My trip to Italy is nearly complete: this is the last post. Finally, we left Roma and headed to Napoli with Mom and Dad. Mom was so anxious to call the Uber that we were at the train station 45 minutes early. It's fine.
Our first stop was Pompeii.
It is huge and impressive and overwhelming.
Plus, of course, hot. We were in Southern Italy in August, after all. I think the best thing I saw all day was the spigot in the street with water - nectar of the gods.
I know I've posted already about Firenze and Milano, but now we're going back to our first day in Italy for a moment, before fast-forwarding ahead to our post-northern-Italy Roma adventures.
Our first stop, while incredibly jet lagged, was The Vatican.
After Firenze, we headed to Milano and hoped that the new rules for vaccine passport requirements would still let us do what we had planned. Loradona and I both carried our vaccine information every where we went, and thankfully, the people were pretty understanding of our lack of fancy QR codes.
Not to say the changing rules weren't stressful. In fact, it's in Milano that I start to feel a pain in my ribs, for those keeping track at home...
Our first day in Milano, we headed to see The Last Supper and the Santa Maria delle Grazie.
In July, Italy changed their rules regarding quarantine, relaxing the requirements for vaccinated visitors from a few countries, including Canada and the US. Less than a month later, Loradona and I were each on a plane, heading to Rome.
These next few blog posts are going to be chronicling my trip. I've decided to separate them out based on city. So, while we flew into Rome, this first post will be about Florence.
To give Mom and Dad a chance to do some work, Loradona and I headed up north by ourselves.
The fast trains are awesome, and gave us a chance to play some rummy with the Hogwarts cards Kyler gave me in preparation for this trip. How awesome is he, by the way? Supporting me going off without him, staying home and taking care of the kiddos, and buying me cards.
My baby girl turned 10! She's officially in double-digits!
For her birthday, we started with presents and chocolate chip pancakes.
Calista had asked for "a blue whale stuffie. Anything else you want to give me is fine. I'm sure I'll like it."
She did indeed like the books
and promise of a new bike.
When she opened her last present, Calista was shocked:
"I wanted it, but I didn't expect you to be able to find one!"
I then took the kiddos to Muttart Conservatory, which due to remodeling and Covid, we haven't been able to visit since Calista and I took baptism pictures 2 years ago.
They loved wandering around, especially looking at the fish,
trying to find the corpse flower, and playing in the overhanging leaves.
At home, after more tasty food (cheese pizza and lasagna rolls), we pulled out the cake:
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (and no nuts).
As soon as school got out, we hit the road to go down south. On our way, we stopped at Calaway Park. We had passes last year for our Tour of Alberta, but then Covid kind of ruined that plan, so we're doing it this year instead.
We discovered Calista is tall enough to do everything - on her own! Craig is tall enough to do the big roller coaster with an adult,
and Caleb is big enough to do the log ride with us.
My favorite!
Everyone got to do a whole bunch of fun things, we ate pizza,
and we tried to stay cool.
That struggle would only get worse throughout the next couple of weeks.
Favorite color: yellow, and orange, and blue, and green
Best part of being 4: um, me eating goldfish and bananas.
Looking forward to for 5: um, I'm looking forward to getting to my new school, like kindergarten, and Craig helping me find my class, since he knows the way, I think.
Kyler and Jeanette got married on the 25th of August 2007, after knowing each other for four years and being each other's rebound date. It's a healthy relationship.
