July 25, 2015

We are just wrapping up our time in Berlin, Germany. We spent 4 days here and really loved it! We arrived here from Dresden in the afternoon and made our way to our campsite just outside of town. It wasn’t the best campsite we’ve been to, but we had a nice spot right on the river for our tent, so that was nice. The tent pitching area was dirt instead of grass, so it got pretty muddy when it rained one of the nights, but it wasn’t the end of the world. That first evening, we just hung out at the campsite and found a grocery store nearby to stock up our food supply for the next few days. We also planned out how we would be spending our time. We decided that for the first day, we wanted to do one of the city tours since there is SO MUCH to see in Berlin. We knew that we could walk around on our own, but we wouldn’t get a lot of the info on the history of places and that a tour would give us a better lay of the land for the next few days. We decided to take a bike tour…it was a lot of fun! They had a trailer bike for Hayden so that he didn’t have to ride on his own. (LOTS of traffic) We had a great time cruising through the city and we definitely saw much more than we would have walking and got closer to things that a bus tour would have taken us. We were really happy with the bike tour.

Berlin Bike Tour

Berlin

Berlin Bike Tour

Berlin really is an amazing city. All of the history with WWI, WWII, the USSR occupation of Berlin, the history of the wall, etc. One of the things that I didn’t realize is that many of the buildings, although they look old, have been recently rebuilt since they were destroyed in the bombings. During the time that the wall was up, many of the old buildings that had been bombed out just sat there. Once the wall fell, the German government began to rebuild the buildings to look like they did before they were destroyed.

Church undergoing reconstruction

Berlin Opera House

Berlin French Church

Victory Tower

Our favorite stop along the tour was the site of the wall and Checkpoint Charlie. Our guide was great about giving us the history of Checkpoint Charlie and giving us a quick history lesson on the wall. We got to stand with one foot in East Berlin and one foot in West Berlin. We also went to the site of the famous book burning in front of the University. They have built an underground memorial that was pretty cool.

Remaining Berlin Wall section

Berlin Wall

Watch Tower

Berlin

Book Burning Memorial

Another great memorial was the Memorial to the Jewish people that died under Hitler. It’s a huge open square with rectangular blocks of all different sizes. You can just hang out and sit on the blocks or walk through the maze of them. An interesting fact is that while they were building the memorial, they discovered that under the site was a bunker that belonged to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Despite some controversy, they still built the memorial on the site. After that, we saw the bunker where Hitler stayed for the last days of the war and where he killed himself. The bunker has since been filled in (they tried to blow it up, but it was too thick) and paved over to be a parking lot. There is nothing to really mark it except for a small billboard parking the spot.   Apparently, the only reason that they installed the placard was because people kept knocking on the doors of the locals to ask where the bunker was located…they put up the placard so that the locals would be left alone! Lol At the end of the tour, we had dinner at McDonalds (Hayden’s choice), then went back to the campsite.

Jewish Memorial

Jewish Memorial

Hitler’s Bunker

The next day we went back into town to get a better look at some of the places that we went by on the bikes. We just kind of bummed around and walked a big loop around the city. We did end up finding a pretty cool Science Museum that was an exhibit on medical technology that was actually pretty cool. We also went to the Neues Museum that had a huge Egyptian exhibit. Hayden really liked it, but we have a hard time getting excited about an Egyptian exhibit after being in Egypt and seeing the things for real! On the way back to the train station, there was a street vendor with HUGE bubble wands for kids to play with…we hung out there for a while and Hayden had a great time making bubbles!

German Parliament Building (Reichstag)

President’s House in Berlin

Museum

Neues Museum Egyptian exhibit

Today we had a serious day and spent the afternoon at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin. The camp has been set up as a memorial to the people that were held here. They have a few of the buildings still standing that they have put together out of the salvaged materials from the site. The exhibits and information was very good, and very sad. They had one of the barracks set up the way it would have been with the beds all squeezed together, the bathroom for all of the people and even a section of the prison, including the solitary confinement. There were several personal accounts from people that had survived their time in the camp, what a terrible experience it must have been. It was a good (although sad) day and very eye opening. I know it’s still a little tough for Hayden to grasp, but hopefully in the future when they talk about WWII in school, he will be able to think back about it.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp gates

Concentration Camp fence

Barracks at Concentration Camp

Bathroom for prisoners

Prison yard (poles where they strung up the people being tortured)

Sachsenhausen Memorial

Perimeter Wall

Tonight we have been planning the next few days. We were originally going to go to Copenhagen, but it’s crazy expensive, so we decided that we are going to skip it after all. Instead, we are going to spent three days in Billund at LEGOLAND!!! It just seems wrong to be so close to the home of Legos and NOT visit the park! J Hayden is super excited (and so is Adam). We’re going to take the train up Billund tomorrow and spend the night camping at the park. We got two day tickets so we can spend Monday and Tuesday in the park all day. After that, I think that we are going to continue north up to Sweden/Norway.

