Our Vacation in Cefalù

Our vacation was wonderful. Idyllic, really. It's the first vacation that I've had that had virtually no scheduled time, and we spent the days doing as we liked, with no real plans or itineraries. I've never understood the value of spending several lazy, unstructured days at a beach, but I think I might have had an epiphany. Spending five days at a beach town is the perfect family vacation when you have a toddler.

Travel to and from Cefalù was fairly easy. We flew from Rome into Palermo, then took a train to the town. Active travel time was only about three hours, although there was some waiting-around time, too. Even so, the day we arrived we had plenty of time to check into our lovely apartment that we had reserved through airbnb, and explore the town.

Indigo was immediately and totally enthralled with the sea. This was her first

Her first look

time at the beach, actually, and she could not get enough of it. She was much braver than I had anticipated, and went immediately to water's edge and cautiously stuck some toes in. She then screamed, half in shock from the cold and half in delight, ran back up to dry sand, and did it again. And again. And again. The entire time she yelled, rapturously, "The sea! The sea, Mama! Come in the sea!" And I did.

So begins my child's deep love for beach bum life. I'm going to have to take her to my father's house extra-often this summer, so that we can go to the beach out there.

We developed a leisurely routine, which involved some light outings in the mornings: obtaining un cornetto (croissant) or una ciambella (a donut) or other various yumminess; playing around the Piazza Duomo, taking a walk around the city center, or letting Indigo burn off energy at a nearby playground. Then we'd break for lunch and Indigo's nap (when we would also nap, or take turns walking around. After Indigo woke up, we'd go go the beach for a few hours, then get gelato, relax, and eventually get cleaned up and go out to dinner. After Indigo was asleep Josh and I took turns going out to our hosts' nephew's bar, where we could use the wifi for free.

After the beach, the Duomo was Indigo's favorite place to visit. She called it "the castle" and declared herself its Queen. We spent long stretches of time at the top of the Duomo's steps, where she capered and danced to the amusement of onlookers.

One of the nicest things about Cefalù is the warmth and friendliness of its locals. People greeted us constantly. They didn't know us; they were just being nice. Italians, of course, adore children, and Indigo often gets a lot of attention even here in Rome. But in a small town where people are more relaxed and have more of that small-town friendliness, their love of children was even more apparent. We went to a little market our first day in town, and every day afterwards the shopkeeper would wave to us. People gave Indigo candy and oranges. One older gentlemen made a Pinocchio puppet dance for her. Waitstaff doted on her. She got a casual, "Ciao, bionda," ("hi, blondie") a few times. In Rome there are some blondes, but in Sicily, not so much. We befriended a family on top of the Duomo steps one night (and one of the women helped save Indigo from a nasty tumble down the steps), and played Ring Around the Rosy - in both English and Italian - with their two kids. It was all just wonderfully, impossibly sweet.

We ate a lot of seafood. At least, Josh and I did. And lots of baked goods. I even managed to eat an entire piece of marzipan, although it took me the better part of the day to do it. It was so sweet! Speaking of sweets, they don't scrimp on the sugar in Sicily. Do you know, that it's typical for them to eat brioche or a cornetto filled with gelato for breakfast?! Yes. Sicilian children eat ice cream for breakfast. At least sometimes. It's a little nauseating. But also so good.

We had originally planned on taking a few day trips, or maybe to hike up La Rocca (the big rock in the middle of the town), but decided to be lazy and hang out on the beach instead. The weather was fairly warm, although mostly overcast, which made playing in the sea and sand pleasant for me, as I don't tolerate heat well.

La Rocca rising up behind the beach

The one morning trip we did take was a leisurely stroll along the sea and around La Rocca to the weekly market. The market was lively and clearly a staple of small-town Sicilian life, but my favorite part was the walk itself, and the views we saw on the way. In particular, there were a lovely mysterious bunch of ruins jutting out of a rocky outcropping. What were they? we wondered.

Usually by the time a vacation winds to a close, I'm ready to return home. Not this time, though. I could have happily stayed for a few more days. Our last day was perfect, and I'll never forget Indigo's delighted squeals as we chased a tiny fish through shin-deep water, or of her pride in being able to finally slurp her spaghetti noodle at dinner, sucking it in her mouth in one neat movement. Or of Josh's face and body, looking utterly relaxed and happy for the first time in a long, long time.

It was the perfect vacation, and I feel renewed. Refreshed. And ready to take on these last six weeks here in Rome.

