Italy: Amalfi Coast Day 5: Pompeii

I've been a little slow to get to our last day in Italy, but I'm excited to share our wonderful trip to Pompeii. It was absolutely a historical highlight of our vacation, especially for the kids. We had to return to Rome for our flight the following day, so we had booked our same driver (yes, that driver) already for the drive from Amalfi back to Rome. Because Pompeii is on the way, we'd planned to stop for a few hours.

Italy: Amalfi Coast Day 4 -- Positano

Given how well everyone slept the night after our coastal explorations (and how much the kids actually slept while we were on the boat as well), Joel and I woke up our fourth day in Amalfi with a new resolve to take a boat vacation at some point in our near future. But, we had a slightly different at-sea plan for this particular day -- we were going to take a short ferry ride to nearby Positano.

Italy: Amalfi Coast Day 3 -- Boating from Amalfi Town to Capri

At the end of every day of our Italian vacation, Joel and I would recap the day's events, marveling at how good the kids had been (overall) and deciding that that day was our favorite. As we all settled into the vacation mode, it truly did seem that each day was better than the last. But I think our third day on the Amalfi Coast really won that title.

Italy: Amalfi Coast Days 1 + 2 -- Amalfi Town

Despite the fact that we found Rome to be surprisingly uncrowded and easy to navigate (mostly), by our fifth day in Italy we were all excited to head to the Amalfi Coast for some relaxation. After much back and forth, we'd decided to stay in Amalfi Town -- it's not as much of a scene as popular Positano (that was a plus in my book when traveling with kids), it's the least vertically-oriented of the coastal towns (also good when traveling with kids), and we were able to find a hotel that could accommodate all of us in one suite (very, very difficult to find as most of the hotels are small). Our hotel in Amalfi had set up a transfer for us from Rome. Originally I wanted to try to train + bus it, but I was so, so glad by the end of our time in Rome that all we had to do was get in a car and sit.

Italy: Rome Day 4 -- Borghese Gallery + Villa Borghese Gardens

We had an easy day planned for our last day in Rome, including a little "sleeping in." And given the schedule we'd been running for our first several days there, the kids actually complied. We took our time getting ready (Cam insisted that the two of us don coordinating patterned jumpsuits), hit up a different cafe in the arcade across from our hotel for our morning cappuccino and cornetti, and then headed over to Borghese Gallery. I had made advance reservations for the 11:00 a.m. entrance -- admission to the gallery is timed and you should absolutely purchase tickets ahead of time online because they sell out far in advance. We picked up our tickets and rented two of the audio tours, thinking that the kids wouldn't be interested. So of course that meant they took the audio gadgets for themselves, but I didn't mind sharing and was just happy that they were listening intently.

Italy: Rome Day 3 -- The Vatican

Given my screw up the day prior with our Vatican guide, I made sure everyone was up and at 'em early Wednesday morning. This meant not only that we were actually on time for our guide (I hate, hate being late), but we were able to partake in a traditional Roman cafe "breakfast." We'd read up and knew that Romans take a quick cappuccino and cornetto standing at the cafe bar. The kids insisted we do the same lest we appear to be American tourists (because I'm sure that wasn't otherwise obvious). We had to grab the cappuccino for take away, but I was so, so happy on the taxi ride down to the Vatican. And then it started to rain. And then it started to pour. And it appeared we would be on time to meet our guide outside the Vatican museum, where we planned to spend a half-hour talking about things outside before our early entry access. Oy.

Italy: Rome Days 1 + 2 -- Ancient and Baroque Rome

We are still shaking off the jet lag of our recent return from Italy; but, even given the 3 (and 4.15 and 5) am wakings since we landed stateside, one thing is clear: this family has been bitten by the travel bug. We've taken plenty of family trips, internationally even, but never just the four of us. In fact, as we sat waiting for our plane to take off, it dawned on Joel and I that we had never all been together (by ourselves) for a period as long as 10 days. Fingers crossed, we tried to convince the kids to go to sleep (bwhahaha).

Project 52 -- Week 34

My seaworthy crew after an amazing (arguably the most amazing) day of our Italian vacation. We just landed back in town yesterday and will have all the deets on our wonderful trip starting next week. Until then, this was our sun-kissed, Tyrrhenian Sea-swimming pair after a looooong day of coastal hopping.

Weekend Makes

We've got Italy on our minds for this Weekend Makes! We're off soon, but we'll still be whipping up a few of these makes in the meantime. Buon fine settimana!

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