I grew up watching all of my relatives play bocce. It's a great sport and it originates in Italy. You have two teams and a palina (sp?) which is the white ball that is thrown down the courth. The object is to get as many of your teams' bocce balls closest to the palina. I got the chance to watch my nonna play bocce against a team of all guys. She rocked!
My Nonna threw both of the red balls closest to the palina.
Me and my Nonna during the bocce games. She was so competetive!
This picture has a long story attached to it. When Sean and I went to Italy two years ago we visited a very important person in my Nonno's life. She is a Contessa (royal ranking is below a Duke and Dutchess, I believe) and was a huge reason why my Grandfather was able to get a ticket to America. He worked on her magnificent gardens as a gardener and she became a very close friend of his. Over the years, my grandparents visited her in Italy (she resides in both Italy and France) and they have kept in touch. We had the great pleasure of staying with her at her estate in Pisa and she was just an amazing lady. She welcomed us so warmly and brought us out to a great local restaurant with some of her family. We stayed the night with her and created a warm connection. I'll have to post a picture of her and her house in Pisa in the future, but I was looking through one of my Nonna's picture albums and came upon this photo. I asked her what it was a picture of and she said, "Oh, that is one of the Contessa's estates in France that we stayed at when we visited her in France." Wow. Her estate (and all of its land and smaller houses) in Pisa was really big, but nothing like this. Pretty amazing, eh?
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