Day 16, Taormina, Sicily. From the ship we have a nice view of volcanic Mt. Etna puffing out a trail smoke. We get off the tender and take a cab driven by a very friendly driver, Enrico, who chats happily on the drive up to the cliffside town of Taormina. We walk through the town, and immediately come across a fantastic gourmet popsicle stand. They’re so good the girls insist we stop there again before we leave.
We have fun exploring some of the side streets, then shortly before the main square come across a watch shop. Both Liya and Bree have mostly destroyed their watches by swimming with them, so we buy them new watches that are waterproof enough for the pool.
We cross through the main square and continue on to the public gardens. They’re beautiful, and include an odd set of miniature fake ruins. Afterwards we have pizzas at a restaurant with a view of the sea. The pizzas are good but way, way too big, and the girls can barely make a dent in the ones they’ve picked. After lunch, Anya carefully navigates back to a stuffed animal store, where she buys a cute little baby boar.
On the way back out out of Taormina, we come across a tiny opening between two buildings and are surprised to see it has a street sign: Vicolo Stretto. The opening to the “street” is just wide enough to admit an adult, and beyond that there’s a flight of stairs going up the hill. Before leaving town, we make another stop at the fantastic popsicle stand.
We have dinner on board the ship at a Japanese restaurant theoretically overseen by LA chef Matsuhisa Nobu. The food’s good, but not any more amazing than the food at Nishino in Seattle.
Day 17, Amalfi Coast. The boat stops in Sorrento, where we meet our tour guide, Salvatore. He speaks with a thick accent and talks about himself in the third person. He drives us over the ridge to the Amalfi side of the peninsula. We stop at one viewpoint and the girls buy granitas: lemon, orange, and orange/lemon; they’re all good. There are lots of lemons for sale, including the huge ones called “cedro”. Salvatore points out that, on the Amalfi coast, you can buy pretty much anything made with lemons: lemon candy, lemon liqueur, lemon pasta, and more. Salvatore observes, “Even Salvatore is made from lemons.”
We stop in Positano for a bit, and walk down to the beach, stopping along the way to buy some gifts. The town is fairly charming, but compared with other Mediterranean towns, most of it is quite new, so there’s not much history layered on here. It’s essentially a nice beach town on a hill.
We drive on to Amalfi, where we eat a pizza lunch. (Italy is the one European country we’ve visited where we never have to worry whether the girls will find something to eat.) We explore the Amalfi Cathedral, purported to hold the remains of the apostle Andrew. The girls like the steps in front of the church. To the amusement and confusion of our guide Salvatore, the girls run up and down the church stairs ten times.
We get gelato from a place that has both “to go” service and sit down service. Both include the same range of gelato, but the sit-down service entails higher prices. We end up sitting down and order some cones and cups of gelato. The cones are huge, and topped with a mini cone. The “cups” of gelato turn out to be massive glass goblets that are far too big to finish. As we’re eating, the proprietor keeps having to shoo away confused tourists who’ve purchased “to go” gelato but try to sit down.
Afterwards we stop to try limoncello, which turns out to taste like an overly concentrated, high octane lemon drop. Nope. More interesting than the limoncello is the female Japanese tourist who comes into the limoncello store dressed like Alice in Wonderland. The two women working the store are so surprised by her outfit that they have their picture taken with her. From the store, we walk down to the beach and cool off our feet in the water before getting back into the van.
The last stop on the tour is the inland town of Ravello. It’s charming enough, with a town square lined with tall “umbrella” pine trees, but the girls are getting tired. Anya melts down, and complains for the rest of the afternoon.
Back on board the ship, Liya has pizza for dinner, making it a two-pizza day for her.
Day 18, Pompeii. We have a bit of panic over a travel snafu — our plan is to tour Pompeii today, but it turns out that Jan never actually got around to booking this particular tour. He’s waiting at the excursion desk when it opens at 7:00 am. They only have two tickets for the tour today, and we need five. The excursion coordinator checks with someone, and we get the okay for our whole family to join the tour.
