February 18th, we took a little road trip adventure with our friends, the Pugh's, to Matera, a quaint little town about 3.5 hours from our house. It rained cats and dogs the entire way to Matera. Matera is where Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was filmed. It is also an UNESCO World Heritage site.
It felt like we were much further from (our current) home, trying to find our way around the ancient town, on the narrow, curvy, one-way, hairpin roads to our hotel, Hotel Caveoso . It was a pretty cool place to stay but our friends Scott & Suzanne and their boys definitely got the much cooler room: a cave, or sassi which is a room or home dug into the calcareous rock of Matera.
We were all pretty hungry and thanks to the rain, we found a restaurant nearby and enjoyed a great meal and wine.
We decided the hotel was great and all, but we should get started and check out the cave town. We didn't get very far before the kids were wet, grumpy, cold and our umbrellas were whipped inside out and broken by the wind.
Of course, that is easily fixed by gelato, so the four kids enjoyed some cold gelato and the guys ended up warming up with some liquor spiked caffe.
The Sassi part of town itself was pretty amazing to see. It is a small town, and truly, NOTHING was open to eat until 7:30 or 8:00pm, so only some of us ventured back out for dinner, Lincoln ended up falling asleep as I carried him, he never woke up during dinner or on the way back to the hotel. He was out for the night. Jamie and Scott took the opportunity to walk around and take some photos of Matera at night, the caves lit up at night give the town a completely different look.
Mother Nature cooperated with us the next day at least, we headed out to take some pictures of the Sassi side of Matera, explored some of the cave homes, what a cool city!
We headed to the new side of Matera where we tried to visit the Tramantano Castle but it was closed for renovations. We walked through some of the new town, found ourselves in a Saturday morning market, bought some fresh produce and enjoyed some lunch where we were, of course, the only patrons.
We had the next portion of our road trip on our agenda, so we left the new side of Matera, and headed across the Gravina river to get a good view of the Sassi side of Matera once again, to see all caves from a distance.
On the road again, we let Scott lead the way with their GPS, and they choose to take the more scenic route. We came upon a flock of sheep, the sheep dogs and the herder. I'm sure to him, we looked like the silly Americans because we were taking photos and staring.
After only about an hour in the car, we arrived in Alberobello, another UNESCO site. Alberobello is such a unique town, the homes are constructed from the local limestone with conical roofs and all were painted white. We had the luxury in staying in a pretty awesome one, I think I would be happy with it as my vacation home someday.
We walked around the trulli homes, many of which are now various shops, but our kids were getting tired, it was getting cold and we were all hungry, and once again we found ourselves with very limited places to eat. However, we did stumble upon a crepe eatery, they had a ton of different types of crepes - some like pizza, some like sandwiches, and of course the sweet variety. The kids were happy, the adults were happy and so we called it a night.
The grand finale of our weekend was a visit to Zoosafari - a drive through zoo near Bari. I had heard it was cool but we didn't think it could be THAT spectacular.
It. Was. Awesome!!!
We first had deer, rams, donkeys, llamas and goats walking along the side of our car as we fed them peanuts and carrots, then we drove through the lions den (with our windows up!!!) where lions play, fight and walk along near your car - there was also a man in a truck who would drive toward the lions if they started acting up or getting too close, and I'm sure (or I hope!!) with a tranquilizer gun within reach. This was a similar set up for the tigers and bears too. Then we arrived at the giraffes... what gentle giants! We had SO much fun feeding the giraffes, Lincoln was a bit nervous and Riann was a little freaked out at first, she even made a beeline for the back dashboard. The giraffes cleaned us out of carrots, left plenty of drool, but we got so up close and personal and had a ton of photos, fun and video of them. It was too cool to hang out with the giraffes!!
We were also able to chill with some zebras, Jamie even got his photo taken with a super friendly one. And then we got to the end, where the enormous camels were unfriendly, stood in the middle of the road, they would look at us every now and then out of the corner of their eye, and not budge, not even an inch. I think we were stuck behind a camel for a good 10 or 15 minutes. Zoosafari was fabulous, we laughed so much and had a ton of fun, it is definitely something you HAVE to do!
On our way home, we stopped along the Adriatic Sea for some nice picturesque photos, ate a pretty amazing meal at a really nice (almost too nice for little kids!) restaurant. We headed home, back to Gricignano di Aversa...
The next several weeks were busy, but not really all that blogworthy.
We attended an Asian Auction on the Navy Base here, yes, Asian Auction, even though we are in Italy. There were some really fabulous pieces of furniture, gorgeous Tiffany lamps, and smaller things like jewelry and glassware. We came home with two new pieces of furniture, an Asian "Wedding Cabinet" and an antique hand painted trunk. It was a fun event that I'll look forward to attending again next year.
Jamie and I had the Supply Corps Ball which was held in Monte di Procida, but it was scaled way back from the original few hundred that were supposed to attend due to the events in the world (Libya), and many people being shipped out.
March 12th, my friend Tina and I went on a wine tour in Avellino to Cantine Antonio Caggiano. Avellino was a wonderful, adorable little town about an hour from here. We enjoyed tasting some fantastic wine, then ended our tour with a pretty amazing lunch and a bunch of fun people who also attended the tour. This is a picture of Tina and me with the owner, Antonio of Cantine Antonio Caggiano.
March 18th, Jamie was able to escape to Bormio, Italy to meet his mother and uncle for some skiing in the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, again due to current events at the time, he almost didn't make it, and his trip was still abbreviated to only allow him one day of skiing. He had a great time regardless, he even took a video of skiing down the mountain... probably not the smartest thing and hopefully he'll never do that again, but he had a much-needed fun time.
Riann had a kind of unexpected surgery - she had bilateral trigger thumbs that needed to be surgically corrected. Lucky for us, there was a wonderful visiting surgeon from the states that became her doctor, and she had an awesome group of doctors that took amazing care of her. Riann was even taken down the hallway to surgery while the surgeon, orthopedists and other doctors let her bed be the train and "chugga-chugga-choo-chooed" all the way down, you would have thought she was going to a party, not surgery! After only a week of soft casts and bandages that didn't slow her down much at all, she was back to fully functioning, happy, straight thumbs.
March 27th, we took a little half day trip and visited Ercolano, a town that sits below Mt. Vesuvius. Ercolano is a town that was completely covered in volcanic ash during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Citizens of Herculaneum died of thermal shock from the extremely hot pyroclastic surges. In 1709, Ercolano was rediscovered and has since been partially excavated. It is better preserved than Pompeii and much smaller, easy and fun to do with Riann and Lincoln and visitors.
That brings me up to one of our BIG trips of 2011: LONDON!!! But I'll have to find more time to write about that...
