Today was Harper's last day of preschool at Happyland! Three wonderful years of peace, hope, and harmony. Gosh she seemed like a big girl back then, but she was just a baby! We celebrated with yogurtland after school and it will be cheeseburgers tonight. Time flies!
One of Harper's preschool buddies (and his parents) are going to Italy and asked about our trip. I wrote them the following email and thought it was wildly appropriate to post it all here.
LUCCA
Lucca is fantastic! Walled city with the tops of the walls as the city’s park. 2,5 miles around and everyone is up there riding bikes, running, walking, walking dogs, etc. Beautiful place to stroll. There are bike rental companies everywhere. We made friends with Laurie who owns this place with her husband. She’s American, he’s Italian. She’ll talk your ear off, but if you get there early to rent bikes, tell them we sent you! http://www.latoscananelcuore.it/
Our favorite coffee/breakfast/snack/lunch place was here:
https://www.facebook.com/panikolucca/
(they don’t have a website) Frederika was the young woman there every morning. {We knew we had become regulars/locals when she greeted us with a brusque "'Giorno!"
Right around the corner is an AWESOME place called Burro & Alici (Butter and Anchovies) They are a tapas place and opened literally 2 days before we first ate there:
https://www.facebook.com/BurroAlici-187942481705200/
We made friends with the owners: Alessandro and Laura. We went there 3 times with a huge party of people. We LOVE them. If you go, please say Julia and Kurt sent you! (We are friends on Facebook now.)
Tons of good Gelato around, but our fave was La Bottega Del Gelato:
https://www.facebook.com/LaBottegaDelGelatoLucca/
Things for kids full of energy! The Guinigi Tower with the trees on top:
http://www.comune.lucca.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/131
The Bell tower:
http://www.comune.lucca.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/132
Harper and I climbed both twice! There are a couple of playgrounds for the kids as well (Harper was a regular at the biggest one near the Tourist Info office). If you walk around the walls, you’ll see both as they are next to the walls.
Lucca also has great shopping (if you are into that) and the Anfiteatro which is a good place to stop and eat:
https://www.italyguides.it/en/tuscany/lucca/piazza-dell-anfiteatro
OH! And Lucca has a HUGE summer music festival every year with BIG names not sure what your dates are, but maybe you can catch something good:
http://www.summer-festival.com/
The Stones are playing in September…!!
Outskirts of Lucca - great family restaurant with fantastic pizza and it’s quite local Bimbotto (about 10-15 minute drive from the walls):
Yummy food and super friendly kind people. One of the waitresses hugged me goodbye the first night we were there!
Also nearby (15 minute drive from the walls) is this amazing Villa which you can spend an afternoon in:
http://www.parcovillareale.it/
You can bring in a picnic, your dog, whatever! It costs money to go in and the insides of the buildings are not open (under renovation) but the grounds are just great. If you are looking for a lazy afternoon of just chilling and having the kids run around. So many little gardens and fountains to look at. We were so pleasantly surprised. (I wrote about it in my blog.)
{I did a whole blog post about it here.}
Other things not Lucca related. These are in towns between Lucca and Florence:
Pinnochio Park:
It’s wackadoodle, but super fun (wrote about it in my blog)
Zoo- nice small zoo with two playground areas inside (Very important for Harper because she does’t care that much about zoos!) They have updated a few of the larger enclosures (Lions and tigers and Lynx and Elephant) so it’s more modern but a few other enclosures are very old and sad, but they clearly have plans. But you can have a giraffe lick you, so that’s fun.
https://www.zoodipistoia.it/en/
We heard about caves you can tour but didn’t go - seemed like a kid friendly, hot day activity! Book ahead.
http://welcometuscany.it/tuscany/lucca/garfagnana/wind_cave.htm
Montecatini Terme is a famous resort town with hot springs. We only went there to take the Funiculare up the mountain to Montecatini Alto - the Funiculare ride is SUPER cool, but I’m sure it will be crowded as all get out in Summer. And they have just an old window ticket booth and paper tickets, so I don’t think you can buy ahead!
http://www.montecatini.it/english/montecatini_funicular.html
San Gimignano (Smaller walled town full of towers) is a lovely day trip:
http://www.comune.sangimignano.si.it/en/tourism-culture
(Harper and I climbed the big tower there too)
FLORENCE AND ROME AND PISA (OH MY)
Some ProTips for Florence and Rome that we learned on this trip (and in these modern times):
If you want to see the David and if you want to climb the Duomo, you have to book timed tickets ahead of time. Otherwise it will be sold out or minimum you have to wait in line for hours! Same for stuff in Rome too - Colosseum, The Forum, The Baths of Caracalla, St. Peter’s Dome, Sistine Chapel, etc etc. http://www.coopculture.it/
As for where to stay in Rome - City Center. Here where we’ve stayed:
Not fancy, but clean and close to everything you want. If you aim your hotel or apartment finder to the areas around Piazza Navona or The Pantheon Or Piazza Di Popolo or the Vatican, you’ll be fine for a couple days in Rome. There are subways, but not a lot, plus it’s kinda fun to walk through all that stuff! Pantheon is my favorite building.
