Italy Family Reunion

Last spring, my family took a trip to Italy for an epic family reunion!  I am so thankful to my cousin for planning the majority of this trip because it was a logistical challenge to say the least.  We had a very large group of people ranging from 7 years old to 80+.  Additionally, everyone was arriving and leaving from different cities on different days... and my aunt was rolling around with a walker because she had recently injured her foot.   It was quite the adventure. 😊   

Rome – Part 1   

My party of 3 arrived in Rome.  We had 2 days to explore the city before meeting up with everyone else.  We took an uber from the airport to our hotel, Hotel Navona Tower Relais, in Piazza Navona.  Piazza Navona was a wonderful location to stay!  It was centrally located and surrounded by a lot of shops and restaurants.  There was a beautiful fountain in the center of the piazza and the whole vibe screamed “Italy”.  After dropping our bags at the hotel, we were picked up right out front by our tour guide for the day.  

I reserved a private golf cart tour with “My Best Tour”.  After a long flight and not much rest, I didn’t think we’d want to spend hours walking around on the first day, but I also didn’t want to waste the day sleeping.  This was a perfect compromise.  Our tour guide took else around the entire city and we didn’t have to sit in traffic once!  He was so knowledgeable and we were able to move at a pace that kept my 7 year old from complaining.  Our tour included 1 hour inside the Colosseum as well, which was just right for us.   We learned that many years ago, the king would flood the Colosseum and have ships battle each other!  That night, we ate a delicious pasta dinner in the piazza followed by gelato!    

We were up bright and early the next morning (hooray for jet lag) and had no problem making our 8 AM entry time for the Vatican museums.  Being there so early meant no lines yet, so we walked right into the museum.  We spent the next 2 hours exploring and at one point thought to circle back through, but it was completely packed.  Lunch today was an American Kid special at McD’s for a happy meal.  Fun fact, the happy meals in Italy come with a side of parmesan cheese.   Later that day, we went to see Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary.  That was a bit underwhelming in compared to all of the other amazing things in Rome!  

Before dinner at Osteria Da Fortunata, we explored the ruins buried beneath the piazza.  It was very cool.  Dinner was unfortunately sub par and I learned the hard way that there are bad Italian restaurants in Italy.   

The next morning, I picked up our rental car from Europcar and we drove South to Bagnoli Irpino, where my Dad’s side of the family is from.  We spent a few days visiting with family and eating a TON of food.  I was 12 years old the last time I visited and not much has changed.   Everyone watched us parade around the piazza in our large group.   

Mount Vesuvius / Sorrento   

From Bagnoli Irpino, we drove to Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii.  I almost drove off the side of the volcano more times that I would care to admit, but eventually we made it to the parking area and took a shuttle to the entrance.  My son took one look at how high up the hike was and immediately decided to wait at the bottom with my Aunt.  It wasn’t a terrible hike, but the path was very gravelly and it was easy to slip around.  Once we made it to the top, we could look down into the crater.   

After hiking back down, we drove over to Pompeii to meet our tour guide.  My son does not do well on organized tours, so we cut off from the rest of the group to move at our own pace.  I learned that only a very small part of Pompeii has be excavated.  There is a lot more that is not yet uncovered.  Overall, this was a good educational stop and very cool to walk outside, but the indoor section of the museum itself was a bit underwhelming.  

After the tour, we grabbed lunch at Ristorante Pizzeria La Gare.  It was average, but that is expected given its proximity to a tourist attraction.   We ended the day in Sorrento, where I dropped off my rental car and checked in to our next hotel.  

Sorrento was my favorite stop by far!  It is the cutest town to walk around.  There are a lot of shops and restaurants and everything is easy to navigate.  I ate some limone gelato inside of a giant lemon and grabbed some late night bites and wine at a local bar.  Sorrento has so many good shops for souvenirs and trinkets, and Nino & Friends was amazing!  

