Urbino

We finally arrived in Urbino last Tuesday. We didn't get to unpack and settle in right away, though, because the apartment turned out not to be as nice as we'd hoped, and we ended up arranging to stay in a different place outside of the old town. We moved Friday night, and since then we've made ourselves at home. Hopefully Eddie can start catching up on sleep!

Eddie's head finally healed from his fall in Monterchi, so yesterday I gave him another big scrape! We were at a playground by the Fortress at the top of town, which Eddie had all to himself. The first time Eddie visited this playground, it was packed with dozens of kids, but on a sleepy Sunday it seems that nobody's out! (Or maybe they all went to the beach—it was pretty hot!) Anyway, there was a carousel with elephants and caterpillars to sit on, so I helped Eddie sit on the caterpillar and started spinning it around. He was laughing and having a good time, when he fell off and went skidding into the dirt. He seemed okay, but later we noticed he had a great big scrape above his elbow. I don't think this poor kid will ever be uninjured.

He's been learning some Italian words and animal sounds! Back in Rome, Loredana taught him to say "Cucú" (Coo-coo), which is what Italians say for peek-a-boo, and he glommed on to that right away. He likes to play Cucu with Nonno, and now that seems to be his name for Nonno! Whenever Eddie sees him, he'll say "Cu cu cu cu." Once when we talked about Nonno while he wasn't there, Eddie went running from room to room saying "Cu cu" (rattling all the door knobs, too.) We have to lock the doors here to keep Eddie out of rooms where he shouldn't be, since he's learned to turn the door handle and walk in. He's been turning the keys—it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to unlock the doors. Then we're in for it.

Eddie has also done a pretty good job saying "kikiriki", which is how Italians say "Cock-a-doodle-doo" for roosters. Since his triumph in saying "neigh," he's also learning to say "mooo" (which is the same in Italian), but he usually says "booo" instead. He's also starting waving to people Italian-style (opening and closing the hand.) And he's begun imitating the sounds of bells and other collisions by saying "bing, bong" or "bang." The other day, we had just come out of Urbino's Duomo when the bells started ringing, so they were really loud. Eddie was drinking some water, but he was so surprised that he spat it out. Then he said "bong, bong!"

At another playground, not far from our apartment, Eddie met a little girl named Veronica, about a year old. It turns out her mother is Russian; we both assumed that the other was a native Italian who would be able to tell that we don't speak natively, so it took us a while to figure out that we were both foreigners! We were standing on some gravel when Veronica fell down on her rump. Her mother picked her up and shook out some rocks that had stuck to Veronica's hand. Eddie watched, then he said "Boom ba-da boom!", picked up some rocks, and shook them out.

So, he's definitely getting better at imitating, and it seems like he might be stringing some words together, too; he might say "big boy" and some other phrases (but it's hard to tell.) We think throwing all this Italian in the mix might slow down his talking. But it's supposed to be a lot easier than learning it when he's older.

Arezzo and Monterchi

After leaving Florence, we drove through the Chianti region, keeping to curvy back roads so Eddie could sleep for a while. We stopped for lunch at La Loggettina in Impruneta. It started raining, which helped him fall asleep after we set off again. (Eddie doesn't sleep very much on car rides, unlike most babies; but if he's tired enough and we sing a long lullaby, it might work.)

After a nice nap, we got to Arezzo, where we spent the night. It's a very charming little place, much more relaxed than Florence, with nice pedestrian streets and beautiful (but really steep!) piazzas. Eddie took another nap soon after we got settled in to the hotel, while Nonno and Anne went to explore the city. After Eddie got up, we went to join them, and they took us to a playground they'd found behind the Duomo (cathedral) at the top of the city! On the way, Eddie climbed a really steep street on his own, meowed at some cats and woofed at some dogs. Then he got distracted by looking at a big statue of Petrarch, who was born in Arezzo. Finally he got to the playground and played on the swings and a slide.

For some reason, dozens of lines full of laundry were hung over the Piazza of the Duomo—it looked like an installation, not actual laundry. There was more in the main piazza (Piazza Grande). Also, in a courtyard just off the Piazza del Duomo, Nonno found a life-sized inflatable bulldozer. Eddie thought that was pretty strange. We got dinner at Caffé dei Costanti in front of the church of St. Francis. Then Eddie ran around splashing his hands in puddles (a practice we're not sure we approve of.)  After dinner Eddie really enjoyed riding piggy-back on Papa (he used my arms like levers, lifting them up, then pushing them down, then laughing.) We snuck around the top side of Piazza Grande. When Anne saw us, she came running up from the bottom of this big, steep piazza, and Eddie (sitting on my shoulders) couldn't stop laughing the whole time she was running up.

