After a nice drive from Bologna to Rimini, maybe an hour and 15 minutes and a dozen loops of "Let it Go," we arrived at the adorable town of Rimini. It's definitely a town I could stay a while in. Another place I'm tucking away in my "for when I need to escape my life" file, or for my "when I write a dissertation or novel or some other silly writing piece that will never actually happen" file. I took so many photos of flowers- every window box of every window was overflowing with bright colored petunias, geraniums, roses, etc! We checked in to our little guest house-style hotel and walked a few blocks down the cute little streets to the beachfront street, outdoor Italian restaurants and posh shops on one side, the beach on the other! We all filled our bellies with delicious pizza (and wine for the grown ups) then headed to the beach. Griffin and Brady played in the sand and shallow water while I went into the waves with Rylee and Olivia. After a couple hours, we convinced Griffin to go into the waves with us and for the first time ever, he loved it! He dove and crashed and rode the waves with his cousins and I, and had such a blast. I was so happy to see him loving the ocean so much- finally!! He's always loved the beach but never wanted to go into the ocean itself. It also helped put him to bed early and easily that night- aha!! Steve stayed back with our early to bed monkey and I went to dinner with the rest of the family, where I had some fantastic clams with garlic and white wine sauce...yum Italy!
We woke up yesterday and took a bus from Rimini for about a 40-min trip up windy hilly roads to the tiny mountain castle country called San Marino. It's actually it's own country within the borders of Italy. It's like a little castle wonderland with adorable Italian cafés and Rodeo Drive caliber shopping. If I thought it would ever be remotely possible, I'd totally put this place on my list of places to escape to too. You probably have to have several centuries of genealogical papers though. Oh well. The kids had a blast running free and climbing on everything, and with any luck I took a few good photos too. (The ones below are from Mark). We had a nice lunch at a little outdoor cafe surrounded by flowers, and topped off the meal with a little gelato of course! We got a few pics of the 4 kids, and one good one of Lynn and Steve (I think their folks will love it!) but ran out of time for the whole entire family pic. Fingers crossed for Friday or Sat on that one. We rode the bus back to Rimini, picked up the cars and headed back to Bologna, waving but not stopping (knocked out boys in the back seat) at the town of Imola, where the famous Italian Grand Prix is held!
Love this!
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