Let me share a few more of our photos:

Day Trip(s): Ostia Antica

One of the easiest day trips from Rome is to Ostia Antica, an archeological site that was once a harbor city for ancient Rome. The city was founded by King Ancus Marcius at the end of the 7th century BC, but the oldest structures uncovered by excavations are dated to the early 4th century BC. Maybe there are older buildings yet to be excavated, or maybe they were destroyed in various conquests, or maybe the original structures were not made out of materials that could stand the test of time. Still, 4th century ruins are probably the oldest man-made things that I've ever seen, and the site is damn impressive.

Cheerfully waving from the necropolis

It's an easy 30-minute train ride from Rome to Ostia, and then about a 10-minute walk from the train station to the site. The site is huge, and we've seen only a small part of it, despite having gone twice. It is a little kid's paradise - lots of wide open space with all these stones and half-walls and little rooms that can be climbed on, and hidden in, and played in. Indigo's a happy kid, and I've often seen her get excited by something, but I have never seen her as delighted and overjoyed as she was on our first trip to the site. I had to practically peel her away from climbing on the walls in the old necropolis (shudder) in order to go see anything else in the site. She could have happily played there for hours. Hours.

"Another rock!"

Indigo loved walking on the cobblestone street that winds through the center of the site. She painstakingly stepped from one to the next, over and over (which is why we never got very far in). We were literally surrounded by thousands, maybe even millions of stones on the ground or all around us in the ruins, and at one point, after another painstaking step, she stopped, looked at her next step, and exclaimed, "Another rock!"

Her favorite part of the site though (that we saw), were the little warehouses and shops near the Baths of Neptune. There were several little rooms that she could go in to and explore. She was beside herself - clearly this was the coolest place she'd ever seen. We had to peel her away from there, too - I had to use every distraction and bribe I could think of to get her to come away so that we could go see some other things.

Towards the warehouses

Hanging out in an ancient warehouse

I think food and milk was the bribe that ultimately worked - she had worked up an appetite from climbing around on top of 4th century BC ruins (crazy, right!?) We ended up having a picnic on a sun-warmed rock just outside the theater, and then we climbed around on rocks some more.

"Me? Up to something?"

We returned to the site when Josh's parents were in town. Indigo was less interested in climbing this time, and more interested in jumping in muddy puddles, but at least it meant that we got a little farther into the site, and saw a few new things. Raye and Candace were especially interested in seeing the theater, which was amazing.

A view of the theater from the top of the seating area

 The theater was acoustically perfect; Ray could speak in a normal tone of voice (he's in the red hat) from the ground, and Candace and I could hear him perfectly from all the way up in the back. Indigo, meanwhile, led her daddy on a merry chase back and forth through a tunnel, and managed to impress some Italians with her pronunciation of Italian words (that's my girl!)

So yes - if you are coming to Rome, definitely go for a day trip to Ostia Antica. It's really awe-some, and it's lovely, and so good to get out of the city for a bit. Here are a few more of my favorite photos from our trips:

The main road through the site

The perfect picnic spot

Even in January, it's lovely and green

Near the Baths of Neptune and the shopping district

Tunnel into the theater

Theater dramatic masks

"Ciao!"

Things

In my Halloween post, I mentioned that it was not easy to Buy Things in Italy. Let me elaborate.

We take for granted the conveniences we enjoy in the US. There are so many more things in the US - I mean material things. But it is so easy to buy things. All sorts of things. Things you don't even think of as essential things, because it's so easy to obtain them. Here? There's no Target, or similar place where you can go and buy all the various things you need. Instead you must shop in 15 different tiny little shops, and try to talk to the shopkeeps about what you need (because shops are so small, merchandise is stacked up or shoved under tables or in secret drawers or hanging from the ceiling). It is hard to explain what you need when you speak baby-talk Italian. Miming can be helpful, albeit embarrassing.

There's this hardware store near Indigo's school, where I went to look for a fan in September. It's actually two stores, but the store with all the things is locked. And packed, from floor to ceiling, with an endless assortment of things in no order whatsoever. To get something from that store, I had to go next door to an entirely separate space (which is taken up by a huge counter and lots of counter-to-ceiling drawers presumably filled with yet more things), explained to the man behind the counter what I was looking for, then I followed him over to the locked store, which he opened. I followed him through a tiny little path winding through the mounds of things, and he kind of dove into the morass, pulling out a fan, then another. There was no fan "section". He literally reached into a pile in one area, waded deeper into the store, and pulled out another. I chose one, then followed him back to the other store to purchase it.