July 21, 2015

Yay…we’re in Germany!!  First off, the food is awesome!  We haven’t had a bad meal here yet!  We got to the city and found our campsite which was a little bit outside of the city, but was just fine.  It’s right off of the public bus line, but takes about 30 minutes to get into town.  We can’t really complain because it’s pretty cheap.  We spent the first day and a half walking around the city and checking out all of the buildings.  There are tons of really neat buildings with various histories.  Much of the city was destroyed during the bombing in WWII, but they have either been rebuilt or are in the process of being restored.  The town feels like what I would always think of as a European town, but it’s actually a very large city!  We found some great restaurants and loved just walking around.

Dresden, Germany

Dresden, Germany

Dresden Frauenkirche

Martin Luther

Dresden, Germany

Dresden, Germany

The palace right in the city was really cool.  There was a huge courtyard with beautiful fountains and lots of really neat sculptures around the buildings.  Adam has decided that he would be okay living here.  🙂  It was free to walk around through the residence, so we explored all of the fountains and gardens for a while in the afternoon.

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Crown Gate at Dresden Zwinger

The most famous statue in Dresden! lol

We were pretty excited to find that there was a bowling alley right near our campsite, so we made our way over there in the evening to check if they had open bowling.  We lucked out and it was only $15 for the 3 of us to bowl for an hour.  We played two games…I killed it on the first game, but then Hayden came back and kicked our butts in the second game.  It must have been his professional approach that you can see in the picture below.

Time to Bowl!

Practically a Pro!

The highlight of the city was getting to see our friends Vanessa and Torsten that we met on our safari in Africa.  We were so glad that we met them because they were the ones that suggested we come to Dresden and we’re so glad that we did!  We met up with them in the afternoon and they took us out to a castle in Moritzburg (just outside of Dresden).  The castle was really cool, but the best part were the grounds around the castle.  There were really beautiful trails through the woods where you could bike/walk to different parts of the grounds.  We went through the main castle as well as the “hunting lodge” about 1.5 km away.  It was a perfect afternoon to be out walking, so we really enjoyed it.  After the castle, they took us to dinner at an African restaurant which was great!  Hayden and I had a zebra steak!  I feel a little guilty about eating such a cute animal, but I suppose cows and pigs are cute too, but I don’t have any problem eating them!  lol

With Vanessa and Torsten!

Schloss Moritzburg

Schloss Moritzburg

We ate zebra!!

From here, we are going to head north a little ways up to Berlin for a few days.  There is so much to do there, so we will probably stay for a few days before taking off again.

July 18, 2015

We arrived in Prague from Vienna on Friday afternoon and made our way to our campsite.  Hayden was pretty excited as soon as we got there because there is a huge playground right next to the campsite.  Luckily, the site was easy to find and right next to a bus stop.  We got checked in and started looking up some stuff for us to do in the city.  As a way to find some good activities, we have been going through the “Adventures by Disney” (Disney tour groups) trips to see what they do and what we can copy.  It turns out that there is a trip to Prague and they go to the Folklore Gardens for a Czech Dinner and Dance Show.  We figured if it’s good enough for Disney, we would probably enjoy it too…we were right!  It was a great evening.  The restaurant actually has a shuttle, so they picked us up right from the campsite to go to the dinner.  The food was amazing and the dancers were very good.  Adam was happy with the unlimited beer and Hayden was a big fan of the Apple Strudel.  We all loved the food too!  We sat next to a couple from Israel who were on their first “kid-free” trip and they were very nice.  After dinner, the shuttle took us back to the campsite where we immediately pooped out!

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Unlimited Beer!

Apple Strudel…Yum!

