On Thursday morning, I went to the Laundromat to do a load of laundry for the first time in almost 2 weeks. I started the load and didn’t see a dryer, but saw that they had a dryer on the sign. I went next door to the  manned laundry shop and “asked”. I understood that the washer would also dry the clothes…one of those all in one machines. I left to go back to the hotel for 45 minutes and came back to wet clothes. I asked again and the 2 big machines were dryers which is what I thought but I swear I saw someone putting dry clothes in them. I knew the bottom one didn’t work. The top dryer was in use and the staff had a load to put in when that finished. I realized this was going to take too long but decided to wait and see what happened with the broken dryer. She couldn’t get it to work but let me use the top dryer! I had to do 2 cycles, one warm which wasn’t very effective and one hot (12 minutes each) which was only warm. I had mostly dry, but still damp clothes. At least they’d be lighter for our travel day! And clean clothes…yea! I still have a few things that are cleaned and dried in the American machines at Michele’s and they’re so great. I am using them slowly to make them last!!! The highlight of the day was our 11 o’clock meet up with Victor and Janelle, 2 students that were undergrads at Vandy while Ray was in grad school. I hadn’t seen them since graduation 8-9 years ago. What a crazy way to meet up again! It was so great to see them walking down the street! We had lunch at the same place we had dinner our first two nights here. It was good and convenient. We were a bit early so walked around the Central Market showing Victor and Janelle what we found there. We had a nice lunch together. It was so much fun to catch up. I didn’t want to leave, but we had a long train ride ahead of us and had not yet bought our tickets or looked at the schedule. We parted ways and we headed off to Sorrento. We got to the station and a train was leaving in about 20 minutes. We headed to Naples, a little under 3 hours. The trip was uneventful. We read, listened to music and rested. Ray got some computer work done. The countryside was beautiful, but the train windows were dirty so I didn’t take pictures. We arrived in Napoli around 6 in the evening, anticipating hungry kids and rush hour crowds. We hoped to buy the ArteCard, a transportation/museum card. The booth closed about 5 minutes before we got there. WE headed to the Circumvesuviana train to head to Sorrento, another 1 hour ride. At this time, it was already dark. We went to buy our tickets and saw the ArteCard symbol and were able to buy our passes there, though we bought tickets for the train for tonight and would validate the cards the next 3 days. The train ride was bumpy, lurchy and pretty lame. Ray declared it the worst train ride he’d ever taken. We had granola bars on the train … dinner. We got to Sorrento around 7:30 and walked through the beautiful lit town in the rain, about 10 min. to our hotel which we found easily. Our room is very nice. The floor is tiled with white tiles that have blue flowers, gold accents and greenish blue filigree. We have 3 beds again and the corner room has a wrap-around balcony with a table and chairs. Our view is of the mountain behind us and oranges and lemons which are everywhere in this lemon capital! We also realized there’s no Wi-fi which was highly disappointing! They have 2 computers for guests to use and we’ve monopolized the time on them using the internet cord on our laptops. We’ve been lucky and not had to share much! The breakfast here is nice…fresh fruit, nice bread, toast and plenty of bread toppings. And of course, coffee.

