A Day in Rome, A Day at the Herculaneum

 After sitting on the balcony drinking a couple of glasses of wine, we slept in super late after all of the travel struggles. The apartment was small but 2 sets of French doors leading to 1 long balcony opened the room up.

We had nothing planned for the day except to go to Tazza d’Oro for the best iced coffee ever. Our room was just down the street from the Colosseum so It was a bit of a walk but we needed to get out and about.

Along the walk we found a men’s shop and stopped to buy 2 new short-sleeve shirts for Dale as he only had the one, he’d worn on the plane. The Italian shirts were so nice and lightweight, perfect for the warm weather.

Thunderstorms nearby

Coffee from Tazza d'Oro

After we each had 2 cups of coffee, we were sufficiently fueled up to walk a little more. We wandered down the streets working our way back to dinner at the gluten free restaurant. The colosseum and forum were lit up making for a romantic walk back at end of the day.

We got a late start again but were determined to go to the Herculaneum. This is an area near Pompeii and was also affected by the devastating eruption but in a different way so that more buildings are intact.

Remains of people trying to escape

https://www.visitpompeiivesuvius.com/en/herculaneum

The area is lots smaller than Pompeii so it is easier to see nearly every building in an afternoon. But, with my stopping to shoot a ton of photos, well, we were there until they were about to kick us out.

Some of the homes were so complete, it was easy to imagine a family living in the house but additionally, how scarry it must have been for them during the eruption.

We didn’t get to climb Mt. Vesuvius but maybe we will make it back another time.

Trying to get to Italy

 I’ve tried to blog since July but have gotten further and further behind. The muse just hasn’t been there. I’ll maybe get back to our grandkids trip and house hunting after we are back from this trip. But for now, we are in Italy, running amok!

This trip started when we decided to attend the opera for Dale’s birthday. I then found operas for the day before and the day after his birthday that were going to be wonderful, so there the trip goes. I also wanted photos from Palatine Hill, something I didn’t get to last year, so added in Rome, but it is a good place to fly in and out of anyway.

We started out, like most trips, with airplane flights. We decided to travel lighter this trip, with our 2 international size, carry-on, roller bags. Dale with a back pack and me with my Patagonia over the shoulder bag. We also had a standard size carry-on roller bag that we checked.

I was able to pack many clothing items in our small international size bags, 1 extra pair of shoes for me, some books and magazines, and coffee makings. We brought our down sweaters and rain jackets in the backpack and my camera and our laptops in the Patagonia.

Checked were our opera clothes, Dale’s button-up, short-sleeve shirts and toiletries. My tripod was also in the bag.

We didn’t know where we’d be located by this trip so we decided to fly in and out of Bakersfield. 5:20 AM and we were off.

We had a stop in Denver which was uneventful, then onto Boston, which was eventful. We landed just as a thunderstorm was moving into the area. By the time we got close to the gate, lightening was all around us and the plane rocked in the wind. We could not travel any further as the storm would put the gate people in harms way so we had to sit on the tarmac for 1-1/2 hrs.

The plane was safe during the storm, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that we only had 1 hour in Boston before our next flight, to Frankfurt, then 1 hour to our next flight into Rome. So now we were missing our flights.

In Boston, once inside the terminal, everything was chaos. Flights were trying to get off the ground, trying to unload and load, people everywhere. I checked with the desk and was told to just get to Frankfurt where we would be told what our next flights would be.

We found our flight to Frankfurt and got right onto the plane. We were not able to get assigned seats until just before leaving Bakersfield as this was a foreign airline, so our seats were way in the back. We didn’t care as we were able to sit together and we’d be sleeping most of the way.

As it turned out there was no gluten free meals being given out and I couldn’t order one before the flight. The flight attendants found extra salads, fruit dishes and cheese for me. I had some crackers and bars so I knew I’d be fine.

Food, as found by the attendants. 

We got to Frankfurt where we were told that we were rerouted to Brussels then Rome so I went to the Customer Service to see if there was any way to go straight to Rome. There were no direct flights available because of all of the delays. But we did get free meals for all of our troubles. We went directly to a place we’d found last year with gluten free sausages, sauerkraut and drinks.

Sausage and wine

We finally got into Rome in the late afternoon but our checked bag didn’t come. We went to file a claim but Lufthansa said it wasn’t their flight. Brussels Airlines said it wasn’t their flight but after showing all of our boarding passes, they finally agreed that it was theirs. We filed a claim without any hope of getting our bag while on this trip.

After catching a taxi to our Apartment, I then couldn’t get the internet on my phone to work. This meant we couldn’t get the instructions to get into our Airbnb apt. We walked down the hill to a little hotel who gave us their internet, then had us use their phone to call the apartment owner. One of the women, then showed us a restaurant across the street that had almost entirely gluten free menu.

