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!!!!!

Yeosu Beach

Hello! It's Big Sis and I am going to tell you all about Yeosu Beach. It was an early morning in the little AirB&B and so after packing up and getting into the chaotic cars, we drove off to the rail park. The original plan was to ride the bikes then go to the beach which was literally right next to the bikes so we all thought that was a great idea. When we went to get the tickets, we realized that there was a long wait and that the price was really expensive (I'm not even going to say that price!) After the adults had a short 20 second conversation, we decided that it was best if we went straight to the beach and just ditched the bike idea. The vote was unanimous among the kids that they just wanted to go swimming. Since it was already really hot, the Walkers (the family that was with us) said that they were going to get ice creams and so we went with them. One of the littles from their family found little Korean hair clips that were windmills. Mom thought that they were so cute so all of the kids got one. After getting the clips in, we all ate our ice cream while walking to the docks to get a picture. I could hear the moms laughing behind us and saying "They are all so Korean now!"I guess we are officially part Korean now because it is like the one thing that Korean are always wearing, little cute funny hair clips. 

We got down to the docks and after we took a couple pictures, we were off to the beach. The view was really pretty. There were these huge cement jacks looking things.  They were pretty neat.

After walking to the beach, we quickly realized that since the sand was slightly black that it was super duper hot. It burned so bad so we hurried under the umbrellas. After putting on sunscreen, we hurried into the water. It was so cool to the touch, but after just jumping in, it felt glorious because it was so hot and the sky was clear. The moms started to walk off and after about 5 minutes, they returned with a HUGE flamingo water float and two water tubes. We all went crazy over them. Since I didn't have anything else to do, I thought "Why not push the little around on the flamingo?" Quinn is only 6 and can't swim very well so I volunteered to push her around the beach on the flamingo. She loved it. Little A and her friend Brynlee sat on the side and just jumped off of the floaty whenever they wanted to and just swam back to shore. M&M and her Best Friend Claire both claimed a tube and just floated around in the deeper parts. 

To swim around with Quinn, I just held unto the wing and frog kicked around the water. Since the water was a little murky, I didn't go more the 40 or so feet away from the shore, but Quinn just loved the ride in general. I managed to photobomb a few photo's along with the 2 older! LOL!

The Korean lifeguards were a sight to see.  They were covered head to toe.  It is so much different then America.  Even the people swimming were covered and in wet suits or even just normal long sleeve and pants.  The life guards had hats, glasses, scarfs, long sleeves, gloves, pants and socks and shoes.  I saw one life guard cover their ankle with their hand when a tiny bit of skin was showing.  They must really be afraid of the sun.

Monster, Talia, and the parents all just sat under the shade of the umbrella and just sat there watching us.

After eating and playing more in the water for another hour, mom told us it was time to go home. The bathroom was really small and really gross so we decided to just make a changing room between the cars. After the kids went in two at a time and changed (that took like 20 minutes) we finally were back on the road.

This weekend was so much fun and I know for a fact that I really loved helping Quinn more then I would have enjoyed my time alone in the water. I loved this adventure that we went on and I am excited for what new travel await us in our new chapter to our book of life, our time in Germany! 

Jeju Island: Hallim Park & Hyeopjae Beach

I’ve gotta be honest here, Hallim park was just OK, we could have skipped this and not have missed a thing. This could be because we have been to a lot of gardens in Korea already, or it could have been that this really is just a subpar place that was way over-priced.  The park was not kept up very well, the gardens were full of weeds and the over all feeling was frankly pretty sad. 

We started by looking at the map and trying to figure out how we wanted to use our time.  The girls were excited about bird exhibit, so we decided to walk towards the birds.  On the way there was saw the two lava tube cave entrance, so we made a pit stop in the lava tubes. It was crazy to walk through a tube made  by air holes during a lava flow.  I could just imagine the holt molten lava flowing and moving and creating air bubbles as it moved, which then cooled into these caves.

The caves are interesting because it is one of the only places in the world where a limestone and lava caves can be found together.  The shells from the ocean made it so the limestone was formed inside the lava tube.  

Caves aren’t really my thing.  After a few minutes, it all feels and looks the same- cold, dark, and damp areas with sometimes just a large cave, and sometimes it has weird rock formations. This one had one weird rock formation; it was a bear and a turtle.  Little A was scared of the rocks, so when I asked her to stand by it for a picture she had a fit.  I did get the picture in the end.

We left the cold cave tunnels and walked on to the birds.  It was a sorry site for sure.  There were huge cages stuffed with sad looking birds.  A lot of the birds were missing feathers.  There were peacocks in cages, and then there were some roaming free.  We all wondered how that roaming peacock won the lottery for being free.  

We found a door to enter the canary cage, so we went in.  We didn’t have any food, but they all flew right to us.  The girls did love having birds fly and jump on them.  I walked away from the door and put my hand out to tell the girls to move, and had five birds fly straight for me and land on my outstretched arm.

Kevin and Monster ended up joining us in the cage and we all had birds landing all over our hands and arms.

We said good-bye to our feathered friends and saw a few more animals.  There were some Ostriches that were missing many feathers.  They were not very pretty to look at, but they were so weird as they moved their heads around.  It looked like their neck and head was a completely separate entity, almost like a snake.  

We decided that we saw enough and were on our way to the exit, we made a small detour through the water garden.  There was a pretty man-made waterfall that we enjoyed.  There were some huge fish in the ponds, and some lily pad on the ocean.

We quickly walked the loop, then called it good.  There were some pretty cool bushes in the water garden that were shaped as animals.  M&M's favorite animal is an elephant, so she was excited to see and elephant bush.

The kids still enjoyed the birds and the caves were interesting, so it wasn’t a complete failure, I just felt we could have used the money and time else-where.

We left Hallim Park and parked across the street at the parking lot for Hyeopjae Beach.  There were signs for the actual beach, but we ended up staying closer to the parking lot where there was part beach and park black volcanic rocks.

The rocks created little tidal pools that all the kids ran straight to.  They found seaweed, shells and some hermit crabs.  

Big Sis and M&M started digging in the tidal pools and found a few oysters fully intact.  They opened it expecting to find a pearl and instead found the muscles and goo from the inside.  Grossed out they tossed it and decided to collect hermit crabs instead. They made a large hill surrounded by a mote, and placed all the crabs they found on the hill.  

Even though there was a beautiful sandy beach just a few hundred meters away, all the kids opted to stay where we were.  They were having so much fun.  We stayed for a few hours, before we all got really hungry.  M&M really wanted to see the sunset on the beach, but we still had about an hour and a half, since the sun didn’t set until 7:33.  We walked down the road and found a pizza restaurant ad enjoyed some amazing brick oven pizza before heading back to the hotel.