Boating Around Capri

There are so many great day trips available to book from Sorrento that it's honestly tough to select a destination. We wanted our time to be a mix of adventure and relaxing during our 8 days in Sorrento, so we figured we would only do one boating tour. We opted to take a trip to Capri, which allowed for some time to swim, explore the island and circumnavigate the entire thing. The tour was not meant to be terribly educational as the beauty has enough to offer.  We were once again excited to have an opportunity to be on a boat, and enjoyed cruising in and out of the many beautiful grottos around the island. Our day was perfectly sunny and we thoroughly appreciated every minute. Here's some photos of our outing.

Capri, here we come!

Red Grotto - where the water meets the rock there is red coral growing

A quick swim (we laughed at the fact that we never saw a life jacket
on our tour and SJ just jumped off the boat and was off!)

Capri!

Stunning cliff-side beauty

Look at that PURPLE!

Spoiled by thirst-quenching & fresh orange and lime slushies

Views from the gardens up on Capri

View from our hike

Some rock climbing

Swimming in clear water with the first sea-glass we've ever seen

Jumping off our boat

Of course, a little Limoncello was offered

Another amazing grotto we sailed into

Sorrento

We were all ready to get to the beach and were thrilled to arrive in Sorrento!  G even got to see Mt. Vesuvius out the window from the train on the way there!

We walked the narrow street from the train station to our accommodation, where a sweet lady showed us to our place.  One of the boys used the bathroom and locked the door only he couldn't get back out.  The kind lady went looking for more keys while the rest of us tried to figure out another way to get him out of the bathroom, but there weren't any windows or other options.  Ten minutes later, with much finagling of the lock, he was out!

After the commotion died down and we unpacked a bit, we walked to the private beach area that our apartment was associated with. We tried to learn what type of discount we received and how everything worked. Basically we received a free elevator ride down to the private beach (instead of paying 1 Euro) and we got a half Euro off for our entire family to enter the private beach! However, this was basically the only beach option we had near where we were staying as we are on the outskirts of the city. We decided to wait and pay to go to the beach on a day where we would be able to stay longer. The kids returned to the apartment to do school and nap while Mom and Dad went to the nearby supermarket to stock up. We marvel at how long it takes us our first trip to the market in each new location as we figure out how certain things work, are arranged, and advertised. For example, here in Sorrento, to purchase any fresh fruits or vegetables, you don't get a plastic bag and the option of selecting your own, you have to wait your turn for the produce worker to assist you and pick them and weigh them for you! One thing we'd observe over our time in Sorrento is that there seems to be a person here for everything, an elevator operator, a beach chair assistant, even a person to open the cooler and hand you the ice cream snack that you want from inside a freezer!

We walked into town and reminisced about the many aspects of Sorrento that we loved 19 years ago. Mom lived on a base outside of Naples during the summer of '97 and ran an art camp for the US Navy kids. She had her weekends to travel, and Sorrento was her favorite place in Italy. That summer her parents came to visit and they celebrated her 20th birthday here, and not long after, Dad came over and proposed. Of course, Mom brought him to this special place as well! We looked out over Leonelli's beach and commented on all that had changed and how touristy the area had become. We had dinner down on the water and witnessed a beautiful sunset on our way back up the cliff to the city center, which has now become a night market. One thing that is still the same are the different shops offering limoncello samples, while they aren't as frequent, they can still be found. However the flavors have expanded to everything from meloncello to pistachio cello!

Dinner here?  Yeah, that'll work

View over Leonelli's beach, where we hung out back in the summer of '97

Everywhere you look, it's beautiful!

Sorrento is the Lemoncello capital and
where our love for it originated 19 years ago

We spent the majority of Saturday at the beach.  Our daughter swam and made friends to dig in the black sand with, while the rest of us soaked up the sun and enjoyed some rest.

Enjoying a Magnum on the beach!

Sunday was Father's Day in America, so we were eager to celebrate Dad and all he means to us. We'd planned on going to the island of Capri for the day, but the weather was supposed to have afternoon storms, so we opted instead to rent bikes. However, being that it was a Sunday, the bike store was closed. Thankfully Mom had a hike in her back pocket, and so off we went. No one was really sure we were on the right path as it was up some steep windy streets and roads in the middle of nowhere. Finally we entered this incredible area with houses and orchards and we could tell that we were onto something. We ended up in Massa Lubrense with a great lookout and had our picnic lunch that we'd brought along. We made our way down to the water and hurried back up just as the storms were coming in. We caught a bus back to Sorrento and were held up for over an hour because an accident had just occurred on the narrow, twisty, cliff-side road ahead of us. Once back and tired from our just-shy-if-12-mile-hike, we opted to eat dinner at the beach club, which unfortunately was a bit of a disappointment for a celebration dinner. All in all it was a fun day of exploring and seeing some sights off-the-beaten-path as we celebrated the amazing leader of our family and all he's sacrificed for us.

