La Campagna

With the arrival of my husband comes the use of a car. This is always very exciting as we get 'village-locked' when he isn't here, only venturing out as far as our legs will take us - and when it's little boy legs we're talking about that doesn't take us very far at all...

First day was the beach - obviously. The boys had been looking forward to going to the "beachside" (as Beni calls it) ever since Austin went back to London the last time.

And then there was the day the rain came - so we headed inland to la campagna (the countryside).
A 15 minute drive up the road took us to a sleepy little village called Bolognano which has a sneaky little walking track on the edge of the village.
Stepping precariously over stinging nettle and big bushes of wild sage we had our first family tramping trip in Italy! The rain had died right down to a soft drizzle which made it a pleasant but humid walk with unfortunately lots of mosquitos...

The sounds of the river on the rocks below us, the smell of rain upon the earth, the excited chatter of our three boys as they discovered centipedes on the ground, fossils in the rocks, sticks for carrying - all this made for a really wonderful and memorable family adventure.
Even the millions of mosquito bites I received couldn't dampen my mood.

Highlight of the trip? Finding fig trees on the roadside weighed down with figs ripe for the picking.
And so we indulged.
(Rebekah you would be proud of us - the figs were definitely on the 'public property' side of the fence...)

My new favourite treat is fresh figs with mascapone. A-blimmin-mazing!

And now, our friends have arrived and more arriving tonight - a week of celebrating life and Italy is ahead of us.

Oh yeah, and our Swiss friends who are the amazing photographers have their cameras with them so stay tuned for some rather incredible photos to come.

Fun times, people, fun times!

...and as I look up from the computer I see my 2 year old son trying to climb into his younger brother's cot with a massive poo in his undies = Awesome.

:::

Linking up here