The bus to Naples and Pompeii takes about an hour. Our tour guide, Anna-Maria, walks us through the ruins. We like seeing an old Roman house with intact frescoes and an impluvium (pool for catching rainwater). In the streets, Bree likes finding the points where chariots and carts wore ruts in the paving stones. We also like the stepping stones that let residents cross the street from one sidewalk to the other side without having to step in the muck of the road itself. We see a small amphitheater, a bath, the forum, and a temple. One large stone in the road includes an amusing detail: an ancient carved penis, pointing toward the city’s red light district.
Day 19, Rome. We have a few last minute crises as we’re leaving the ship: Anya can’t find something just as we’re leaving the room, and then when we get down to the gangway, she can’t find the ID card she needs to leave the ship. We finally make it off the ship and onto the bus from the port of Civitaveccia to Rome. The bus drops us near a taxi stand, but it’s a bit of a trick finding a taxi that can take all five of us and our luggage.
The taxi won’t actually take us all the way down the tiny road to our hotel, The Inn at the Roman Forum. It’s a small hotel and, as its name promises, just around the corner from the forum. The receptions indicates they’ve moved us up to two rooms on the hote’s top floor. These rooms turn out to open onto a surprisingly large rooftop garden. Another surprise: the hotel’s basement includes archways and a colonnade that date back to 50 B.C.
We take a taxi to the Campo de Fiori to meet the family of Melis, a classmate of Anya’s whose parents, Kathie and Resat, are teaching a University of Washington program in Rome this summer. We have lunch with them, then Melis leads us to one of her favorite gellaterias, Alberto Pica. They have some interesting flavors including apricot and riso e cannella (rice and cinnamon, which tastes like rice pudding).
We leave Anya to spend the afternoon with Melis’s family. Melis teaches Anya how to drink from the ubiquitous Roman water fountains. Water normally pours down out of them, but if you cover the spout with your hand, water jets out of a small hole — creating an arc of water you can easily drink from. Anya teaches us how to do this. We later pass the sacred knowledge on to other tourists.
Later, we eat dinner on the terrace of a place called Il Falchetto. Afterwards we walk around in search of another gelato place. We turn a corner and find the landmark Trevi Fountain, but the fountain happens to closed for restoration.
Day 20, Rome. Bree joins Jan for breakfast on the hotel’s rooftop terrace, but they decide to go up even further and eat on the teeny tippy-top terrace.
We do a morning tour of the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. Before we get to those sights, however, the tour spends a long time passing through the Vatican Museums. The Raphael rooms are amazing, but mostly the museum just wears out the girls before we get to the main attractions. By the time we’ve seen the Sistine Chapel, Anya and Bree are done, and even the sheer monumental scale of St. Peter’s Basilica can’t engage their attention. They melt down, so Angela takes them off the tour and out of the building. (Unfortunately, Anya walks out still carrying her audio headset from the tour, and it takes a while for Angela to figure out a way to return it.)
Meanwhile, Liya is energized by the prospect by climbing with Jan all the way to the top of the basilica’s dome. She counts the first 200 or so steps, then gives up. (A sign later says there are 320 steps.) When the staircase begins to follow the course of the hemispherical dome, the walls of the staircase become sloped and curved as well, which is fairly disorienting. The last segment of the climb is up a tiny spiral staircase with a central dangling rope to hold on to. They finally emerge onto a viewing platform. (They notice an even tinier spiral staircase hidden away that continues going up further, but it’s closed to tourists.)
The girls spend the afternoon back at the hotel doing their preferred activities: reading and playing iPad games. They’re currently addicted to a farming simulation game called Hay Day, and happily spend hours planting, collecting, and trading virtual agricultural commodities.
We have dinner at a modern-style pasta bar. Bree’s so exhausted, she falls asleep on Angela’s lap. Over dinner, Anya protests against going on another tour tomorrow, but later agrees to the tour plan after a bribe of bulk-purchased Italian candy.
Day 21, Rome. After breakfast, we make a short walk from the hotel to the Colosseum. We’ve purchased tickets for a “Skip the Line” tour, but when our group gets to the Colosseum entrance, we still have to wait in a massive crowd. It turns out that today’s a special day. Colosseum entrance is free for all E.U. citizens, so the place is mobbed with Italians. By the time we get inside, an hour has passed, and we’re all hot. Fun historical note: each entrance arch to the Colosseum has a number above it — exactly like a modern stadium, only in Roman numerals. We enter through gate LIII.
