Well, that was a ride

One day you're frantically running around The Hague trying to UPS your kids birth certificate to Canada and then before you can have lunch, you're in a rental car driving to Italy.  Sometimes life takes a hard turn.  Though it took a harder turn for my sister in law who'd been in Italy on a cycling trip and got hit by a car, hence our hurried departure.

I'd gotten a general hey how are you message from her while I was running aound the Hague trying to express post youngest's birth certificate to Canada so they could get home, long story but it basically involved an expiring passport and the airline wouldn't let her board.

I swiped the friendly message away as I was focused on the task at hand.  Once on the train back to the boat, I messaged the man who told me about the accident and the fact that she always in hospital flat on her back, not able to even sit up for any reason at all and about to be discharged to a hotel room.  Could we come and help
  Texted and googled the entire way back, chatted with the man when I got there, rented a car for 3 hrs from then and called to find a place to leave the boat.  Wham blam t'ha k you ma'am, and we were off to the races. Mad packing, the only things we forgot were the wall plugs for the phone cables and nail clippers.  Not too bad all told.

We were going to drive it straight, but SIL said she had a friend staying with her overnight anf that the rest of the crew were leaving the next evening so we stopped for the night on the way down.  Italy was Italy, wonderful and beautiful and gorgeous food. And warm.  Mostly we nursed and bought food and cooked and ran errands, but as SiL improved we managed a few outings, Ravena was astonishing, glass bead mosaics dating back forever

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Walks in the hills and along the coast, visiting Sant Marino (disappointing) some excellent meals at the hotel, oh, the hotel, you could never ever ever find kinder more helpful people.  Ever anywhere.  Astonishing. If you're ever in the area, nstay at Hotel Fedora in Riccione, especially if you like cycling.

Eventually we all headed home, we took SIL to the airport and got her in a wheelchair and on a flight, then we took 3 days to get home.  Stopping in Reggio Emilia, Neuchâtel to learn about the pile dwellers from thousands of years ago, and Strasburg.

Now we're back on the boat in a beautiful quiet stretch of river eating our way through the last of the Italian groceries and getting psyched for going to TO in a couple of weeks.

Wow.  It was quite a ride.