The next morning, after exploring Arezzo a little more and having a morning nap, we hit the road for Urbino. For lunch, we stopped at Monterchi, a really nice little Tuscan village. We had lunch at Una Terrazza in Toscana (A Terrace in Tuscany). Before eating, Eddie and I explored the village a little bit:

Then Eddie worked on learning to slurp pasta!

It turned out that right next to our restaurant was a museum which had the Madonna del Parto, a famous painting by Piero della Francesca that Nonno knew. Every little town in Italy is like that—the smallest hamlet will have some important artwork and a picturesque church. We went to see the painting, and the ticket also covered a Museum of Scales nearby, so we went to see that too. That was two stories filled with scales, of all different designs, for weighing lots of different things. It was a strange little museum!
Eddie was walking down a steep path when he tripped and fell. It was so steep that he couldn't stop, and he scraped his forehead along the stones until his head bonked into a metal post. The poor guy! He's okay, though, besides a big scrape on his forehead. He cheered up pretty fast.

Walking in Florence

Florence

Auto stop on the road to Florence

It was rainy much of the time we were in Florence, which kept it nice and cool. The old center of the city is mostly car-free, which is nice for Eddie to walk around. On Thursday we walked in Le Cascine, a big park along the river Arno near our hotel. We'd heard there were playgrounds, but we went a long way without seeing any. Eventually we turned around and headed into the city along the river. We came to Ponte Vecchio, a bridge which is completely covered in two-story buildings on both sides, so that you don't even know it's a bridge. It's all jewelry shops now; Eddie like to look at the shiny things, or maybe that was his mother. A couple blocks from the far side of the bridge (south) is the flat where Nonno once lived for 6 months, long ago.  Back on the north side, Eddie got out and walked with us toward the Palazzo Vecchio, where a waiter at a restaurant (which all have tables outside) accosted him: "Giovanotto! Dove vai?" Hey kid! Where are you going? Eddie gave him a look and kept going.

On Friday we all visited the chapel of the Medici, where they're all buried. Sometimes Eddie gets restive in museums, but he liked this one. He mostly enjoyed pictures of babies. He is always impressed going into high-vaulted rooms, like the vast central cupola of the chapel. He especially likes making loud echoes...

When we left, all around there was a big open-air market, with kiosks and stands selling all sorts of things, filling the streets for blocks. We wended our way through the crowds and found a place to eat called Da Pinocchio. Florence has a lot of good food for Eddie: Ribollita, a kind of bread soup, and plates of salty cheeses with honey, a new favorite. After lunch we visited the Duomo (cathedral), and Eddie walked all around on the mosaic floors. Then Nonno took him back to the hotel, and Eddie fell asleep in his stroller, so Nonno just wheeled the stroller into the room and left him to sleep in it.

On Saturday we all headed south of the river. We found a trattoria that Nonno recalled fondly, the Quattro Leoni (Four Lions.) Eddie used his bread to do "scarpetta"—wipe up his plate! What a good mangione! The waiters liked him, as usual. Eddie has been enjoying lots of salads (he eats everything but the lettuce) and fruit. He also likes bread, which restaurants always bring before the meal, and we have to try to slow him down or he will fill up on nothing but!

Eddie managed to say "neigh" like a horse! He's very proud about it, and now whenever we ask about an animal sound he doesn't know (or some that he does) he will say "neigh" (previously, he would say "bah" when he didn't know; before that it was "meow" and before that "awooga.")
He also learned to say "boh," which is Italian for "I dunno." He does it very well. It's a good all-purpose response to questions in Italian, or a general comment in a discussion.

After lunch we went to the Palazzo Pitti, one of the Medici's main palaces, which now contains a bunch of museums. We all went through the Palatine Gallery, which has lots of statues and paintings, including a big painting of baby Hercules strangling the snakes that came into his crib (which was Eddie's Halloween costume last year.) Eddie put up with all this for a while, but then he got thirsty, so I took him out to drink some water and run around in the Palace's huge courtyard. After the others got out, we all went behind the Palace to the Boboli Gardens, a big park which was once the private garden of the Palace. Part of it is a labyrinth of tall hedges and very steep paths!

Boboli Gardens

Eddie made it to the top of this steep hill all by himself. Then he pointed at his stroller: time to ride now!
He took a little nap in the garden. Then we crossed back over the Ponte Vecchio and got dinner at a kind of creepy place by the Palazzo Vecchio. On the way home we passed by this big boar.

