Naples

Our first day on the cruise ship was a day at sea.  It was lovely to spend a whole day exploring the ship, getting some sun on the deck, swimming and eating and playing.  Finn and the girls got a nap in, we saw the show that night and got plenty of rest before our first shore day.  Our first stop was in Naples.  We woke up to this:

It was so surreal looking off the side of our cruise ship and seeing Italy!  Unreal!  We got some breakfast and made sure we had everything we needed for the day (tons of diapers, wipes, emergency pooplosion outfits, cameras, snacks, formula, water, the list seemed endless) and went to meet our tour group in the theatre of the ship.  This day we signed up for a half-day tour of Pompeii through the Disney excursions.  This was sort of a rough start and I think a lot of it had to do with being a part of a tour group.  It was really hot.  The boys were really tired.  And it was stressful to have to keep up with a tour group.  Our cute Italian tour guide, Guido, was darling and tried to be patient but we were not always quiet and the boys got tired of listening to the ear phone tour really quickly.  I loved having a guide so we could get a lot of cool details, but I really wasn't able to hear much of it because we were trying to keep the kiddos happy.  Still, just being able to be in Pompeii with our kids and see things that we'd only seen pictures of was pretty amazing.  And we wouldn't have known that we don't do well in tour groups at our current stage without having tried it.  So, now we know.

Auntie Mallo brought some cereal from the cruise ship and it was a lifesaver.

Tate, shooting at me from behind a pillar.

It was SO hot with the little ladies strapped to our chest.  Sweat was just dripping down my chest and back.  And even though they were still pretty little, they got heavy after a little while.  

It was incredible to see how much detail was preserved under the ash for all those years.  The fact that columns, entire walls could stay upright during the explosions and waves of ash and gas it pretty amazing.  And then there's so much detail still in the carvings on the capitals and paintings on  walls and mosaics on floors.  It's so cool.

Tate and Finn loved seeing the artifacts in this one area.  They had rooms filled with pottery and a few of these casts that they learned about in Tate's presentation.  People died and as they decomposed they left cavities in the ash that scientists filled with plaster so we have a replica of how they looked when they died.  Crazy.

This was probably my favorite building.  It's a public bath.  The details in statues around the rooms, carvings on the ceilings and walls were so well-preserved and looked amazing.

Here's Tate, pretending to be a dead body.  Obviously.

So many stairways leading to no where.

Again, I was busy taking care of my little ones so I didn't get nearly as much information as I wish I could have.  But we did a lot of research before we left and I think it was cool for Tate and Finn just to be in these places we'd talked about.  To see the way they planned sidewalks so you didn't have to walk in the dirty street, the way they planned all the streets to be straight and had numbers on each building so that addresses were easy to find.  Things we talked about and saw pictures and videos of before we came.  Such an amazing experience.

Poor little Finny probably had the hardest time.  He was tired and hot.  He tried to hold it together and we were able to distract him with snacks and water once in a while but he was pretty worn out.

After our tour was over we got back on the bus and went back to the cruise ship.  Mal had a friend who told us his favorite pizza place in Naples that we had to try so we got in a taxi and asked him to take us there.  Luckily, we ran into Genaro, taxi driver extraodinaire.  He stayed with us for the rest of the day and was the most fun part of our day in Naples.  He told us that both of the pizza places Mal's friend recommended were closed because the owners were on summer vacation.  Most inconsiderate of them!  But he took us to another spot he knew for lunch.  Finny fell asleep in the car and Genaro insisted on carrying him in to the restaurant for us.  He was so kind and generous and friendly all day long.  It was so endearing to be around someone whose enthusiasm for life is almost visibly bubbling out of him constantly.   

We laid Finn down on some chairs and he was completely out during lunch.  Which is a shame because lunch was the bomb.  We saved him some pizza and he ate when he woke up in the car.

It's so fun to travel with Mal for so many reasons, among them is that she loves good food as much as we do so when we make noises as we eat, what about bob style, she's right there with us.  We had the most delicious pizza I've ever tasted and some ridiculous caprese salad with tomatoes and mozzarella that tasted nothing like tomatoes and mozzarella I've ever tasted before in my life.  I can't decide if I'd weigh a thousand pounds if I lived in Italy or if I'd be happier eating less because absolutely everything tastes so wonderful!

After our lunch we went let the boys chase pigeons in the piazza that was right outside our restaurant for a minute.  They were thrilled to be able to run around for a bit and chasing pigeons always seems to be the highlight of their day.  Then we got back in the taxi with Genaro and he showed us the town for about another hour.  He took us up to the top of the hill by Naples and let us take some pictures of the view.  It was so gorgeous.  

Genaro was the best.  Glenn and I could understand enough because Italian is pretty similar to Spanish so we could even speak to him a little and he could understand us.  And he LOVED that Mallory spoke such fluent Italian.  She ended up sitting in the back for some of the ride and he kept checking in the rear-view mirror to make sure she was looking at him and listening.  Every once in a while he would stop and say, "Mallory?  Mallory!" to get her to make eye contact with him before he continued with what he was saying.  He talked non-stop for over an hour about the history of Naples, the Italian philosophy of life, his family, the mafia, it was awesome.  His enthusiasm about everything Italian just made him glow in a way that was darling and absolutely hilarious.  At one point he pulled the car over and turned around in the driver's seat to tell Mallory and I something important.  His eyes got really big, he motioned enthusiastically with his hands and then when he got really enthusiastic he actually started to crawl over the driver's seat.  His upper body was half way over the seat by the time he finished his thought and then he turned around and kept driving.  Oh my gosh we were laughing so hard.  He pulled over at another spot a little later and ran down to a store to get us an ornament from Naples.  When we put it on our tree this year we laughed remembering this kind, friendly man we met who took us on the most entertaining drive of our lives.

He dropped us off at a shopping street that was close to the cruise ship so we could shop for a bit before walking back.  We kicked ourselves as we walked away for not getting a picture with him.  Later, as I was going through our pictures I had to laugh because we actually did get a picture of him...sort of.  He took us to this beautiful piazza outside a cool church, which is where he got married and he took some pictures for us.  In true Italian fashion he used his hands to signal us when to look and to draw our attention.  Aaand he got some pictures of his hands while doing so.

It was a great first outing in Italy!