The tour’s fine, but when the tour leaves the Colosseum and heads for the Roman Forum, Jan takes the girls out of the tour early to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s meltdown. The four of them have lunch at a streetside cafe before going back to the hotel.
In the evening, we meet up with Melis’ family again for dinner at a restaurant in the Campo de Fiori. It’s a beautiful evening to eat outside, and the square is bustling with activity: musicians, street hawkers, and an absolutely terrible magician. Resat and Kathie explain that the magician is there every night, and every night he does the same terrible performance. Most of his tricks involve cheap props, like the sword he sticks into his mouth. Throughout the performance, he chants the same few words over and over again. When he’s finished with a trick, he waves his fingers in the air. We don’t think the act can get any stranger, but it does — when he’s finished, the terrible magician takes off his toupee and holds it out to ask for change.
One street hawker is selling a sort of light-up spinning, flying toy that you shoot into the air with a small rubber-band slingshot. The four girls have a great time flinging the toys into the air again and again, which gives the adults a chance to linger over coffee.
After dinner, we go back to Alberto Pica again for gelato. By the time we’re done, it’s pretty late, but the girls clamor for us to make a stop at a local “cat sanctuary”. This is small fenced-off block of sunken Roman ruins. Locals feed the stray cats that congregate there. The girls run around the block trying to count the cats. Angela takes a taxi with Anya and Bree back to the hotel, while Jan and Liya enjoy a nice late evening stroll back.
Day 23, Rome to Venice. We two taxis to the Termini station — we can’t all fit in a normal taxi with our luggage. Our taxis drop us off at two separate places, however, and it’s somewhat confusing to find each other in the busy station. We have seats on a fast Trenitalia train to the Venezia Santa Lucia station, about a four hour trip. Around lunchtime, Jan and Anya make their way to the tiny snack bar. Most of the offerings are sad-looking sandwiches, but they also have toasted focaccia pizzas aren’t too bad, and we end up buying three.
After getting off the train in Venice, we buy tickets on a vaporetto boat and take it to the Ca’ Rezzonico stop. There we meet a woman named Marta, who walks us the short distance to the apartment we’re renting for the next four nights. The apartment is in an very old building called the Palazzo Loredan dell’ Ambasciatore. A couple of Venetian doges were apparently born in the building centuries ago. The building’s on a small piece of Venice called Ca’ Cerchieri, and faces the Grand Canal. Our apartment is on the top floor (the 4th, or the 5th by American reckoning), and it takes a few trips in the tiny, ancient, slow lift to get all our luggage to the top. On the plus side, the place has some great views.
We have some time before dinner, so Jan and Angela go out shopping for groceries for tomorrow’s breakfast. We have trouble following Marta’s directions to the nearest supermarket, and are about to give up when we spot a small, nearly hidden, entrance to the market between some shops. We have fun puzzling over the Italian labels on the milk, yogurt, etc., trying to figure out what we want to buy.
On the way back, we stop at a boat selling fruits and vegetables that’s pulled up along a quay. We want to buy about a half a pound of tomatoes, so Jan looks up the translation for “quarter kilo”. The translation (according to Jan’s phone) is “quarto kilo”. When Angela asks the the grocer for the tomatoes, instead of “quarto”, she asks for “quatro kilo”. “Quatro kilo?!?” asks the surprised grocer. That’s about nine pounds of tomatoes.
We eat dinner at a typical pizza/pasta place on the Campo Santa Margherita. Just as we’re walking back to the apartment, the temperature of the air drops, and the sky darkens. Everyone starts hurrying to wherever they’re going, and the storekeepers start closing up. We make it back just before the thunderstorm hits.
Day 24, Venice. In the morning, we walk to the Piazza San Marco. Anya leads her sisters in chasing after pigeons. Jan’s up for going up to the top of the companille tower, but Anya’s opposed to having to wait in any more lines. We walk through the piazza into the smaller quayside piezzetta, and have (ridiculously expensive) coffees and granitas with a nice view of the water.
