The Parents are Coming!

The Parents are coming; oh, the parents are here. A 5 hour, 3 AM drive from Cortona to Milan to pickup the parents made for a lively Tuesday morning. I know, there had to have been a better way, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. One of my other options was to go up the day before, by train, stay in Florence for the night, take the train really early in the morning (the parents’ flight was getting in at 8:30 AM) to Milan, plus a bus from Milan center to the airport, in hopes of finding them when they walked out (which was a huge worry of mom’s) and then repeat it with the two jet-lagged, senior parents. Not a great option. Of course they could have stayed in Milan for the night and we could have done it all a day later, after they had some wits about them. Rather than sacrifice their sanity, which would have sacrificed my own in the end, I decided to cut out the middle man, keeping their sanity intact while sacrificing my own.

It was just me and the early morning truckers and thank God it was dark; did anyone know there were mountains between Florence and Milan? I didn’t until I was coming back with the parents and realized how truly insane it was for me to have made the trip in the dark, with the trucks, and little sleep. The fall colors on the way back were stunning! I tried to take a picture, but on the switchbacks, going 120 km/per hr.; best not. But I did take a picture of the parents sleeping through the best part of the drive.

We stopped half-way to take some pics and lunch in Bologna. This fountain of Neptune may make the Christmas card; is it okay that the women have water streaming out of their breasts? A fantastic lunch of bologna and cheese, lasagna like you’ve never had before (think béchamel sauce), pumpkin tortellini with sage butter sauce, and tagliatelle with ragu or bolonese sauce. Bologna was a great kick-off.