Our new friends from Israel

The next morning, we decided to get out and see the city.  We’ve been to quite a few museums as this point, so we just planned to walk around and see the Prague Castle and check out the river front.  At the Prague Castle, there is a wonderful viewing point where you can see the entire city from the top, it was really pretty and exactly what you would expect to see of a European city.  Inside of the castle area, there was a toy museum, so we figured that was something we couldn’t miss.  🙂  The museum was small, but had some neat toys.  Hayden and Adam like the Star Wars and Super Hero toy sections the most.  There was also a Harry Potter doll, so it was a good trip for Hayden!

Prague

Hanging out with Superman

Star Wars Toys

Super Hero Toys

We left the Toy Museum and continued through the castle into the central square where the actual castle is located.  Wow…it was a beautiful building!  We didn’t go inside (long line and a little pricey), but it was amazing from the outside.  The idea of building something that elaborate with the limited technology of the time is really incredible.

Prague Castle

Prague Castle

Prague Castle

From the castle, we walked across the bridge back to the other side of the river where we found a place to rent paddle boats.  It was a nice (although a little hot) day, so being on the river seemed like a good idea.  The paddle boats were fun and Hayden got to stick his feet in the water to cool off.  We have decided that we need to get a paddle boat for the lake when we get home.  It’s a nice was to be on the water and you even get some exercise!

Prague

Riverfront in Prague

Paddle boating!

Paddle boating on the river

Tired after steering the boat

Vltava River in Prague

We walked through town a little more that afternoon and saw the oldest working astronomical clock in the world.  It is actually the third oldest in the world, but it’s the oldest one still working.  The clock dates back to 1410, making it over 600 years old and still running…crazy!  It was even cooler looking in person.

Oldest working clock in the world

We got back to camp a little early and relaxed for a while before we hit the highlight of the city…the movie theater showing Ant Man in English!  🙂  Adam and Hayden had been on the lookout for a way to see the movie, so they were pretty excited to find it in English!  Heaven forbid we miss a Marvel movie!!

Ant Man!

We’re going to take off from Prague tomorrow and head up to Germany…YAY!  We are going to Dresden first where we are going to meet up with some friends that we met on our safari in Africa.  From there, we will spend some time in Berlin before continuing our way through Germany.

July 18, 2015

After several weeks of visiting ruins, churches and museums, we decided to make Vienna a “kid’s trip” for Hayden.  We found a great brochure at our campsite that listed the top things to do in Vienna for families.  He picked the Aquarium for his first choice and we also wanted to get to the palace where they have a children’s section and also a hedge maze to go through.

We hit the Aquarium first because that was what Hayden was the most excited about.  I have to say, it was actually a really cool aquarium!  They had lots of different fish and also had an open room with free-flying birds, monkeys, turtles, a crocodile and lots of fish.  It was really neat and the birds were awesome.  Hayden really enjoyed it, so we were happy!  The aquarium had lots of things that we hadn’t seen before, so it was fun to see all of the new fish.

Giant python!

Giant Sea Turtle

Hayden eating a giant crab

Swimming with the fish

After the aquarium, we walked through town for a while and found the Imperial Treasury.  Wow, talk about some serious jewelry!!  The museum had the Austrian crown jewels along with lots of artifacts/clothing from the past kings/queens through the countries history.  We have decided that it would definitely be nice to be royal.  🙂

Imperial Treasury

Imperial Treasury

We made it a short day and went back to the campsite to hang out and get to bed a little early.  The next morning, we made our way to Schonbrunn Palace where we got the kids family pass for the day.  We went through the palace gardens and out into the hedge maze that they have set up.  We didn’t do great at the maze, but at least we found our way out!  They also had a really cool playground where we spent a while watching Hayden run around.  After being outside for a while, it was starting to get pretty toasty, so we went to tour the inside parts of the palace.  They have kept the children’s rooms in the same shape as when the princes/princesses lived here, so Hayden got to play with the toys and see the rooms all set up.  They certainly had a nice place!  Inside of the kid’s room, they have a ton of “royal clothes” for dressing up.  The best part was that they even had adult sizes, so Hayden and Adam both got to dress up.  I especially like Adam with the long hair!  lol  We also toured the adult portion of the rooms which were very interesting as well.

Schonbrunn Palace Gardens

Schonbrunn Maze

Schonbrunn Maze

Schonbrunn Palace playground

Prince Hayden

King Adam and Prince Hayden

Schonbrunn Palace

We spent another couple of hours walking around town where we saw some great architecture and had some Schnitzel for lunch.

We probably could have spent another couple of days here, but it’s time to move on to Prague and work our way up to Germany!

