Day 26 Home Again

We woke up super early to take a cab to the airport and said goodbye to our beautiful Italia.  I don't remember much of the plane ride home.  Everyone just slept and cried and watched movies.  Lucy and I got on an earlier flight home from Atlanta so she could make it back early to be ready for her first semester back from her mission at BYU.  Justin and Henry and Bea took the later flight and ended up pulling up to our house around 2am.  As we ran around the yard looking at the chickens, gathering eggs and checking out our garden, our neighbor said he was surprised to hear little kids voices over here so late at night.  Yes, that would be rather strange. Henry and Bea stayed up all night long until Bea fell asleep at 6am and I made Henry take a one hour nap before I took him to his first day of Chinese school! The babies and I were over the jet lag in about two days, while it took Justin, Henry and Bea over a week to adjust.  Now we are settled back to normal farm life and lovin' it.  I do miss speaking Italian or French every day and I really miss the kids trying to speak in Italian.  We're trying to speak Italian in the house for a couple hours a day.  I hope they continue to pick it up.  If any of you are considering a similar trip.....do it!

Day 25: Tour of Rome

Today we actually made it to church for the first time on our trip! Luckily both Justin and I lived in Rome so we were confident we could make it to church.  We still had to leave an hour early to catch the bus and every person that got on the bus was put through my rigorous test of whether or not they were LDS or not.  There ended up being only one lady who was a member of the church on the bus and I suspected that she was because she was dressed way modestly for August in Italy and she was Peruvian! She was kind enough to show us the way there from the bus stop and learned that she was seduced by an Italian man who wanted to marry her and bring her back to Italy.  She ended up convincing him that he should just help her get to Italy and didn't end up having to marry him.  Phew!  Well, when we got to church Justin and I saw a guy who Justin and I knew as a young kid from another city we served our missions in at the church with his wife and a baby.  We couldn't believe it.  I didn't serve in that branch(now a ward) so I didn't see anyone I knew except for him.  Church was really wonderful and it was so nice to hear the gospel in Italian again.  The talks were great, the lessons were really insightful and the spirit was strong.  It's so nice to see that the church isn't in it's infantile state in Italy.  The people are really understanding the doctrine.  We said our goodbyes and walked back to our bus stop.  We were like 5 minutes late to get to the grocery store to get some fruit and bread, so we had to stop with our starving children at this place called Pizza Planet.  It was run by a man and his wife from Morocco and had probably the worst pizza we have ever tasted.  The kids wouldn't even touch it.  Only Violette ate some.  After tasting the pizza we asked them owner what the best thing there was and he brought us out these delicious gyro wraps that we devoured and had to get another for Henry and Bea because they even loved them.  This man was so generous.  He brought out some special tea for us to drink, washed our grapes for us and even gave the kids some macaroons for free just to be nice.  He was so excited that we came all the way from the US and were in his little shop in the middle of suburban Rome.  After eating, we waited for the bus in the blazing hot heat back to our apartment.

Once at the apartment, Justin decided to stay behind and pack while Lucy and I took Henry and Bea to see the Colosseum.  Since the kids didn't get much sleep the night before they were cranky the whole time.  We got a video tour of the Colosseum and Lucy and the kids learned about all the fights and deaths that happened there.  It was pretty incredible to think about what went on in that place.  One thing I learned is that the women were probably not allowed in the main area, but were separated from the men up in the highest section inside the walls and could barely peak out at what was going on.  Reminds me of how the Pittsburgh Steelers won't let women with newborns in to see their games because they're trying to protect the enjoyment of their fat, drunken male fans.  Looks like things haven't changed much since then.  Henry and Bea took a million photos with Lucy's camera and threw an hour long fit because we wouldn't him keep taking photos of every single artifact even though we were a half hour late to meet Justin.


