Amalfi

Italy's Amalfi coast is a beautiful area... homes and buildings built into the sides of a steep incline, stair stepped up from the sea.  We drove along the coastal road south from Sorrento and snapped a few photos along the way before making a pit stop in Amalfi.

Here we made our way to one of the rocky beaches and the kids quickly began looking for sea glass, seashells and other treasures.  While they did that, Ted and I enjoyed a couple of tourist-priced cappucinos.

But they were good.

I might have hunted for a treasure or two, and in the process found this pretty little gem.  If you squint your eyes just right it almost looks like a heart.

I was working on getting a quick group shot of Ted with the kids when I promptly lost my balance and ended up falling into the rocks.  It was a pretty funny scene for Ted and my children as I attempted to stay upright for a second or two before finally giving in to the fall.

After a bit we headed up the main road into the town where we saw lots of tourist stands eager to sell us trinkets, pottery, lemons and gelato.

It also led us to a beautiful 12th century church, the Amalfi Cathedral, which we toured for a small fee.

Like most cathedrals we've visited it was stunning; filled with incredible artwork and elaborate altars.  It contains relics from St. Andrew (as in Peter's brother), and had a few treasures in a museum area that were of minor interest--including these gold statues; do you see that one of them is holding his own head?  We have no idea what this was since all of the signs were in Italian and we could not read them.

We only spent a short time here in an effort to see more of the must-see places in the area, but the few hours we did spend were fantastic-sea glass, wonderful views--both into the town and out on the sea, and a town abuzz with people enjoying it all.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

Make Limoncello!  At least that must be what the folks in Sorrento think.  We spent just a few days in Sorrento, just south of Naples, Italy--a perfect trip.  The drive down was right around 8 hours, and I stayed awake the entire time so that I didn't miss out on any of the beautiful scenery.  I even drove for part of it (wisely choosing the drive with the least amount of big/busy city traffic).

Anywho, we booked a place through booking.com (this is becoming more and more my favorite way to find lodging) called La Neffola.  It was a beautiful little oasis of a place--with lemon and cherry trees, wisteria vines, and all in all loveliness.

From here we could walk into the town where we found plenty of places to eat and shop!  Yay!  One store was called Lucy's and we found another shop called Mary.  That was kind of fun!

Breakfasts on the terrace with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.  We do not take these opportunities for granted.

yep, that's a Dr. Pepper, but you might be surprised to know that for our 3 night trip we only packed 4 total.  We're slacking off!

If you squint just right you can make out Vesuvius in the background behind Cory.

We brought home some lemons from the grove of trees, and we made a yummy lemonade...not limoncello.  :)

The Best Days are the Lazy Days

Luckily we were able to have a day or two of hanging out at home, and that seems to be what the kids had the most fun doing.  Here are a few pictures of them just enjoying each other's company.

Bonus for the Dads--just a hop, skip and a literal jump from our house is a Go-Kart place, so Ted and Jon went there (with a handful of kids) for a race.  Riley took the photos.

We also slid over to nearby Polcenigo to enjoy the castle ruins--always a fun place to explore and climb.

 

AND--Gelato to go...yum!

Olive Oil, Olive Oil, wherefore art thou O Olive Oil?

No visit to Northern Italy is complete without a trip to Verona and our favorite olive oil spot--Bonamini.  Sabrina at Bonamini is a marvelous host, and gladly gives a tour of their facility and offers a lesson in proper olive oil tasting, as well as olive oil generously drizzled over bread.  So, we loaded up the family trucksters and headed towards Verona for a day.

First Stop:  Bonamini

We have been here a couple of times, and this was the first time we'd seen the bottling in operation.  They were bottling a garlic oil for a special event.

Listening to instructions on tasting the oil.  Guess what!  I now have a table cloth just like this one!  EEK!

We were able to get a few varieties of group shots here, too.

Then it was off to Verona with a recommendation from Sabrina for a good place to eat--just slightly off the beaten path of the main tourist stops (which we had tried before and none had impressed us).  Not surprisingly, Corte Farina offered Bonamini oil on the table!  Well played, Sabrina.  And the food was just perfect!  Here's a picture of Mary's wurstel pizza.

Then it was off to see some of the typical sites and some souvenir shopping at the market.

It became quite fun for people to attempt to photo bomb our photo ops as well:

No one here thinks you're funny.

Probably one of our favorite places in Italy

With a scene like this, how can it not be?

Add in some ninja

And some races

And 8 kids, mostly smiling

And some super cool mosaics

And Aquileia is hard to beat.

Predjama--Not my kind of castle

In Slovenia is this really neat castle called Prejama Grad, that is built right into the side of a mountain.

You can read a little about it here.  We enjoyed walking around the rooms on the multiple levels, seeing the torture chamber, checking out the antlers, and looking at the displays.

One of the interior rooms showing castle life

The castle area was as much enclosed as it was directly open to the mountain and outdoors

It was pretty impressive, but also pretty drafty, as evidenced by our Rudolph-like noses!

This is the beginning of the entrance to a cave below the castle, not accessible during the winter months

I now have a new appreciation for our drafty Italian house--it could be worse!

Buona Pasqua--very belated

A few pictures to see how we celebrated Easter this year...

With our friends in town, we had some fun with Easter traditions.  To Riley's utter and complete joy, we spent one lazy afternoon decorating sugar cookies.  The girls spent quite a while making their masterpieces.

We also had a little egg hunt in the yard and roasted marshmallows and peeps just before it started to rain on us.

We don't have any pictures of the sunrise service or the beautiful church we attended it at...partially because the weather was so yucky, that it was a Sunrise service only in name, and also since it was so drizzly and chilly the kids dressed for the weather, and no one had their new clothes on--that will have to be for another day and time--maybe once the wisteria is blooming.  However, it was a beautiful church, so it's a shame I didn't bring a camera to take pictures.