kathleen and italy mix very well!!!! (very very long)

ok so i know that it has been a long time since i have last posted. more than one person has already told me this....i get it. but now nobody can complain about a lack of blog. so now i will begin from where else???? the beginning. so i left london last week in the height of all the crazy fog...i personally barley made it out of the airport, my flight was delayed basically a half day to milan. that was so annoying. anyways i was dead tired cause i got about 3 hours of sleep the night before because i was up late packing and one of my flatmates kept talking to me. anyways so i crashed on the flight to milan making it very quick found my luggage (which they almost lost) found my train that brought me to the center of milan. and i FIANLLY met up with my aunt and uncle along with their three kids and mary! the rest of the day was just getting us back to florence since its almost 3 hours away.

******Next Day*******
so mary and i slept in a bit and got a late start with my uncle mike showing us around. i felt like we really saw a lot. we went to a bunch of piazzas that i dont remember the names of at the moment, we went to the giant church (duomo) and climbed to the top some 400+ stairs, and we were able to see David the sculpture by Michelangelo. It was very amazing. i really had no idea that he was so big. but he is not normal human size at all. he was built large (his hands are incredibly oversized for his body) so he could be put on top of the duomo but Michelangelo decided he didnt want him up there. so huh there you go. i have decided that florence is pretty easy to navigate around once you have done it once or twice....so if mary or i ever got lost we wouldnt be lost for long i am guessing. we had a long day in town so mary, mike, and i came back to the apartment (which is the largest apartment i have been in in a long time and it is so cool) and just hung out and called it an early night.

this is the duomo in town. its absolutely gorgeous. made of marble and really breath taking. when you climb the top of the duomo you can see for ever it seems like, it really gives you a good idea of florence.

this isnt the real David, the real one is inside a museum so the elements dont wreck it too much. you can kinda see it, his oversized hands....check em out!

**********Next Day*********
so this day was a little more eventful. we decided that we wanted to see some italian country side so all of us (sarah, mike, and kids included) all borded a train and headed to a town about an hour out of florence called cartona. this is the city that the movie "under the tuscan sun" was sorta set in. this is the town that diane lane's (at least i think thats who is in the movie) character gets off the gay bus tour stops at....it was pretty cool. this town was litterally on a hill and pretty much no matter where you wanted to go was up. and of course the place we wanted to go was to the old castle on top of the hill. so up and up we went. once we got there since it was so close to christmas (or natale as they say in italian) the castle and the church was closed. oh well at least we got to see it as i always say. from there we walked back down to the small town square and grabbed some lunch that included me getting a very large calzone that i couldnt finish. i am blaming it on the fact that my tummy still isnt better yet from being sick and it cant take a lot of food. thats what i am going with. but it was sooooooooooo good. after lunch it was so cold that we all decided to head back home and call it a day. mary and i totally crashed on the train ride home. i dont even remember falling asleep!!!!!!!

this is the view we got from about half way up to the top. dont you just love tuscan landscape????

alice (my 6 year old cousin) and i taking a break climbing to the top of the hill!my calzone that i REALLY wanted to finish but was unable to.....boo.

*****Next Day*****
So now it is finally christmas eve and it sooooooooooo doenst feel like christmas, buts that ok cause i am in florence italy and i lovin it. this time sarah and baby jill took us around and we saw even more stuff. we went to a street market where i finally grabbed my turqoise blue scarf that i wanted and sunglasses that i needed. it was such a cool little market, its the kind of place that you can haggle with all the vendors and every stall is selling the same kinda of stuff, all the fun tourist stuff...you know. anyways we walked around that for a while and then went into the main market area where they sell food and explored a little bit and bought a few items. we walked around some more and watched jill run around in her favorite piazza that is full of pigeons. she is so cute to watch run around. just love it. we went and saw another church were michelangelo is burried, but we didnt go inside. from here sarah and jill left mary and i and we went to what seemed like a nice suburb of the city called fiesole on the top of a hill to watch the sunset. it was the first time we had been alone in florence. very exciting!!!!! so we took the bus up and sat on a ledge for a while after playing around by a monastary and exploring a bit. from up here you could see everything. it was so cool. once the sunset it automatically got very cold. colder than we enjoyed it to be so we hopped on a bus and headed back to the apartment, it was christmas eve after all!!!!!!!! so here instead of santa (babbo natale) coming down chimneys and filling stockings he climbs in the window and fills shoes. so the kids had their shoes all set out and ready for babbo natale to come. it was my first grown up christmas that once the kids went to bed i saw the presents get put out and the shoes filled. i even got to write the letter back to the kids from babbo natale.....cause i have santa like handwriting! cool!!!!!!!!