Celebrating Dad with an Italian leather journal gift and personal notes

Walking among orchards off-the-beaten-path with frozen juice boxes as a surprise treat!

Sports area built into the cliffs for the school we passed on our hike

We arrived at our destination!

Accident on the narrow road from Sorrento to Amalfi

Sunset for our Fathers Day dinner

From Sorrento we took a day trip to Capri and to Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii, which will be separate posts.

During our 8 nights in Sorrento, Mom was treated to a night away at a hotel by one of the missionaries we met along our travels who felt the Lord leading her to bless us with a night alone, so this was her gift. It's been humbling to receive things this year as we set out to give, but it has been such a good lesson for us. Mom's night away really revived her for the last leg of our journey and was truly a gift to us all!

We spent the rest of our days in Sorrento enjoying the town, sneaking in a couple of date nights, getting school done, and visiting the beach. It was a dream-come-true for us to bring our family here and we enjoyed every minute of it.

We love this place!

Lemons the size of SJ's head!

A little unexpected & gross addition on our walk to the beach! 

G and SJ splashing at the beach 

Someone's having fun collecting sea glass!

Florence - Renaissance Life

Wednesday we had a quiet morning and caught up on some school and logistics.  That afternoon our youngest stayed back to keep working while the rest of us headed to Museo del Bargello.  This was a small museum with some of Michelangelo's early works.  We enjoyed seeing the different statues of David and how various artists depicted him in regards to his age, the attitude they desired to imply by the stance they sculpted him in, and at what point in his battle with Goliath they represented him.

More gelato? Yes!

Every now and then we can get the teenager to pose - here with a self-portrait by Michelangelo

To determine who would design the bronze doors to the Florence Baptistry (Duomo), artists submitted a tile depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac.  Competition was primarily between these 2 tiles (left tile by Ghiberti and right tile by Brunelleschi). Ghiberti won and the gates would be referred to by Michelangelo as "The Gates of Paradise," a name that would stick.

Mom's always drooling over the idea that these kids have field trips as part of
their regular school experience and are able to learn about this art firsthand.

We arrived at the Basilica di Santa Croce, where the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, and Ghiberti are, only to learn that it had closed 10 minutes earlier. We then ran into a fun leather shop where we spent some time while our oldest continued to practice his card tricks on the clerks and their friends. That evening we hiked up to Piazzale Michelangelo for a beautiful sunset and lookout over the city of Florence, it truly took our breath away and was good exercise getting up there!

A new hat can bring such joy

Son doing card tricks in a store

Florence Panorama

Amazing view of Florence from Michelangelo's Plaza

Thursday we started the morning we visited the Uffizi Gallery, housing the world's greatest collection of Italian Renaissance art, gifted to the city of Florence by the Medici family. We took part in a tour that visited many of the highlights of this large art gallery, and provided some interesting insight. For example, The Duke and Duchess of Urbino shows the Duke from the left as he lost his right eye in a battle, while the Duchess died prematurely and this is the reason she is so pale as it was painted after her passing, also her hairline was fashionable at the time and if one didn't have a high hairline naturally, she would shave the hair on her forehead!  The Baptism of Christ pinging by Verrocchio (who was Leonardo da Vinci's teacher) was actually painted by both Verrocchio and Da Vinci who added the angel.  Overall, our tour was interesting and we were happy to have a guide, but we were all getting a bit "museum-ed" out. When the tour ended mom and some of the kids wandered the streets a bit while Dad and our oldest stayed at the Uffizi to visit a few areas that we'd rushed through. We met up for lunch and then Dad and the kids let Mom have an hour to wander by herself as we were all needing a change in dynamics. In case you are curious, taking four kids through two museums in a single day may not be recommended.

Duke and Duchess of Urbino by Piero della Francesca.  

Boys in front of The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

G in front of Botticelli's Allegory of Spring, where there's a secret admiration between several of the figures that cupid is helping along.

Baptist of Christ by Verrocchio (and Da Vinci), where this son curiously observed that many paintings of John the Baptist have a cross in them when the cross hadn't occurred yet.

We reconnected outside of La Academia where, our oldest son pulled our daughter's first tooth before we headed in to see The David by Michelangelo - yep life just keeps on happening! The kids were in awe at how large this statue is in person, and we all enjoyed walking around and observing this magnificent piece of art and learning the story behind it. Fascinatingly, two other artists had rejected the piece of marble that Michelangelo used for this statue, while Michelangelo saw David in the marble from the beginning and just chipped away to reveal him. (In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it - Michelangelo.)

