Trips, Pics, and Tales

Wednesday, June 26th Today we are leaving the Epic and heading to Rome! I’m so looking forward to returning to Rome! We had just a short visit when we began this journey and now to end there will be perfect. This time we're renting an apartment. So far every part of this trip has been just as planned, hopefully it will continue! Fingers crossed! I met Mimi and G-pop at Taste for our last breakfast on the ship while the kids and Keith slept in for just a little bit longer. Breakfast was pretty good. Nicer than the buffet, not so much because of the food, but because there was no crowds. We talked about how we enjoyed all of the ports we'd visited on both cruises far and how wonderful the cruise portion of this vacation had been. We again decided to do the self disembark. Since my parents were on a different deck, we told them we’d meet them off the ship right by the walk way. We had no problems walking off and found them with ease. As I mentioned before, most people seemed to bo...

We continued our drive, up the coast, or was it down the coast? I'm not even sure! Anyway - we'd be going to Sorrento next! But before we did - another picture stop - one last view of Positano! We drove along and arrived in Sorrento! We really only had about 45 minutes here. Sorrento seemed to be all things Lemon! It is a much flatter town than Positano. We split up here. Megan went with my parents to find Gelato and Alex came with Keith and I. We stopped in one of the Lemoncello shops and were immediately hit with several samples. Alex was pretty happy about this! The shop we went into makes their own product and we were sold on a little bottle that was a twisted combination of Lemoncello on one side and the Lemoncello Cream on the other. I really like the creams…apparently Alex did too and seemed to think I should be buying him his own bottle??? This whole teens drinking in Europe is a bit strange to me! A sample, fine, but a bottle? I don’...

Continuing along our wild ride!!!  We left off on our winding ride along the Amalfi coast heading to our destination for lunch... We arrived at the restaurant we’d be having lunch. I didn’t write down the name though. It seemed to be full of many tour groups, at least at lunch, it was fantastic! All homemade food, served family style. The views were beautiful.  We started with bruschetta, meats, cheeses, veggies, potato salad, beans and it seemed to go on and on and on! Huge bowls of food! Wine of course was also served! Then we had four types of homemade pasta! Gnocchi, cannelloni, ravioli, and a fusilli type pasta. And if that wasn’t enough we had five or six different types of desserts brought out. Again they said they were all homemade. They were fantastic. And of course, dessert wouldn’t be complete without a shot of Limoncello! We are now in the Amalfi Coast right? Salute!  Checking out that perfect view! Tummy...

Continuing along....when we left off we were getting back into our van with Paolo after a most wonderful and touching visit to Pompeii. We were ready to head off to the Amalfi  Coast for the rest of our day! We began our drive through the Amalfi coast towards Positano where we’d be having lunch. As we started our drive Mt Vesuvius was a constant reminder of our visit to Pompeii. Such a beautiful landscape, but such massive destruction! As we drove higher the views became more spectacular. The camera was clicking away! We drove through Paolo’s home town. He pulled over on the side of the road, left the van running and told us not go anywhere! Said he’d be right back…we watched him run into a shop and came out looking disappointed. Unfortunately it was still too early for his favorite pizza shop to have their pizza ready. He was taking his mission to get Alex the best authentic pizza in the region quite seriously! He promised he would not let him down...