Cinque Terre, Italy

We stayed in Cinque Terra, on the west coast on the Mediterranean Sea. Cinque Terra is made up of 5 small towns and we stayed in Riomaggiore, the farthest town south. It was absolutely picturesque. THey are all built on cliffs so it's all up hill, at least it felt that way when you're walking everywhere! By the end fo the trip, I swear my calves have never looked better! All these pics are intermingeled of the towns together. We had such a blast in Riomaggiore. It was the sleepest of the 5 towns and I think that's why it suited everyone best. To explain the pics: the frog was just sitting in the middle of a walkway and I almost stepped on it! John had an underwater camera and he took it out into the sea with him and Mackenzie and her dad Pete. There was a big rock out there and they were standing on it, jumping off. I just love the pic of Mackenzie jumping off, she looks like a mermaid statue on the front of the old ships! The pic of the guy with the afro under water, he joined them out by the rock and kept insisting that John take his picture under water. He turned out to be a world renowned concert pianist and we went to his concert one night! We still didnt' really believe he was terribly famous until I was flipping channels and there he was on BBC, interviewing! In Vernazza, I think it's the third town south, there was a little chapel that you could light a candel and say a prayer. John and his sister Kelly lit a candle for their mom Carole. She was supposed to come with us but she passed away in November. About the middle are two pictures of John's family: John, sister Kelly, daughter Mackenzie, Kelly's husband Pete, and John's sister Jennifer. The one with their lips pursed is becuase we were just joking about how the Olsen twins say "prunes" when they get their photo taken to make their lips fuller to they are saying "prunes!" The rest are pretty much us having fun and being silly!

Roma, Italy

Rome was my least favorite, only because it took 4 hours to get there by train, then we had to take four hours back to our town. It was hot, smelly, dirty, and we only got to see the colluseum and the ruins becuase we had about 5 hours to spend there. We got off the train then took the subway to the colluseum. It was cool because you walk out of the station and bam! there is the colluseum. It was pretty cool to see. Almost the entire building is made of bricks. John's brother in law Pete had a good comment...not only did they build it brick by brick, they also had to make the bricks first. Haha, I don't know why this suprised me to think, it's not like they had a Home Depot! One part that was lame was there were basically no signs telling you about the colluseum, you had to take the guided tour to get any of the info-boring! My favorite part was the pic of the "floor" of the colluseum - the floor itself was removed underneath was were they kept the fighters, slaves, and animals so you could see the walkways and cells.

We didn't stay long in there, once youre in youre pretty much done. We walked across the way to the ruins and hung out a bit. It was so hot the only thing that saved us was the little vendor selling frozen bottles of water.

A little about the trains...apparently Italians are not very concerned with proper sewage control. The train toilets have a white ball at the bottom. When you flush, the ball disappears and the waste is just dumped on the tracks below. It was a bit gross, to say the least. John said it was common knowledge that it was common courtesy to not use the bathrooms while you were at a stop, so that the people at the stations didn;t have to smell the pee and poop. Yuck! The train coming back from Rome didn't have the balls at the bottom so you look down the toilet and you just see the tracks zoomin on by!

Pisa, Italy

Not much to say about this town except the leaning tower was cool to see. I thought it was much taller and was unimpressed by its height but the architect is beautiful, it's made of all marble. the best part was seeing all the people lined up the their arm in the air! Here are the obligator pics of us holding the tower up, and one of John sister Jennifer and I taking a break from the sun in the towers shade.

Wedding - Castiglioncello, Italy

John's counsin Eric was getting married in Italy, the main reason we decided on the trip. His bride was Erika, and this was the town she spent every summer in since she was 3. They were married on July 14th, in the Basilica Cattedrale San Gerbone in Massa Marittima. We first took the train from Chinque Terra to Castiglioncello (3 hours) waited around for an hour for the buses, took the bus to Massa where the chapel was (1 1/2). It was so hot so all of the pictures we look sweaty and gross. Sorry, not much we could do about that :) I don't remeber how old the church was but it was pretty dang old. It was a traditional Catholic wedding, very long but pretty since half of it was in Italian. A woman sang Ave Maria and they had a four piece orchestra. After the ceremony we all went outside and waited for the happy couple to come outside. You can throw rice in Italy! So this pics you will see are at the chapel, wedding photos, John and his neice Makenzie, an old man helping the ladies down the steep steps, and a couple of the reception but we didn't take that many there.