We returned to Trattoria Cesar, where we were so impressed with our dinner we had our first night in Florence, that we wanted to eat there one more time. We'd been told that in Italy children put their teeth that have fallen out under a cup in the kitchen and that a mouse will come during the night and fill the cup with coins. Obviously because we are in Italy, we wanted to follow along so the mouse would come, so our daughter's first experience with the "tooth fairy" was a "tooth mouse," and she woke up the next morning and ran to the kitchen to find her glass of coins.

She lost her first tooth!

Michelangelo's David

Complimentary limoncello jug from Trattoria Cesar

Florence - Duomo

Tuesday we did school in the morning and then headed to tour the Duomo in the afternoon. We started our tour going underground to the crypt where we saw remnants of the past that have been uncovered in 4 levels, each for a separate time period, along with much of the history of Florence.

Heading up to the main floor of the Duomo, we learned that the lily is the flower of Florence. We also saw an interesting painting depicting Dante and The Divine Comedy, showing hell, purgatory, and heaven depicted as the city of Florence. We learned that Dante is considered the father of the Italian language as he wrote The Divine Comedy in Italian.

The Comedy Illuminating Florence by Domenico de Michelino

We were all in awe of the amazing fresco on the ceiling of the dome of the duomo. This was painted in 1579 in the octagon dome. The number eight is symbolic religiously as it took 6 days for God to create, on the seventh day He rested, and the eighth day symbolizes the last judgement, which is depicted in this ceiling fresco.

Beautiful fresco ceiling inside the dome depicts the Last Judgement

We climbed the staircase which led to the interior balcony and observed the amazing dome that Brunelleschi completed in 1436, as we also enjoyed a view across the city.  The unique history behind this dome is that in the late 12th Century, the people of Florence began building a magnificent cathedral around the idea of a dome that no one knew how to build, but that they believed could be figured out.  The people of Florence wanted a dome that would soar over the city and cover the 42m wide space they'd left for it in the construction, the problem was that to construct only the scaffolding for a structure such as this, there was not enough wood in all of Tuscany!  Filippo Brunelleschi was able to invent a way to build a self-supporting structure, that many years later remains the tallest building in all of Florence. The dome is far more massive up close than it appears from the ground and seeing it at this level adds to the marvel when looking at it later. This also gave us an interesting perspective to admire the pink, green and white marble used in its design.

Filippo Brunelleschi looking down

Kids in front of Brunelleschi's dome - still difficult to tell the enormity of it - the  dome
is 118m tall and the gold ball at its peak is 3m across

When our tour ended we climbed up to the bell tower for another view of Florence and then ventured over to the museum where we learned more about the history and construction of the Duomo and saw some incredible artifacts from its history. One highlight of the museum was Ghiberti's original Gates of Paradise, depicting Biblical scenes from Creation to Solomon's reign. Another highlight was Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta, where he sculpted his own face under the hood of the Nicodemus figure, with the intent that it would decorate his tomb someday.

The original Gates of Paradise by Lorenzo Ghiberti

Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta with his own face under the hood of the Nicodemus figure

Afterwards we visited yet another paper-making and leather specialty store where our son purchased a leather journal and got his name stamped in gold-leaf on it. That evening Mom and Dad escaped for a very much needed date night.

Having his leather journal personalized

Florence: Italian Food

After our quick 3 nights in Venice, it was off to Florence by train. Here we had paper reservations for our trip but were held up because we could not show our stolen Eurail pass. They never asked to see our pass in Spain, so we thought that maybe we could squeak through in Italy, but after a bit of arguing and even a willingness to purchase tickets again, they would not let us on the train, and we miss it. This forced us to head to the ticket office and remedy our situation because we had three more trains in Italy that we'd already booked. Fortunately the office personal were very helpful and friendly and we got all three of our trains rebooked. It was unfortunate to have to repurchase our tickets, but the prices were actually fairly reasonable due to a special they were running where kids travel free with an adult. In hindsight, we realized that the Eurail is not the way to go, at least for our itinerary. It cost way more than it's worth and we should have done more research. Also we have since learned that our insurance will not cover the loss of tickets, so we are out that money. We did get reimbursed for our passports though. All in all our lost bag/theft was not a cheap endeavor but not the end of the world either.

Upon getting the next train, we arrived in Florence about 2 hours behind schedule, but we had nothing planned so it didn't matter all that much. We had mapped out how to get to our place but we had also mapped out where our food tour started the next day. Unfrotunately, Dad directed us to the wrong one - with all of our packs on! The troops were not happy. Ultimately some grabbed a cab and threw all of the bags in as it was hot and they were heavy, while some of us walked to the proper accommodation location.

That evening we had an amazing dinner at a local place where the food was excellent and the prices were reasonable. We ended up going back to this place on our last evening a week later. However, during dinner our first night, SJ fell over in her chair into the lap of the patron behind her. Her face was terrified but thankfully everyone was good humored about it and we quickly packed up and returned to our apartment.