July 13, 2015

We arrived in Venice yesterday afternoon and camped right outside of the city for the night.  First thing this morning, we got up and got ready so that we could catch the first shuttle into the city this morning.  Based on the cost of Venice, we decided to make this a quick trip and only spend today in the city before heading out.  By the end of the day, we were pretty happy with our decision.  While it is an amazingly cool city, there wasn’t really much of interest for Hayden and everything was pretty expensive.

We got to the city and decided to just walk our way from one side to the other.  Because of the mix of canals and roads, it’s pretty easy to get lost!  We spent some time wandering up and down little alley ways and across canals that I’m sure we had already been through, but it was fine because we just wanted to meander around anyway!  We came across a couple of really neat looking churches, but since we were lost, I have no idea which ones they were!  lol

The Grand Canal

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

The highlight of the day for Hayden was going into a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit that they had set up in one of the local churches.  It is a traveling exhibit that shows models of many of his inventions and talks about his life and all of the things that he accomplished.  It actually ended up being a really cool stop for us!  We spent at least an hour going through everything and it gave us an awesome opportunity to talk about how math and science are important for inventing.  Hayden was totally enthralled with it and has decided that he is going to build a bunch of the machines when we get back home.

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

We did a little more wandering after the DaVinci exhibit, but finally made our way to St. Mark’s Square.  We had read ahead of time that you can feed the birds here, so we stashed some of our bread from lunch to give to the pigeons.  Hayden was in pigeon heaven!  It seems like he is always wanting to chase the birds anytime we go anywhere, so this was his chance to get up close and personal.  You could put some bread in your hand and the birds would come right on to you to eat it.  He would have stayed here for hours, but we ran out of bread!  🙂

Feeding the pigeons in St Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

We didn’t actually go into the museums in the square (we saw a ton of museums in Italy and decided we could save a few bucks here), so we hung out here in the square for a while before making our way back to the train station.  We intended to take a gondola back, but it was $90 for a 30 minute ride…CRAZY!!!  (Yes, we’re cheap)  We couldn’t quite justify the expense, so we went with the water taxi which still got us some great pictures from the water.  Once we got going, we were glad we didn’t bother paying for the gondola because they were paddling right in the sun with no type of shade and it was HOT!

Once we made it back to the train station, we had a little while to kill, so we went for our old stand-by…ICE CREAM!  We found a place where you can make your own ice cream bar and it was AMAZING!!  You pick your ice cream, then pick the type of chocolate coating (white, milk, or dark), then you get to pick 3 toppings that go on the ice cream bar.  They make it right there…they were so stinking good!  I could have eaten at least 2 or 3 of them if I wasn’t sure they had about 800 calories in each one.  🙂

Best ice cream bar EVER!

We are taking the overnight train to Vienna tonight, so hopefully we will get there in the morning refreshed and ready for a new country!

July 12, 2015

We arrived in Florence on Saturday and immediately got to work checking out the city.  Our first stop after a quick train ride from Rome was to find some lunch!  We let Hayden pick and he chose Hard Rock Café.  I had to laugh since Courtney and I used to ALWAYS want to go to Hard Rock where ever we traveled!  Not surprisingly, he got Mac and Cheese and loved every bite of it, (especially the extra cheese).

Hard Rock Café

Once we were all filled up and ready to go, we started the afternoon at the Duomo.  Unfortunately, the actual dome is closed for restoration, (which kind of stinks), but we still got to go into the Baptistery and climb up the tower to the battlements.  There were a TON of stairs, but it was a good way to work off all of the junk food that we just ate at the Hard Rock.  lol  The buildings in Florence are beautiful.  Inside of the Baptistery, there is a huge and stained glass window that was absolutely beautiful (the picture doesn’t do it justice).  The entire building, including the ceiling, was amazing.  We also climbed a ton of steps (Hayden counted 424, I counted 414) to the top of the tower to stand on the battlements.  From here, the view was awesome.  You could see the entire city.

