Author: Jen

After Rome we made our way down to the Naples area. The highway ends after Naples and the roads are small and clogged from there south. The merging of 4 lanes into one lane at the end of the highway was seriously nuts (see the above photo and you can feel my stress). It took us several hours to complete what should have been the last hour of our drive. But we made it to Sorrento, just north of the infamous Amalfi coast. We stayed in another “cabin” there, this time with a little more space (two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and porch with a gorgeous view). The campground even had a “beach”…a rocky beach that you had to hike down a steep hill about a mile to get to.

I did not want to drive the crazy Amalfi coast so we took the bus…and even that was a little crazy. Just imagine…really skinny roads, with the cliff’s edge on one side and a house or mountainside on the other. Add to that the size of a bus and just imagine what happens when two buses meet. It was crazy. And beautiful. But crazy. Here we are waiting for the bus…Dustin’s toes are in serious danger of getting run over. We jumped on the bus and spent our day exploring the towns of the Amalfi coast.   Southern Italy is full of lemon groves. There are two types of lemons here…normal and monstrous. This one was as big as Declan’s head.

Declan loved the lemon granita. Don’t let his face fool you. They had these funny little village scenes everywhere. This was the biggest one we saw, in this fountain. It even had a moving waterwheel. When we got back to Sorrento we discovered this crazy house way down in a ravine. Pretty sure I’ve seen pictures of it on pinterest before. Then we found a DELICIOUS restaurant. (Nicole got royalty treatment after they brought her the wrong thing. While she waited for the right dish they brought fresh mozzarella and prosciutto…to die for.) Then we waited for the bus to go back to our accommodation. And we waited. And waited. And the bus never came. Then when there were enough people waiting to start a good riot, we all jumped out in front of the next bus (not the right one) and crammed ourselves into it and made it back, exhausted. Italians have a saying “Viene quando viene”. It means “It comes when it comes”, in other words don’t even look at the schedule (bus, train or other), especially when you are in Southern Italy.

We made our way to the island of Capri for a day. It’s just off the coast of Sorrento and it is gorgeous! It felt like a bit of a tourist trap because the minute you get on the boat you are bombarded by people trying to sell you a tour of this or that. It’s a very small island with two towns, Capri and Anacapri. We did a boat tour around the island (yup, they got us) and saw the incredible cliffs and went through the lover’s rock.

 

 

 

 

The towns felt very Greek to me, white washed buildings with views of the ocean. Little winding alleys with lot’s of stairs.

But the best part, and the whole reason that we went to all that effort to get to Capri, was the blue grotto. It’s this awesome gave that glows a beautiful blue inside. The opening to get into it is very small. They load 2-3 people in these little row boats and then the rower waits for the waves to be just right and tells everyone to lay down, then grabs a chain and pulls the boat in while lying down as well. The opening is small but the cave is big. Our rower let us swim, we were SO excited. It was fantastic.

 

September 5-6, we spent in Rome. Nicole and Dustin went to the Vatican museum while Declan and I explored other museums. Poor Dustin and Nicole had to endure some “fun” accommodations. Not the most romantic trip, lol. But we got to see a lot!

Putting my head together with the discus thrower. Supposedly one of the first copies. Below are some rings from the floating roman palace on lake Nemi that I learned all about..it was massive. Also saw a collection of BEAUTIFUL mosaics. Declan got a good nap in.

 

We managed to get in to the Borghese gallery and see the impressive collection of art there including Caravaggio and Bernini. It was nice and small…sometimes art collections can be overwhelming but I felt the Borghese was just the right dose.

Ah Rome. She never ceases to exhaust me. Although I will say that we did a metro pass this time and it was AWESOME. We jumped on any bus or metro any time we wanted. Definitely helped with the fatigue.

September 4th, Nicole, Dustin, Declan and I packed up my little red car and made our way to Rome. We made a few stops on the way…

Our first stop was in the land of Ferraris, where Dustin got to test drive a Ferrari. He was pretty much giddy. Declan considered trading in his ride…




Next we stopped at my favorite hilltop town, Civita Bagnoregio. Bellisimo! The town apparently has started charging entry (easy to do since there is only one way in) to try to do some repairs. It’s pretty much a ghost town right now because people got scared the whole place would fall off the cliffs after a big earth quake.

Declan enjoyed being tortured in the back seat by his Aunt Nicole. But she made up for it by feeding him chocolate chips when I wasn’t looking.

While Dustin and Nicole were here we did a cooking class in Vicenza. We learned how to make hand made pasta, carbonara sauce, bread, mixed meats (which included bunny rabbit, pheasant, sausage) and homemade gelato. I really should have taken more photos of the finished food…

While my sister Nicole and her husband Dustin were here, we all went out for a double date night. It would have been pretty much perfect if it hadn’t been for my screaming sidekick, little Declan. That kid was NOT happy. Nick showed them around all day (i.e. forced them to walk at least 20 miles, maybe more…the joy of Venice!) then I came in the evening after managing to rid myself of one minion (Jonah). We went out to dinner and then took a starlit gondola ride. Declan was a little fussy for those parts, but then the hour long walk back to the train station he pretty much just screamed at the top of his lungs. That kid does not like to sleep on the go. BUT, dinner was fantastic and it was fun to ride the gondola through the tiny waterways of Venice and watch the gondolier paddle while standing up, ducking under bridges and texting. And now we can check that off our bucket list, a romantic evening in Venice with a screaming baby. Ah yes.

Me and my minions took Nicole and Dustin to see the Romeo and Juliet castles, a castle by the lake (Sirmione) and finally to Verona, city of Romeo and Juliet.

Ah July. Have I seriously not blogged since June? YEESH! Sorry about that people. Here’s some highlights:

Declan: End of June he starts to roll over. Then beginning of July, sitting up on his own. End of July, crawling…sort of. It’s an army crawl (still is) I think crawling hurts his knees on Italy’s hard floors. He pushes off with his big toes, mostly his right one. Then within two weeks in August he popped out four teeth. The top two are too far apart and the bottom two are too close. Adorable. (Just today, September 17th, I noticed a 5th one coming in too!)

Jonah highlights: Jonah got his own rock climbing harness and went climbing. We failed as parents to teach him how to get down before sending him up and paid the price by waiting over an hour for him to decide to climb back down, ever so slowly.

We had a bike given to us for Jonah that did not have training wheels. Our neighbor told us to take the pedals off so he could practice scooting and balancing. After about a month of that we put the pedals back on and Jonah just took off. He is a bike riding pro now. He really has a talent for it, the kid can even dodge cones and races around like it’s no big deal. It’s hard to believe he’s really only been doing it for a month.

He loves to try to catch all the little lizards outside. He continues to be the best big brother ever, unless their car seats are next to each other in the car, then he tortures his brother on car rides. That’s what brothers do right? He loves his little buddy.

 

 

I love my boys.

We headed down to Camp Darby for 4th of July in hopes of seeing some sunflowers blooming. But due to the massive amounts of rain this spring I think they must have planted late and they weren’t quite blooming yet. We did however enjoy the Camp Darby 4th of July festivities on the beach. Including their creative attempt to save money on fireworks by doing a “lights and water” show…it was actually kind of cool. It was like the Bellagio fountain on a semi-truck trailer.

 

Declan’s first beach experience. Not sure how he felt…

 

The boys went scuba/snorkeling in Portofino while the women and children hung out on the beach. A nice relaxing final day before the Lloyd’s began there LONG journey home.


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