Florence apartment entrance

On Saturday we had signed up for a Taste Of Florence Food tour which we have grown fond to booking early on our stays in new places. Its fun to learn about the local cuisine and also get recommendations on places from a local. The more we travel the more we realize how little we like the touristy stuff, which is ironic considering that we are, after all, tourists.

This tour started with some an introduction to the art of Italian coffee, which we would learn is incredibly different than the Starbucks experience we've come to enjoy as we sip our gargantuan mug, all cozy in an armchair, over in-depth conversation.  No, Italians pop into a bar, where they order a shot of their favorite caffeine concoction and often shoot it while standing up, and off they go.  What comes closest to the American idea of an espresso is referred to as "caffe" and is ordered by requesting, "Un caffe."  We sampled several caffes brewed from different beans, and of course being American, added much sugar to it.  We discussed the benefits of getting a quick jolt verses a stomach full of many unnecessary extras that we are used to in our large mugs.  We learned about the Bialetti maker that is in most Italian homes and how it is used to make these possibly-addicting caffes.  Unfortunately, our daughter has a thing for coffee and when we weren't looking, one of her brothers slipped her their shot of the strongest brewed caffe, Robusta, which she excitedly gulped down, only to later experience the consequences.

We moved on to sample trufle butter, and then to a wine shop to sample some cheeses and learn about the regions local wines.  If the Chianti bottle has a rooster icon on it, it's 80% San Gervoise grape from the Chianti region, which means that it's authentic.  Then we headed to San Lorenzo Market where we sampled different cured meats, balsamic vinegars, olive oils, schiacciata (a fried focaccia type of bread served as an appetizer), Tuscan Miranda (a common mid-afternoon snack made by drizzling Tuscan red wine on a slice of bread and sprinkling some sugar on top), Panforte (a desert that monks would carry with them and use to pay taxes during the Middle Ages, consisting of almonds, nuts, sugar, honey, four and candied fruits), and pasta.  We learned about Vin Santo, a delicious dessert wine that a hard almond cookie called catuccini is dipped into.  Of course the tour brilliantly wrapped up with gelato.  It was another great start to understanding the gastronomical highlights of this area, and we enjoyed visiting with the other Americans on the tour - some fun women who were taking their daughter's on a Europe tour for their high school graduation.

Food Tour group in Florence

Since the tour ended near the market area, we decided to just spend the rest of the day wandering around the city shops.  This is where our sweet four-year-old daughter experienced her caffeine crash, and for really the first time on our trip, completely melted down.  She's been such a trooper and we can't imagine there are many other four-year-olds that would put up with this lifestyle as well as she has.  Dad took her home to nap and Mom took the boys shopping.  She returned to let Dad out for pizza with the boys so she and SJ could snuggle and have a movie night.

AMAZING pizza combo - truffles, ham & burrata!

Sunday Mom and G stayed in to catch up on some schoolwork and make a plan for the rest of our travels so that we could get the necessities accomplished without stressing over missing out on the fun.  Dad took the rest of the kids out to walk around the city and we all met up for dinner.

On Monday we headed to the Tuscan countryside for a day of authentic cooking and feasting. This was a unique experience as it was a somewhat new organization and not overly professional; however we embraced this as we were seeing a more accurate picture of what Tuscan life was like. Traffic and construction caused our driver to be an hour late, and we had to take two cars to the countryside, but only one of the drivers spoke English. Once we arrived at the farm/guesthouse where we would be spending the day, we settled in and were thrilled at the beautiful views, hammock, trampoline, Foosball table, and unique miniature pony. After having a couple of appetizer/snacks, we got started making the pork and tomato sauce for the gnocchi. We mostly observed this process, but were excited when it came time to make the berry tiramisu and we were able to be hands-on. We wrapped up our chefs-in-training by learning how to make gnocchi, little potato puff of pasta that, if made properly, are little nuggets of melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Then we were able to sit down and indulge in our delicious feast. Throughout the morning people would stop by and lend a hand and there were several other guests at the lunch table, and from what we could gather, these people were neighbors and it was not unusual to have several other people stop in unannounced for a meal. We rested after lunch and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, then we headed to a nearby winery to sample some of their products and learn about their wine-making procedure. Upon returning to the farm and waiting for dinner, Dad and our oldest took the motorcycle out for a spin and adventure as it ran out of gas - luckily it uphill at the time.  Our dinner didn't begin until 9pm and was a BBQ feast of sausages, steak and more. It was an interesting day and we all enjoyed it, the gnocchi and tiramisu making were highlights and we learned that in Tuscany, wine flows more readily than water!

Beautiful Tuscany

Dad & SJ making tiramisu

Possible neighbor helping press potatoes for gnocchi

This gnocchi maker did such a beautiful job he impressed our hosts!

SJ and the miniature pony

Resting in the Tuscan countryside

An unforgettable motorcycle ride - they ran out of gas and had quite the adventure!