Cortona and Mercantale

So it has been crazy these past few weeks...sorry for the outdated blog, I'm horrible. Shouldn't even be granted the name of "blogger." Anyway...It is all for a good reason. I've been a few places that seriously put my ideas of beauty to shame. Italy is so pretty. I'm almost, almost, tempted to just buy a house and live out my life under the beautiful tuscan sun. Don't worry mom, I won't. ha-ha. Unless I find that awesomely handsome Italian man that whisks me off my hopelessly romantic, American feet and forces me to live in a huge villa with him. Don't hold your breath though. Anyway, about my trips. While Greg was out of town (out of town for us-- he was in town for others--he was, in fact, in Utah) Amy, me, and the kiddos went to see a couple of towns in the middle of Tuscany. We hit Cortona the first day.

Pretty amazing huh. Sorry, my obvious lack of camera skills can't possible capture the beauty of this city. It's built high on some mountain...a hill for Utahans....that overlooks the classic view of Tuscany. This city is gorgeous, right out of a movie or book.

Again, I'm so bad at the camera, but it was so beautiful here. We ate yummy pizza while we sat on stone steps that lead up to a typical old Italian city cathedral. It was surreal. Oddly so. We spent a couple hours within Cortona and then drove to our apartment in a small little town called Mercantale.

This ex-tabacco drying house is now refurnished into three separate apartments rented out to vacationers. It was nice and cozy with a small kitchen and two bedrooms stretched across two floors. It was pretty cool! Everything decked out in IKEA, which they LOVE over here. My favorite, well second favorite thing about this place was the dry air...I finally got to escape the humidity I can never seem to get used to in Pisa. The nights were nice and cool. It was certainly awesome. ha!

Well the thing I loved the most of this place was the awesome pool that was right outside of our front door, the pool! For those who know me well, I'm not much of a water--swimming kindof person. I'm sure you'd agree. But seriously I spent all of my time actually in the coldish water...swimming. Who could resist? While swimming in this awesome pool you were surrounded by the mountains of Tuscany. It was sooo pretty! I wish I could be there now!

Well I would consider this another successful adventure in good old Italy. Yay.