We got into apartment, dropped our bags, went to the restaurant and they said to come back in 20 min. In the meantime, we walked around the corner to a wine bar, tasted wine, bought a bottle and came back to the restaurant where they had reserved a table outside for us. We were starving but everything was safe for me to eat and we were going to be fine!

Gluten free pizza and pasta

 

Packing While Living in our RV

 Our house sold in 4-days, that was over a holiday weekend. Our realtor asked if we knew that it was a holiday and I replied “no, our calendar isn’t around so I had no idea”. It didn’t seem to make a difference and we went into a 30-day escrow.

We moved our RV to our oldest son Nate’s house. He lives on a farm and had room in the rear under a huge tree.

We had lots of loose stuff to pack or not to pack. What could we fit into the RV along with ourselves? And, it wasn’t just us. In 1 month, we’d have 4 grandkids for a grandkids trip, so trying to have space for everyone in addition to stuff was a challenge. We set up 3 tables under the trees and started pulling stuff out of the RV. I had boxes, tape and plenty of bubble wrap. Items either went into a box or into the RV.

Packing was underway

Additionally, we had to take our Ferrari up to Northern California to have the motor put in. This was a 2-day ordeal but worth the effort as we will (hopefully, after 2 years) have our Ferrari running.

Ferrari was leaving Bakersfield one last time

Leaving the Ferrari at the shop

As it turned out, it was a nice time at our son’s. Every morning the parade would start, as we called it. 1^st Jasper would come in the RV and just sit down at the dinette table. He had some quiet time and would just sit. The Emilio would come in to see what we were doing. Sometimes they would eat breakfast and sometimes not.

Usually, Zaya would stop by to say hi and a couple of mornings Bel came with her cup of coffee. I’d stop when the kids came by as I don’t know when that will happen again. How lucky we were!

Bekki would often come by several times during the day. We’d drink coffee or margaritas together, especially when I was particularly frustrated. Our friend Kim came for 1 last taco Tues and we all sat outside for a meal. Nate stopped by when he could but usually, we needed his help with one thing or another.

Jasper had to show his costume for a party

We are glad that we were able to make those memories.

Airing Ourselves Out

 

Newly Freed- Footloose and Fancy free

A friend, who knows who it was by now, said that I needed to blog as the events in our lives are changing.

Well, here I am, sitting in our Jag while Dale drives down Highway 101. We just had a wonderful little getaway and I am enjoying the last of our, wind in the hair, moments.

Looking out over the Pacific

So, to back up a couple of months, we were attempting to get ready to go to Canada for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, we’d had problems with intruders and we knew that the hot summer was fast approaching. Additionally, we’d been talking for years about moving to Canada. We made the decision to sell the house and move on.

We contacted the realtor we’d worked with and she told us what we needed to do to get the house ready to sell. The house needed to be painted throughout the entire interior, new butcher block countertop and a new shower floor.

Nice new paint, new butcherblock countertop

Moving, lots of things were packed away.

It took some time but we got mostly moved out into 2 storage units and our RV. The RV is still heaped with stuff but it will be gone thru eventually.

Moving from a house into a 200sf RV is not easy at all. I don’t think I’d want to be a permanent RV’er as I’ve lived in it while working for weeks on end. Plus, there is no room for my sewing machine or Dale’s model airplanes that he has partially built, or anything else. We had to decide which clothes to pack up, where to store our silver, photos, negatives and on and on.

I am taking my big scanner, DVD’s and CD’s that have photos as this is a good time to transfer those to a newer media. We also have books bought recently that will fill in the time.

For about 3 weeks we spent every day packing and going thru stuff, Dale in the garage and me in the house. Finally, a friend said that we should just stop and go away without the RV. Just go away and “air out”.

We saw that it was going to be really hot for a couple of days so packed up the Jag, put it on the car trailer and hauled it to Atascadero. Funny thing, our good friends happened to see us driving along, chased after us to say hi. 

We then drove up the highway until we reached cool ocean air. We did not bring any food, just a couple of bottles of wine and our credit cards.

A view of the Pacific

One last ride before the big move

We’d really wanted to go to Big Sur and camp but opted for a hotel, then spent a day driving down Hwy 1, past Big Sur for a leisurely lunch at Nepenthe. This was a getaway that we needed.

Lunch with a view

We still worry that we have made a good decision, our house is a beautiful home and repainted, we’d really like it. But it is too big, it is too hot in the summer and expensive to keep cool, the air quality is really bad and sends me into coughing fits, and I feel safer in Canada. But having lived in the house for 25 years it is easy to become complacent and it is tough to make a major change. However, we are sure that we will be fine starting a new life. It’s scary and exciting!