"Il Dolce Far Niente" The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

Because D constantly has away games every other week or so, I'm always stuck with plenty of alone time. A lot of wives hate this aspect of being married to an athlete but I've grown to love this time to myself. Usually I spend it indoors, working on my business, reading books and doing things that I can't always get around to with D here. I promised myself that I'd take advantage of this time this season to push myself to go explore Venice by myself and last weekend I did just that.

They say the best way to discover Venice is by getting lost so that's just what I intended to do. On my walk around the city, I found some amazing hidden gems (including the most beautiful bookstore in the world- see below). As Venice is nearly impossible to navigate by map or GPS, you really just wing it when walking around. Your only hope at not getting completely lost are the small signs instructing you on where to walk for some of the city's biggest tourist attractions. Unfortunately, these signs tend to be quite ambiguous (my personal favorite are the ones that show arrows pointing you to go multiple directions).  I've kind of learned my way around, but luckily for me my husband is the world's best navigator (cough, cough, isn't every man?). Anyways, the absolute beauty in Venice lies in "Il Dolce Far Niente", the sweetness of doing nothing. Grabbing cicchetti (Venetian tapas) and a glass of prossecco, and sitting by the canals people watching. Life is good.

Truly the most beautiful bookstore in the world.

"Acqua Alta", meaning high tide

They keep all the books in bath tubs/gondolas to protect them from high tide

Seriously felt like I was in Hogwarts for a minute

Some other awesome/hilarious things that have happened lately...

• I found an amazing gym close to my house. It's owned by the Virgin Records/Airline company and is probably the nicest gym I've ever seen. Not to mention they sell glasses of Prosecco for 2 euro (seriously prosecco is cheaper than water in this city) just in case you feel like getting hammered after  a nice leg workout. Unfortunately, like in a lot of European countries, they look at women weird when they are in the weight room and not spending their entire workout on a treadmill or cardio machine. A man even had the balls to tell me to lift less weight (epic).
• D won his first home game 74-57 !! He played an amazing game, scoring 14 pts and kicking ass on defense. Anyone who has sat next to me during any sporting event (especially when D is playing) knows I get temporary Tourette Syndrome and yell the most profane comments.  Like I honestly don't even know where I come up with this shit. Luckily, I have picked up some Russian cuss words and now use those as my go-tos in hopes that those around me don't understand.  After the game, we went to eat with a few of D's Italian teammates who described the restaurant saying "we will eat chicken and a lot of beer on table. Perfect.)
  
• They are absolutely obsessed with dogs here. There is literally no rules on where you can bring your dogs and you constantly see them all over the grocery stores/ in shopping malls. I bring Tucker to the cafe around the corner and he's become quite the celebrity (his confidence is through the roof). 
• Finally had Neapolitan style Pizza and it rocked my world. Struggling to find that balance between wanting to eat everything in site and fitting into the amazing Italian clothes I'm seeing. 

  

  Cicchetti. You are so good, dammit. 

So far loving every second of living here and can't wait to see more .

XOXO

A Night in Firenze

Takin it to the next level with the Selfie Stick

Last week D had a very rare two days off so we decided to take an overnight trip to Florence. Italy was one of the first countries I visited abroad, when a girlfriend and I went days after graduating high school, and Florence really stuck out to me as my favorite Italian city we went to. I was pretty excited to get back there with D who had never been.

Now, as much as I'm a dog lover fanatic, I'm not the type to take my dog on vacation.. or to the grocery store..  or the mall, etc. But here, we don't really have the luxury of leaving Tucker with friends or family for a night, so wherever we go, he goes as well! Tucker lives quite the life. He's lived on three continents and six countries in his short seven year lifespan. Most people would kill for this dog's life.

He's kind of a rockstar...

Florence was just as beautiful as I remembered, but absolutely flooded with tourists (as is Venice this time of year). There are so many study abroad programs in the city, that I'm sure the comfortability of hearing English everywhere is what attracted me so much to Florence on my first trip here. Now, after living overseas for a few years, I'm more used to not understanding the language, and it I actually prefer places with less expat crowds.

I'll take one of everything

We hiked to the top of the Palazzo Michelangelo for the most amazing view of the city. My approach to getting D to hike/do anything remotely active on his day off is to keep him completely in the dark about whatever plan I have. Once he finally caught on that we'd been steadily going uphill for a few minutes, I promised him a beer at the top and he took one for the team. The view was absolutely worth it.

View from the top!

For dinner, we went to this really authentic Italian place my cousins had suggested. They only offer two seatings a night and it's so packed that you're practically giving a lap dance to the people next to you. I could see this working out fabulously if you had a social pair of guests on either side to enhance the already awesome, all-you-can-drink deal with. Unfortunately, we were stuck next two a couple that appeared to be on a blind date and would rather hang buy their toenails than utter a word to one another. Regardless, it was a really neat experience and I ate far more than I want to ever think about again.

Ponte Vecchio

Perhaps the highlight of our trip was this amazing hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop we found on TripAdvisor. The place is literally he size of a master bathroom and consistently has a line out the door at any hour of the day. We had the most incredible sandwich of prosciutto, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella,  oil and vinegar and some sort of truffle spread. It was one of those life-changing meals that I think I'll crave for the rest of my physical existence.

so much yes.

