c'est loufoque: ITALIA!

Sorry for the wait everyone... I've been taking some time to enjoy my last couple of weeks in Paris but I thought I would give you some of the pics from our adventures in Italia! I'm still not sure how dad manage to rally car his way through the whole country without getting a single dint on our little Fiat named Marcello! Honestly, he's a magician!

Marcello and I kickin' it!

We spent a lot of time following farmers in their tiny trucks!

A little mountain town where we stayed called Porretta Terme

The view from our balcony

Lyle and Laurie hanging out

The first time Nat had a chance to see actual mountains!

BONUS VIDEO: Some random cliff in the middle of nowhere... I'm sure the mafia dumps dead body there but I decided that a dance was in order... It's what I do!

After staying overnight in a bit of a creepy 'Shining-esque' Hotel Roma, we took a side trip over to Pisa. Sidenote: The Leaning Tower... it does exist, weird I know... and it really does lean!
FACTS

It actually took over 177 years to complete
It began leaning almost immediately after the 3rd stage of construction began
It is slanted 3.9 m from vertical
Basically, the soil it was built on was like a dry alkali bed!

This is not an optical illusion

Really Natalie...

...That's what I thought!

Baxter had to get in on the photo op

After an afternoon in Pisa we headed out on the open road toward Tuscany. We soon found out that knowing how to get there on a map and having ridicuously confusing signs and road construction can lead you into the center of the narrow streets of Florence and into a 6 lane road about where your life flashes before your eyes! By some sort of magical miracle we escaped unharmed using the technique of following a giant city bus and by using the sun to figure out which way we were going we managed to escape into the even more confusing labrynth of roads in the tuscany countryside! I swear I saw the frickin' Minotaur, but we finally made it to the Villa Veronica and had a nice night with an amazingly surreal view out our balcony! Tuscany was so much more than we could have imagined, so relaxing and laid back. It was really one of the places Nat and I had always wanted to go and although I didn't fill my end of the bargain and become Asian and pregnant, we still had a chance to see those "creepy Italian trees!" and be Under the Tuscan Sun! Sidenote: If you haven't seen the movie, rent it now!