Stained glass window in the Baptistery

Baptistery ceiling

Baptistery baptismal fountain

View of Florence

Del Duomo

Florence skyline

Del Duomo

We decided to get the Museum Pass so that we could go to all of the museums and just take our time looking at what we wanted on our own schedule.  It worked out good this way because we didn’t ever feel hurried and if we wanted to just spend a few minutes somewhere, it wasn’t a big deal.  That evening, the Piazza Vecchio was open late, so we took advantage of the late evening sunlight and toured through the apartments.  Talk about an amazing place to live!!  The sunset that evening was beautiful and if it hadn’t been for a wrong turn outside of the museum, we would have seen the actual sunset.  🙂

Piazza Vecchio

Piazza Vicchio

Florence sunset

Sunday morning we started out early so that we would have plenty of time to hit everything we planned.  Hayden wanted to start at the Galileo Museum.  The museum was really cool, and he was really into the astromomy/physics exhibits.  Who knows, maybe that was his first step to becoming the next Sheldon Cooper.  It gave us a great chance to talk about physics and to show the importance of math in science.  (He hasn’t been loving math lately, it could be because I’m not the best teacher!).

Galileo Museum

Galileo Museum

Galileo Museum

Galileo Museum

There was also a Paleontology Museum and a Mineral Museum that we visited.  They were both pretty cool and a good way to spend a couple of hours.

Antlers! lol

Dinosaurs at the Paleontology Museum

Mining for gems

In the afternoon, we made our way to the Galleria Accademia where “David” is located.  It’s pretty funny because the actually museum is tiny and the only thing that people really came for was the “David”.  The rest of the museum was just about empty.  We did all of the “touristy” stuff and pretended to pinch and touch his butt.  lol  In all seriousness, it really is an amazing statue.  To think that it was carved out of a single piece of marble and that it was done so perfectly is really crazy and goes to show how talented Michelangelo really was.

“David” in Florence

Pinching “David’s” butt…lol

I touched the butt…lol

On the way back to our campsite, we stopped by the Boboli Gardens, but it was miserably HOT, so we didn’t stay long.  Adam and I enjoyed this because we read “Inferno” not long ago and there is a part of the book where Robert Langdon is trapped in the gardens.  We did find the little hidden pathways that he used to hide, so that was fun!

Boboli Gardens

Seriously HOT day!!

Boboli Gardens

Back at camp, Hayden was in heaven because we found the Italian version of “lunchables” for dinner!  There is a grocery store right near our campsite which makes for great (and cheap) meals.  🙂  This has definitely been one of our biggest money saving tactics!

Italian Lunchable!

On Mondays, Florence pretty much shuts down because most of the museums and monuments are closed for the day.  We decided to take advantage and catch the train over to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower.  We have heard and read that Pisa isn’t much except for the tower, so we just went in the morning for a quick stop.  It worked out great, we left our bags at the train station, walked to the tower, clicked a few pictures (ate an ice cream, of course) and then came back to Florence before leaving for Venice.

At the Leaning Tower of Pisa

“Leaning” against the tower

AHHHHHHH…it’s falling on me!

Holding up the tower

Leaning Tower of Pisa

July 8, 2015

First off, we are so excited to be in Europe and to be using the train system.  We have global Eurail passes and it really couldn’t be much easier to get around!  We left Naples yesterday and just went straight to the train station where we paid a $3.00 reservation fee and jumped on the next train to Rome.  We did have a quick stop over, but it was worth it to only pay $3.00 instead of $10 for the direct train.  The trains are nice (even the Regional trains) and even had plugs so that we could sit and charge up all of the electronics.

Train ride!

We made it to Rome in about 3 hours and found our campsite right away.  Luckily, Adam had e-mailed them ahead of time and got exact directions including the bus numbers!  We LOVE the campground!  They have a huge pool, a super market, and really nice bathrooms/showers.  We have our nice little tent set up for the next few nights, and we are good to start hitting the city!

Camping Picnic

We spent today touring the Northern portion of the city along with the Vatican.  We pre-purchased our tickets to the Vatican because we heard horror stories about getting in, but it wasn’t really that big of a deal.  The security line to get into the Basilica was long (about 30 minutes), but we read about times when it is much worse!  The inside of the Basilica is beautiful…really amazing!  It is definitely a place that anyone (whether or not you are Catholic) can definitely appreciate.  The walls/ceilings/floors/statues/EVERYTHING are absolutely stunning.  I took a ton of pictures, but I’m afraid that none of them do it justice.

