiful with the forest, the ravine, the famous Ponte di Torre bridge. We enjoyed the spectacular views of nature. The drive itself was a very narrow and winding road and we drove all the way up the Eremo di Grazie hotel where we'd considered staying on our honeymoon. It is certainly very quiet and out of the way.

Then, we returned to the pool. This afternoon, Charlotte swam in the finals of the 100 breast and the 1oo fly about 20 minutes apart. She improved on her morning swim, dropping her time by a couple of tenths of a second, but she dropped from 4th to 5th place. She also missed the Nationals qualifying time by .o2 seconds. Next, in the fly, she essentially repeated the time she'd swum in the morning and finished 7th. But now, she had one more race. The timed finals of the 200 IM. It was a great race to watch as Charlotte came from behind to win her heat, posted her best time, and took 4th place overall. It was a good note on which to to make our departure.

Charlotte stayed in Spoleto and will have one more day of racing, but it was time for Josh and I to get back to Rome. My cousin, Kathy, and her son Jack had arrived from Toronto this afternoon, and I was looking forward to seeing them. We made the drive back in about one and a half hours. Olivia, Avery and Jack seemed to be having a good time when we arrived. They had already eaten and were playing together.

First, we toasted Kathy's arrival with the requisite Spritz cocktails. Then, I cobbled some left-overs together. I kept thinking Kathy and I were going to go out for a pizza, but once we got to drinking and talking, and putting the kids to bed, it was already 10pm. Still, we hopped in the car and went for a walk/drive about town to see the sights, all lit-up at night.