The saving grace of mud pies

August 22, 2011

I'll try to move from the more pedantic entries about our surroundings.

Today we rented a car and, in the outrageous heat of the early afternoon, set off for Lake Vico (around 15 minutes south of us). Like the other lakes in this area, Lake Vico was created by a volcano and now rests surrounded by a forest and nature preserve. The legend is equally fun to imagine and preferred by Alex and Eleni: Hercules struck his club in the ground and - there you go - a lake!

Neil and I found a great spot to sit under these trees. The kids are barely visible in the distance here (two dots to the left of the tree in the middle) happily making mud pies out of the lake grass and the volcanic mud. Big project. Kept them busy and focused for hours.

This is the view from our desk

Sunday, August 21

Our apartment is fully furnished. We want for nothing. We all have comfy beds and fans in each room. We've even got access to internet, although it's old school - no wifi - and quite temperamental. I'm plugged into the modem and this is the view from our desk in the late afternoon.

The heat caught up with me. I've been desperately hydrating all day. I think my fanatic "drink water" command for the kids was one I needed to follow better for myself. I'm ok now, but I had Neil researching how to get to the hospital (just in case) earlier in the day.

It's 7 PM and Neil is heroically at the playground with the kids. Me? I'm finally feeling like a human being again.

This is the view from our balcony

Saturday, August 20

This is where I hang laundry and watch the pigeons. It's not much of a balcony (no visions of me sitting on it drinking my expresso should come to mind. It's purely practical). The building on the bottom right seems deserted by humans and left as a pigeon coup. It's a pigeon haven/heaven...we wake up to them every morning.

It's incredibly hot here. A heat wave even.

Alex directed Neil around Viterbo with his map; they found a playground nearby. Eleni and I braved the supermarket and afterwards, found a McDonalds. I'll share the pathetic truth of keeping her sane right now with you here: Eleni had a happy meal and it really did make her happy.*

*I think once Eleni gets a routine (school, etc.), she will be fine. But, right now...it's a delicate situation.

This is the door to our apartment

Friday August 19

Aside from a few exploratory walks in the early morning and early evening, we spent most of our day behind this door. We're trying to escape the oppressive heat.

This is the door into our apartment building

Thursday, August 18

Transportation experiment #1:

We walked (some ran and hopped) down the 46 stairs (we're on the third floor), opened and shut this door behind us at 8:50 AM. We bought tickets for the blue bus and stood on the sidewalk waiting for the bus at 9:30 to take us to the beach. The bus was on time, but unfortunately zoomed right past us. Correct information about where the stop was? Not sure. Neil had sorted out enough to know the next one arrived at 11:30. No good. Way too hot to stand around.

We walked a ways and then stopped for coffee. Smart move. Fully caffeinated, Neil developed our next plan. This involved an orange bus stop.

By 10:30 AM we were in a San Martino, a village 10 minutes east of Viterbo, in the pool at the local hotel.

Kids could not have been happier. Eleni went down the slide for two hours and Alex pretended to throw grenades (and use other various weapons of war) at an Italian boy who responded in kind. The two never exchanged names or even spoke a word to each other (except making the sound of machine gun fire) for the hour they played like this. Neil swam and read. I read and swam.

Perfect.