Italy-Day 1-La Montagna Lignano

The restaurant Alice and Alfonso own right in the middle of Lignano Park. Their living quarters are above the restaurant.

The restaurant which is only open in the evenings in Summer (and all day on Sunday)

View from the place where we ate dinner with Elia-right next to the restaurant

Inside Alice and Alfonso's beautiful house

It was always so clean-even with a 3 year old running around and working at the restaurant all night. So impressed with Alice!

I LOVED this light they had made out of an old bottle with Christmas lights in it. Looks like an upside down lightbulb!

View from the side of the restaurant- towards the Park which has a playground, a pond, and animals including a donkey (random right?), goats, rabbits, and a few more. Didn't get a chance to take pics of the park, but maybe Tiff has some. Anyway you look at it, her home for a few months is stunning!

Scooter picture! Tiffany is super brave about driving the scooter in Italian traffic. They take no heed of the speed limit and the streets leading up to Lignano are winding and narrow with lots of blind curves that barely fit one car. But somehow, they are able to fit two passing cars by swirving off the side momentarily-even if it is on top of a mountain. Tiffany apprently had a near run in with a bus... I know this sccoter was glad to just have one passenger after I left instead of two. Sometimes we felt like we wouldn't make it back up the mountain.

Elia-he got on a kick of watering everything-plants, rocks, toys, pathways, everything! (Tiff says this happens every once in awhile). We hoped the flower pots had good drainage so they wouldn't drown.


Ok, so I am actually back dating all of these Italy posts as there wasn't much time to post in Italy (and who would want to when you're in Italy for a week!). This first post is of the day I arrived. Tiffany's friend Dorian picked me up from the train station in Castgilion. Unfortunately I forgot how to change trains once I got into Florence-finding it on the board and all that-and missed the train I was supposed to take to Castgilion. Actually I was pretty impressed I remembered how to use the self-service ticket machine as it was all in Italian (ok, so someone had to tell me how to get my change...). So I was an hour late with no way to call Tiffany to let Dorian know. Finally got there and Dorian was waiting. Problem was, he speaks no English, and I speak no Italian. So after traveling for about 10 hours-walking to the tube station at Clapahm with my luggage, taking the tube to Kings Cross/St. Pancreas, taking a train to Luton rail station, taking a bus to Luton airport, plane to Italy, bus from Pisa airport to Pisa Centrale train station, train to Florence, then train to Castgilion, I was exhausted and not even able to recall the slightest amount of Italian. So, it was a little awkward..haha. When I made it to the restaurant, everyone was so welcoming. Alice and Alfonso have American family who live in College Station during the year and were spending the summer in Italy, so they were there with their nanny. Lignano, although a little tricky to get to (without a scooter or car) was beautiful and so full of families eating, playing, and enjoying life!