On the way back to the apartment, we get sandwiches to go from a nearby deli. Our apartment has a nice terrace in back, so we eat lunch out there. It’s pretty hot, but there’s an awning so it’s got some shade.
Jan and Angela want to visit a small museum around the corner that’s exhibiting reproductions of various machines and contraptions envisioned by Leonardo da Vinci. Anya wants to just stay in the apartment and read, which is fine with us. The museum exhibit is fairly interesting, especially the wooden mechanical devices you can interact with: gears, winches, etc. Afterwards, Liya goes back to the apartment, while Bree accompanies Jan and Angela on a walk.
After several days of pizza and pasta lunches and dinners, the girls want to eat somewhere that’s not Italian. Jan finds a listing for a Chinese restaurant called Tianjin that sounds so-so, but at least it’s something different. The walk there through the neighborhoods on the west and northside of the Grand Canal is pleasant enough, but when we get to the location indicated on Jan’s phone, there’s no restaurant there. Worse, just like yesterday evening, the temperature begins to drop suddenly, and the sky gets dark. We widen our search for the restaurant, and ask around, but to no avail. Finally, with the wind picking up, we duck into a small restaurant just as the clouds open up and a torrent of rain pours down. So it’s Italian again for dinner. We’re grateful we got one of the last tables big enough for five — the place immediately fills up with other tourists seeking shelter. With the waitstaff and kitchen slammed, dinner takes a while to appear, but it’s not bad.
Day 25, Venice. Buon compleanno a Sabriya! Today’s her seventh birthday. Ever since we first realized months ago that her birthday would fall during the time we were in Venice, Bree’s been eagerly looking forward to being here. We take a birthday gondola from the Accademia bridge, up the Grand Canal a bit, and on a loop through the smaller canals. We pass by two gondola boat building workshops. It’s interesting to see that the gondolas aren’t symmetrical — they’re curvier on the left side, so the gondolier can constantly paddle on the right and still have the gondola go straight.
We get sandwiches for lunch again and birthday cake from a bakery next door. We don’t have any birthday candles to put in the cake, so Jan puts in a bunch of kitchen matches that flare up like a fireball when lit.
Jan and Angela leave the girls in the apartment after lunch and explore the nearby l’Accademia museum. In the late afternoon, Jan does some more online sleuthing and manages to figure out the actual location of the Chinese restaurant we’d tried to find last night. This evening, it starts to rain before we set out on our walk, but at least it’s slow and steady drizzle instead of a another thunderstorm. We do indeed find the Tianjin restaurant. It’s mostly terrible. But we all agree that it’s still nice to have something different for dinner.
The restaurant is just around the corner from the picturesque Rialto Bridge, so we walk to the bridge after dinner. With all the rain that’s been coming down the last few days, Angela’s keen to see whether there’s flooding on the Piazza San Marco. Not surprisingly, Anya just wants to go back to the apartment, so Jan takes her back. On the way, they spot an appetizing-looking focaccia pizza restaurant, which they decide to try the following night for our last dinner in Italy.
Angela, meanwhile, takes Liya and Bree to the Piazza San Marco, which indeed is partly covered in a bit of water. Liya opens and closes her umbrella to startle pigeons into flight. Bree’s wearing Keen sport sandals, so she stomps around right in the water.
After the walk, we get lunch. Jan and Angela have something like a gyro; the girls get pizza that comes with french fries on top of it. The afternoon is full of more walks. Jan takes Anya shopping for a blank masquerade ball-style mask she can paint herself. They walk most of the way to the Rialto Bridge, but can’t find the right store; they happily find it on the way back. It’s called Ca’ Macana, an old and apparently well-respected mask workshop.
Day 26, Venice. We make a long walk to the Rialto bridge and back on either side of Grand Canal. We keep to small streets at first, then at one point suddenly find outselves on the main tourist thoroughfare. We stop for coffee, drinks, and pastries and a small shop called Caffe al Ponte de Lovo, a coffee shop so old it’s mentioned in a play from the 1700s.
Later, Jan and Angela walk to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum of modern art. Finally, we all walk all the way back to the Rialto Bridge again so we can try the foccacia pizza at little place Jan and Anya had noticed last night. It turns out to be called Antico Forno. The place is hopping, particularly with Americans. We take out pizza to go, and eat on the steps of a church in a nearby square. The pizza’s actually quite good, and very filling.
