Monday, December 7, 2009

Catching Up

Well, it's been awhile. The last month has been filled with work, Christmas shopping, vacation planning and holiday decorating. Now that I'm in Seattle for work again and have less to distract me in the evenings, I can think about all that has been happening.

The biggest accomplishment...and a really exciting one, at that....is that we found a villa to rent in Tuscany! I spent a lot of time a couple of different weekends researching places to stay. And after I had narrowed it down to about 5 different choices, Nate picked the winner in about 10 minutes. Go figure.

We'll be traveling to Italy the end of April and are staying for 2 full weeks. The first 3 days will be spent in Rome, where we're staying at a Marriott and cashing in some hotel points. Yay for a free stay! Then we're traveling to Tuscany for a week, which is where the villa comes in. We'll be staying less than a mile from Radda in Chianti in Central Tuscany. The town of Radda sounds quaint and homey and the central location will put us in a good spot for venturing out and exploring (we'll have a rental car for the week in Tuscany). The villa itself is somewhat basic, but perfect for a home base. We plan on visiting a lot of wineries and trying local cuisine, but we do have the option of cooking in if we so choose, as the villa has a gas stove. There's also a pool, but since we'll be there in late April, it won't be available yet. The most ironic thing, based on the fact that Nate loves to cook, is that the villa is owned by a local chef. Maybe that's why Nate picked this place?

You can read more about it and see the gorgeous pictures of the local countryside at this website: http://www.to-tuscany.com/lacasanova/. The villa is named La Casanova. How romantic... And at less than $1000/week, it's pretty affordable too.


[from to-tuscany.com]

At the end of our trip, we're planning to spend a few days in Florence. I've looked into lodging for our stay there and that is the final decision we need to make as far as booking a room. Once we're through with that, I can move on to figuring out WHAT we're going to do/see while we're there! I hope to accomplish a lot of that over Christmas break.

Speaking of trips, we're also planning a trip for late March to take a jaunt down to Florida. We're going to visit our friends Kevin and Deanna and we'll be taking in a couple of Cardinals spring training games. I'm almost as excited about that as I am Italy...but not quite.


Well, I think I'll end there for now. I need to go out and grab some dinner. Until next time...

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