dreaming of traveling

This summer, we took a short and very fun vacation to Redding, CA and Legoland, CA (pics coming soon). But, I'm dreaming of traveling further. I'm dreaming of international travel.

My husband and I have finally applied and received our passports. Any travel we've done (inside of the USA, Canada, Bahamas and Mexico) only required our birth certificated. Now we need to apply for each of the kids to get theirs so that we are ready to go!!

I've been dreaming of Italy and entered a contest to win a free week at Al Gelso Bianco sponsored by Ciao Bambino. Her wonderful review and contest can be found here.

My Italian dreams began when my cousin announced that he and his family were moving to Naples, Italy for 2-3 years. I'm a lot jealous of their adventure. I've been following their adventures and quick weekend trips since they arrived there in August. The kids are attending school that is teaching them in Italian and English. They run off to Rome or Florence to spend a few days. The romance of day to day life in Italy. Ahhh!! I'm dreaming again. 

Marc and I have been discussing going over there since we have a free place to stay and I've put in some airfare watches to alert me when round trip tickets drop. I'm more than OK with pulling my kids out of school for 2-3 weeks so that we can experience this adventure and better yet, in the off season. I'm sure we will miss out on some of the tourist experience and the heat of summer, but Spring or Fall look just as wonderful over there. Really, even if it was snowing, I'm in heaven because I'm in Italy. We've been planning on spending a weekend in Naples visiting, 5 days in Rome, the weekend in Naples and then off to Venice for 5 days. A slow road trip through Florence and Pisa (a little of Tuscany?) and then back to Rome to fly home. Ideally, I would love to spend a month there. And I know that would even be too short. But, we might have to scale back to 2 weeks. Which is still wonderful because it's Italy!!

So, fingers crossed that our name is drawn to win a free week and an amazing farmhouse to explore Florence from.