Day 27, Venice to New York. We start our return journey with the very best trip to an airport we’ve ever had (or perhaps possible anywhere): a trip by water taxi. The taxi picks us up right on the building’s little front dock on the Grand Canal. It’s sunny and warm, with a little breeze — perfect boating weather. The boat putters up the Grand Canal, then swerves into a small side canal. The bridges are so low we can touch them as we go under them. When the taxi leaves Venice proper and heads out into the open lagoon, the driver picks up speed, and we go whipping across the lagoon to the airport. It’s fantastic. Would that all airport taxi trips were this fun.
Day 28, New York to Seattle. In the morning, we take a short taxi ride to Jackson Heights to see our friends Fiona, her husband Peter, and their daughter Tallulah. The last time we saw Tallulah, she was only about a year old; now she’s five. We hang out at their apartment, and the four girls have some fun making shapes with Legos and blocks and seeing if anyone can guess the animal they’ve made.
We walk to the subway station and walk up to the platform, but they’re doing work on the tracks or something, and so we’ll need to first go in the other direction, then backtrack on an express train. The girls are getting hungry, so we abandon our plan, and decide to eat in Fiona and Peter’s neighborhood. They take us to Jahn’s, an old ice cream parlor and diner. Despite having eaten pasta throughout our Europe trip, Bree still orders spaghetti.
Popcorn. It’s what’s for breakfast.
Around 3:00 pm:
Liya: “Where’s Sabriya?”
Parent: “Sabriya? She’s been at science camp since 8:30 this morning. You’ve been home all this time and didn’t notice?”
Liya: “So that’s why it’s been so quiet all day.”
Camping trip to Sucia Island State Park. After four years of doing a family camping trip at Mount Rainier National Park, we’re ready for a change. Jan’s keen to try another camping trip in the San Juan Islands, and a number of reviews suggest that Sucia Island is a good spot. It’s north of the large and popular Orcas Island, but Sucia itself isn’t served by the state ferry system. To get there, the six of us (five of us, plus Jan’s mom) drive up to Bellingham and take a water taxi to the island. The boat ride out is fun all on its own.
You generally can’t reserve a campsite on Sucia Island, so we’re not quite sure where (or whether) we’ll be able to find an open site. Since it’s a Thursday, however, there are plenty of sites open. The boat lets us off at the Fossil Bay dock. A short walk away, we find a great unoccupied site on Fox Cove. Some wheelbarrows by the dock make it a bit easier to move our pile of gear from the dock to the site.
Bree waits for s’mores.
After breakfast, we make a short hike over part of the island to Echo Bay, and then to Shallow Bay. Our goal is a set of weathered limestone cliffs which have a series of small holes or tiny caves in them. Most of us just go up a little bit, but Anya is happy to clamber all over. A combination of bouldering experience and a pre-teen’s confidence lets Anya get pretty high up.
We return to our campsite on Fox Cove for lunch. In the early afternoon, we get a surprise visit from the Frazer family. They have a cabin on Obstruction Island on the other side of Orcas, and since they knew we were on Sucia, they thought they’d pop over and say hello. Our girls have fun playing with their girls while the adults sit around and chat.
The rest of the afternoon is spent walking around Fox Point, looking in tide pools, and playing in the shallows.
Angela gives a thumbs up to apples wrapped in foil, seasoned with sugar and cinnamon, and baked in the campfire.
Bree at twilight.
After two nights of camping, we need to head back to Seattle. Normally breaking camp can be a somewhat melancholy experience, but a good cure for that turns out to be a boat ride. The water taxi meets us back on the Fossil Bay dock, and the ride back is immensely fun. We’ve had perfect weather the last few days, and the water’s calm all the way back to Bellingham.
Liya takes a moment to lie in the sun using our pile of gear as a bed.
Angela takes Liya and Sabriya down to California to visit their Chen relations in Rancho Palos Verdes. The two girls will stay with Johnny and Zen-ni for a week while attending a horseback riding camp. The girls and their cousins Anthony and Brian immediately pick up where they left off the last time we were down in CA. That is, they shoot Nerf guns at each other.