Italy - Day 1 (May 10 - 11, 2024)

Our trip to Italy started early on Friday, May 10th.  

My alarm was set to go off at 4:30 but I was out of bed at 4:00.  Who can sleep when it's finally time to go on the trip you've been planning for and agonizing over for months?  Not me!  

And when I say I was agonizing over this trip, I'm not being dramatic. I worried, fretted, anguished and finally prayed (should have started there) about this trip from the beginning.  Was now the right time to go?  Should we take the kids or not?  Do we need to be spending all this money when we still have tuition bills?  Are we seeing the right places?  How long should we stay?  What if the weather is horrible?  You get the drift.  The devil was working overtime on me and I'm not going to lie - it took  the joy away from the dreaming about and planning for this trip.

Our flight from Charlotte left at 10:00 AM so w left the house at 6:30 AM.  We reserved a spot at The Parking Spot several weeks before the trip and it was such a great decision!  The parking was cheaper than the airport parking and the shuttle to the airport was literally right there at our car the second we hopped out.  In no time we were at the airport.

Dan has Global Entry and TSA Precheck and was hoping we could all cruise through the shorter security lines with him since we were all traveling together, but that was not the case.  So he waited with us non-frequent travelers in the very long lines.  All the lines moved quickly thankfully and we were at our gate in plenty of time.  One thing about me - I DO NOT WANT TO BE LATE AT AN AIRPORT and Dan who is much less stressed about this was nice enough to get me everywhere we needed to be in plenty of time. 

With that said, we had a very long layover in Washington, DC.  When we were booking the tickets we had two options - a 45 minute layover or a 5 hour layover.  We did not want to risk missing our flight with a short layover so we opted for the longer one.  We took advantage of all the drinks and food at the United Lounge which Dan is a member of and thoroughly enjoyed our wait time together.

(Side note here:  Dan and I have been doing the low carb diet.  I've been doing it since February and he started it in March.  Dan does a very very strict version of it - literally almost zero carbs per day.  I do a less strict version and allow myself 10 to 20 grams of carbs per day.  Prior to the trip, Dan lost 22 pounds and I lost 13.  Please keep this information tucked away for future purposes.)

We enjoyed many carb-filled foods and many carb-filled beverages in the United Lounge until it was time to head to our gate for our 5:30 PM departure.  Flight time from DC to Rome was 8 hours and 45 minutes.  We were scheduled to land in Rome 8:15 AM Rome time.

We all attempted to sleep on the plane to no avail.  It's hard to force yourself to sleep  at 8:00 PM EST knowing good and well that it's 2:00 AM Rome time. I kept doing calculations in my head..."if I fall asleep now I will get 5 hours of sleep" or "if I can just fall asleep now I will get 3 hours of sleep". What is not helpful when trying to sleep is calculating how much sleep you can get if you can just fall asleep. So basically we all dozed off and on a a little but were awake most of the night.

Sarah, Peter, and I were in one row.  Sarah was on the aisle, I was in the middle and Peter had the window.  Dan had the aisle seat on the row next to Sarah. We had maybe an hour until landing time and Sarah told me that Dan had been getting up and down a lot through the night going to the bathroom and was in the bathroom at the moment and had been in there a while. 

He finally came out of the bathroom and sat with his head in his hands for a while and then motioned for an air sickness bag.  I quickly handed him one and he quietly threw up.  The amount of stress I felt was through the roof! Dan had all the information about the trains and the ferry we needed to take when we landed and I felt helpless.  Sarah was crying because she has anxiety around vomiting and Peter was upset because his right ear had been ringing and would not stop.  I needed help y'all.  And quick.  So I just began repeating the Surrender Prayer over and over until I felt peace.

Jesus, I surrender myself to you. You take over. 

The plane landed and Dan said he felt much, much better after throwing up. Sarah dried her tears and calmed down.  Peter's ears finally quit ringing but not for another couple of hours. And I just kept praying because I still felt uneasy. We think that all the carbs were too much for Dan's stomach to handle because we all ate the same things before the flight and during the flight.  

We landed and headed to get the train from the airport to the train station. While we waited for our train, we grabbed some coffee and croissants.  The Rome airport is about 30 minutes outside of Rome so it was a quick ride.

Once we got to the high speed train station in Rome we made our way to our platform and got on our train to Salerno.  It was a 2 and a half our ride.  The train was nice and clean, there was a snack car which we did not use, and we had four seats which were around a nice sized table.  We charged our phones, checked out the Italian countryside, and snoozed a little.  And then we were in Salerno!

We made our way by foot from the train station to the ferry.  Thankfully it was a pretty short walk and we all packed light (we each had a backpack and a piece of carry-on luggage.) 

