Movie theater in Naples

      We found a theater nearby that plays some American movies, on occasion, in their original form-in English! (with Italian subtitles-field trip idea!!)  Aaron and I were supposed to go for a date, this past week, but the night the movie, Lincoln, was playing Aaron had to work late :-(  So, I found another 'date', my sweet friend Leslie Ross :) and we took the train to the theater.
     Before I tell you about the movie, let me tell you about what I saw on the way.  First of all, I got on the most packed train I have ridden.  It was like the bus, in that, after I got in the 'sardine can' about 15 other people got on behind me and squished me in the people in front of me. Yikes. Thankfully, I was only on for 1 stop. Then, when I got off, I spent some time people watching outside the station.  I think I could have stayed there and skipped the movie-a lot of entertainment near the station.  There was a group of boys playing soccer. They weren't just carefully juggling the ball back and forth they were kicking it as hard, fast, and high as they could; so I stood a distance away for my own safety. One boy started wailing on another kid so a woman rushed over to grab the ear of the offending boy and yell at him. He then backed away and along with many angry Italian gestures he made his thoughts known to her.  Have I mentioned that the kids here tend to be a little unruly, disrespectful and just plain rude..ugh. It's weird to me though because all of the young adults we have met have been so kind and respectful..hmm..thank God for maturity, right?
  Also near the station, there was a woman who just dove right into the dumpster nearby and started ripping garbage bags open with a little claw-like hook she had.  I guess it just seemed so crazy to me to see someone digging in the dumpster like that.  She definitely wasn't shy about it.
     So, we found the theater alright and bought our tickets. It was 5,50 euros/ticket. (less than advertised in the paper-yippee!)  I bought popcorn and fizzy water, 3,50 euros-affordable!  The theater looked very similar to what we have in the states but what we found to be interesting is that the movie stopped at one point and a big sign flashed across the screen that said, 'Intervallo', intermission.  That was different.  We asked the Italians behind us how long it would last but they didn't know either.  So, we just stayed in our seats.  It lasted about 15min. Anyway, it was quite enjoyable to go to the movies.  It's been a long time since I have done that.  I think I picked up a few new Italian words reading the subtitles too. Simple pleasures!

Abruzzi mountains

     Last weekend The LeClair family joined several other families for a day amidst the Abruzzi mountains, (appx. 2hrs drive north-ish of Naples).  It was a beautiful day but we were prepared for the weather to be bitterly cold.  We all went up there to help clean up an olive tree orchard to get it ready for the growing season.  As the saying goes, "Many hands make light work" we were a living example of that! We got to work right away and not too long after, most of us shed our coats, hats, and scarves. It wasn't as cold as we had planned for-thankfully!

     We were up there on a mission to help the nuns who live in the abbey. They were very sweet ladies and it was wonderful to be able to help out.  I wish I had taken some 'before' and 'after' pictures of the orchard. A lot of trees were uncovered from brush, ivy, etc. and a lot of limbs were pruned. Then, many burn piles were started to clear up the debris.  At one point, Aaron was seen running from one burn pile to the next with a flaming branch to start a new burn pile.

Some pictures of us workers having a well earned lunch :-).  The white dogs are Abruzzi Sheepdogs. They are pretty cool dogs!

 I got a little bit of time with these cuties.

 Pictures of a few of the buildings on the property.

 I'm sad about the lack of quality of these pictures because the views were breathtaking! The picture above is of a little village atop the hillside; the pic. below is of a really cool looking castle.

First week

       It took over 4 months but we are finally settled in a place of our own here in Naples, Italy!  Usually the first thing I like to do in new surroundings is explore and get to know the area where I'm living. The only thing I've been able to do, is go shopping! Groceries, groceries, groceries. There are 2 teenagers in the house, afterall.  The main reason I haven't gone exploring yet is because it has been raining a lot this past week-in fact, it has rained every day we have been in this appartment!  Fellow Western Washingtonians would probably agree with me: It feels like home! :-)
       All of our shipped belongings arrived this past Friday.  We went to the Questura (police station) Friday morning for fingerprinting-another part of the process to be in Italy, legally. When we returned, there were several brown paper wrapped packages on our doorstep. It was quite exciting!  We unwrapped and unpacked everything in a few hours. I don't think I've ever had a move go that quickly. Have you?  I guess we didn't bring that much stuff afterall. That's okay, more room for us to bring treasures we find here. haha!

