What now?
Driving home from the ferry to Sardegna we couldn’t help but make a quick touristy stop to prop up the leaning tower and then go see the beautiful Firenze.
A nice shot of David’s bum. What??I like big butts!
Last gelato in Italy next to the Florence duomo, bittersweet. Wait no, make that just sweet. So delicious.
For the last few days of Dustin and Nicole’s visit we decided to hit the beach. Sardegna (or Sardinia in English) is a large island off the west knee of Italy. We took an overnight ferry ride to get there and let me tell you, it was the ride of a lifetime due to a little wind. The boat was almost as big as a cruise ship and it was tossing and turning like a row boat. None of us dared go outside to look, we all just laid in our beds wondering if we would see another day. But we survived! Here we are ready to get off the boat…
We headed first for the famous Emerald coast. And it was beautiful. White sandy beaches and crystal clear blue water. In my mind when I think of beaches, I think tropical and palm trees. But Sardegna was quite different in that way, it was desert. You would never guess the beaches would be so beautiful when you are exploring inland.
The next day we rented a big blow up boat and Captain Dustin took us around the gulf of Orosei exploring the beautiful caves, cliffs and beaches there that are only accessible by boat or crazy hikes.
We had some difficulties with the anchor, while I investigated Nicole decided to take some photos…
There were a lot of jellyfish in the water, mostly out away from the shore thank goodness. But other than the jellyfish and a few little fish, there wasn’t really much to see. We snorkeled some, but there wasn’t much there. Just clear beautiful water.
We had an interesting experience with a B&B that we were supposed to stay at…Sardegna was settled by Spain for awhile so while they do speak Italian it is sort of a Spanish dialect of Italian and the old people were especially difficult to understand. When we arrived at our B&B it was just this crazy old lady who the only thing I could understand her say was “you don’t understand me, do you?” We were supposed to wait for someone else to come and meanwhile we awkwardly stood with this crazy lady so we decided to just leave and find somewhere else to stay. I felt bad about it, but sometimes language barriers can make things a bit uncomfortable and we were all tired and I think we had just had enough.
We found a cute little city on top of a pointy mountain capped by a castle. It was really fun to wander the little streets.
Sardegnans identify themselves first as “Sarde” and then as “Italian”. One of them told me that they love where they are from and when I said that all Italians say the very same thing, he responded “but we love it more.” And they do seem to. They have a different culture and therefore a different food. Lot’s of seafood and a weird bread that looks and kind of tastes like cardboard…
On the last day there, it was a bit windy and cold. So we went to Porto Cervo to check out the fancy yachts. This here yacht is one of the biggest in the world and is owned by some Russian dude…
Then we went and explored Olbia before boarding our ferry back to Italy. Olbia was interesting (I didn’t get any photos apparently, but it was kind of a seedy city)…here we are in the parking lot making some dinner. Yes, we do this everywhere we go (ask anyone that has come to visit). Yes, I know it makes us look homeless.
Pompeii is one of those mandatory stops in southern Italy. It is crazy to me how they have chipped away at, and un-buried this whole city that is so amazingly well preserved. And they are not even done digging, even after over 200 years of digging. I thought there would be more perfectly preserved and creepy bodies (morbid I know) because that’s what you always see pictures of, but there really weren’t many bodies. Mostly it was a whole city that you could wander around, it would seriously take you all day to walk every street.
I loved stepping stones in the road to keep your feet out of the dirty street water, perfectly sized and placed for the wagons to go over. You could tell how many lanes a road was by how many stepping stones there were. It is crazy to me how far back things like highways, sidewalks and general traffic rules actually go.
In some of the roads you could see very deep wagon ruts. This one you can see the ruts abruptly end, which tells you that they were in the process of replacing the stones on this road. Along the roads were shops and then behind and above the shops the people who owned them would live. 
What good roman town doesn’t have an arena? 
Here’s something you may not know, Romans considered penises with wings to be a symbol of good luck. They are all over Pompeii.
Here we have a bread store, complete with wheat grinders and an oven.
Who knew the floor in our apartment looks exactly like one in Pompeii? Crazy!
Dancing with the dancing faun, because well, why not?
Dustin ordering him some fresh baby from one of the fast food restaurants in Pompeii. Apparently these people ate out for all their meals. They didn’t have kitchens. I like.
Not only did they not have kitchens in their houses, they also didn’t have baths. So they went to public bathhouses. There were some neat things about the bath houses like a locker room and a ceiling with grooves in it to make the water run down instead of dripping on your head.
The infamous bodies were in these rooms with all kinds of stuff piled in baskets on shelves, seemed strange to me. I thought they would be displayed a little differently.
And of course there were some temples to various gods.
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.