There was a restaurant in between the train station and the ferry that had a ton of people eating there. It was called Madegra.  The people there spoke English was which very helpful.  We pointed at what we wanted and they popped it in the brick oven.  Sarah and I grabbed something that was a mix between a calzone and a piece of pizza with a crust on top and met Dan and Peter at the line to get on the ferry.  We all agreed that they tasted wonderful and we chowed down.

The ferry ride from Salerno to Amalfi lasted about 25 minutes because we didn't make any stops at any other towns.  We enjoyed the views and pulled into the port and were just amazed at how gorgeous it all was.  

We hopped off the ferry and made our way to our AirBnB.  It was about a 5 minute walk from the dock to the stairs that would lead us up to our apartment. In the listing for this apartment, the host emphasized that there were 180 steps leading up to the unit.  You could arrange for a porter to take your suitcases up the steps but we declined that. We had packed light and were going to do it ourselves.

Y'all....those 180 steps (we all felt like there were more but we never actually counted) almost did us in.  At this point, it had been 28 hours since we had gotten up and we were all so exhausted.  (Also, I failed to mention that Dan has a Baker's Cyst behind his knee that has been giving him issues and would continue to haunt him our whole trip.  But Dan is a non-complainer and endured a lot of knee pain on this trip quietly. He's my hero.) We were also hot and sweaty and just ready to sit down.  

We slowly made it up the steps and then couldn't figure out how to get in to the apartment.  Thankfully our host was in the building and was there in minutes to let us in and show us around.  She even whipped out a charcuterie board from the fridge. 

After she left, we were all amazed at the beautiful views from our apartment.  They were exactly as described and shown in the listing.  It all felt like a dream.  We were finally in Amalfi, Italy in our little rooftop apartment.  

After getting settled in we headed down to get the lay of the town and to grab some dinner.  There was a cute little restaurant right on the water and we grabbed a seat there.

It was probably around 6:00 at this time which is apertivo time in Italy. Apertivo is similar to Happy Hour in the US.  It's the time between work and dinner (Italians typically eat dinner around 9:00) when you enjoy a drink and a little snack.  We came to really appreciate this during our week in Italy and finally towards the end were eating our dinner at 9:00 PM like the locals.  

Since it was apertivo time there wasn't a full menu but we got some bruschetta and pizza and drinks and were just soaking it all in. Then we headed back to the apartment to get some sleep because we are all so tired.

I ended this day feeling very thankful and very blessed.  We made it to Amalfi.  It took a long time and it wasn't without it's little hiccups.  God was so very good in granting us safe travels and I was extremely thankful that Dan's illness was nothing more than eating too much and that Peter's ears had stopped ringing.  I was grateful that the apartment was everything we hoped for and everything it was advertised to be. But most of all,  I was so thankful that we were all together and able to experience the trip as a family and I was so excited about the adventures that were ahead.  

It was a very long day, but it was a very, very good one.

The Alps from the air!  So breathtaking!

In Salerno waiting to board our ferry eating some delicious hand pies!

The docks in Salerno

Peter on the fery as we are approaching Salerno

Salerno from the water.  There are no filters on any of my photos.  The water was this gorgeous green blue color!

A very bad selfie of a very tired but happy me!

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Family photo on the docks in Amalfi! 

View from our apartment in Amalfi!

We could not get over our view!!

More views from the apartment!

The charcuterie board our sweet host left for us!

Peter admiring the view!

St. Andrews Duomo

Heading out to apertivo!

Me and my sweet husband.

At dinner

Gelato!

Apartment views of Amalfi at night!

Good night from Amalfi!

Buongiorno! Siamo tornati dal nostro biaggio in Italia!

Good day! We are back from our trip to Italia!  It was everything we hoped and prayed it would be and more!

We arrived home late Saturday night, headed to mass on Sunday morning,  lunch at mom's, and then started on the massive mounds of laundry.  We did Peter's first as he had to go back to Raleigh Sunday afternoon because he started his internship at the John Locke Foundation Monday morning.  He had a great first day, by the way!

Yesterday Dan and I both took off of work which was definitely a good move because we still had a lot ot do from being gone - more laundry, yard work, bills, etc.  And also just getting these old bodies back on East Coast time was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Dan's back at work this morning and I'm heading off to work soon as well.  And by the way - I got a new position at work - I will be the person receiving all the product into the store, matching it with it's invoice, setting it up in our point of sale system, setting the price, etc.  I'm excited for this new opportunity but also a little nervous.  I trained with the person doing it before me for a few days and then went on vacation and I'm hoping I remember everything I'm supposed to do!  The nice thing about this position is that once they back fill my old position, I will no longer have to work any Saturdays.  My new schedule will be Monday - Thursday.  

Sarah starts her internship at the Bethesda Center for the Homeless next Monday so she is extremely excited about that.  Thankfully that's in Winston-Salem so she will be here all summer!  

