The Winter-Shirey’s Come to Visit

During the last 2 weeks of May, Asa, Erin, and Jeff came to visit us and we had a fantastic time hanging around Piacenza and doing a bit of traveling.

Our big trip was down to Tuscany where we spent 3 nights in the countryside. Our apartment was in the tiny village of Gambassi Terme and it gave us great access to the Via Francigena which is the old pilgrimage route between France and Rome.

The route goes right through the wine country and has lots of nice hiking offshoots. We had a lot of fun exploring the trails, one of which turned into a huge adventure.

We took the Bob strollers on this hike thinking we’d be mostly on the dirt road. It started out by going up a mountain and straight back down the other side at which point we came to “The Decision.” The Decision involved us being at the very bottom of a canyon and deciding whether to turn around and go back up the steep LONG hill that we had just spent 30 minutes coming down or to continue on a path that kind of looked like a path that went straight up with a 75% grade. I mean it was straight up. We decided to continue onwards, but it took both parents to get the strollers up the hill. The moms pushed the Bobs and the dads pushed the moms. We got to the top after a lot of laughing and sweating and then our mouths dropped open because the so-called path completely disappeared. We looked down at a meadow borderded by forest and a river and with a big “what the hell” started down. Jeff Shirey went ahead to scout out a way and Erin and JJK slid down the rocky dirt until reaching the meadow.




Once in the forest we found a trail that crossed a stream. Erin and Jeff took off their shoes and Bobbed across while Jeff and I threw big rocks into the stream to create a bridge. Making it across we continued on only to find that the trail turned into a water-logged mud bath. Luckily Erin found a way around through the trees and we made it through with only a little mud. Of course we ended up at another stream-crossing at which point we made a another rock bridge and pushed the strollers across. At the other side, Jeff Shirey magically produced a bottle of wine and 4 cups from his backpack and we lounged at the stream with a glass of wine while the boys threw rocks into the water.


Once we connected up again with the Via Francigena we felt obbligated to stop at the closest winery to finish off our long hike with some wine-tasting. It was a fabulous ending to a fabulous day.

Other than the Tuscan countryside, the Winter-Shireys also saw Florence, Venice, the little town of Bobbio outside of Piacenza, and Parma. The Parma visit occurred around 5pm when we decided to simply head to the train station and catch the next train to Parma. It was a fun, spontaneous decision and we had a good time having an apertivo and picnic dinner in Parma. The only glich was that Noah became ill and ended up vomiting during the entire trip. This stomach flu brought him down for a number of days of endless vomiting, but the rest of us somehow managed to mostly avoid getting it. We all had a bit of something, but nothing getting even close to Noah’s full-blown sickness. We were super lucky considering this happened right at the beginning of their trip.

At home in Piacenza we had a lot of fun just hanging out. The boys enjoyed click-clacking around in their hot pink, plastic, high heels. The whole trip was absolutely fabulous with "BIG SMILES" all around.