And Gelato. Just Gelato all day long. It will be hot, so having it 2 or 3 times in a day would not be unreasonable.
Oh, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa is 1/2 hour drive from Lucca (1.5 from Florence). Once you park at the tower area, it can literally be 1 hour in and out (not sure if you can buy tickets to climb it ahead of time or not). Kids under 8 cannot climb… :-(
The train from Florence to Lucca is 1:20 minutes, by car about 50 minutes.
So many amazing things to do and see!!
On our road trip to Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, I prepared with audio books. Last year we drove to Sequoia and listened to music (Hamilton was big then) as well as short stories from a kid's story podcast. We also had that awesome Star Wars recording from the 70's: The Story of Star Wars. Harper loves that, but it's only an hour long. As she is older and as it was going to be a longer trip, I thought why not Little House?
I downloaded Little House In The Big Woods and Little House On the Prairie. We listened to the first one all the way up and Harper seemed to like it. I asked her what her favorite parts were and she said, "When they were telling the stories" which means when Pa is telling stories about his own childhood and adventures. We started listening to LHOTP on the way home, but only got a few chapters in as we chose music and other stuff on that drive. So, I started reading the rest of the book to Harper at bedtime, two chapters a night.
Last night we got to the end and I was a MESS.
First I have to remind you that I am a HUGE fan of these books. Been reading them as long as I can remember. In fact, these two books (LH in the Big Woods and LH on the Prairie) are the first books I remember owning and going to the bookstore with my mom to get the next book was SO EXCITING. (Only rivaled by a more recent me opening my front door to receive the latest Harry Potter via Amazon on release day.) I read the LH books to this day, just for fun. I have bought many other books about these books. I love these books. I know useless details, not unlike this woman here, who is my LH twin.
BUT.
When you read them out loud, to your five year old -- It gets different. I knew there would be issues with the way the Indians are portrayed and the way they are talked about in LHOTP but DAMN. So after a few pages of "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" chit chat, I stopped to tell Harper about how people were wrong about a lot of things a long time ago. And that this book was written a long time ago and how they talk about Native Americans is wrong. And that people know better today. (Well, I didn't tell her the whole truth about racism still existing, as she'll learn that soon enough.) I brought it up again in later chapters about the "Indian War Cry" and she nodded as I reminded her about how wrong they were about the whole notion of who the Osage were.
As the book ends, the family has to leave as they had accidentally strayed into "Indian Territory" by 3 miles and soldiers would come and move them out. Pa just packs the wagon and they are off. They had built a house and a stable and bought and planted seeds for a corn field, potatoes and other veggies. And they just left it all. Then they say goodbye to their neighbors, one of them being Mr. Edwards, and they roll on west.
Me being the emotional sort and also enjoying the roller coaster of emotions that is menopause, I was crying as I read the end. Harper seemed unfazed by my crying - clearly she's used to me. It's not the first time I've cried while reading her bedtime stories. There is one written by a jewish woman telling the story about a quilt made and handed down through her family. And the one about the guy who walked the tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The book ends with "the towers are gone now..."
Anyway, I'm a cryer.
Last night as I put the book away and tucked Harper in, I thought ahead to the next books, excited to read them aloud. Farmer Boy is next and I like that one for a change of pace. Then Plum Creek. All good. Then I thought about Silver Lake and almost started crying right then. Silver Lake starts with (spoiler alert) Mary going blind and Jack the trusted dog DYING! I remember SOBBING when I very first read it as a kid. Man, that was brutal. It still makes me cry.
This is all a dream come true, tears or no tears. And I'm not going to force it. I hope hope hope that we keep reading these, that Harper reads them on her own as well and that she'll say "YES!" when I ask if she wants to go to Pepin Wisconsin or DeSmet South Dakota. For now, I'll keep the kleenex handy.
I 100% admit I used to be a person who said, "OMG preschools have GRADUATIONS?? How ridiculous." Because it kind of is.
On the other hand, marking an occasion is important. Call it whatever you want to call it - graduation or whatever. The more funerals you go to, especially the startling, out of nowhere ones, the more you realize how important it is to stop and reflect on life changes. Funerals, weddings, graduations - or more simply - transitions from one part of life to another. Stop the world from it's wild spinning for a second, reflect, breathe, applaud, enjoy, cry, celebrate. Celebrate where you started and how far you've come. It makes a difference.
So, cut me to crying at Harper's preschool graduation last Friday. The "graduation" consisted of the kids singing all kinds of wonderful "I've done it!" songs and taking lots of pictures, then dancing. Each child got a one line description and Harper's was "always the peacemaker." My heart melted with joy. What a wonderful thing to have said about your five-year-old!**
Mark those moments. Celebrate them all.
**My preschool or kindergarten year end report included the line "Julia has to learn she can't always be the boss." I have almost learned that. Still working on it.
Yesterday, Harper was watching cartoons and I sat down with her. Five minutes later, Willoughby (the cat) came and sat in my lap.
Harper looked over and said: "Hey, I was going to sit in your lap!"
I said, "Okay, you can. I can move Willoughby."
She said, "Well do it!"
I laughed and nudged Willoughby off, then my big girl came and sat in my lap for another five minutes until it was time to brush teeth.