I  haven’t posted for a while, but it’s summer, and work has been in full swing, and we’ve been gearing up for this European vacation before school starts. We spent the week with some of my in-laws, including my brother-in-law Thomas, at a villa outside of Venice. It was an exceptional week.

We spent the time in Venice, and parts thereabout, and I’ll post more photos of those day trips as I work through them all. But we also spent a good deal of time just hanging out at this villa, which was part of the Tenuta 2 Castelli vineyard in the Veneto Hills. It’s a prosecco vineyard on this incredibly hilly road known, somewhat obviously, as Prosecco Road.

But it was just…so nice to get be away and enjoy some Italian countryside. I haven’t been to Italy since I did an art librarianship course in Florence in grad school, and we’d been to Rome before that. It’s just kind of a magic place. We cooked and grilled in the backyard a few times and just enjoyed hanging out here. Much different than our cookouts at home.

We spent a good amount of time in the pool. And singing to the trees outside our windows (like the princesses do in every movie in the mornings).

But the bottling facility and the cellar were right down the hill from the house, so we did go over there a couple of times to sample the prosecco and pick some up to bring home. That’s the cellar down the hill.

And the villa up the hill.The extra dry was delicious, that’s what we left with. Perfect summer drinking.

They do a small batch of red wine in oak barrels, which was also delicious, but the prosecco was the thing. This is where it’s made, in this part of northeastern Italy just south of the Dolomites and west of Venice.

We tried some before it’d been fizzed, and after. The sugars and fermentation completely change the flavor.

This was about as exciting for H as you’d think, but she still hung out, played games, and had a good time. With the tipsy grownups.

School starts next week, and this has not been a terrible way to gear up for a new year. At all. More adventures to come as I get through these pics.