home again home again
Great shot flying into DCA for Kelly and Ian’s wedding.
Great shot flying into DCA for Kelly and Ian’s wedding.
I squeezed in three nights in NYC en route to Kelly and Ian’s wedding in DC. The trip gave me lots of good Ogilvy NYC time, and saw me reunited with the gang from Italy for one night only. Luckily that night we ended up at a dive bar in Brooklyn that only served cheese balls, chili dogs and Frito Pie for food - which is basically an average day of eating for me.
Let’s hear it for New York
After a scary fall health-wise, spending lots of time with my Dad was the major point of the trip home. From fall walks, to more visits to apple-less apple orchards, to copious amounts of Little C’s for me and breakfast rounds for Dad we got a ton of bonding time. We also now know that Polly’s Country Market “Seafood Cove” does not carry sushi grade tuna, in no uncertain terms.
Shark & Daughter
Paging Tim Allen…
Pure Michigan Fall
Highlight of the trip was “apple picking” at a non-orchard with the now Michigan-based @unterekless. Despite the fact that it turned out Michigan’s apple crop had been devastated in a freeze, and there was no actual orchard at the place Karen took me anyway, we had a great time drinking warm cider and eating spiced donuts. A proper midwestern fall outing with a great friend (except for the part where we were almost stung to death by a swarm of bees.)
Not picking apples with Karen
Wine fortunes end
Our day trip to Florence lacked direction. Literally. We were incapable of moving in the same direction for more than about 50 feet - as tested by Steve, who determined it took us about 25 minutes to walk in a straight line as a group.
We ate a long lunch, climbed the Duomo and sat around (steps, bridges, curbs) while soaking up the local culture. Sadly, we did not see David due to an extraordinarily long line - there’s always next time.
Firenze
The Cast of Ciao Down
After a stop off at a grocery store and a death defying drive up a very large hillside in an manual transmission, we arrived at our home for the next five days - Todi Castle. To say it was picture perfect would be an understatement - the place was so amazing we literally spent the entire first day sitting and staring out at the landscape (and consuming an absurd amount of wine.) ”I think we just made a full rotation around the house!”
Somewhere along the line, we hatched a concept for a new television dramady called Ciao Down, where 8 zany Americans move to Italy to open up their own restaurant. Hilarity ensued.
All in all the eight of us took down 80 bottles of wine in 5 days - which did not include 2 day trips to vineyards and one trip to Florence. My liver has barely recovered.
Todi Castle
The trip to Italy continued with a big three way meet up at the Rome airport arrivals area. Somehow, we all found each other literally simultaneoulsy in a very crowded area - which darkly foreshadowed the next four hours we spent wandering around the airport looking for ATMs, bathrooms and food, losing people still drunk from Copenhagen all nighter and standing in line at the car rental place. Just say no to autolavaggio!
