For Christmas, our oldest daughter and son-in-law came to meet us in Italy. So for this occasion we wanted to have a unique experience. Justin rented a castle in Tresana, Italy. It was a place built in 1200 AD and about 12 years ago, after 100 years of no one living there, a foundation came and purchased the castle/tower/church and started fixing it up. They also started selling off parts to others to fix up. Yes, the place we stayed was incredible and a unique experience. It also came with extremely large spiders! Watch below for a tour of the rental castle by my little girls. (Don’t worry the video is spider free!)

Simple Christmas

Our Christmas was very nice and simple. We explained to our children, this living abroad experience was our Christmas and more, but we did try to keep our fun traditions from years past. We ate our traditional Indian food on Christmas Eve, acted out the nativity and read Luke 2. I previously ordered Christmas PJ’s for the family, however they didn’t arrived before we left for Europe, so I guess we will all get to wear Christmas pajamas in May when we return to Utah! Haha. We did buy slippers for the girls in Greece with big yarn puff balls on the toes so they could wear those on Christmas Eve. We watched The Nativity video, made by our church, watched several other Christmas shows and we had a lovely Christmas tree.

Let me tell you a bit about our Christmas tree. We went out looking for a tree and found one (the only one left at the store), I loved it! Only here in Italy, they leave a root ball on the tree and place the tree in a basket. Very interesting. Our tree had twine tied around it so its branches were all pressed down and made it easier to carry. However, we (all 8 of us) were in our vehicle and we were relatively close to our home, so Brooklyn rolled down the window and had Justin put the tree through the window and onto her lap. The man at the store put the tree roots in a paper sack to help keep Brooklyn’s clean. She then held the root ball on her lap and the tree was sticking out the window as we drove home. It was hilarious!!!!

Two Casualties

You also may have notice the luggage rack on the top of the car. We purchased it in Milan to carry some of our luggage around. When we left our vehicle in long term parking two weeks ago and flew to Greece. We paid a bit more to get the car vacuumed and washed. Well apparently the people washing the car must have driven it into the carwash area and hit the luggage rack which totally cracked it. They emailed us and called us (speaking Italian) trying to explain what happened. So when we arrived at the long term parking, our luggage rack was duct taped and a few bungee cords strapped it in place! They did purchased us the same luggage rack and tried to send it to us at our Christmas rental home. Which if you watched the video tour above, you would know and see how hard it is to find the door and to have to walk carrying a luggage rack box, would be really difficult. So…they didn’t deliver it. We are still working on a different solution.

The second casualty was, that we popped a tire on the very bumpy road leading to where we parked for our rental castle. Between Mason, Zeke, Luke and Justin they changed the tire in about five minutes!

Christmas Eve Indian food, which has been our traditional Christmas Eve meal for about 15 years.

Our Elf Had Babies

Christmas Day Church

We also had a wonderful time at church. We attended a small branch 30 minutes from our rental home. What a warm friendly branch. They had two primary aged children, so Sicily and London were asked to sing with their two children during Sacrament Meeting. The two Italian children were around four years old, so it was more of a quiet Sicily solo. I loved it, we missed the little girls singing in their home primary program (we left for Europe the week before the program) so this was a great experience for them. We also arrived an hour early, because the branch had adjusted their starting time for Christmas. So we took a walk and the girls reenacted the Beatles sidewalk photo.

The Statue of David

Leaning Tower of Pisa

We also visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We along with other tourists all stood and did silly poses as if we were pushing over the tower. One local boy even came up to Eliza and gave her a high five as she was standing posing as though she were pushing it over. The area near the Leaning Tower of Pisa was very beautiful with a large cathedral, guard wall and grounds.

Construction of the tower occurred in three stages over 199 years. Building started in 1172, and the tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the second floor in 1178. This was due to a foundation, set in weak, unstable soil. Construction was stopped for almost a century, due to the republic of Pisa being in battles most of this time. This allowed time for the underlying soil to settle.  In 1233, construction resumed. The seventh floor was completed in 1319. The bell-chamber was finally added in 1372. There are seven bells, one for each note of the major scale. Many efforts have been made to restore the tower to a straight position or at least keep it from falling over. Starting in 1993, 870 tonnes of lead counterweights were added, which straightened the tower slightly. In May 2008, engineers announced that the tower had been stabilized, and it stopped moving for the first time in its history!

Cinque Terre

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