sarah and i in florence going to see some more sights!!!!!!mary and i in our new sunglasses and scarves. we were climbing up to go see the sunset!the view from fiesole...so breathtaking!!!!!!its hard to find really large christmas trees here so we had a small one on the "christmas chair" and here the kids have their shoes waiting to be filled from babbo natale...

***********Christmas Day************

There isnt much to say about christmas besides that it happened and it was very nice. our christmas started at 8 in the morning which is very doable...thats not early for christmas. we ended up spending our entire christmas in our pajamas and playing with all the kid's new toys and reading books and just lounging around. we drank mimosas with blood orange juice and just had a relaxing day putting together puzzles and playing battleship (love that game so much). it was a good christmas away from home. it wasnt the same but i wasnt expecting it to be at all, if i had to be away from home i am glad that i got to spend christmas in a beautiful country and not somewhere like butte montana. ugh. but i hope everyone else had a wonderful christmas day!!!!

******Next Day**********

So the day after christmas (which is actually the day that i am writing this) was a pretty eventful day. mary and i discovered that pisa is actually only one hour alway from florence, and we totally capitalized on that. sarah helped us onto a train in the morning and we took the train to pisa. when we got there we wandered around a little bit and eventually we turned the corner and there it was.....the leaning tower of pisa. in person it looks so much extra leany. it was really unbelievable. the tower is in company with a large duomo and a bapastry. they are all located in the "field of miracles" it has large lawns of grass and its very picturesque to look at. its not in the middle of a street, which i half expected it to be in a roundabout or something like that. but it was in a spot you wish all landmarks were placed. but anyways word is that the tower leans 1 mm more every year, and when it was built like over 1000 years ago or something like that it was leaning right away and 2 architects besides the original one tired to correct the lean. so on the 4 ''floor" you can tell it was built back to try and compinsate for the lean. very crazy. mary and i were gonna go climb to the top but it was 15 euro and it kinda creeped us out a bit how much it was leaning...just didnt feel safe really. so we ran around pisa for awhile, and we found out that without the tower there people would not go to pisa. cause thats about all there is to do, so after we grabbed some lunch (i tried another calzone and had a lot better luck with it) we went back to the train station and went back to florence. Once back in florence i really wanted gelato (my new favorite thing ever!) so we went to this place called festival del gelato, a place that sarah and mike showed us, got some gelato walked around and then went back to get MORE gelato ( i told you i love it) but the second trip turned out to be very interesting. i was trying to decide what flavors that i wanted when i saw this young man that looked a lot like a kid i know back in bozeman. but i didnt really think about it cause i see people that look really similar all the time to people i know. but turns out it wasnt a look-a-like. his name is kevin clayton and he is from bozeman and i am friends with his older brother and i ran into him in festival del gelato in florence italy. how random is that?????very!!!!!

the tower and the duomo, which is also leaning but not as severly...and i dont know which way it is leaning.everywhere you look people are doing the same pose, pretending to push up the leaning tower. these little things to stand on made it that much easier. i just really liked how you could see everyone doing the same pose. i liked it!!!!!and then here i am pushing it up myself. and it is actually a harder picture to take than you think....mary giving it a go herself.....both of us in front of the tower....

**********December 27***********

so now after a lovely time here in florence mary and i are off to paris to meet up with a bunch of friends from back home. it was so awesome to see sarah, mike, and the kids. and fingers crossed i will be back again!!!!!