We got home and geared up for our last night in Italy.  We started our magical night at the Piazza Venezia(the wedding cake) which houses the tomb of the unknown soldier.  I ate the hardest sandwich in my life and we went on a stroll to all the closest interesting Piazzas.  After that we hit the Pantheon and the largest gelateria with over 150 flavors to choose from.  It, of course, took forever for everyone to choose what they wanted, especially since it was the last gelato we were going to eat in Italy.  Then we wandered back to the piazza and let the kids run around.  We played tag, and hide and seek in the columns of the Pantheon.  Of course, everyone in the piazza thought it was really entertaining.  The cutest was when I was running around holding Violette out, chasing Clementine and Bea and they were all laughing their heads off.  They found a fountain and got all wet trying to get drinks from it and I ended up falling down while I was holding the baby and hit my knee really bad that ended up as a giant bruise.  Ouch! The stairs were so slippery!  The worst part is that tons of other people slipped while I was recovering on the steps and it seemed like it was just entertainment for the people sitting around there.  They were just waiting for the next person to slip and fall and keep the night lively. 


After that we debated about going home because it was like 11pm already, but we were really close to the Trevi fountain and we just could leave without seeing that.  We were so close! We walked there and spent a few beautiful moments looking at the newly cleaned fountain with super clear water.  I remember it being really dirty, so it was awesome to see it so sparkling clean.  We debated about going to the Spanish Steps, but we were not close at all so we abandoned that idea and waited for a bus to take us home.  I think we got home around 1am and crashed hard.  We and the kids were exhausted!

Day 24: Adieu Positano,

As we were leaving our beloved Positano I thought up a poem...

Adieu Positano, ci vediamo il prossimo anno. This means, Farewell Positano, we'll see you next year.  I said it with a glimmer and a wink to Justin.  I doubt we'll be there next year, but I won't give up hope. 

We left our dear Praiano and Positano and took a cab ride(thank you Justin) instead of the bus and the train to Napoli to take the train up to Rome.  As we were situating our stuff at the Napoli train station I saw an old Italian man look down at Bea and shake his head and hands at her and then I looked down to behold one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen…Bea in the gutter with her hand inside a giant, purple, Italian sized used condom.  We immediately ripped it off of her and wiped her hands off.  Lucy and I were so disgusted that we couldn’t contain our laughter and finally Justin chimed in and finally had a good laugh. I've never been so disgusted in my life.  

We loaded all our stuff on the wrong train, which I was suspicious of because it left at the wrong time and said Milano on it.  I ended up having to sit in the hot vestibule in between cars and we had to pay 8 Euro per person extra because we were on the wrong train.  The guy had no mercy on us.  Justin bought some pizza and food that ended up getting all over the floor and Justin's pants and our kids were all disgusting.  We basically looked like gypsies and were acting like them too.  I wasn't very happy.  I don't like travel days and after four weeks of carrying the baby on my shoulders and in my arms, I was exhausted.  I just wanted to sit in a regular seat.  Anyway, it was really embarrassing.  We tried to save money on expensive hotels by finding a one star hotel.  We had two rooms, one without air conditioning.  For the two nights we spent in Rome, it was cheaper than one room for one night in most other hotels.  Plus,we got free breakfast delivered to our door every morning.  They even went out and bought another pack-n-play because they told us they had two, but one ended up being broken.  I don't think they made any money from our stay. haha. 

When we got to Rome it was still pretty early so we decided to head right out to St. Peter's Cathedral to show Lucy the amazing building.  After checking out the inside, which is enormous and filled with so much art, as well as my favorite sculpture, Michelangelo's "the Pieta'" We bought tickets to go up to the top of the dome and hoped that the kids would be up for climbing up 500 steps up to the top.  They loved it and even Clementine climbed the entire way up.  At one point we were in the walls of the dome and they were so slanted that it was hard not to bonk your head.  Every time Clemmie hit her head against the wall, she said softly, "ow, ow" without another word of complaint.  haha.  We stopped at the bottom of the dome to see the paintings and mosaics around the inside of the dome where we decided we wanted to do mosaics of our kids instead of photo portraits.  Clementine's hair bow also got stolen by a very obese little Mexican girl who Bea saw take it.  I told the mother and when she asked her daughter about it, she had been sucking on it and then gave it back to me.  Yuk.  We climbed up to the top and looked out at the highest point of Rome at all the gardens and buildings.  It was windy and cool up there compared to inside the passageway.  We took some photos and then headed back down.  We stopped at a half way point to let the kids run around since it was way safer than any place down on the ground.  I spoke to a family from Iran who were truck drivers in Canada.  They were so nice.  The kids started to freak out so we tried to find a place to eat.  All the good places were closed for the holiday so we ended up eating at a place where giant tour buses of tourists eat and it was surprisingly pretty good.  They even had french fries which the kids were excited about.  We got gelato next door and then took the bus back to our one star hotel. 

