Catching up - Friday

Hi all,

We've gotten a little behind on posting this weekend, so I'm writing things in arrears. Friday was a pretty lazy day. It was THE hottest year to date for this neck of the woods. Absolutely stifling. Good thing we hadn't planned on traipsing around any hot villages!! Instead, the kids alternated between pool dips and napping. Joel and I drove a very short distance to a winery to do some tasting in their lovely air conditioned digs. The winery was Felsina in the town of Castelnuovo Berardenga. Aside from the slight awkwardness of drinking wine with someone staring at you (we're not very good at that and actually prefer to drink and talk about it in our own kitchen - ha!) we enjoyed hearing about the various combinations of grapes to make the various tastes.

As is the case with most vineyards here, they also have olive groves. We're way too early in the growing season to actually see olives on the trees as flowering just finished. Harvest is in November so that will be the timing of our next trip to Italy. We did taste a few oils though and bought a collection to compare at home.

Other than that short venture out, we tackled the grocery store again and a farmacia for some cold/allergy medicine for Alex. I now know how to say nasale congestione and all sorts of other drippy and drainy sort of terms in Italian.

We went to our now favorite restaurant in the area - Il Bivocco. It has simply delicious Tuscan food and we're trying to get a taste of everything for our palates to remember when we leave. Everyone has decided that we need one more visit to get the job done!!

Calvin and Joel are now beating Drew and me at our euchre marathon seven games to four. Ugh! We haven't given up though. This may have to continue once we return to Indiana.

The photo today is of all of us at the entrance to our castle apartment. Alex had just enjoyed doing some rock climbing on the walls - fun to watch, but she's forbidden us to post any of those pictures as they are always aimed from below looking up. So Joel set up the tripod on the ground beneath and then Calvin pressed the timer and hustled it up to the top of the stairs in 10 seconds to get this family shot. Whew!!