Not your average blog, blog.: Tonight I'm going to bed in Italy...

I have never said that before. I'm pretty happy with life right now.
I did a lot of things early in life so it isn't very often I get to experience something new.
Moved out at 17, I got married at 23, had a child at 24- I did all the bad things early too.
Italy has been grand. We had the day off today, we are actually driving to Basel, Switzerland for a show tomorrow night.
I drove us 5 of our 12 hours, stopping in Brescia, Italy. I have only been in Verona once, we pulled it over but were unable to stop... lets just say our driver was very impatient back then, we don't travel like that anymore.
I knew we would never want to drive the whole way. We are pretty good at clocking miles but we stop for pictures, ice cream, diaper changes... you know, rock n roll stuff. The drives are so beautiful, there is no way to just blaze past everything. I want to make sure the kids have fun and get to play around. When I was traveling constantly as a kid I don't remember ever stopping. We probably did... maybe, anyway, I try to keep them entertained. They are both so good in the car. It's amazing.
Speaking of the car. It is a total dump. There's so much crap every where. We may have purchased every kids magazine in the UK and Europe. We have them all. Some in German, Austrian, Croatian.. is that their language? Croatian? No one really talked to me while we were there, so I don't know. Eddie says it's "Moose and Squirrel" accent, you know "must get moose and squirrel". I don't get the reference really but it is funny anyway.
So Croatia was great. The flat was amazing and exactly what we all needed. I would love to say that we have a super full day of seeing the sights of Zagreb but we barely did anything at all, which was perfect.
We woke up super late and decided to take a walk and get some things for the day. We had a full kitchen, it was like a dream! So we all got up and got dressed and headed out the door, all smiles and then BOOM! the heat hit. It was so cussing hot outside, I felt like I was back in Arizona. Ugh. We all started bitching immediately- Q the most. That kid has never been able to take the heat, I can't blame him, plus he was born in Seattle. It is hot there for like 12 hours a year.
We walked to the store anyway, much to Q disliking. At this point he was hot and hungry, not a good combo for a 10 going on 14 year old.
We got to the store and it was very... Croatian. It was huge and bizarre, yet in some ways very much your average store. It is just strange to see the milk on the end cap and 5 isles of sliced meat. And so we went straight to the bakery. I am not sure you know this but the Croatians have their pastries down pat. They are delicious
We grab some pastries and start eating them immediately as we walk around the store. I picked up fresh bread, cheese, milk, cereal, water and some fruit and diapers (of course, we are always buying diapers- it seems as thought this chick never stops peeing!). Eddie and Elvis met up with us and then we noticed a security guard following us around. He as being very obvious but I believe he thought we had no clue. I started opening things in our basket, just to fuck with him. It was fun.
Back at the flat we had the entire day to ourselves. With sound check about 5 hours off we thought we would drive tot he lake or something but walking back into the flat with the a/c blasting... we decided to stay in. We had a ton of laundry to do and guess what? there was a washing machine!! What a beautiful sight for us. We did about 3 loads and it took about 6 hours. Those machine in Europe are slow! Everything in Europe is slow though, going out to eat! Forget about it. It will take you 3 hours and with a toddler that is a ridiculous thought, even with our toddler who is perfect in every way (NOT!)- ya the long eating thing I can't get behind, I mean if I didn't have kids, sure but I do, so I can't.
The day was spent without a second thought of what we could be missing. "What did you do in Croatia?" Eddie will no doubt be asked in an interview... "laundry" he will reply and it is completely true.
Eddie took Q to sound check, I skyped with my family while Elvis took a nice long nap. It was nice to talk and SEE my family. It has been too long, once again.( I will see them at Thanksgiving, yay!) Afterwards he came back to pick us up and we all went to the club. The owner was super nice and had a cool name, something like... Pishta, I dig it. He as awesome, really nice, has a baby- I guess he is a legend in those parts, he looked like Lemmy's cousin or something.
They had a "BBQ" and it was more like crockpot dinner but it was good nonetheless. It could have been goat, it was dark. Q was eating it with his hands like an animal and then he got a bone and game over.
I kicked his ass at foosball. We have been playing a lot of that lately and I usually have Elvis in one hand (she likes to "help") so I am guessing I am like a world champ or something. I can do anything with one hand.
After the kill, I decided to take Elvis back. Really I just wanted to get back to the TV they had at the flat. It was real english and I was ready to veg the cuss out- so I did. We had parked out back of the club in this dark alley and when I fianlly got the big rig turned around we noticed a little white mercedes was parked like a real dumb ass, totally blocking everyone in the alley. Eddie ran inside to see if he could find the owner, which was hilarious in itself because we are in CROATIA, where they do not speak the english (well, some do but you know what I mean). He comes out and looks at the Mercedes and our car and I am thinking he ridiculous because there's no way we will fit, you couldn't fit golf cart through there... then before I could say anything sarcastic, he walks to the passengers side of the car and pulls the emergency break, puts it in neutral and pushes the thing out of the way!! It was SO cool, he got major points for that... whatever that means.
There was a guy walking up to help and he noticed it was "Eddie Spaghetti" and he thought it was pretty cool too.
So he saved the day and we made it back to the apartment. Eddie and Q went to the show and E and I hung out and watched some crappy movie but it was in english so I was down.
And now I am about to lay my head down on Italian soil for the very first time. I feel a lot of pride tonight. Getting to be somewhere new and making an effort to find this lovely little town. Our hotel has this fantastic pool on the roof, that overlooks the mountains and a castle. We all jumped in as soon as we got here, ,drank a Peroni and watched the sun set. We had dinner tonight in the city center, the wine was superb and the food was hit and miss. Elvis got the best pasta and Eddie got the best sauce. But the wine, oh ya... it was tasty.
Tomorrow we say "Ciao" to Italy and go to Switzerland. We found a toy store that we will stop at before we leave in the morning and then it is about 6 hours to Basel.
Enjoy the pictures.
XO