Vatican CIty

St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Square

St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica

Inside of the Basilica, you can also go downstairs into the crypt where all of the deceased Pope’s have been buried.  It is really cool to go through a read about when they each served as Pope and to think about all of the history that has happened through the years.  We were not aloud to take pictures inside, but it was very beautiful down there as well.  After going through the Basilica, we went around to go see the Vatican Museum.  This was a separate line, but also not too bad.  We had pre-purchased tickets for 1:00 and we pretty much got in right at that time.  The museum had a really good audio program where the kids got their own guide that had more interesting kid stuff so that we could listen to the adult version.  Hayden was SUPER excited that they had an entire section with Egyptian artifacts and that his audio guide had an “actual ancient Egyptian” talking to him.  🙂  Even for “non-arty” people like us, there were tons of really amazing things that we could definitely appreciate.  The paintings were beautiful and there were tons of really neat sculptures too.  We spent a few hours going through the museum before coming to the Sistine Chapel at the end.  Unfortunately, no pictures are aloud in the Sistine Chapel, but it was certainly amazing.  I have to say (and I’m sure true art lovers will disagree), I was more impressed with the ceilings in some of the other rooms than in the chapel.  While it was really neat and the history of it is amazing, I thought that some of the other rooms (the Map Room in particular) were even cooler.

Vatican Museum

Vatican Museum

Vatican Museum

Checking out the artwork

Mummies in Rome!

Vatican Museum

Perseus Statue

Vatican Museum

Vatican Museum

Vatican Museum

We also walked around the Northern part of the city to check out some of the buildings that we wanted to see.  We started out at the Plaza of the People and walked along the river down to the St Angel’s Castle.  There were so many cool buildings and the bridges along the walk were very nice too.

Egyptian obelisk in Rome!

Piazza del Pepolo

Rome

Piazza del Tribunali

Castel Sant Angelo

Ponte Princ Amedeo Savoia Aosta

After a very long day and lots of walking, we made it back to the campsite where we had dinner from the grocery store.  It’s nice to be able to get some bread, meat and cheese and just have a relaxing dinner by the tent.  Tomorrow we will be going to the Coliseum and spending the day at the Forum and the Ancient Roman ruins.

July 5, 2015

After a crazy, long trip starting in Santorini, Greece and finally ending in Naples, Italy, we are finally here!  It took 55 hours including:  2 ferry rides (the first was 8 hours, the second was 15 hours), 3 train rides, a night spent “sleeping” in a hotel lobby, and 6 hours walking around Patras, Greece, and a bus ride, but we made it without killing each other!  Seriousl, it was a ridiculously long trip and the worst part is that we found out we could have flown directly from Santorini to Naples for about an extra $100 or so…probably would have been worth it, but the journey is half the fun, right?!!  We did finally make it at about 10 pm last night (4th of July) and as soon as we were checked into our hotel, we got out to find some pizza for dinner.  Since Naples is the home of pizza, there are about 100,000 pizza places and they are all fabulous!

After a quick dinner, we went to bed so that we could get up first thing in the morning and set off for Pompeii.  We took the train out there which was only about 45 minutes or so.  It was Sunday, so of course, it was crowded, but it was fine with us.  It was insanely hot…felt just like Florida!  When we got to the ruins, we were pretty excited to find out that the first Sunday of each month is free, so we didn’t even have to pay…YAY!  Pompeii was pretty cool.  It was completely covered in ash when Mt Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, and everything was very well preserved until it was dug up centuries later.  We spent a couple of hours walking all through the town (which was much bigger than I imagined) and saw lot of cool stuff.  They had some of the buildings open that you could walk through to see the remaining artwork on the walls and the pottery that has been recovered.  They also had a couple of petrified corpses of people that died in the eruption.

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Pottery from Pompeii

Pottery and crafts from Pompeii

Petrified person from Pompeii

Petrified child from Pompeii

The bath in Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

In tact artwork in Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Ruins of Pompeii

Theater in Pompeii

Theater in Pompeii

Theater in Pompeii

Artwork in Pompeii

Temple of Isis in Pompeii

After a few hours in Pompeii, we went over to the next town, Herculaneum.  This town is much smaller than Pompeii, but because it was covered in lava, instead of ash, it is much better preserved.  There were quite a few less tourists, so we were able to walk through lots of the buildings and check everything out for a while.  We didn’t spend too long here because it was HOT and we still had to have time to make it up to Mt. Vesuvius.

