Arezzo and Arrivederci

On Thursday, we drove down to Arezzo for our last day of adventures. To be honest, I wasn't that excited about seeing the town, but we were all really happy we went. Once we got through the sprawl, the interior of the town is absolutely beautiful... we had a great time wandering through the streets, viewing some beautiful frescoes in the cathedral, and playing in a gorgeous park above the town that offered views of all of Tuscany.

The town was about to host their annual festival, so Jack and Kate purchased trumpets from a souvenir vendor and proceeded to entertain the entire town with their parade (maybe "entertain" is too strong a word)... but Jack did have a great time teaching Kate how to blow through the trumpet and was so proud of her when she finally figured it out.

We had a great lunch of pizza margherita and, yes (one final time!), gelato on the way home. On a side note, we're seriously worried that the kids are going to go through gelato detox once we get back to Zurich.

On Friday, we decided to just stay near the house and relax before our long car ride home on Saturday. We took a little walk in the hills near the house, played in the yard, took our last swim (sniff, sniff!) and spent time working on arts and crafts outside. We had a beautiful sunset on our last night and could not have been happier with how amazing our vacation was.

On Saturday, we woke up early to say good-bye to the house (Jack and Kate literally said good-bye to every window, door, and piece of furniture) and we headed on the road by 8am. Kate did MUCH better this way - one close call, but no vomiting! The only thing that spoiled our trip was getting stuck in traffic south of the St Gottard's tunnel - we were there (see picture attached) for 2 hours with no movement... but the kids were great and we all learned lots of new car games and car songs to keep us amused. We arrived home Saturday night just in time for Jay to run down to the train station to get us some groceries, and all were happy to unpack, see our house, and just relax outside of car seats!

If you're made it through our entire vacation blog, you'll no doubt have guessed that all the pizza, pasta and gelato caught up to us - especially me - so we're off to the gym now that we're back! We had a really wonderful vacation and could not have asked for a better mix of sightseeing, good food, and great family memories - we thank God how lucky we are.