Cooking dinner in Florence was super fun! Kate, Alexa, Andie and Zach made linguini from scratch and have come to appreciate the amount of hard labour that goes into each and every noodle. Jeremy and Will prepared, and scooped out the center parts of each zucchini which were later filled by Jason A and Eric with finely chopped vegetables and grated Parmesan  which was used to stuff the zucchinis. Jason C had an important role- dicing tomatoes for the pasta sauce. He said that he now understands why his mom buys cans of diced tomatoes! Meanwhile, while the dinner was being prepared, Jill and Emily were in charge of baking the cake for desert and Jess and Helen made the chocolate filling for the cake. After an hour, we enjoyed our hard work and feasted on our delicious creations.

Parents- if you’re lucky maybe we will cook for you upon our return!

While in Florence, we got to dance the night away at a super fun night club, and were very impressed by Will’s dance moves! We climbed the whopping 463 steps to the top of the Duomo,  Alexa introduced us to la strega nocciola which was one of the most delicious gelato places with by far some of the most exotic flavors, lavender, chocolate chilli pepper, and fig among others!

 

During our tour of the Academia, we got to see Michelangelo’s artwork which were very impressive! We had the afternoon to explore a little of central Florence, visited the gardens, the Uffizi, Santa Croce where we saw where Michelangelo and Galileo were buried (Jason A thought it was pretty neat that we were in the same room as such important historical figures) and also were able to see how leather is made, and some of us exercised our bargaining skills at the leather market.

Sorrento… Oh where to begin… Did somebody say Italian paradise? Our first day was spent enjoying some nice rest and relaxation by the lovely pool at our hotel. We went for a delicious dinner, arguably the best one yet- where we enjoyed Italian dishes on a beautiful terrace. Later that night we sang at the karaoke bar and had a blast!

 We took a ferry to the island of Capri- breath taking  island- where we tried their famous freshly squeezed lemonade and visited the gardens where we took pictures of the great view of the Sea.  We later took a boat tour around the island where we got to go swimming in the famous grottos. Zack, Jason A and Will bought ‘european swim suits’ which they sported for our capri adventure.

 We’re all having the best summer ever- I could go on and share more stories but I will end here and let you hear about our more recent adventures from your own lovely children- perhaps over a homemade authentic Italian dinner prepared by them for you!

Until then… Ciao

The Westcoast Blogger