 View of our elevator from our door. We don't use it much because we are only on the 2nd floor and we need to justify our daily meals of pasta and pizza...haha!

 Upon entering, living room on the right, dining room on the left. Beyond the couch is the door out to our terrace and washing machine room(just big enough to house the washer and some shelves)

 Master bath-with a bathtub!!

 Master bedroom above; Julianns sweet friends made lunch for us this past Sunday. It was awesome!

            We have no problem with a lot of events revolving around meals. I like to consider myself an unbiased foodie..hehe.  This past weekend we got invited to dinner with some of the missionaries from Il Faro International Baptist church.  They also invited some of their Italian neighbors. Italian was the dominant language, as you can imagine, and I was excited because I understood and was able to speak a little too! (Huge accomplishment!!)  But back to the topic of food, most Italian meals consist of several courses. Our meal: appetizer (antipasto) crackers and artichoke dip (yum!), Baked gnocchi (cooked by our friend's Italian neighbor-delizioso!), BBQ chicken wing (finger-lickin good), salad, and 2 desserts-just my style-cheescake bites and fruit salad w/prosecca.  Anyway, the food was good and the company was great! It was really fun to visit with everyone. I was a little nervous before because I don't know much Italian and I wasn't sure if I would be able to converse much. But I was nervous for nothing. The Italian guests were quite patient and kind-even in my lack.
         This next week will hopefully bring more adventures.  We'll see...

5th and final move here in Italia

  We are no longer nomads! We have a place to call our own here in Italy.  It is so nice to be where we are going to be for the remainder of our stay.  We even unpacked all of our suitcases! (I kind of want to pack some of our stuff back up-we have a lot of potential laundry-have I told you how long laundry takes here? haha)  Above: sliding doors into Race's room

  2 beds in Race's room means there is room for guests! Benvenuti ospiti!! (welcome guests)

 Stairwell up to Juliann's 'Shortlandia'  The ceiling is the right height for Juliann(and Mati!and friends) :-)

 Lots of storage and a bathroom

 Nice, spacious desk space for school work-mostly art. There is room for Juliann's sewing machine and maybe a piano keyboard?

 View from J's loft

 Our first meal in the new place. Pasta, of course!

   Our new place is in the heart of the city of Naples(email/FB me for the address).  The surrounding area houses many high end shops and a few outdoor markets; pretty convenient! We have a porter(in Italian: portiere). His name is Michele. He is very nice. He even smiles when I am trying to speak Italian. Such a patient man. haha
   Even though there are some conveniences here, everything is just a little bit more difficult than back home.  There is no where for us to park our car at the appartment so we have to park a few blocks away, there is a lot of traffic around so it takes 3-4 times longer to get around, etc.  It is, of course, totally different than in Washington but we figured we would probably never get another opportunity to live in the city so we are embracing it!
    (for some reason, I can't find the pictures of the front room, kitchen and our bedroom so I will take some more and post them on the next blog post)  Until next time..

Sorrento and Salerno

      It's funny how quickly we forgot about how exhausting and difficult travel can be.(and how tired we were of paying tolls on every road around here..ugh)  After our family trip up north, we were thoroughly exhausted and thought we wouldn't take another trip for a long time.  Apparently, a long time is a day and a half.  We drove to Sorrento via the Amalfi coast.
    Sorrento is a touristy town on the coast of south Italy.  The streets were still decorated from Christmas.  I love how enthusiastic people are about decorations (and fireworks!) here.  In most towns, there are trees with lights and ornaments and light displays up and down the streets. Sorrento was no different. It was fun!
       After lunch, we drove to Salerno.  We had been hearing about how awesome the lights are in Salerno; also that the lights stay on well after Christmas and New Years.  Because of their popularity, we were told to get to Salerno by 3 or 3:30pm just to find a place to park-lights usually go on by 5ish or so.  Well, we didn't get in town until 7 because we drove the coast from Sorrento to Salerno-took around 3hrs. (The Amalfi is something we will be visiting several more times too. It's one of our favorite spots!)