Day 23: Epic boat ride

Today we decided to rent a boat and ride up the Emerald Coast searching for fun places to play.  First, however we packed up our stuff for the next day, then we took the bus down to  “La Grotta dello Smeraldo”, the Emerald Cave.  It was an easy access trip because instead of going down a million steps down to the water level like we usually have to do each time we go anywhere.  They actually had an elevator!.  Our guide looked like a lumberjack and was actually pretty animated in his description of the cave.  It was pretty large and the bottom of the cave was very blue.  The blue is caused by natural light that comes into the cave from a hole in the rock below sea level.  He took us around and told us the facts of the cave with a mysterious voice.  The coolest part was when he used his oar to splash the water on next to the blue spot and the whole cave turned into a million sparkling blue droplets.  Then came the cheesy part of the boat ride.  In Italy everyone tries to find Mary, “ the Madonna” or Jesus in everything from a piece of toast(actually seen), a chip(actually seen) to a rock or even a stain.  I’m not sure why, but someone put some statues that were the same color as stalagmites at the bottom of the cave of the manger scene and tried to make us think they were just created like that.  It was obviously fake, but it was just funny that they tried to do that.  As we left, we passed by a giant group of Japanese tourists that Lucy impressed with her Japanese and after we bought a bunch of fruit from an awesome fruit vendor that gave us a bunch of free stuff, we headed to the beach for an hour before we rented our boat.  At the beach we encountered the same crowd that was telling me that my baby had rocks in her mouth as usual.  There was also an obese Italian man who told us we couldn’t put our stuff in front of them, even though there was plenty of room.  We had a small argument with him and the people around us were embarrassed so everyone was being extra nice saying we could be close to them.  Then the rest of his large family came over and they all started doting on my kids saying, “look how blonde and beautiful these kids are!” to their fat father, and then I made friends with their family.  Aaah haah.  He was pretty embarrassed.  I ended up talking for about a half hour to Laura, our neighbor, about the restoration of the church and she seemed really interested.  It’s so interesting to do missionary work now that I’m not called as a missionary.  As a mother of four, people have a lot of respect for me here and it seems like they listen to me.  It feels easier to share the gospel with women.  I feel like I really connect with them, unlike when I was younger and single.  I kind of wish I could go on a mission as a young mother here in Italy somehow.  I just love sharing the gospel in Italian.  I think I will love going on a mission when I’m older.  After Justin yelled at me 5 times that I needed to come right in the middle of my testimony, ugh, we went and waited for the boat for 15 minutes.  Double ugh.  We got on the boat and headed off on our epic adventure.  We hunted down awesome places to jump off, found a giant cave with a beach inside it, swam out in the middle of the ocean, jumped off the boat, and caught tiny crabs.  Henry and I climbed up into an arch and jumped off into the ocean.  It was probably about 15 feet up, which is a lot for Henry.  He’s a brave boy.  We took a million photos of the beautiful hillside and even let the kids drive the boat a little bit.  The water was a perfect temperature, the sun was shining, the kids were happy and we had a wonderful time.  At 6pm we returned the boat and ate gelato on the beach.  I met some really beautiful people at a restaurant that turned out to be the restaurant owner’s son, his actress girlfriend and their friend who was a high fashion designer.  They were pretty much the most beautiful Italians I have ever met.  I invited them to our house in Utah to go skiing.  The actress girl said she was a snowboarder, so maybe I can convince her to come out to ski.  We waited for the bus for a half hour and finally got home around 8pm and tried to go to our neighborhood party, which we missed most of and put the kids to bed.  I found Laura and gave her a pass along card with the Italian information for the church on it.  There really isn’t a ward around where she lives, but maybe she would be able to go to Sorrento, which is about an hour away.  Just as we were finishing our dinner of Buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes, we heard the disco party music start.  We even saw an Italian family arriving at 11:30 with their three small children.  My jaw was pretty much on the floor.  Incredible.

Day 22: Aug 23: Happy Birthday Bea!!

