Castel Sant Elmo & museo Duca Martina

(fun pic at the entrance of the castle)

     One of the first things we saw when we came to Naples, was a large castle at the top of the city. I don't know if it's technically in the center of the city but it seems like it is just looking at it.  We ventured to the castle last week.  It is one of my favorite spots here! The pictures below don't it justice, but the views from the top of the castle are spectacular!!

  For those of you who are friends with Race on Facebook, please forgive the redundancy of these pictures.  I don't know I didn't take a camera up to the castle..so we had to use his tablet to catch these shots.

view of Naples toward Mt Vesuvius. You can also see part of the museum building.

view toward Capodichino airport. It was really cool to see so much from the castle. It's not clear here, but we saw so many domed buildings around the city. We couldn't even count them all!

Facebook shot..haha (good job Juliann :-)

Race and Dante just enjoying the view. Seriously, we all just walked around the castle top and looked around for almost 2 hours. Fabulous!

 Inside the castle

 We also went to the museum next door but Race didn't want to take pictures so there aren't any.. It was cool. There was a large church with lots of paintings and decorations. One room was filled with artwork completely made of wood(like Intarsia wood art). There were also big fancy carriages that the well-to-do families rode around in centuries ago.  I would have felt sorry for the horses that had to pull those heavy things! wow! (wish I had pictures to share :-(

Caserta Reggia & Gardens

("The sun, it burns us" said Race and Dante..haha)   Caserta is a place about 30min outside of Naples. The big draw, for us, in Caserta is the palace and gardens there. I don't know how many hectares the gardens take up, but we walked around and explored for several hours and we didn't see everything. When someone asks Race's friend Ryan, who has lived here with his family for 15 years, he says, "Caserta Reggia" (Reggia is the palace).

It is a place that I could gladly visit again and again! In fact, we didn't get to see the palace itself too much so we do need to go back again. We spent most of our time in the gardens-it was wonderful!!

That is a waterfall coming down the hill. From a distance it just looks like rocks.

Dr Seuss tree :-)

These were taken in a 'secret' garden area.

I just liked this tree

For those of you who have seen Juilann's room in Washington, does this look familiar?! cool, huh?!

more trees that I liked

Alyssa, Cecily, Vincenzo, Ryan and 1/2 of Dante..hehe

Entrance of the palace

Guess what was the first thing I noticed as we walked into the gardens?

Above: view from the palace out to the gardens. Below: partial view of the back of the palace with the beautiful and sweet Cecily and the fun and kind Vincenzo!

Such fun people to spend time with...

A large pond where we stopped for a picnic. Hoping to see the resident swan but saw the goose couple instead (which didn't make it in a photo)

Here is my thoughteful friend, Cathy. (Not in the photo is another great friend, Jacki)
   We all had a great time at Caserta Reggia and gardens!!

Mt Vesuvius

            We made it to the top of the volcano, Mt Vesuvius.  It is the only active volcano on the European continent and approximately 3 million people live on or near it!  I think it has the highest population of any volcano in the world..how crazy is that?! And don't forget about Pompeii!
          Since, things seemed to be quiet on the mountain, we ventured out to hike to the top.  There were at least 1,000 tour buses there (I might be exaggerating a little but not much..ugh) After carefullly driving around all the buses (picture us in a large Ford station wagon on a, sometimes, narrow, curvy, and sometimes steep road maneuvering past huge tour buses!) okay, so, with that, we made it to the parking lot.  Phew!!
    Lots of crowds of school groups and tourists and an elevated entrance fee (when we first got to Naples, the advertised price was 6 1/2 Euros, we paid 10..ugh) didn't deter us from hiking up.
    We were reallly glad we went but we were disappointed with the increase of price and the inundation of souvenir shacks at the beginning, middle and end of the trail. Really?!  oh well...it's all good. It was a fun adventure and the views were wonderful.
      

Cousins in Italy part 2: Venezia

            April 3-5th we vacationed in Venice with my cousins Kat, Mati and Dante.  I found an appartment on the 'island' that could sleep 8-through AirBnB-check them out! Awesome resource for renting appartments for vacationing.  Anyway, we flew from Naples to Venice with no problems. Aaron and I got off the plane thinking, "this was too easy" (more on that later). 
        According to the map from the appartment owner, it should have been simple for us to find our destination.  Well, we walked around in circles for a while before we did..ugh. We just weren't familiar with the city and it is pretty easy to get turned around there.  Especially because we have always been able to use the water to find destinations; you know, "just go to the water and then turn Left".  We certainly couldn't do that in Venice-the water is everywhere!!  haha 
        The appartment wasn't quite ready but we were allowed to drop our bags off so we could go explore.  And explore we did!   However, since Aaron was with us, we weren't free to just roam.  He was determined to find a 'destination'.  We walked all over the place and found lots of churches, bridges, souvenir stores,etc.  The difference between Aaron and I when we travel is that I sincerely enjoy roaming and exploring. Seeing and experiencing whatever comes around.  I usually don't have too many expectations or 'set-in-stone' plans.  Aaron doesn't really thrive on that..however, he's great to travel with so it's all good.

 taken near the appartment we stayed in; in the Santa Croce district of Venice

 The famous Rialto bridge! 

 I love the orange and yellow next to each other. I like the perspective of this picture.

 Kat modeling and us feeding the pigeons near the church of Paul and John

 Isn't Mati cute?!

 Kat is reflecting my joy of being on the boat

        The next morning we got up and purchased 12hr water bus tickets.  The tickets allowed us to hop on and hop off any water bus traveling around Venice.  I could have stayed on the bus all day!  I loved being on the water and seeing the city from the water too.  We got off at the island of Murano-known all over the world for their glass art and jewelry. Beautiful! We also got to watch a glass blower make several different pieces of work.  It was especially nice too, because it was a little cold outside.  We got back on the bus and rode home.  It was our plan to get back on in the evening and ride around but we didn't. sob, sob, sob.. 
          Remember how I said our trip to Venice was so easy? Well, the 'other shoe dropped' on Thursday night when we got a message stating that our flight out of Venice the next day was canceled; due to a STRIKE. (go figure, strikes in Italy are so rare...haha NOT!)  So, we followed directions on how to remedy the problem: the airline told us to choose another flight.  We chose an earlier flight than what was originally scheduled. Early Friday morning we walked out to catch the bus to the airport-in the pouring down and sideways rain. Got to the airport only to learn (after lots of questions and pleading on our part) that our flight didn't exist. Aarghhh!!!  Long story short, we requested a refund for our flights and booked the train to get back to Naples.  The train would have been nice but it stopped at, I think, every stop possible between Venice and Naples(that's a long way!)..ugh..exhausting. Oh, and I'm pretty sure a guy seated near us rode the train for free. When the ticket checker came through he made the guy get out of his seat and then he gave him a piece of paper.  The guy proceeded to tear the paper up with no hesitation.  I'm sure it was a fine but how he would get the young man to pay it was beyond me. Interesting.