Bella Italia - Florence

We flew from LAX via Munich to Florence, the journey went very smooth and Florence airport is so small that is was no problem finding the driver from the hotel, who picked us up. We decided to pick up the rental car on the Monday instead of the Saturday when we landed since you don´t really need a car when staying in the city.

Florence is of course know for its cathedral and it such a nice contrast to where we currently are living. Buildings are old and carry so much history. This of course means streets are often narrow and small pavements.I didn´t quite expect so many tourists in mid September, but it was very very crowded - Swedes, Germans, Brits, Americans - all over the place. It was actually a little too touristy for us, and also it was difficult to move about with the pram with all the crowds around us, especially since Florence wasn´t child friendly whatsoever.

I was quite surprised to see all the jewlery stores lined up next to each other, just like a mini version of the gold souk in Dubai but with MUCH higher prices.

Luckily, I bought the dress for the wedding before leaving OC, because here I would not have found anything Not only mini sizes, but not so many shops (apart from Gucci, Louis Vitton..Zara and H&M) around as I had hoped for.

All in all we spent 2 nights in Florence before oicking the rental car up and driving south. Talking about rental cars..whatever you do, do not rent a car with Hertz in Florence or Italy. We had to queue for 2 hours before actually getting the key to the car and then having to fiddle around trying to fit the child seat in the car. 2 HOURS folks! Everything was manual in their system, the clerk had to go to the garage and check the car before giving it to us and so on. They even had one of these old machines for the credit card, you know, where they push this metal thing across the card and it copis the details on to the paper.

Back!

Back in SoCal, and this time the jet lag hit us hard, both ways. It it Emily the hardest, she has turned nights into days and did the same in Italy. So of course we are super tired too. Understatement.

I will show all the pics once I have uploaded them but here are some reflections over the past week

• People smoke a lot in Italy. Yikes. We are so spoiled here. I do not like smoke.

• FOOD, OMG, I loved the food culture. Long dinners, with starters, main course, afters..SPARKLING water, glasses with no straw, NO soda. No burgers. Pane, Pizza and Pasta. Miss it already. (Not a "dough" fan, but this was a nice change".

• Italy is not child friendly. People are, but not the infrastructure. No changing tables, high chairs, lots of steps and stairs. Small restaurants..We are spoilt here.

• SO NICE to walk a lot. We ate a lot of food, A LOT, but seem to have walked it off. Yay!

• Too many tourists in Tuscany. Swedes, Brits, Germans..EVERYWHERE.

• Mosquitos, had forgotten about them. Ouch!

• Beautiful wedding. The Italian women looked like they were on the catwalk! We had a great time at the wedding. All weddings should last for 3 days.

• Style, from now on, all shows and bags should get bought in Italia. Elegance and style! 

Unfortunately we had a small welcome army waiting for us at home. Ants! Everywhere!! NOT fun. Had to empty the food cupboard first thing after arriving at home. No more heat waves please. Though now we are well prepared. 

We´re Off!

Looks like we are flying tonight! Super stressed day though. Didn´t get home until 11.20 pm last night, WAY AFTER my bed time. It was the Swedish school´s board meeting (I am now the treasurer) and it lasted till 11 pm. Unfortunatelyt Emily woke up when we went to bed so I had to sit around with a awake babs till 1-ish. NOT fun since I wasn´t tired anymore once she was asleep. Then up at 4 am, and then at 7.30. SIGH. Dunno what´s going on but it need to stop. SO TIRED.

Drove to the Brow boutique to have my lashes and brows down. I keep telling myself there must be just as good places nearby, but oh no. I keep trying alternatives, and keep getting annoyed so, here I was again, driving 35 minutes to South Laguna and paying $ 75. Pretty crazy though you can run a business just based on lashes and brows. Only in California!

                                                         Regular customer at this place again

Something we yet are to learn is to pack light. We are terrible travellers, always bring more than needed. Still, I like to have a choice. Just in case you know. So currently there is CHAOS at the clarkes'.