I posted pictures and updates from the trip on my personal Facebook page. I always like to do in-depth blog posts so my family can refer back to what we did and what we saw kind of like a scrapbook  but because I'm no longer sitting on the couch eating bon bons on the daily, it will take me some time. :) In the meantime, enjoy this lovely shot taken in Amalfi.  We passed by these steps each time we went up the 190 steps to our apartment.  

Ciao!

Moulin Rouge! The night the old lady was out way past her bedtime.

Several weeks ago, a friend texted me and another friend to see if either one of us wanted to join her at the Tanger Center to see the Broadway production of Molin Rouge.  Her husband wasn't able to go with her and another friend was going in his place but ended up not being able to go either. So she texted us.

When I got the text I paused.  My first thought was "There's no way I'm going out on a Wednesday night". Because the Tanger is in Greensboro, the show didn't start until 7:30 and I knew I wouldn't be in my bed until Midnight.  That's two hours past my normal weeknight bedtime!  And I had work the next day.

My second thought was "Hmmm...maybe the other person she texted realllllllly wanted to go so I better wait a bit before responding".  But after a bit I thought to myself, "Dan will be out of town, the kids are at school, I never do anything fun any more, it sounds like a great idea!"

So we made the plan to go and I was looking forward to it until the actual day of.  I woke up on the 24th and kept thinking "Why did I say yes???? I'm going to be so tired.  What is this show even about?? I bet it's going to be horrible!"  

And to be fair to my friend Wendy, it had nothing to do with the show or the lateness of it on a week night, it's my old lady brain.  I used to go out on a whim all the time in my 20s but the older I get , the less adventurous I get (and isn't it sad that seeing a Broadway play on a Wednesday night is now considered adventurous?  24-year-old me would be so disappointed in 54 year old me! :)

And to make matters worse, everyone at work kept asking me what I was going to wear?  I hadn't even given that a thought but quite a few customers had been in shopping for outfits to wear to the show.  This is the downfall of working at a ladies boutique - everyone is very focused on clothing and outfits and what to wear and getting new things for every event.  Guess what I am NOT focused on?  Yep....what to wear.  So that added an extra layer of stress worrying that I was not going to be dressed properly.

I got home from work, put on black pants and a sweater and Wendy picked me up at 6:00 pm.  We headed to Greensboro, got parked and went inside.  And the first thing I saw was a woman wearing a bright red ball gown.  And I panicked a bit.  The black pants and sweater was probably not the way to go but then everyone started pouring in and there was every kind of outfit you could imagine.  

There were people in blue jeans, there were groups of women doing a girls night out dressed in cute short dresses, there were older couples dressed like they were going to church, there were trendy couples who looked like they shopped at expensive boutiques in NY City and there were people dressed in shorts.  So, note to self  - wear whatever the heck you want and don't waste a second of worry on it!

We walked in and found our seats and the whole stage was red. About 10 minutes before the show characters started coming out on to the stage and slowly dancing around the props.  The women were scantily clad because the Moulin Rouge in France was the birthplace of the can-can (which at the time was a provocative dance) and I was thinking "What have I gotten myself into?  This is going to be horrible!" 

And then the show started and Y'ALL!  I can not even begin to tell you how FABULOUS this show was!!!!!  The music, the characters, the story line!  It was funny, it was sad, it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!

I was entertained the entire time.  I never once looked at my watch.  I actually would have been fine it was LONGER!  If you get a chance to see this show - do it!!!!!!!!  And I can only imagine how much better it would be to see it on Broadway.

I know I don't have much to compare it to.  I saw Les Miserables in NY City in 1987.  And it was wonderful.  After that show, I immediately bought the cassette tape and played the songs in my car on repeat.  And then the off Broadway production came to Charlotte in the early 2000s and I drug Dan to see it.  The off Broadway version was good but not nearly as good as the original.  I think that was because in New York, they had a fantastic stage that rotated around and the traveling production did not.  

Right around that time, I also drug Dan to see Rent.  We both HATED that (Dan actually fell asleep if memory serves) and I haven't seen any other Broadway play since then. So I was expecting to be completely underwhelmed with Moulin Rouge but boy, was I wrong.  

Wendy, who frequents Broadway shows at the Tanger Center said it was the best one she had seen yet so lucky me that I got to go to that one!

After the show we even got pictures with some of the cast members.  Overall, it was an awesome night!  I'm glad I said yes to something on a weeknight and something that I thought wasn't going to be my cup of tea.  

And here are a few pictures of the event:

You have to take a picture in front of the sign,

We had great seats and of course we got there early because we are old ladies! 

This is Harold.  He was my favorite character in the show so I was super excited that we got a picture with him!

And this is Santiago!  Another great character from the show.  They were raising money for Broadway Cares which uses the funds to support AIDS related causes hence the buckets.

Have any of you seen Moulin Rouge?  What did you think?