Not only are things harder to obtain, there's less choice. I think it was Lo who said, when visiting, that product choice was really what the US is famous for the world over: you can basically name your price, and buy nearly anything at the the price point you want. There's less choice here. It often seems like there's a Walmart-quality version, or a designer-version of any given thing, and very little in-between.

 

But it is immensely enjoyable shopping in the outdoor markets. I do shop at the local grocery store for many items, but I get all my fruits and veggies (and sometimes cheese and bread) at the markets. And the flip side to not having convenience here, is that Italy boasts so many gorgeous artisan boutiques - the like of which you'd rarely see in the US. Like this glass lamp shop in the heart of Rome:

Not only does it have a spectacular storefront, it has this huge basement filled with glass wares. It's really like a huge, magical, hidden-treasure grotto down there. I've taken to referring to it as the glass grotto.

Then of course, there are lovely little shops down gorgeous, winding roads that have made-in-Rome wares that you won't find anywhere else. I found a little kids' clothes shop - the woman tailor was inside, sewing away as I entered. Turns out she's Swedish, but has lived and worked in Rome for the last 30 years. Her clothes are bright, cheerful, and utterly adorable.

The paper stores in Florence are exquisite. Here's a tiny sample of what you might see:

Don't they look like textiles?  Amazing.

I've got to get more pictures of the toy shops soon (Christmas is coming, so I'm sure I'll have the opportunity soon). I did go into this one shop in Orvieto that had this wonderful little - mobiles? Models? I'm not really sure what they were. But I want to cover a ceiling of my home in tiny little hot-air balloons, now.

And here, of course, is one of the open-air markets, at Campo de' Fiori:

A Day in the Country, Part 2: Olive Picking

This past weekend we had the opportunity to see some more of the Italian countryside. A friend here at the Academy owns a house in Giove, Umbria, which has roughly 40 olive trees on the land (also a number of grapevines). It's olive harvest time, and so she invited the community up to her house for olive picking, a chance to see the olives pressed, and general food and merriment.

It's an easy trip by train - about an hour. I was pleased to see that about 25 people came, some of whom I don't see that often, outside of mealtimes. A number of children came as well, so I knew that Indigo would have plenty to entertain her if she tired of picking olives.

So, the house. Well. The view was okay. ;)

 Yeah, yeah - I was utterly entranced. Of course. And the smell - the air was both fresh and clean, yet also smelled rich - of earth and heat and olives. Lovely.

I thought that olive picking would be about the same as apple picking, but there are a few differences. For one, olives are a lot smaller, so there's some fear that any that fall from the trees could easily be squashed (and potentially ruined) underfoot. Or lost. So they spread large nets under the trees, then gently use small mini-rakes to comb through the branches, or even a sort of electric rake that agitates the branches. People may also climb the trees to get the olives higher-up. Basically the idea is to unload all the olives into the waiting net below, then gently move/pour the olives from the net into the baskets/crates. The children were especially good at this final task.

Indigo is at that age where she loves to put little things into bigger containers, so she actually really loved finding the olives that had dropped into the nets, and transferring them into the crates. Of course, she loved sitting on mommy and daddy's shoulders and picking olives straight from the trees, too.

After we were done picking olives, we had a lovely lunch together on the porch, overlooking what seemed to be all of Umbria. Some of our company had stopped picking olives earlier and had made some pasta and this wonderful cheese-sauce that was amazing slathered on bread...mmm. The children played, and we all relaxed, and then a number of people went to watch the olives get pressed. Josh and I decided to take Indigo home, as it was growing late, and I had the rare pleasure of holding my sleeping child for the duration of the train ride home. It used to be that I held her every day as she napped, but now that she's so big, it doesn't happen all that often. It was the perfect end to a really amazingly lovely day.

A Day in the Country, Part 1: Orvieto

Last week three dear friends from college came to town, and we were fortunate to spend several days in their company. We've been friends with Iggy, Maggie and Anandamayi for years, but haven't seen them since 2009, or as it's affectionately called in our circle, The Year of Many Weddings (including our own). We met them for dinner a couple nights while they were in town, and we went on a day trip together to Orvieto last weekend.

I didn't really know anything about Orvieto when we set out, except that it's in Umbria, and reportedly beautiful. It's an easy trip from Rome by train - about an hour and ten minutes. It was also Indigo's first train ride, and she was excited to be on a "choo-choo". We ate bread and excellent cheese and salami on the ride, and very soon we were there.

At first I was confused - where was the town? And then my friends told me that we had to take a funicular up the mountainside, because Orvieto was essentially about 52 stories up. I'd never been on a funicular before (it's essentially a tram with two cars that counterbalance one another; while one goes up, the other comes down), and was a little worried about how Indigo would react to the ride, but she was fine.