Friday morning rain was predicted so we decided to go to museums in Naples instead of Pompeii so we could be indoors. Naples quickly became one of my least favorite cities. I’m sure, that, had we had better weather, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Though, it may still be low on the list. WE got to the train station and headed to the metro. We just missed a train and waited about 25 minutes for the next train to go one stop. We didn’t realized we had to wait so long or we would have walked. At this point, the weather was okay. At least it wasn’t raining. There was even a bit of sun in Sorrento and I was tempted to go to Pompeii anyway. We walked toward the museum that I wanted to visit, but missed it and ended up a block or so past at the Duomo. It was a huge beautiful façade in the middle of a lot of dirty ugliness. There was garbage everywhere on the streets and it felt really dirty, more like a 3^rd world country. We decided to go in the museum next to the duomo, the treasures of januarius. It was included in our museum card. We got in free and the booklet says the audio guides are free for pass holders, but she charged us 2 euros. I showed her the Italian in the book and she said “2 euros”. I think I will complain to the company. We got one audio guide and shared it. Really the museum was not overly interesting. It is filled with Catholic relics and lots of very expensive silver things. It was interesting enough, though. They have blood from the saint in some vials. That’s weird. There were some beautiful rooms of what was probably living space at some point in time. By the end of the museum we were hungry so headed to one of the original pizza joints that Rick Steves recommends. It was raining so I held the umbrella in order to keep us on track with my many maps and books. Naples is a pain and with all the maps and books, I still had a hard time navigating. We turned where I thought we should turned and walked quite a ways down a very, very  narrow, very, very dirty street that would be scary for a lot of people. There were clothes hanging down from the apartments everywhere. We turned around and went back to the main street and continued down hoping to find the right intersection, but we passed it. We turned on another big, fancy, clean street and admired the gorgeous, colorful buildings with glitzy window fronts and continued on in hopes of pizza. We kept walking and found the street! The first recommendation had a long line out across the street, so we opted for the competition across the street with no line. We were seated immediately and ordered 4 pizzas. We got 2 margherita, 1 4 stagiones (4 season), and 1 forte (with peppers and salami). 3 would’ve been enough. We didn’t finish them all. The kids didn’t eat much (more on that later). It was good but I’ve had better. The tomato taste was incredible, though. The kids also go to watch them make the pizzas which was fun. The waiter was not friendly and seemed annoyed at us (this is a theme of the day). After lunch they cleared our plates and also our bill so we didn’t’ know how much to pay. Ray went to pay and they added it up. We’re not sure if they charged us right. In the end it was close, but I think they added a bit. They also didn’t give Ray enough change. We’re thankful to not have been pick-pocketed but we are definitely getting ripped off some. Thankfully Ray noticed the change discrepancy and then they very clearly showed us the tip jar…as if…I was pretty disgusted with the whole thing. We went across the street to head to another museum and a major, major downpour hit us. We stood under the eve in front of the theater and debated what to do, watched the rain and commented on all the different kinds of garbage we saw floating down the street….ewwww. I read a bit of Rick Steves and realized that the fence in front of us was a barrier protecting a bit of a Greek wall from antiquity. We looked in and it was basically some old rocks with a ton of garbage around them. We were getting tired of standing there and the rain water was gushing down the street about 6-8 inches deep, so we went in the nearby gelateria for some Rick Steves recommended Gelato. I imagine they didn’t get much business that day, but they certainly weren’t interested in serving us!!! Amazing. The guy seemed very put out to have to serve us. We stood watching tom and jerry and other cartoons while we ate ice cream, wet and cold. We headed toward the museum but realized it just wasn’t going to happen. We were getting wetter and wetter as time passed. We walked through the heart of Naples mafia area. They had tons of shops selling little nativity scenes, the popular craft from Naples. The streets were narrow and claustrophobic, but very full of culture…if it just weren’t so wet. We finally made it to one of the few metro stops. We got down and looked at the map and saw that there was planned expansion to connect this metro to the station. We had to take this one stop and make a long transfer to get to the right metro. Then we only had to take it one stop. Because of the rain, we stayed on the metro rather than walking which would have been so much faster! When we got on the first train, people started to leave the last car and come to ours. We were glad to have seats because it got very crowded and hot while we waited about 15 minutes for them to clean up something in the last car. We’re assuming someone had gotten sick there. They got it cleaned up and continued on. We were very grateful that the next train to Sorrento was an express so it took just under an hour in stead of 70 minutes. Joshua fell asleep next to a stranger. I stood the whole time (at first because I had to and later by choice). Jessica and Ray got to sit a bit. Ray took the kids home while I went grocery shopping and got a bit for dinner. I got home and nobody was hungry but we didn’t have time to establish that before I headed to the grocery store. The kids weren’t feeling well. We put them to bed and they got up a lot during the night. Both got pretty bad coughs and Jessica threw up around 1, about the time I was heading to bed. Ray slept well.

