Italy

Girl Scouts sent me to Pisa, Italy for some training as I am the new Committee Chair for Hohenfels Girl Scouts. Ryan was on leave, for the summer break, so we decided to make a family trip out of it. We left early Thursday morning and headed down to Italy. Italy was beautiful. Surprisingly, it reminded us a lot of Florida. It was hot, humid, there were palm trees, lizards and sand spurs. We were planning on camping in the on post campground. Unbeknownst to us however, all the pine trees in the campground had gotten some rare disease and had to be cut down. So we were camping in a wide open space with no shade!

My conference went from Friday-Sunday so Ryan had to entertain the kiddos on his own. They managed to keep cool from the sun by going to the park which was in the shade and going to the pool. Ryan also tried to take them to a beach but they were kicked off... appearently it was a private beach.

Pisa wasn't the most beautiful city but the area that the leaning tower was in was awesome! It was so neat to be able to see the tower!

Ryan and the kiddos had had enough of camping so we decided to head back Sunday after my conference ended instead of Tuesday morning. For fuel we usually get a ration that we have to put money on to a special debit card to use... to allow us to pay U.S. prices for fuel. In Italy they don't use the debit card you have to buy coupons that allow you to pay U.S. prices. We quickly learned that most gas stations in Italy are closed on Sunday. Many of them have a system that you can pay at the pump and get desiel fuel but you cannot get gasoline.

We were getting very low on gas and having a hard time finding a gas station on the autostrasse (like our expressways... but they are all toll roads in Italy.) There are only two types of gas stations that accept the fuel coupons that we got from the Army. There were none near us. It got a little harry for awhile but we ended up finding a gas station that was open. We had to pay full price for a few liters of fuel but I'll take that over running out of gas in the middle of Italy! Shortly there after we were able to find the right type of gas station and were able to fill up. The rest of the trip was uneventful. We ended up stopping about an hour away from home at 2 am. We had eaten a early dinner and I was getting hungry. We stopped at McDonalds and had some french fries. The kiddos woke up in a great mood and we had a giggle fest in the McDonalds parking lot waiting for Ryan to come back outside. It was an awesome end to a great trip.

Wish that we had more time there Italy was beautiful so much more that we would have like to see. We would love to go back before we leave.