Beach Day - Grosetto

The Monday after Easter Sunday is also a holiday in Italy (I love that). We were feeling a little guilty for dragging the kids to all our favorite places. Easter Sunday felt like a marathon with church in the morning, a formal dinner in the afternoon, and a trip to Assisi in the evening. The kids are great travelers and can have fun anywhere, but we felt like they needed to go somewhere that was made for them. We told the boys that the day was theirs and they could choose where to go. They unequivocally decided on the beach so it was off to the beach we went.



The closest beach to Siena was in a place called Grosetto. I will be honest. It wasn't the most amazing beach I have ever been to. There was a ton of wood everywhere and a fair amount of trash. I actually feel a little silly complaining about it. I think the rest of Italy spoiled me so I was surprised to see something that just looked normal. It was a sufficient beach and the kids had a ridiculously good time. In fact, if you ask them they might say it was their favorite place in Italy :).

See the wood! It was everywhere! But still, the water was sparkling and the mountains in the background are gorgeous....I'm definitely being too picky.

Esme took a short nap in the stroller. We weren't worried about anyone bothering her seeing as how she was guarded by the wood fortress.

I'm glad the boys could make due with the variation of sand toys that we threw together. The eggs were from the giant kinder eggs they got for Easter. They used those like buckets and shovels. I found the large plastic container in our washroom. Then we had a large collection of McDonalds happy meal toys (as anyone who knows Luke can well imagine). That was enough for them.

It felt so relaxing to know the boys were having fun. Afterward, we had to drive for quite a while to find something to eat and then we were stuck in severe traffic most of the way home. But there is really no better place to be stuck in traffic than in Tuscany.

Poggibonsi

I really slowed down with the Italy posts. I just got so tired of sifting through and editing pictures. There are so many pictures! But I would love to have it all done so I may just skip the editing and fly through the rest of that amazing trip.

Poggibonsi was not very far from us. We saw signs for it all the time as soon as we were on the outskirts of Siena, so one day we decided to go check it out. It was getting late when we arrived and I don't know if we ever actually found the main part of Poggibonsi. But it didn't matter. Because I just love saying that name and I probably said it 34 times while we were there just for the fun of it.

We somehow ended up at an excavation site of some kind at the top of a hill. It was probably very old and very cool inside. But it looked closed and the kids were anxious to get out and play. So we turned around and went back to a park we passed about 5 minutes earlier. It looked like a little mini Disneyland to the boys. Complete with a zip line (totally unsupervised which I doubt would ever pass in sue-happy United States) and a merry-go-round. There was also a playground and a little aquaduct where we tried to race bark, but it didn't really work.

It was such a lovely evening. We didn't feel like visitors, but actual residents who were just hanging out with our kids at the park. The amazing thing about Italy is that it is so easy to just stumble upon these beautiful little places. No one publicizes them. And when you find them you feel like you dug up a treasure that no one else even knew existed.