These three came to visit us for two weeks. My sister Stacey and her two youngest boys, Craig and Devon. Her oldest, Billy was back in the US adulting. He has a real job now and real responsibilities. (I’m so proud of you Billy!) We hope that he and his girlfriend Melissa can come visit us next year.

WE ALL HAD SO MUCH FUN! It was so nice having them here. I will not mention how empty our house feels now, or that the dogs and cats are lonely without all of their loving attention. Andy actually took the whole two weeks off (he hasn’t done that since our honeymoon to Hawaii 10 years ago). He had to take the first week off because his office was shut down but I’m still proud of him for actually relaxing! All of Italy takes vacation in August. I’m not kidding. Everyone takes at least two weeks but some take four to six weeks off. Everyone goes to the sea, lakes or the mountains and the cities are dead. Our little town (Biassono) and Monza were ghost towns. Literally. We actually found parking places but also found signs on restaurant and store doors that said they’d be back in two weeks. Milan and Rome didn’t have their usual traffic either.

I tried to plan as much as possible while they were here but also I knew that we would all need down time too. When we were home “The Family Guy” was constantly on the TV and Stacey and I read books. We traveled to Lake Como (Varenna and Bellagio), Venice, Lake Maggiore (Stresa), Milan, Monza, Lake Lugano (Lugano, Switzerland), Pisa, Cortona, and Rome. We owe a big thank you to Andy for driving the five of us around everywhere! The drive home from Rome was a long one but we all made the best of it. We all ranked the destinations/experiences and we all picked Stresa as our favorite. We all really liked the lakes because we all are lake people. We rode in car taxis, private boat taxis, a car ferry, a vaporetto  (water bus in Venice), we rented a motorboat on Lake Lugano in Switzerland and we rode in a gondola in Venice. We took a walking tour of Rome and saw the Vatican. We relaxed by the Mediterranean Sea. We went to street markets and we shopped in quaint stores. We ate fantastic food but I think the pizza was still our favorite! It really was an amazing vacation. I’m going to post about each place individually because they all were so uniquely special.

I wish the vacation didn’t have to end but we all had to go back to reality. I hope we showed the Gerhardts why we like Italy and it’s not all about the fantastic pizza!

Who is coming to visit us next???