Italian Extravaganza Parte Due

To elaborate a little on our days of train travel and gelato-eating, here is the more detailed version of our vacation.

We left Corfu on the evening ferry to the mainland on Monday, October 4.

Once on the mainland, we had a nice dinner and waited for our midnight ferry to Bari to depart.

A little after midnight, we loaded up and hit the open seas.

9 hours later, fresh as daisies, we arrived in Bari, Italy.

We spent the day in Bari, a surprisingly enchanting little seaside town.

We even happened upon a random, Tuesday afternoon wedding in this church.

And we decided to become honorary guests.  It was as beautiful and elaborate as one would expect.

In the late afternoon, we hopped our first train to Sorrento, and, finally, arrived at our first destination.  We were pretty ready to relax at that point.

We spent 2 nights in Sorrento, exploring up and down the gorgeous Amalfi coast.

 

   

One really neat thing we did there was take a bus ride up and down the Amalfi Drive.

 It is a winding, cliff-hanging, breathtaking drive up and down the coast.  It combines the cheap thrill of a roller-coaster with practically unparalleled beauty.  (Although it looks a bit cloudy in some of these shots, there was not a drop of rain.  I am pretty sure I could not have handled all the thrills making that drive in the rain would entail.)

 

We then spent a morning in Pompeii, truly a sight to behold.

After that, we headed north to Rome.  We spent 3 nights in Rome, playing, walking, exploring, laughing, and just having a good time.  We saw absolutely all that we wanted to see (including an awesome visit to the catacombs, where you cannot take pictures, but it was amazing) and still had plenty of time to just wander aimlessly, taking it all in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there was a good deal of what is pictured below (more so on my part actually than Christos.)  We both wore that gelato around for the rest of the day.

Our last stop was Venice, where we spent 2 fabulous days and nights. We roamed, wandered, shopped, ate, and awed.

Of course, we had to have a romantic ride on a gondola.  We were pretty excited about it.  Can you tell??

We got a fantastic guide, apparently one of the few who still sings, who also spoke English and gave us a bit of a guided tour.  At the time we took our ride, not many other gondolas were running because the water was so high.  Every time we went under a bridge we had to shift seats and hold our breath.

I had no idea the above picture was being taken, but that is me wondering if we would make it under another bridge.  We attributed the fact that we did, in fact, successfully make it under every bridge to the added weight that baby gave the boat.  Hooray!!  Baby saves the day! 

So, that was our vacation in a smallish nutshell.  After Venice, we trained down to Ancona, and then took another overnight ferry back to Greece.  And it all already hardly seems real. 

As I said, it was all I could have ever dreamed it would be.  We were happy as clams and I am so glad that we shared that special time together during our last days as a family of two!!!!