Firenze, Italy - end of trip

Firenze was absolutely gorgeous and my favorite!! It was incredibly hot! By this point in the trip we were tired of walking and tired of being hot. I ate so much cheese I didnt even want to look at caprese for fear of being ill. Plus, we were completely over the touriesty stuff so we didn't go into any muesem's, just walked around and looked at everything. That was one of the best things about us traveling together - to both of us, guided tours seemed about as fun a watching ice melt-boring! I just wanted to be able to get into my own car instead of a train, drink a diet coke with suffeciant ice cubes, and watch something on TV other then CNN or BBC - the only english channels we got. Pics you will see: the policeman at the train station on those Segways (they looked like they were having a blast!), scenery pics of downtown called Ponte Vecchio - the bridge as you walk through it is entirely gold and jewelry shops (GORGEOUS!), Boboli Garden is where all the statues where - John wanted me to sit on the giant turtle but it was metal and sooo hot that I couldn't even touch it! I wanted to be like the naked guy on the turtle (only not naked :)). You'll also see the view of Firenze from the top of the Boboli Gardens and some cute pics of John. The pic with him looking sad by the pizzeria - he talked about eating at this place since the day we decided to go, he was sooo excited-apparently it has the best pizza in all of Italy. Well the one day we could go it was closed!! So we went to some other place that sold pizza and got silly so we took pics of each other to see who was better at being crosseyed. And the one where John's head is cut off-we had the server lady take our picture and she was so nervous she cut John's head off!! There were so many more pics I remember John taking but don't know where they ended up.
So that is the end of the trip! We came home on the 17th and where very excited to be back in America...not that we didn't love Italy but we heart SoCal!

Counterfeit training session

Wednesday I went to a training seminar for the LAPD to learn about counterfeiting. LA just established in February a task force speciafically for counterfeit goods - it's been extremly sucessful so far. In March they coordinated a mass rad on Santee Alley (downtown shopping area) that is notorious for selling fake goods. Luckly, they only seized about 100 pairs of fake Rocks...good to see the numbers low. Total they seized over 1 million worth of product. They arrested over 35 people, 5 of them being gang members from the likes of MS-13 and 18th street (very bad gangs). This is an alarming trend (that gang members are becoming involved) because this will make it just that much more difficult to stop it - it's a direct provine contributor to terrorism, prostitution, child labor, human trafficking, and drugs to name a few. Anyway, I'm writing this because it was very interesting to go to. Most of the info I knew but they had a Q&A with two "reformed" counterfeit sellers which was awesome. One guy made 100K a year working flea markets saterdays and sundays selling bootleg dvd's - there is major money invloved. AND, the best part IMHO, was that the Louis Vuitton guy was there and I had him authenticate my purse...IT'S REAL!!!! phew! And he told me all the tricks to tell so now I'm an expert :)

Mexico pics from three weeks ago...

So I went to MX three weeks ago with John but I haven't been able to post much lately so here is one cute pic. My camera died the first night there but luckly I got this one :)

We had soooooo much fun! The weather was absolutley gorgeous and we had the best house. We went to Las Gaviotas, like usual, it's an American housing community on the beach about 40 mins south of the border. Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. Friday night we went to our friend Anthony's dad's house in Rosarito. Anthony has two younger brothers and they pulled out a jump rope. Now I don't know if anybody knows this, but I can skip rope like nobodies bin'ness! I used to tear it up on the playground and gym class in elementary, my specialty being double dutch. So I was going crazy that night, teaching them a ton of sweet tricks, it was the greatest hour ever...except for the fact that my calves hurt SO bad by Sunday that I could hardly walk! I thought I'd actually torn a muscle it hurt so bad. I highly recommend a skip rope to anybody trying to get their calves into shape! Great for the thighs too :) Aside from that, I was able to get the best sun kissed tan, lots of rest, and good MX food. Even the drive back was a breeze, took 6 hours but no problems at the border. I want to go again!!!