Month: April 2011

Jonah doesn’t often put more than one word together on his own so when he does we celebrate. He just said:

“Nice Daddy”

I assume he was telling daddy to be nice. I guess I say “be nice” to Jonah a few times a day…

This weekend the boys were feeling a bit under the weather so we stayed “home” and participated in the Easter Eggstravagnaza on base. Jonah seemed confused about all of it but enjoyed the chocolate and opening and closing the plastic eggs. He did NOT enjoy the easter bunny, and didn’t quite grasp the egg hunt, but overall we had fun.

We are trying to decide if we want to fight for privatized housing or give in to the government housing. We have seen two options that seem alright. The choice is this…

3 bdrm apartment with really small bedrooms that is only a few miles from base.
OR
3bdrm apartment with big bedrooms that is 8 miles from base.

What do you think?

Nick here posting…
This weekend’s Lloyd family trip was to the city of Verona. Most people have only heard of Verona because it is the setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliette. What a lot of people don’t know is how incredibly beautiful the city is.

We took a train from Vicenza to Verona. There are two kinds of trains here, Eurostar and Regionale. Eurostar trains are direct, fast and expensive. Two one way tickets to Verona would have cost us about $40. On the other hand, Regionale trains are slow, stop at every small station along the way and are very inexpensive. Two one way Regionale tickets cost us only $12. The Eurostar train would have taken a little over a half hour. The Regionale got us there in about an hour and fifteen minutes. It wasn’t that bad though, and frankly we just couldn’t imagine spending $80 for a day trips transportation to a city that’s not even very far away.

Verona, as viewed immediately outside the train station, isn’t much to look at. After a fifteen minute walk into the city centre though, the scene changes dramatically. Beautiful, centuries old houses and buildings line the streets; painted pastel yellows, and reds. As you enter the heart of the city you pass through an archway into Piazza Del Erbe, where street vendors sold everything from lemon trees to pottery. In the Piazza is the Arena di Verona which resembles the coliseum in Rome but is a bit smaller. Later in the day we stopped at a pasticceria vendor, who sold us a cannoli worth dying for.

Next we saw the famous “Juliette’s Balcony.” The entryway into it had the names of thousands of couples graffitied on the walls.

We stopped next to a fountain:

We saw several cool churches:

Then we crossed the river by bridge, yielding the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen. It was incredible.

And here’s a picture of a cool museum:

And lastly here’s a photo from the streets of Verona:

Overall Verona was the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I may make this claim again down the road since I haven’t seen all of Italy or Europe yet, but for now Verona is the city to beat. There were a LOT of tourists about, which was a bit of a downer, and the stores were upscale boutiques that obviously catered to rich foreigners, but the beauty of just walking down the streets of the city totally made up for those small shortcomings.

Went to the housing office today and found out that Vicenza is under mandatory housing assignment. Which means that if they have government housing available, you pretty much have to take it. The only way around it is to turn down government housing, at which point they stop giving you housing money and you pay your own rent until their is nothing available at which time your housing allowance will resume.

They don’t have anything in the “Villagio” (the on post housing) but they do have some government leased apartments available. So we go on Monday to have a look at those. We saw a few pictures and frankly I’m not too impressed….we’ll see.

Some of you have asked how you can get ahold of us. Here is our contact plan…
You can call us on Skype (does not have to be video, just use it to call). We try to stay logged on so that we are available. Just look me up “jenwlloyd”. Or I can call you for free using Google call. So if you need to get in touch and we are not signed on to skype, just email me or Nick with a phone number and we will call you back!

Still in the hotel. We start looking at housing tomorrow. That’s all I know.

Just thought everyone should know that Jonah FINALLY slept through the night here last night. He has been waking up every 1/2 hour or so asking for water or climbing into bed with us. But last night, he slept. (I on the other hand did not…my body for some reason wants to be awake from 12am to 3am…very strange).

Also, in light of Jonah’s upcoming birthday, I thought I would tell you all about his latest “interest”. Jonah LOVES trains. It came up out of the blue. We have never really talked about trains or seen them and all the sudden he gets super excited and says “choo choo” every time he sees anything to do with a train (which will typically be some kind of Thomas the train item at the store…he can pick them out from a mile away!) We bought him “Spencer” from Thomas the train and he takes it everywhere. I’m thinking Thomas the train birthday party theme for sure! The Px doesn’t have much selection for toys but I have heard that amazon will ship to an APO. So I might have to get him a train track…

Anyhow, Nick is at work today. Sounds like it might not be until the end of the week that we get to start looking for housing. We have to wait until Nick has in-processed. More paperwork. Goody. Jonah and I are just chilling at the hotel while Nick is at work. I think we’ll go outside now, the weather is too good to sit in here all day!

If you need to send us mail address it as follows:

SPC Nicholas Lloyd
CMR 427 Box 3949
APO, AE 09630

As far as I understand you will get US rates because it is an APO.

So far we have still just been on base. This base is much more “army” than Fort Meade was. There is a large infantry unit here. Which means lot’s of single soldiers in the barracks, and there’s just a different feel to it. It is an Italian base here that we are occupying (We are not allowed to build bases in Italy, but the terms of Italy’s surrender in WWII allow us to occupy their bases). It’s called Caserma Ederle (ed-er-lee). When you come through the gate their are Italian soldiers that check your ID. It is a small base, but they have a lot of stuff, Px and Commissary, movie theater and outdoor rec center, a brand new medical clinic.

Nick checked in with his new unit today (DMA Vicenza) and will begin in processing on Monday. It sounds like he will be traveling some with his job but not too terribly much.

We gotta figure out what to do for the weekend!

Buon Giorno from Italia! We made it. Jonah and I got in at 1 am Tuesday night/Wednesday morning from Idaho. Wednesday at noon we headed off for Dulles airport. The flight from DC to Frankfurt was about 7 1/2 hrs (we had a strong tail wind otherwise it would have been 8). Did we sleep? Jonah slept the first two hours while we watched a movie, then he refused to sleep the rest of the time so we did not get much sleep.

Now picture this, you’ve been up all night and you get off the plane into the biggest airport you’ve ever seen, you’re tired and you can’t see straight. You have to figure out where to go but all the signs are in German. You come to a passport checkpoint there are four different lines, somehow you get stuck in the longest one. All the other ones get shorter as they open different lanes but you’re too tired to move lanes. By the time you get through there aren’t any other lines even left. Then you have less than an hour until your plane leaves. There are signs pointing to the B gate but it is nowhere to be found. You wonder in circles until you figure out that you have to go through security again to get to B gate. Then when you get to your gate, you are ushered into a bus (just in time) which takes you for a long ride out to where lot’s of planes are parked. And then you load the plane to Italy. Yup. That’s what it was like. Luckily no baggage was lost and all went smooth. (Except somewhere along the way we lost Jonah’s fleece…no idea when.) Flying over the Alps was my favorite part…Gorgeous, simply amazing.

We are attempting to stay awake until bedtime tonight and it is not proving to be easy. I think we are going to go for a walk now and find some food.

It feels very tropical here, humid and very green. Really nice day. Nice change from the snow in Utah/Idaho this past few weeks. We haven’t seen much yet.

Julie: I found those things that I thought I left at your house.
Mom: I left a pair of Jonah’s pants in your dryer, just keep them until you send a package sometime, no rush, it’s hot here, we’re in shorts!

OK, CIAO!