Ruins of Herculaneum

Mt Vesuvius and Herculaneum

Mt Vesuvius over Herculaneum

Ruins of Herculaneum

Ruins of Herculaneum

Ruins of Herculaneum

View of Mt Vesuvius

Following Herculaneum, we found a shuttle that took us up to the “base camp”: for Mt. Vesuvius.  From there, it’s about a 1 km hike to the top of the mountain.  1 km doesn’t sounds like much, but at a 14% grade and over 90 degrees, it was tough!  (or maybe I’m just really out of shape!)  We did make it to the top (eventually) and it was totally worth the climb.  The view of Naples and the Bay were beautiful.  We could see the entire city and the surrounding area.  After a quick loop around the caldera, we came back down (much easier than us) and caught the shuttle back into town.

Crater of Mt Vesuvius

View from Mt Vesuvius

View from Mt Vesuvius

Mt Vesuvius

We made it back to our hotel in time to go out for dinner (pizza, of course!) and gelato for dessert.  Every place we have eaten here has been fantastic.  The pizza is so good and I had a Caprese salad for lunch today that was amazing.  I really hadn’t ever been a huge fan of tomatoes, but I swear I ate an entire plate of them and what must have been a pound of mozzarella!  Anyway, tomorrow we are doing the super touristy, Hop On Hop Off bus to see the sights in Naples.  They are kind of cheesy, but it’s really the easiest way to hit all of the highlights of the city.  🙂

July 2, 2015

After a long 8 hour ferry ride from Athens, we made it to Santorini.  I have to say, I’m pretty much in love with Santorini!!!  The landscape is beautiful, the food is amazing and the beaches (although a little cold), are very nice.  We got here on Monday afternoon and got right on the shuttle from the port to our campsite.  The campsite was nice with plenty of room for tents and a view of the water.  We got set up in our “home” for the next few days and decided to go check out the town.

Tent Sweet Tent!

We stayed in the town of Thira (Fira) just outside of the city center.  It ended up being a perfect place to stay.  We were only a 5 minute walk from the center of town with tons of shops, restaurants, and a fabulous view!  We walked around town for the evening and stayed to watch the sunset.  We also stopped by a travel agency and signed up for a volcano tour for the next day.

Town of Fira, Santorini

View of Santorini

Santorini Sunset

After a good night’s sleep, we slept in a little (it was hard to sleep in since the sun was up and the tent doesn’t block much light!), then got up to get ready for our excursion.  We took a wooden boat out to an active volcano just across from the island of Santorini.  The volcano was really cool, we hiked to the top and saw both of the craters.  Hayden has been into volcanos for a while, so he really enjoyed getting to see it.  The volcano is active, so you could even see steam coming out of the crater (although it’s hard to see in the pictures).  We looked at some of the volcano monitoring equipment and hung out at the top for a while enjoying the view.

Wooden boat ride to the volcano

At the top of the crater

Smoke in Nea Kameni (active volcano)

At the top of Mikri Kamini

Once we finished at the volcano, we got back onto the ship and sailed across the volcano to where the water is heated by volcanic hot springs.  We swam here for a couple of minutes before taking off again.  From the hot springs, we came back around to the island of Santorini again to see the view from the water.  It’s even more beautiful than the pictures show!  The water is so blue…it’s like the color of sapphires…really pretty.

Volcanic Hot Springs

Oia, Santorini

View of Santorini from the water

View of Santorini from the water

After a long day of hiking up volcanos and swimming in hot springs, Hayden and I were too pooped to climb all the way back up to the town, so we hitched a ride on a donkey!  lol  It was fun, but our donkey was very stubborn and didn’t want to be told where to go.  He kept running into other donkeys and stopping in the middle of the road, but it was fun.  🙂  We had super yummy Gyros for dinner with baked feta cheese and pitas…it was SO GOOD.  I am planning to try and make all of this food when we get back home, but I’m afraid I will never get it to taste as good as it does here.

LOL

Donkey ride up to Fira

Wednesday we didn’t really have any plans, so we walked down to the black sand beach to go swimming for a while.  Unfortunately, the water was freezing and there was a pretty strong undertow, so we spent most of the morning making sand castles and tanning.  Hayden and Adam were brave and got in the water, but I was a big weenie and stayed on land where it was nice and warm.  We finished off the day with another dinner of Gyros and ice cream (of course) for dessert.   I think that our favorite part of the island is that there is an ice cream shop every 10 feet…definitely our kind of place!

Playing at the beach!

Black Sand Beach

Ice Cream time!

We are taking the ferry back to Athens this afternoon and camping out in the train station for the night so that we will be there for our train in the morning to Patras.  From Patras, we will catch another ferry over to Italy and be in Naples by the 4th of July!