The "Porcellino" at the Mercato Nuovo

On Sunday, all the waiters whistled like birds for Eddie: at lunchtime at the Grotta Guelfa by the Mercato Nuovo (in the center of town), and at dinner at Da Pinocchio by the Mercato San Lorenzo (at the edge of town.) We sure spent a lot of time in markets that day! Eddie tried to whistle too, but he doesn't quite have it down. Between markets we visited the Uffizi, a big museum with tons of important art. Eddie's favorite was a fresco with a cherub who had stolen one of Zeus's thunderbolts—a baby lugging a big heavy thing around, like Eddie when he absconds with a 2-liter water bottle. Eddie made it through a good bit before he got bored and Nonno took him outside.

Poor Eddie missed his afternoon nap, so the next day we hit the road earlier than planned, hoping that he would sleep in the car.

Videos in Malta

Pics from Malta

The Cathedral in Mdina

A view from Mdina

Sometimes he didn't sleep in the rickety crib

On watch from the bastions of Valletta

Rome redux

After Malta we spent several more days in Rome, where we saw more of all the relatives. Eddie charmed them all by showing off his animal noises. He's beginning to learn the names of animals in Italian, too. Eddie spent the days with Nonno at playgrounds and eating gelato while his parents visited the Vatican museums one day, and the Roman forum, Colosseum, and Palatine Hill the next. Who got the better deal?

Eddie did come with us into St. Peter's cathedral. He thought it was pretty impressive. Then he went with Nonno while we went to the museums. They had gone to a bar to get lunch (in Italy, this is not as irresponsible as it sounds) when it started pouring! They were sitting outside under an umbrella, and lots of people crowded in to escape the rain. Everybody watched Eddie eating, and he put on a show of saying "mmmm" and smiling and drilling his cheek. Everyone applauded and laughed. When it stopped raining, everyone waved "ciao" and Eddie waved back!

Hey Eddie, it's hard to make out but I think there might be a Colosseum over there

The next day, Eddie visited a playground on top of Nero's palace, the Domus Aurea, while we visited the Forum and Colosseum. Thanks to the meddling of those no-good parents, he had fruit for a snack this time, instead of gelato (at least, that's what was reported to us...) While we went for a quick look at the Palatine Hill, he revisited the Circus Maximus, where he got to see a chariot race take place—but with bicycles instead of horses! He brought some of the stones from the gravel on the track away with him, and left them on the seat of the car.

The next day, it was time to say Ciao to everyone—especially Baby (ie Lorenzo)—as we hit the Via Flaminia for Florence.

Airplane

Eddie is pretty excited about planes now. He is good at recognizing pictures of them, even little icons on a map, and makes the sign (for him, a flat hand moving horizontally through the air) and says "vvvvvv". When we go through airports and get on planes, he does it all the time. He has been good on all our flights so far.

While we were driving through Malta with our Maltese guides, he made the airplane sign. We looked around, and sure enough, there was a plane flying by, but it was in front and to the right where he couldn't have seen it! The people in front could see, and talked about it, so maybe Eddie heard them—but they were speaking Maltese! I guess he's already picking up a new language!

(Maltese is a bizarre mixture of Arabic, Italian, and English, which produces such place names as Ta'Xbiex and Marsaxlokk.)

Malta

As we landed in Malta, we wanted Eddie to drink some milk, since swallowing helps to equalize pressure in the ears. So we told him that the milk would be good for his ears. Then he tried to put the milk in his ears! Luckily, it was in a sippy cup with a valve, so it didn't spill all over his head.

On our first day in Malta, we ate at the Fortizza, a restaurant in a little old fort on the beach. It's built of sandstone, like everything else on Malta, and since it hardly ever rains, you can't tell how old anything is: stuff from 1300 and 1800 look alike. Eddie was tired from his long airplane journey, but the rest of us ignored him and stuffed our faces.

He's been sharing our food, having some of whatever we order. He'll eat just about anything we give him, except lettuce, olives or anchovies. His taste for some veggies seems to vary day by day, though.

The hotel provided us with a crib, which was frighteningly rickety and had a drop-side secured with a simple slide bolt latch, which we had foolishly taught him to open with a latch board. So we couldn't leave him to fall asleep on his own.

That night, we went to Valletta, the capital of the Knights of Malta, on a bus. Entry into the city is through immense walls, with huge outerworks around a little gate reachable over a narrow bridge. Those knights were serious! But a few blocks down, there were no walls along the seaside. Didn't they have to fear attack by sea more than by land? What's up with those guys?

Strangely, Valletta seemed like a ghost town, with all the restaurants and shops closed, around 8pm. We ended up at The King's Own Band Club, where it seemed like most of the staff had gone home and a busboy and a waitress were trying to run the restaurant by themselves. Eddie entertained himself by saying "baby" over and over (looking at some pictures of children.)