Think I have been packing all week. ALL WEEK FOLKS. Clearly not done yet. One more hour to go. Making sure iphones and ipads are charged. Enough nappies. Camera packed. Formula. Baby food. Porridge. Shoes. Dresses. You know the drill, LONG LIST. Phew.

Might upload some random pics from Italy but blogging from the phone is no hit so SO LONG, bella Italia, here we come!

Bel Bambini - Shopping Heaven

Needed to buy babs a dress for the wedding next week so I headed down to Bel Bambini in Newport Beach yesterday morning. What a shop! Why hadn't I discovered it earlier?

 The y have some really nice contemporary stuff, none of that tacky disney stuff they sell at Babies r us, lots of light colours and lots and lots of accessoires. Its location is kind of unfortunate, there is nothing notably around so I have been driving past it since it opened having no reason to stop but thought I'd start the dress hunting there and yaay was I right. Bit of a shame that all contemporary looking American stuff has to be so expensive but come on folks, refuse brown.

                                                                 WOWOWOWOW

Customer service was pretty crap, I didn't see any shop assistans during the 30 minutes I spent in the shop. Great place for cribs etc, clothes are a little pricey (you can find some of the stuff a little cheaper in the other kids/ boutiques I have discovered) but hey, how many childrens' stores have dior right? Heaven!

Popped in next door to have some breakie. Think we will visit East Chow again! Nice breakfast choices but a big minues for not having cranberry juice. For someone who doesn't drink coffee nor tea (very often) cranberry juice is a MUST. LOL

Target

This happens when you forget to bring your own bags here..chaos! And for some reason people like to pack one item in each bag...more or less. NOT great. And such a waste.

Mid Week Stress!

The normally such organised me is failing at the moment. I ordered some formula from diapers.com the other day, 6 containers since it was an offer, only to discover (when opening the HUGE box) that I had ordered the wrong one. SIGH. Instead of saving time I now have to return the damn thing AND go shopping.

Second stress factor, Lufthansa is on strike. The Germans are usually so reliable, (I always avoid flying with Spanish or French airlines, haha) but now they have decided to go on strike. This week. When we are travelling. It would be a disaster if the flight got cancelled. Not only because of the delays but the long stay car park at LAX is booked. hotel in Florence, connecting flight from Munich, transfer from Florence airport to hotel and so on...so, knock on wood, hopefully they will either get their pay rise or back down. Either way, we really do want to fly Friday night.

A totallt different subject - I am back at Barry's! Went Saturday morning and had a very near death experience, sort of seeing stars after 10 minutes on the tread mill. Horribly out of shape, with other words. After nursing myself on Sunday I decided to give it another shot on Monday and whoops, I am back in the routine and enjoying it. Phew. Never, never, never ever take a four week break again.

I am also very happy to annouce that Emily's first words are in Swedish (Sweden 1, England 0). She syas "titta" (look) several times a day, and claps her hands when we say "klappa händerna". Way to go babe!

Labour Day Weekend

Monday night and the end of a nice long weekend. Don´t you just love when you realize on a Sunday night that there is one more day of the weekend. Yay!

We have had a very relaxing weekend. Some bbqs with friends, sweating doing nothing in the hot weather ( I love love love the SoCal weather!!). Today we were going to the OC Zoo in Irvine Regional Park but once we got there, the entrance was closed because there was no more parking spaces available! How disappointing, but as usual we had a back up plan; dim sum at Irvine Spectrum. I had seen the restaurant plenty of times walking past it and it really looked like a typical Chinese dim sum restaurant. I used to hate these places when travelling to Shanghai but now, not having had any Chinese food (and I mean Chinese Chinese food) for over a year, I actually looked forward to it. Big plus was of course I knew there was not going to be anything "disgusting" on the menu.  Turned out to be nice, even if the food was somewhat Americanized. Pretty sure I never had edamame or egg rolls in China. But hey, better than chicken feet!

                                            Bought some yummy dips at Bristol Farm´s

                                  Bar area at the dim sum restaurant, just in time for the happy hour

Also managed to rent a real crappy movie tonight, Battleship, even hubby thought it was bad so you can imagine how poor it was.