Loving Zest...

Like the rest of Italy, Tuscany is famous for its food. Luckily, trying to find restaurants that please the picky eaters in our family is pretty easy in the land of pasta. Our favorite restaurant in Siena was definitely Zest, which we discovered while wandering around. 

My lunch of scallops with grilled eggplant and zucchini was fantastic.

We enjoyed our lunch so much that we went back for dinner the following night. This time we sat outside on the funky tables designed to sit on the slope.

The highlight of dinner was definitely the desserts. While the chocolate cake was delicious, it was the tiramusa made with limoncello instead of coffee that was the big winner.

Reflections in Siena....

At first glance, you might think that both girls just wanted to take a picture of Zach, but it turned out that they really just loved taking photos of themselves in his cool reflecting sunglasses.

Reflections of a beautiful girl

Exploring Siena...

Another lovely view of Siena

Zach was the bag boy
 during photo ops

Carolyn & Steve loved
showing us around Siena

Cool Pics in Siena...

The following day was spent exploring Siena. To the kid’s relief, we didn’t go to any museums and only dragged them into two small churches.

Just love these shots of our lovely daughters.

The Duomo...

After dropping our bags at the hotel (which was sadly unimpressive), we ate lunch on an outside terrace. Then Veronica joined the adults for a visit to the Duomo (cathedral) of Siena, built in the early 1200s.

There were some beautiful mosaic floors, but what really impressed me was the Piccolomini Library, housing a collection of illuminated choir books and frescoes. This amazing ceiling of mythological subjects was finished in 1503.

Carolyn & Veronica rest
on the Duomo steps

First Impressions of Siena...

Our friends joined us for breakfast at our hotel, then we all took a train down to Siena, in the heart of Tuscany, where we were staying together for four nights. While we had visited Steve and Carolyn several times since we moved, the four kids hadn’t actually all been together since November 2005. Not surprisingly, the kids bonded instantly and had a lot of fun together. Also not surprisingly, we took a lot of photos of them.

Off to Tuscany...

Just a few hours after school got out for the year, us girls headed to the airport to fly to Florence. Jimmy had to work and was unable to come along to meet up with Carolyn, Steve, Samantha and Zach, close friends from North Carolina who were travelling around Europe for a month. We were supposed to arrive at 10:30 p.m., but our flight didn’t even depart until midnight; it was very weird seeing Schiphol shut down all around us as ours was the last departing flight for the night. Although we didn’t arrive at Hotel Alba Palace until 2:30 a.m., we were very pleased to see we were staying in such a beautiful and historic room.