“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”

My dream come true! Thanks to the movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun” this was a must do.  I had the pleasure of driving through the Tuscan countryside along with my sister and niece.  We had a blast trying to figure out how to drive stick in a foreign country and laughing at the weirdest silly things we were doing while enjoying these amazing places and experiencing a different culture.  It took us 30 minutes seating at a parking lot laughing our heads off because we could NOT figure out how to put the car in reverse and not knowing how to ask because we did not speak the language, a great story teller this turned out to be.

2014, my niece Alondra graduated from High School, I had decided as a gift I would take her to a place of her choice.  Thank God she picked Italy.

Travel companions, my sister Laura and of course my niece Alondra (Ale). Ale and I drove to Houston to meet with Laura and fly out of Houston. We flew Houston, Newark, London and Rome. Our hotel in Rome was near the airport and a good 15 or so minutes from the tourism sites. First day we requested our taxi drop us off near the Colosseum which we didn’t find until like the 3rd day. We walked a good 50 blocks hahaha not kidding though, to the Vatican. Along the way we managed to find the “Fontana di Trevi” or also known as “La Fontana del Amore” located in the District of Trevi.

Here we decided to grab a bite to eat, my niece Ale asked for a pizza but we were having difficulties due to the language barrier. While we are discussing how to ask for a pepperoni pizza a waiter that happened to be flirting with Ale overheard and said ya si si pepperoni (Italian accent) and proceeded to get our order. 15 minutes later he comes back with a pizza with cheese and bell peppers ONLY 🤣😂.

The rest our our stay was awesome minus the part when an English speaking young taxi driver stiffed us with a $40 charge that later we found out was only $14. So we proceeded to get a rental and take of on our drive through the Tuscany country side to Florence, Verona, and Venice.

“Difficult roads often lead to great destinations.”

I had just gone through a divorce and decided I needed to treat my kids to an epic vacation. So I invited my grandmother, my mom and a niece to take a trip to Florida and Nassau, Bahamas. Packed our bags loaded my van and took off on our therapy journey.

24 hour drive from the Rio Grande Valley to Kissimmee, Florida. First day there I slept if off to recover the 24 hour no sleep, while my family went to miniature golf and swimming. Next day I made the mistake of booking one of those profit share things to try and get free tickets but of course it’s a crock of crap ….

Well we didn’t let that detour our purpose to enjoy and forget. We visited Universal Studios best ride at the time was Back to the Future. Which I made all of us ride it even my 70 year old grandmother that I’m sure got off of it with whiplash but to my surprise she did not complaint one bit. She did fight me when I got her a wheelchair had to convince her that we were only doing to skip the long lines (lol) and that we did.

We visited Disney World the third day and had just as much fun. Julio my middle child was wearing a shirt that read “it’s my brother’s fault” while taking turns using the wheelchair people would stop and say oh bless your heart thinking that in fact he was on the wheelchair because something his brother had done. 🤣

Fourth day we travelled to Miami to board a small plane that took us to Nassau. We were fortunate that my sister’s husband was stationed at the American Embassy and that they had a beautiful house we all got to stay at during our visit.

We visited the Blue Lagoon, Atlantis and Club Med. My kids enjoyed everything, from spending time in the clear waters, the boat ride to Blue Lagoon, swimming with the dolphins the food and most of all just spending time together.

This is a must do again trip.