Day 7: A day in Pisa - the beach and the famous leaning tower!

Day 7: A little slice of the USA: Camp Darby
Camp Darby is a NATO base in Tuscany, and what a relief to arrive here! We stayed in a Temporary Living Facility(TLF in military speak) with two bedrooms, Air Conditioning, and a kitchen.
Camp Darby is small- it seemed about the same size as Lajes Field, our last station, but it was awesome to get to shop at a commissary and replenish our food supplies. And everyone spoke English, which we're learning is something that we start to miss after a while.
We woke up around 8:30 local time- our body clocks are all out of whack what with changing two time zones, staying up late and sleeping in such a wide variety of places.
One of the dilemas on this day was what to do about the bites.  THE bites. After the first night in Barcelona(see previous post for description of the apartment) Elijah complained about some itchy spots on his legs. We assumed that he has been bitten by mosquitoes. But then no one else got them, and they got big and red. You're all thinking it. Two dreaded words. Bed bugs. AAAhhh!!!!
We don't think that that's the actual culprit, since no one else got similar bites and all the beds were gross, but it still gave me the heebie-jeebies.
So do we wash ALL our clothes on high in one day and play it safe, or wait and see? This highlights the differences in the two spousal units of our family- Rebekah would like to burn everything to the ground and go from there. I'm willing to chance it. After some convincing, we decided to chance it. No laundry bonanza. We let the insect-fates decide. If more bites show up on anyone we'll find a laundromat, wash it all, then burn our clothes, our suitcases and our van, then lock the ashes in an airtight box and bury that in the desert. If not, we'll press on.

Ok, so Campy Darby was great- resupplied our food, our gas, and our enthusiasm. Saw the leaning tower, swam in the Med, ate some gelato and had our first cathedral-awe experience. 
Also, all our tires remain fully inflated, the transmission shifts appropriately, no one is hurt or sick, and Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again whether we make it to Turkey or not.

Rebekah's addendum:
Camp Darby reminded me a ton of Eglin AFB, Florida- our first station: high-top evergreens, cicadas, prickly grass and hot and humid!
Also, I loved the commissary! Our Lajes friends of the last couple years know of our commissary frustrations, as they simply stopped stocking things like oh, crackers. Or lunch meat.
But this commissary was a cornucopia of foodstuffs! I spent a good 45 minutes just staring at all the options, and was asked three times if I needed help finding things. No, just marvelling...
I told Josh that this stop has renewed my enthusiasm for the trip, and hopefully we're learning how to do things better to make it more fun for everyone. Tomorrows adventure to Florence then Rome will be a good indicator...

Here are the pics from the day, from beginning to end.  This first one was our attempted breakfast outside.  But the mosquitoes are AWFUL, and we only stayed out long enough for the shutter to snap.  

Seeing these sites, ya'll, is quite surreal.  It's hard to really grasp what we are looking at when we are trying, yes trying, to wrangle four little in transition, under rested, under exercised, rambunctious boys who really don't have a rip about some leaning tower (ok, they DID care about the tower, but have struggled to care about monuments up until the point that we saw the tower).  Even so, it's a treat.