The Arrival of Rita

Late November brought two new friendly faces to the castle. First was the arrival of Anna’s mom Rita (AKA Gina, long story that we wont get into :>). Rita arrived to the welcome arms of our family and was a wonderful house guest for the ten days that she was with us. This was not her first trip to Italy and having been born in Malta (A small island South of Sicily) many things about Italy reminded her of her childhood and heritage. It had been over three months since she had seen her daughter and grandchildren so needless to say, she was very happy and emotional upon her arrival. It was wonderful to see Anna and her mom embrace at the airport when she arrived and the two of them spent a significant amount of time together in her ten day visit.

Trey and Olivia were really excited to see their grandma as well and the three of them had a lot of quality time together. Gina arrived on Thanksgiving Day and those of you that know my mother en law, know that she is a “Purist”, so Anna and I planned a nice surprise for her. We found out that one of our favorite local restaurants “Olio and Convivium” was serving up a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, so we made a reservation and the five of us gave thanks in Florence, “American Style”! The dinner (Not sure why I would expect anything else) was terrific! In fact, I think that I insulted Gina when I said it was the best Thanksgiving Dinner that I had ever had! We had Turkey, pea soup, stuffing, mashed potatoes and apple pie with vanilla gelato! Damn it was good!

Much of our time while Gina was in town was spent relaxing and visiting some of our favorite restaurants. We also took a day trip to Sienna when Kirk arrived. Sienna is one of Gina’s favorite cities (Mine as well) so it was a nice treat for her to revisit the wonderful terracotta walled city (See Sienna in this months blog for more details).

Gina loved the castle as much as anyone that has visited it since we have lived here. Upon her arrival, I took her upstairs to the tower and showed her the 360 degree view. The first words that came out of her mouth were: “This is the best view in the world!” It might just be! I think that what she enjoyed the most about the castle was the “Openness” of it. She doesn’t like closed and dark spaces and the fact that the castle’s walls are nearly entirely windows, made it very enjoyable for her.

Another highlight for us was going to Santa Maria Di Fiore for mass. This is something that we promised Gina we would do with her when she arrived. I am no longer a church goer and we wont get into the reasons why in this blog, but I have always wanted to attend a mass in Italy. The service was exactly the way I remembered it from some twenty years ago and I think that the kids were shocked to see that I know virtually every Catholic prayer by heart still to this day!

Finally, a pathetic addiction took place when Gina arrived. The addiction is known as “Prisonbreakaritis”! It is defined as an inability to go to bed at night without watching at least two episodes of the hit Fox Show, Prison Break! Every night like clock work the three of us (Kirk joined in later) put the kids to bed and watched Michael Skofield and Lincoln Burrows plan their elaborate escape from prison. By the second night, Gina was hooked more than Richard Pryor liked cocaine! We watched 22 episodes in nine days! Pathetic ain’t it!