Italy Day 5: Church, Mt. Vesuvius & Herculaneum

We found a local Italian church and made our way through super narrow alleys and crazy roads to make it to the meeting in time.  Luckily we are pro drivers in narrow craziness with all our practice in Korea.  There were some missionaries there that had translation devices, and they translated the meeting for us into English.  We didn't have enough devices for everyone, so we took turns every other talk.  We left after the first meeting and made our way to Mt. Vesuvius. 

I was really looking forward to this day and our adventure up Mt.Vesuvius.  I enjoyed hiking the volcano in Bali, and was excited to hike Vesuvius with my whole family.  We brought Monster's hiking backpack and loaded him on Kevin's back.  We started by driving as close to the hike as we possibly could go, we found a parking area, which provided a shuttle to get even closer to the base of the volcano.  With as many kids as we had, we wanted to cut out as much walking as possible.

We started the hike about half way up the volcano.  There were the usually side street salesmen trying to convince our kids to buy small model volcanos and rocks and other things.  We steered the kids away and started our ascend up.  

The hike at the beginning was a lot of loose dirt and small rocks.  Little A kept dragging her feet and kicking up dirt.  The cloud cover was extremely low, we kept talking about how we were walking through the clouds.  To keep Monster and Little A preoccupied we took turns making up stories about how all the clouds and fog came to cover us.  Little A had unicorns and horses as the main characters in her stories.

The weather called for rain, but we were super lucky that we never got rained on.  We did have mist from the dense fog, but luckily the rain never came down.  The paths got super slick the higher we got and the fog kept getting thicker too. Monster was beginning to really start getting irritated and he was crazy bad for about 5 minutes, and then he crashed.  He slept the rest of the way up and down.

When we made it to the top, the kids are a little disappointed because the clouds were so thick we couldn't even see inside the volcano, but Heavenly Father smiled on us, because after a few minutes the clouds parted just enough to see inside the volcano and to see a little of the city below.

We stayed at the top and explored a little.  We went all the way to the end of the path and didn't find anything except a little shop, so we enjoyed the view one last time and started our descend down.

It took us a little over two hours to complete our Mt. Vesuvius hike, and all the kids did really great, it helps so much to have friends to distract them and to keep them going.  I was really disappointed we were not able to get a really good view from the top of the volcano, but I am so glad we were able to hike it.  It was crazy to see where the volcano originally was before it blew and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.  We were showed the line where the original volcano was, and over half the top was blown away when it erupted.  We had just enough time to hurry to Herculaneum to catch it before they closed, so we hurried to the cars and made our way to Herculaneum.

As we walked down the Cardo III Inferiore, it was neat to see the same raised sidewalk as we saw in Pompeii.  The streets were were much more narrower though and would only have allowed one house and carriage to be on the road at a time.  It seemed that the sidewalks were significantly higher here.

The House of the Beautiful Courtyard was my favourite house in Herculaneum.  This house still had not only the stairs still intact and a second floor, but it had the most amazing painting on the the wall and details could be seen.  It is suspected that the house was transferred from a private residence into a school.  I was in awe and could not believe that this house still stands after 2000 years.

House of the Black Hall was a really neat house with second stories and awesome columns.  There was a large garden in the middle and a pretty neat wall. The house was situated so the garden could be seen from the rooms.  It wasn't in very good shape inside, but everything outside was pretty amazing.

As were were waking down the road we walked down a shop area where the streets were lined with shops.  They were small square rooms all in a line, it was fun imagining each small shop filled with merchandise that the Romans would have wanted to purchase.

The House of Deers was a rather impressive house.  The visual colors on the outside of the house was so neat to see, since it has been around since before 79 AD.  There were some neat paintings on the wall and many rooms inside.  The room was super impressive along with the garden, which is where the house gets its name.  The garden had states of deers being attacked by dogs, and a few other statues.

The House of Relief of Telephus was the next stop, and is the second largest house in Herculaneum. These columns held the second story rooms, not a roof.  It was neat seeing two story houses here because all the second floors in Pompeii were ruined.

There were a few thermopolium throughout Herculaneum, and they were so impressive to see.  These establishments were basically Roman fast food joints.  They would prepare and serve hot food for ht locals here.  The counter has sunken jars made into them which would hold the food.

We ended at the Barrel Arches where about 300 human remains were found.  We learned that this is where the sea came straight up into the city and these were port warehouses and boat storages. These people ran here trying to get across the ocean, a boat was also found in the area.  Unfortunately, they were killed by the high temperatures caused by the clouds and ash from the volcano.  The material from the eruption added a 400 meter strip of land.

We just barely got to see everything before they started to close everything and ask all visitors to leave.  We only spent about an hour here, but it is significantly smaller than Pompeii.  It's mostly smaller because it has not been able to be excavated anymore due to the city being completely hurried under apartments and residences.  We left and treated ourselves to gelato since everyone did a stellar job hiking the volcano and exploring Herculaneum.  I really liked how the houses were preserved way better then Pompeii, and how the second stories were still intact.  It was also humbling to see all the bodies in the boat storage area.  I'm so glad we got to see and hike the volcano that froze Pompeii and Herculaneum in time.  It was like nothing I have ever seen before.  And it was even more amazing to see those cities frozen in time by Vesuvius.

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!!!!!