Today is Bea’s 4^th Birthday.  We have a few presents for her that we bought in a darling little toy store in France and a few little things we got from Napoli.  One is a small ceramic tea set and the others are tiny wooden little tea sets and utensils.  She’s going to love them!  This morning Lucy and I went on an epic run up the Pathway of the Gods or “Il sentiero degli dei” and ate a bunch of figs and found a lifesaving water spigot half way up.  Most people who were going on the trail had giant backpacks and those ridiculous walking sticks and there we were, running up a zillion steps without any water.  Haha.  We met this cute Austrian family as Lucy was climbing up a giant fig tree to reach the ripest ones and we handed them some delicious ripe ones.  Then, instead of running back down all the sketchy rock stairs, they offered to drive us if we just went on and ran up and around this little canyon.  They assured us that it was just 3 miles from their car back to our town so we decided to take them up on it.  Turns out, it was more like a 30 minute drive down because we had to go in the opposite direction for 20 minutes and then go back to our little town. When we got to our house, their son threw up in our pasta bowl and Bea drew them some pictures.  Justin went to make reservations for the train while we cleaned up and made Birthday lunch.  Justin came home, we ate delicious pasta and let Bea open her presents.  Bea was so adorable when we were giving her all the attention.  She was so happy to get her tea sets and happily played with them for about a half hour while we cleaned up.  Henry even bought her a box of Popsicles that we all shared in lieu of a Birthday cake.  It was really sweet.  Then, we spent the rest of the day at one of our favorite beaches the beach, lazily playing at the beach with the kids.  It was a lovely day. 

Day 21: Pompeii and risking life for pizza

Today was insane.  It was probably about 100 degree outside and we decided to go to Pompeii to see the ruins and then go back to Napoli to get the best pizza in the world.  We took a bus to Sorrento and then took a train out to Pompeii.  It took almost two hours to get there, which we didn't expect, plus a long wait in line to get in to the site.  When we finally got in, we were surprised to see how giant Pompeii is.  It's really a decent sized city with thousands of residences, stores, and other things a city has like piazzas, government and religious buildings as well as two giant amphitheaters.  About 2/5 of the city isn't even excavated yet and we didn't even get to see 1/10 of the place, especially trying to navigate it with kids.  It was so interesting that it was so open to the public.  Any art left over is pretty well preserved, but you're allowed to go inside almost all of the ruins and climb over and step on stuff...well at least Henry did.  There were no signs saying "no touching" so I hope it was ok.  There were even some new convenience stores they put in the middle of the town for people to get food and drink, plus some of the ruins were also converted into offices for the archaeologists working there.  We heard the government is worried that Vesuvius was ripe for another eruption again and are paying any residents 30,000 Euro to move, which doesn't seem to be tempting anyone.  You can't buy anything with that if you don't get money from selling your house.  

We saw the remnants of a few dead people, but didn't get to see the room with 13 people along with a child since it was under construction:(  We spent some time in the smaller amphitheater and Henry even performed Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious with the stick and dance for everyone sitting up in the rafters.  If I ran that place, I would schedule performances and fun reenactments for the people coming to visit.  

 After we left, we took the train back to Napoli(Naples) to get the best and cheapest pizza on planet earth.  Napoli is no place for blonde kids because there is a pretty large mafia presence there and if the kids get snatched they could never be seen again…but we were willing to risk the lives of our children for pizza. Since it was most people's yearly vacation, most of the delicious pizzarias were not open but we found one that was open, but didn't even open until 7pm! For those of you who don't know, Italians usually eat dinner around 9pm. Eating at 10 to 11pm isn't even unheard of.  Since we had starved the kids to be hungry for pizza, they were getting really cranky.  So, we decided to find some traditional pastries from the street.  As we walked down one of the main street, our eyes were turned to the many bullet holes in every single glass window we passed.  I wish I had taken a photo of the baby store with bullet holes in all the windows.  haha.  My favorite pastry in Italy is the sfogliatelli, which was fresh and hot at a little bakery we found.  The kids ate it and also got some delicious gelato.  We spent the next hour or so on Spacanapoli street where people were selling all sorts of strange things.  This street seriously looked like Halloween, or more even like something out of Harry Potter.  It seems like the local craft in Napoli is tiny dioramas with scary moss, freaky waterfalls and dead trees.  You can buy a scene and then fill it with all sorts of moving people parts that are doing various things.  You can also get tiny food, tiny furniture, and basically anything tiny you can think of.  I found a tiny wooden tea set for Bea's Birthday with some tiny spoons.  Lucy got her some tiny little pots to cook with.  I wish instead of a freaky Halloween scene, they had cute little dollhouses or something.  We bought a few things and then it was time for pizza.  Unfortunately I think the kids weren't all that hungry, but we went and ordered like 8 pizzas anyway.  The buffalo mozzarella pizza margherita cost only 4 Euro, which is insane because most pizza costs at least 10 Euro anywhere else around the country and buffalo mozzarella usually tacks on another couple Euro.  Since it was so cheap, we ordered one for every child.  The servers were like, "um, that's a lot of pizza.  Are you sure you want that much?"  Yes!!   We ate ourselves to oblivion with the most delicious pizza with the softest crust.  We had three left over to bring home.  Yum.  The server had our exact same family with four kids just about the same age.  I don't know how he feeds them all with a job like that. 