 Sorrento

 I would have loved to take a ride with this sweet pony

 Below: view of a cool road below the main street in Sorrento

 Statue of  Tasso. A famous poet from Sorrento

 Below: sunsetting beyond the Amalfi coast

 Salerno. Below: we had to drive through hoards of people

     Seeing the massive crowds and the lack of even 1 parking spot, we decided to drive around Salerno a little to see what everyone was talking about.  We could barely even see where to drive but we saw a few light displays.  It was cool.  We were content, so we drove home.  Exciting, aren't we?  Remember, this is the family that fell asleep before midnight on New Years Eve while staying in Florence, Italy...ahhh!!!  haha

Part 2 of Our Family Road Trip

      Since Switzerland is approximately 30km away from Cernobbio and Lake Como we decided we would drive over for the day.  It's just kind of cool to say, "We're going to Switzerland today.." haha
Anyway, we followed our GPS to the border.  'She' took us on a wild drive on the side of a hill, through tight roads and lots of twists and turns.(We were saying, "Is this really the right way?")  We saw an official looking gentleman standing next to a barricade and thought we would need to stop and show our passports. Nope. The man just waved us through; why he was standing there, I'm not sure.  After the fact, we realized we had just crossed over the border from Italy to Switzerland. Uneventful. Oh well.
     Switzerland was beautiful!  There was lots of leftover snow from what looked like a decent, past snowfall.  We were fortunate enough to find a great park to hike around in.  It was awesome! Hiking in that area is rather popular, apparently. The park was on a hill and the views from the top were breathtaking.
     After the park we drove down to Lake Lugano; city likewise named.  It was a Sunday afternoon so it was time for 'Passagiata': a stroll.  We joined in.  We walked around the lake a little bit. There were all kinds of birds we watched,etc. Then, we walked closer to shops and restaurants. There was also a public ice skating rink that anyone with skates (or rental skates) could use.  It would have been fun to go skating but I couldn't see the ice-the rink was PACKED! We were getting hungry so we searched for a place to eat.  There were a few fancy restaurants open and the McDonalds and Burger King were also open. We decided against all of the choices because every place was too expensive! A burger meal at Mc or BK was over 13 franks (12 euros or close to $15)  Plus, we were too close to Italy apparently, because every food choice was Italian too.  (What is Swiss food like, anyway?)
  

 View over Lake Lugano.  Race next to a snow marker

 Juliann was so happy to get her hands on some snow!

 Some art in the park

 More art? :-)

 Swiss mountains.  I wish I could name them

 Why am I carrying all this stuff?

 Not sure what Race is doing here..hmmm

 Family time

 Isn't this a cool swing?

 The next day we drove to Florence. We were really excited about Florence because so many people told us it was a beautiful city and that we would love it there! It was a nice drive getting there. Lots of hills, trees, and rustic buildings to see on the way. Our GPS, once again, got us close to our destination but not all the way. We parked so we could search for our hotel. We walked around a busy piazza (market central, in fact). We found a sign with our hotel name and rang the bell. The hotel entrance was not at all what we expected. We had to walk up 2 flights of stairs to the reception desk and it looked like a doctors office entrance. Everything was slightly run down; there were pieces of plywood under the cushions of the couch. hmmm. The man at the desk was not friendly and didn't even smile once! We should have turned around and left right then but we weren't sure what to do. Aaron had the car parked and we brought our luggage upstairs. Our room was a simple rectangle with 4 twin beds-2 of which were pushed together. The walls were painted a nice hospital blue with exam room flourescent lights above. It gets better...the bathroom was no bigger than a coat closet; you could go to the bathroom, shower and use the sink at the same time!(oh, not to mention, use the bidet too) When one took a shower in there, the whole room got soaking wet. ugh.. we only took a shower there once. After a few hours of being there we wanted to leave! But we were stuck. The guy at the desk would not let us leave without paying for 2 nights. And it wasn't cheap! So, we stayed.
There were a lot of cool things to see in Florence. It was fun to be out with everyone and to enjoy the lights,etc. there. We didn't go in any of the museums or churches because those that were open, were super crowded. It also rained on the second day we were there and it wasn't fun to walk around in the rain. It was definitely an experience. We might have to try Florence again another time.
Once we got back 'home' we all collapsed! We were thinking that we wouldn't go another trip for a long time. That lasted a day...I'll tell you about it in the next post :-)