And then - we were in the town. We decided to first explore the Etruscan ruins. Indigo had a blast running around, and managed to find the one muddy puddle in the whole city - and jumped in. Of course. The view of the countryside from the ruins was breathtaking.

We then walked down the street into the city proper, and it was just gorgeous. I fell in love immediately. It really reminded me of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, in feel. It was yet another isolated city/fortress built atop a bunch of rocks - Orvieto isn't an island, of course, but it is on top of a mountain, so the feel is very similar. And it has similar narrow, curving streets and tiny shops filled with both artisanal wares and tourist kitsch.

We walked through the town, meandering slowly towards the Duomo, which was "striped" with different colors of stone (I'm told this style is famous in Siena, but there's also a church in Florence that uses the same technique). On the steps of the cathedral, Indigo befriended a small Italian boy, and the two of them ran around together for a while, until I finally coaxed her away with the promise of gelato. Which was quite tasty.

The piazza that surrounds the cathedral is quite large, and happily (mostly) car-free, so Indigo was free to run around quite a bit. Most of the small, winding roads were car-free, actually, so it's a great town for little kids. I could let her run without worrying too much, except when she spied a ceramics store (of which there were many), and then we were in trouble! She kept saying that she wanted "a teapot", and would head into the store to try to grab the first pitcher or bowl that she saw. She gave us a few heart attacks.

After a quick dinner it was sadly, time to leave. I am actually happy that we didn't see everything that we had wanted to, because it means that we have a good excuse to take a trip back to the town some time.  Maybe around Christmastime, or in the Spring.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

We traveled more than 1,000 miles, of course. It's a bit mind-boggling to think that we're halfway around the world. I spent a good deal of the transatlantic flight watching the big screen at the front of the cabin to see where our little plane icon was on the trip trajectory. Totally boring, yes, but also kind of mindlessly fascinating. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Quick recap - movers came on the 31st to haul all our stuff out of the house, into a truck (which broke down and needed a jump-haha) and presumably off to a storage facility. By the time they were three-quarters done, I was totally done, and all my belongings could have burned in a fire, for all I cared. I suppose that's not actually true, but I was glad when we finally packed up and drove to Providence to stay with Rachel for a few days.

Which...was lovely. Living with Rachel again, even for such a brief time, was wonderful, and reminded me of the golden Montebello days. We didn't throw any crazy dance parties this time 'round, but we did see a number of folks who stopped by to spend time with us before we were set to flee the country.

And we nearly didn't get beyond that first step. US Airlines almost didn't let Indigo and I fly, because our return tickets were for 10 months in the future, and we didn't have visas - so we could technically only stay in Italy for 3 months. So they refused to let us check in. Sure, they had a point - it is actually illegal to stay in the country for 10 months without a visa. But I honestly don't think that the Italians care. Nor have any Academy fellows run into this problem before. Josh called the Academy immediately and someone tried to get in touch with the NY Consulate to get everything straightened out. We never did hear back from the Consulate, because if we waited around, we'd miss our flight (which was so helpfully delayed an hour - actually good luck, because of this other problem). Instead we just changed the return date for our flights to November. Which we'll have to change back to June. Which incur a $250 change fee, per change, per ticket. That's - yup - you guessed it! $1,000 in fees. Thanks, US Air.

Anyway, after that, the flights went as well as they could have. We had a short flight to Charlotte, which was not as crazy busy as I'd feared, so that was a big plus. Indigo fussed a bit on that flight and then slept, so she was fairly wide awake for the second 9-hour flight. Despite being exhausted, she was as good as gold on the long flight. Really. Minimal fussing or wriggling.  After about 3 hours she slept, fitfully, and I had to soothe her back to sleep a few times. Only at the end of the flight did she begin to demand to get out of her seat, and by then, we were only about a half hour from our destination.

Getting through the airport was actually fairly easy, although there was a long wait for our bags. A driver from the Academy had been sent to meet us (he had Josh's name on a sign in the lobby - how cool is that?) and my first glimpse of Rome included palm trees and strange spiky foliage partially obscured by a concrete parking garage. The sound of whistles being blown, car horns honking. A strange sweetish smell, which I later identified as diesel fumes. We got in the car and drove breakneck down a highway and through some part of Rome, and then, suddenly, we were at our new home.

My memories of those first few hours are a little fuzzy, since I was running on perhaps 4 hours of sleep. I think I put Indigo down for a nap, unpacked a little, then slept myself.

Next up: our first few days, our apartment, the Academy, and other adventures.