Our trip was too short (as always), and I'm anxious to get back to Florence again sometime while we're here. I feel so lucky that we can just hop in the car/train and travel to all these incredible cities. D was gone this weekend for an away game and I seized the opportunity to go walk around Venice by myself (will tell ya all about it on the next blog post). I really have to pinch myself that I live in such a beautiful place and I can't wait to discover more about it. Until then, I'll continue to post about my whereabouts and hopefully take enough beautiful pictures to convince you all to come pay me a visit! XOXO

Is it me or does coffee just taste better out of a Gucci mug..?

Tucker admiring one of Michelangelo's finest works

Wake Me Up.. I Live Here?!

All I can say is, WOW. The last 24 hours have been a complete whirlwind. After packing my life up into two suitcases, I was en route to Venice! D and I had been apart for over 6 weeks, so I was so ready to be back with him. After a surprisingly mellow plane ride over and a quick layover in Zurich, I had arrived! My handsome husband was there, flowers in hand, to get me and I couldn't have been happier.

Our house isn't far from the airport and just driving the 10 minutes through the countryside I couldn't stop talking about how much I already loved Italy (D laughs because I can always make my mind up about a place within roughly 3 minutes).  This was just my second time in Italy, having been about 7 years ago on my first Eurotrip, but I had forgotten how absolutely beautiful it was. Our house is in Mestre, the mainland area of Venice, located about 15 minutes from the canal areas. When I asked D about our house, he just said "well theres a lot of halls and rooms everywhere" and I didn't understand what he meant until I got here. I feel like we live in a labyrinth and although it's not big, I still have gotten lost several times. It's quite different from the "open concept" living Americans love. 

Our neighborhood is really cute filled with a lot of charming, old Italian style villas, while ours is the only one that looks like it could be taken out of any city in America (go figure).  I'll post more pictures of the interior after I get it looking like it hasn't been a bachelor pad for the past six weeks (which it has). Don't worry, I'll include shots of the epic Austin Powers couches in the living room that look like they were hijacked from a Miami nightclub. Anyways, I am in love with our neighborhood. There are so many cute restaurants and bars and we are a quick walk to the Mestre center which has a mall, and a beautiful downtown area. 

Our new home.. the labyrinth.

A gorgeous Church on our street

Love this cafe around the corner <3

After getting settled in last night, we decided to go into Venice for dinner. There's a train that runs right from our city into the Venice area but we decided to drive instead. We parked our car and D lead me around the 400 bridges and dark sketchy corridors into the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I'm not sure what I was on the first time I came to Venice to not remember this feeling, but I was left completely speechless this time around. It was a totally surreal experience, being with D in this gorgeous place and thinking "holy shit.... we actually live here". I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude thinking about how lucky we are that D gets paid to do what he loves and that basketball has taken us to live in some pretty incredible places. (Side note: Screw Paris.. Venice is the most romantic city on Earth.)

I mean....there are worse places to live

Could there possibly be a more beautiful place to eat?

We stopped for Cicchettis (Venetian version of tapas) and wine in a small hole in the wall restaurant where I was almost moved to tears after tasting the best meatball of my life (sorry Mom). Those of you who know my Mom understand my absolute devotion & appreciation towards true Italian cooking. She learned to cook growing up as the only Irish family in a predominately Italian neighborhood and it's her authentic Italian cooking that has made it impossible for me to be impressed by any "Italian" restaurants in the states. Hers is just that good, period. D & I are complete foodies and will try just about anything, so we were clearly stoked about living in (arguably) the most famous gastronomical country in the world. I complimented the owner on his meatballs (that sounds way dirtier than it should) and he told me he would e-mail me the recipe. I died a little inside and decided I was never, ever leaving Italy.

After dinner, D took me to get gelato at one of the 10,000 gelaterias he had already conquered. He told me a teammate had to talk him out of going to two different gelato shops back to back the week before, arguing that he had two hands for a reason. I love this man. Anyways, the gelato was life changing and I couldn't stop thinking about how many burpees it would take to burn off all that I had consumed that night. Luckily, we tracked our walking and had trekked about 3.5 miles within a couple hours, so that somewhat helped ease my guilt.

The start of a beautiful relationship..

I somehow managed to sleep through the night, in spite of the 6 hour difference, and woke up ready for my second day in Italy! We went into Mestre for lunch and to our surprise, they had a huge international food festival with different vendors set up from all around the world (kinda hoping this is a weekly thing). Lavender from Provence, Austrian pretzels, Guinness on tap, Russian caviar and French cheese, among other goodies, were lined up down the Mestre Center. There was even "Cannabis Flavored Energy Drinks" from Holland, which kind of sounded contradictory if you asked me but who am I to judge. 

Cannolis in the making..

Post indulging in all of these goodies (cannabis excluded), we headed to the grocery store. It's always a fun/interesting experience for me to go to the grocery store for the first time in a new country, to see what i'll be able to find and not find over here. Unfortunately, D isn't always patient during this process,  so I decided to wait to thoroughly check the place out on my own. (I lose him EVERY.SINGLE.TIME we go into any grocery store, but luckily, he can predictably always be found in the chip/beer aisle ). 

yes, yes and yes.

D had to leave this afternoon for an away game but he'll be back tomorrow and we will head to Florence for two days since he has a couple days off! I remember Florence being my favorite part of Italy so I am absolutely ecstatic.

Mestre, city center

I am so excited about what this year has in store. I've promised myself to make the absolute most out of living here this season and I'm sure I'll have many hilarious stories to come. Thanks so much for reading :) 

A little preseason photoshoot for this cutie ;)