Italy in our future

Having family in Italy is wonderful. It also makes things complicated.

I was planning a trip with my sisters where we would go to Vicenza, but would see other places too. The initial complication was that we wanted to take our mother with us, but she did not want to do all the sightseeing, so we were trying to sort out where she would go, and where she would miss staying in Vicenza, and how to get everyone back and forth between all the locations.

As that was starting to come together, my brother and his wife announced their own trip, and which day they would be in Vicenza, and would need someone there to translate and introduce. He had not been there since he was two, and she had never been there, so it was good for them to go. Seeing my aunts and uncles marvel over this change from the toddler constantly going in and out of every door to the tall muscular man was very touching.

It did completely sink the other trip. Certainly money was an issue, but having enough time and being able to get the right time off from everyone's jobs was just impossible.

Still trying to plan and strategize, it became clear that trying to bring our mother along for our multiple destination trip was not going to work well either.

That shouldn't have mattered, because before we thought that her next trip would be her last one. The flight is hard on her, and not getting any easier, and she has lost many of her family members. We will always want to maintain the relationship with our cousins, so it can make sense that we would go without her. The trip we made for my brother should have been able to be her last trip, but somehow that didn't feel right. It feels like she needs to go again.

So, it feels like what is needed is one more trip with my mother, and one more trip with my sisters.

The one with my mother would be staying around Vicenza, but I could happily spend some time exploring Parco Querini and Giardini Salvi on my own. I would love to make it inside La Rotonda, and prove it can be done. I have still never been to Montecchio.




Also, I really want to go to Soave. That is a community known for their wine, which I am not generally into, but you can see the castle when we go between the airport in Verona and Vicenza, and the castle walls come down the hill like arms embracing the hillside - at least that's how it looks to me. It might look different once there, but I'd like to check it out.

With my sisters we want to see Florence, and more of Venice - especially the islands in the lagoon - and Vicenza of course, but we also want to go to Rome, and when there you can easily go see Pompeii and Capri. I want to go there. And then you find little things, like from Florence it is pretty easy to get to Pisa, and between Florence and Venice one potential stop is the Ducati factory. That would be pretty cool.

Those are the things we hope to see, and it only takes time and money. Only.

Here are some random pictures I liked but haven't used yet.