Italy Day 4: The Beautiful Amalifi Coast

Kev's here. This trip today won't list a lot of historical facts. This day was spent just seeing amazing looking places, and welcome to the beautiful Amalfi Coast. We hired the best driver for the trip that picked us up from Sorrento, and between two vans the Dahlin and our family had quite the day! Plus it was a great way to celebrate Aaron Dahlin's b-day. The deal with the Amalfi coast is that it's amazing to see, but I wouldn't want to drive it for a moment! Crazy switchbacks and over the edge craziness. We started on our way to Positano. Even from the drive we could see what so many people talk about it. It was amazing!

We stopped at a little alcove above the city of Positano which provided the best overview of the city!

Within the city itself we stopped down in the main city to go to the Positano beach, passing really beautiful old churches, but all the kids could talk about was going down to the beach.

We passed through the village, then made our way down the beach where the kids created a game they called "run-away," seeing how close they could get to the water without getting wet. Well can you imagine what happened?

The village skyline from the beach was incredible to see the slopes and colors of all the houses. What's famous though along the cost though is one thing: lemon trees, so it was so fun to see little tiny houses all of which had lemon trees growing their yards.

This is one of the towers that line the Amalfi coast, and were built in the 1200's. 

Our next stop was Ravello, another scenic drive with continued beauty.

After a while of driving we finally reached the main square of the city, primarily to see the Amalfi Cathedral. In this square was multiple shops and this beautiful mosaic covered church, but we weren't able to see much of it. I just had to take a picture of this fountain because seriously, who thinks to make a fountain like this. Zac just kept staring at it trying to figure out why water was coming from boobies: your guess is as good as mine.

Jody Dahlin had gone into a store when the store owner suddenly collapsed. She called for Aaron, who is a Pediatrician, who sent sent his daughter Ava to come get me as well. For the next 45 minutes we tried to assist in her resuscitation, having Aaron screaming in the square for EMS help, to which a pharmacist came and called 911 for us (whatever the number is there). Note to self: don't get hurt in Italy. After hold her hair when finally came too and started throwing up, we grabbed one of her own bowls from her ceramic store and tried to keep her alert. It wasn't pretty. EMS took forever to get there, and then the medics wanted to get her adrenalin without a full cardiac work-up. Aaron and I just stepped back and let them do their thing, but boy it wasn't what we would have done. Either way, we were there at the exact time we needed to be! Nice to be on the Lord's errand even on trip. We were supposed to have lunch at a restaurant in town, but it ended up being closed.  The kids were super hungry, so after EMS came, we went out and waited for the drivers so we could find another restaurant.  They took a while since they weren't expecting us to be done yet.

Our two tour guides took us to this genuine Italian family style restaurant for Aaron's b-day. The lady that owned it was like 80 years old, took one look at our family and then told us what we wanted and walked away. It really was like the movies, but she was right and she brought us some amazing food. These were our two tour guides. The sun finally came out which was amazing to now see the blue water!

The best part was when we told her it was his b-day. She then brought out this explosive candle on top of this dessert from her restaurant. The candle was awesome, but the dessert was hideous. Seriously, Grandma Italy had given us this pie for free, and all the kids would take a bite, spit it into a napkin and hid it under the table. Luckily I had bought him some Lemon desserts from a pastry shop before we got there and that was a saving grace! Nothing like a Roman candle on a cake!

We next stopped at the Ceramiche Cosmolena, which was one of the many ceramic stores this area is famous for. This place was gigantic, holding anything from gigantic tables and ceramics to small little figures of the kitchen. Heather and the girls had the best time with this place, especially because it started to intermittently poor rain!

The trick in this place was ensuring Zac didn't touch anything, which meant I spent the majority of the time outside with him to ensure he didn't turn into the Hulk and start smashing. After becoming a couple of hundred euro poorer, we all stood out waiting for the drivers to come pick us up. When then made our way to the last stop, Amalfi.

So what was fun was driving along and then seeing that with the rocks of the road were then miniature scale models of the villages. They were so ornate and beautiful.

The view at the end of the day finally turned out beautiful and contrast of the light was perfect. Amalfi was awesome because the city was super quant and quiet. It was super fun to walk around, and there we found a bunch of lemon candy. When I went into the store I tried one of them, which started out like a lemon head, but then suddenly your mouth exploded with sour!! Having been the only one that tried them I took the chance to see what Heather would do. So I gave her one, waited patiently for the face of a lifetime and bam: there it was! Torture of sour. Well Heather did the same to Emily, which did the same to Aaron, which did the same to his kids. It was a perpetual torture session, to which we sent a whole bag to Krista Deguelle, one of our dearest friends. AND CUE THE FACES!!!!!