On the second day, Eddie visited some cool playgrounds near our hotel, and made friends with a Maltese boy. After his nap we took a taxi to Mdina, the old capital. This is a small stone city where he enjoyed walking around and watching horse-drawn carriages go by. After lunch he convinced us to take a carriage ride, which went all over the little place. We tried to teach him that horses say "neigh", but he would only say "bah", like he says for sheep. He hasn't been doing Ns for a while.

The next day, Eddie hung out with Nonno, visiting playgrounds and walking along the rocky beach visiting pools, while his parents had lunch in Valletta and made their way to Tarxien to see the 5000-year-old temples there. That night, a friend of Nonno and her boyfriend drove us around the southern coast, which we hadn't gotten to. We got out to walk along the coast by the even older temples of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, which were closed, but we saw the outside. It was nice to see some of the island which wasn't covered by buildings.

Poor Eddie is short on sleep, but he's being very good. He loves stomping around in all these new places, and getting attention from people. He can also tell when something is impressive, and he'll point and say "Oooh!" What a good little tourist he is!

The Eternal City

Eddie's family came out in droves to meet him when we got to Rome! I think he met 18 relatives in a couple of days: Lina and Enzo, whose home we stayed in; her parents, Mena and Antonio; their daughters, Serena (well, Eddie already met her in Boston) and Cristiana, along with her husband John and 7-month old son Lorenzo; Giovanni who drove us around, his wife Mena and daughter Valentina; their sister-in-law Loredana and her children Simone and Elena; Aunt Assunta; her daughter Sabrina; Aunt Cecilia; and her son Dario. Eddie liked to play with Lorenzo (and call him "baby"), but he mostly wanted to take all of Lorenzo's things and not give them back.

Eddie meets Lorenzo

In back: Enzo, Mena, Valentina. In front: Anne, Eddie, Giovanni

Eddie examines Lorenzo's things. From left, John, Cristiana, Lorenzo, Anne, Eddie, Kolya, Mena, Lina

The first night we had a feast at Lina and Enzo's, then went to bed. The second day we had a feast at Mena and Giovanni's, then drove around Rome for a bit. We went to see the Bocca Della Verita, a huge mask, but there was a huge crowd waiting, so instead we walked around the block to the Circus Maximus. Eddie had fun running around in the gravel there (on the anciently blood-stained ground.)

We drove up the Aventine hill and visited some nice gardens, like an orange grove, with wide views of Rome: St. Peter's, the Tiber, churches and parks. Eddie tried some roasted chestnuts. We saw an Italian baby there all bundled up in a winter coat and a winter hat! To our Boston sensibilities, it was not very cold; it was a little warmer than in Dublin, where the bus driver told us it was too hot for the Irish! Eddie was in layered shirts and sandals. Anne pulled his hood up so that the other baby wouldn't feel too overdressed. Eddie found a cool pinecone. He also liked playing with Giovanni's keys.

Near that spot we stepped into a church (St. Sabina) playing organ music, with a totally empty nave. Further on was the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, our next destination! Those wily knights placed their door and keyhole to frame a view of St. Peter's dome.

That night was a pizza party at Mena's, with tons of relatives again. Eddie received a cool magnetic book as a present from Loredana.

Elena, Loredana, Serena (out of frame), Anne, and Kolya watch Eddie open his present

He really enjoys showing off for an audience. When he ate, he would twirl his finger in his cheek and say "mmm," and everybody loved it. He likes to babble and make everyone laugh.

There's a little step out of the living room where we ate, and Eddie managed to walk up it all on his own (a new skill he's working on, instead of crawling up stairs: usually we need to hold his hands) and even to step down sometimes. But usually he took the prudent course of backing down over it on all fours. Everybody watched while he made this maneuver one time. When he finished and stood up to find everyone watching, he took a bow! He quite deliberately bent at the waist, keeping his hands at his sides, and made a full bow, then straightened up! Of course we all went wild. I've never seen him do that before (he'll bend over, but he puts his hands on the ground.) I have no idea where he picked that up, but it was hilarious!

The next morning we embarked for Malta!

Ireland addendum

On our last day in Dublin, we had a picnic lunch outside the Department of Education, which has an elementary school on the grounds, which was on recess. Some little girls saw Eddie through the fence as he was wandering around and said "Hello baby! Come here baby!" Eddie walked back and forth nearby, smiling at them. A little boy joined the girls and said "Be our friend!"

Pics

Orange Grove in Rome with Giovanni

Walking in Malta