Thankfully we got a cab back to the train station and barely made it back to Sorrento in time to catch the last bus.  We were so tired and hot from that long day and when we were riding in the bus back to our place, we noticed that all the lights were out in our town, which meant no air conditioning at our place.  Nooooo!  We got to the bottom of the huge hill and had no other choice than to walk with the kids up three long switchbacks up the hill.  It was 11:30pm and all the kids were asleep.  We had to wake them all up and carried them all up the hill.  Henry had to walk and by the time we got up to the top, they were all wide awake at midnight.  We had a rough time getting them back to sleep.  Since we had no air conditioning, we had to keep the windows open and many mosquitoes came in to our apartment.  Justin had 20 bites on each ankle.  I was constantly covering myself with the sheet until I got to hot and then uncovered myself until I felt the mosquitoes biting me and back and forth all night long.  That was a rough night!  The babies' rooms didn't have air conditioning so their rooms were like stinky saunas.  Poor little things couldn't even sleep.  Next day, back to the beach!

Day 20: Amalfi and Ravello

Today we spent about an hour on the bus driving at a snail's pace to get to Amalfi, which was only 10K away.  I think I might have been able to walk there faster.  When we got there, we hopped directly on another bus that took us to a town called Ravello that sits up a lot higher on the hill.  Ravello is famous for music and pottery and has a spectacular view down to the coast and of the terraced hillsides.  The terraced hillsides, for me, were one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.  Those hills, or even I dare say mountains are enormous and many of them are completely terraced from top to bottom.  Someone told me that it took hundreds and hundreds of years for people to terrace them by hand, one at a time.  For some reason, that was one of the aspects of our trip that amazed me, even more than all the art and cathedrals.  I really want a terraced hillside with grapes growing on it someday!

While in Ravello we walked around the town, saw the view and ate a delicious lunch of bread, tomatoes, and buffalo mozzarella that Justin bought before we left.  I will never get sick of that meal.  The girls found a friend, who was a little girl just Bea's age to run around with.  I can't remember her name, but she was really darling.  I talked to her mother and she told me that her daughter is so rough and tumble that she sometimes worries about her.  She gets criticized for letting her go outside in shorts and no socks in the winter because that's what she wants to wear.  And, she doesn't fret about germs like most Italians do and when I told her that's how I parent my kids, she was so excited.  I even told her of articles I have found that tell parents not to wash their kids' hands after they play outside in the dirt so their bodies can get used to the germs in their surroundings and she was thrilled to know that I was on her side.  The girls ran and ran and ran around the piazza, laughing and playing together even though the little girl didn't speak Italian and vice versa.  She did say "bye bye" in the end, which I could tell the parents were proud of because she figured out how to say it all by herself.  The family wanted to get together with us but they were staying there in Ravello and we were all the way in Praiano and it just wouldn't have worked out. 

We hopped back on the bus down to Amalfi and spent the rest of the day on the beach there and ate pizza for the umteenth time before returning to our cute little Praiano.  Oh, and we met an American family in the water that had twin boys, one who was going to sign on with the hockey team here in Salt Lake City.  His mother was probably in her 40s and was probably one of the fittest women I have ever seen.  Seriously hard body and her sons were muscularly gigantic.  They had their girlfriends there and the mother's sister was also there with her 5 kids, a couple of which were adopted. Henry played with their younger sons and was grateful for someone who could speak English!

Then once again.  Bus and home.