an adventure

Ciao bellas!
one morning as we were driving off in our van, Brain said: "Don Quixote and his faithful companion Sancho Panchez set out on something which if not an adventure, was uncommonly like one." I love that, and that's how it feels every morning as we pile into the van for yet another day in Italy. First thing we like to do (some a little more desperately than others) is find a place for coffee. Then with someone reading a map, someone else watching signs, Brain at the helm off we go. I'm the other driver, which is rather limiting...the other day just the girls came into town for groceries and email and I took a wrong turn down way too narrow streets and of course right into the town square with all the local old fellows watching as i lurched along (its a standard)and 'exclaimed' that sh..this is exactly where i did not want to be!!! but with some laughs and encouragement we made it out ok.
Just got back form Sienna, we leave at 8:00ish and get back 7:00ish, Ray is making supper, mike a fire and Brian drinking many well deserved drinks! Sienna is a city built on many many levels of other cities. one medieval honkin' church built on yet another older medieval church and so on. Great museums, but I said to Mike that I cannot look at one more dying Jesus in Mary's arms or one more fat cherub with little privates!! (no offense anyone).
Italians have a very different sense of store openings... we are never sure when anything is open for fear that it is a holiday, a Monday, a weekend, a Tuesday, the hours between 12:30 and 4:30, between 2 and 5 except on the third Sunday of the month or on days with even amount of letters, or year that end in...you get the idea.
Judy had finished getting groceries that Ray needs for his creation so gotta go.
ciao ciao
Francesca Luisa Maria Donatello (Laurie)