We planned to have a slower day today. It was so gorgeous this morning. We headed to the roof of the hotel to check out the view and then headed to Pompeii around 10:45. We couldn’t pass up the sunshine and the kids were feeling fine despite their coughs. We loved Pompeii. The kids were tired so had a slightly hard time but they really enjoyed it so were able to persevere. It was way better than I had expected. I thought it would be closer to rubble, but there were real buildings. It was incredible. The ingenuity at that age was fascinating. We had a snack at the train station and were lucky enough to catch an express again!!! In Sorrento we went straight to the orange/lemon grove across the street. We tried some of the famous local limencello or iced lemon liquer and headed back out of this peaceful garden. We walked down the fancy main street to the plaza, took a picture of the sea and headed into the narrow shopping streets for tourists. They’re very quaint and full of beautiful things from the area...lots of lemon everything. The local craft in Sorrento is inlaid wood and it’s quite beautiful. The kids and I got gelato and went back to the room while Ray had a conference call for 3 hours to prepare for their business competition in Singapore later this month. I walked down to a beautiful little park overlooking the bay and Vesuvius. It was incredible. I continued on down, down, down the hill to the marina. I went down a narrow road that turned into steps that zigzagged to the water. I walked through the old greek gate from ancient times. One of the roads in Sorrento predates Jesus! I did my little hike just before sunset so got some beautiful views, though the sunset didn’t translate into pictures well. It was breathtaking. I walked 8.5 miles today. I think yesterday was over 10! We went to dinner in a little place in the neighborhood and had some great homemade pasta. Joshua had gnocchi, Jessica had cannelloni, I had linguini with capers and olives and Ray had fettucine with seafood. The kids were exhausted tonight and fell asleep quickly. Hopefully they’ll sleep well tonight. We head to Rome tomorrow.

The rain stopped and we had sunny weather today, but with a cold wind. Luckily we all don’t mind being a bit cool. We went out with t-shirts, mostly and got a bit cold in the afternoon, but not too bad. We did Rick Steves’ Renaissance Walk and went from the Duomo to the Palazzo Vecchio. We went inside the Duomo and the Orsanmichele along with the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. I’m not in much of an art mood here, which is a bit unfortunate seeing that Florence if fairly significant for art (to understate it…). We just don’t know much about Italian art. I also don’t want the kids to get burnt out on sightseeing too early on in this trip. I read the Rick Steves tour as we walked along. We saw the David replica outside the Palazzo Vecchio. We went back to the central market for lunch. We stopped at a place that looked good in the market and lo and behold, it was a Rick Steves recommendation! Ha! We had a fabulous and fairly inexpensive lunch or pasta e fagioli (a soup), risotto and roast beef paninis. We closed down the market and headed home. All the adults except Jo went to check email and do internet stuff at the café down the street. The kids watched a bit of tv, then, without prompting turned it off and read (all while we were gone). I brought out their new Roman playmobil guys including a chariot and they set up scenes with them. I loved hearing Jessica as I put them together…”That’s a Gaul”, “He holds the spear like this,” etc. I was amazed at how much she knew. They’ve read a lot about Rome and Romans and they also love Asterix. I thought these toys would be good to connect the book knowledge to the history. It’s fun to hear them talk about the life of the Romans. They wore tunics all day today. I heard a few people comment on them. It’s a bit out of place here in Florence. I really wanted them for Pompeii and the Colosseum/Forum. They didn’t get them too dirty today, either! Yea! After our afternoon rest, we headed to the Leonardo Da Vinci machine museum with my parents. It was 3 rooms full of machines built based on Leonardo’s thousands of notebooks. It was a great little museum, but a bit disappointing at the same time. It was neat to see the ingenuity of this Renaissance man and to think how much sooner technology could’ve progressed had he actually built some of his machines. He would’ve been pleased, I’m sure, but he wasn’t very good at completing his projects. We watched the videos on his life and work and spent about 2 hours there. From there we headed for dinner and ended up at the same place as last night. It was good again! Our waiter was different and we missed the guy from last night. The kids shared the wild boar sauce on ravioli, grilled sausage and French fries. Ray and I shared an eggplant soufflé type thing, fried seafood (squid, anchovies and shrimp) and beef with a very strong (and delicious) rosemary sauce. We were exhausted, even though we only walked 5 miles today. 6 is standard when we’re on vacation in European cities. I have no idea what we’ll do tomorrow.