The next morning, we all got picked up to head to an all-day foodie tour with Il Turuziello.  We started the tour in a little café, where we enjoyed an espresso.  Our guide took us up to their family’s lemon farm in a very small truck that zoomed through streets more narrow than my wingspan.  We walked through the lemon trees and then enjoyed an olive oil tasting.  After the tasting, we learned how mozzarella is made and got to taste the deliciousness each step of the way.  It was a very fun, hands-on, full day activity!  That night we ate the best gnocchi of my life at Oysteria di Famiglia.  

The next day, some of our group headed on a bus tour to the Amalfi Coast.  My family took a ferry boat to Capri.  Unfortunately, it was too windy to go to the Blue Grotto, but we had a lovely day walking around the island.  After another gelato, we jumped on a bus to Anacapri to take the funicular to the top of Mount Solaro.   That experience was a lot of fun!  After another night of delicious food, we went back to our hotel for the last night in Sorrento.  

 

Florence   

The next morning, we jumped on the Circumvensia train to Naples.  From there, we switched to the Frecchia Rosa, which brought us to Florence and our next leg of the trip.  We stayed near the train station, which admittedly, was not the best area.  It was close enough to walk to the Galleria Accademia to see The David, which was definitely worth a visit.  That night we had dinner nearby and then went to Rivoire Firenze for hot chocolate.   

We split from the group the next day as they were going shopping and we headed to Pisa.  It was a quick 1 hour train ride to Pisa and a nice walk from the Pisa train station over to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  We did not go in the tower, but were able to enjoy the view fully from the ground.  We took our required tourist photos and then grabbed lunch and gelato nearby.  This was a fun and easy day trip from Florence.  

That night, we met up with the group for dinner at Antica Osteria 1 Rosso.  It was a cute restaurant, but comparatively not the best meal on our trip.    

My husband’s birthday was the following day and we all headed out to wine country to celebrate.  We stopped in a few different vineyards in Montepulciano.  We also stopped for snacks, including sheep’s milk gelato in Pienza.  Our last vineyard in Montepulciano included lunch.     

Rome – Part 2   

We boarded the train back to Rome the next morning.  For our last day in Rome, we decided to stay out by Villa Borghese and explore the large park, Borghese Gallery, and Zoo!  We met up with some local friends for dinner that evening and then grabbed a plane back to Boston the next morning.    Overall, we had a really great time.  Rome and Sorrento were my favorite cities by far.  The beautiful architecture of Rome and the all-day cheese/lemon/olive oil tasting in Sorrento are not to be missed!   I know I will be back again!

Thanksgiving in London

It has become a bit of a tradition for me to travel overseas during American Thanksgiving.  This year was no different.  Hopping off a plane early Thursday morning, my traveling companion and I were at the Park Lane hotel in Mayfair before noon.  It was a bit confusing getting to our hotel since part of it is under construction, but we managed to arrive fairly quickly and it a cheaper manner than if we caught a black cab or took a train. 

Hogwarts decorated for Christmas!

We didn’t have time to sit around and let the jet lag sink in because when I was buying tickets a few weeks prior to the trip, a lot of dates/times were sold out for certain activities.  One of those activities was touring the Warner Brothers Studio where all of the Harry Potter movie sets and props were stored.  Fortunately, I managed to get tickets for the 2:30 time slot on the day we arrived.  Unfortunately, that meant we had about an hour to grab a sandwich from the local Pret and get some money exchanged at the nearby bank before trying our luck on the subway system.

I did my research and knew which trains we needed to take, but it still managed to take longer than I planned for (about 1.5 hours total from London).  The over ground train we caught from Euston to Watford Junction stopped at every stop along the way and we ended up being about 15 minutes late (they still let us in any way!).  The studio tour was huge and had a lot of very cool stuff.  They had an entire section dedicated to green screen technology and showed how the Quidditch scenes were filmed.  I had two favorite parts of the tour: the first was walking into the Hogwarts dining hall at the very beginning because it was decorated for a Christmas feast!  The flaming pudding was awesome.  The second, and probably my most favorite, part was the giant model of Hogwarts at the end of the tour.  It was so intricate and used to film the outdoor scenes during the movies.  I felt like if I could have shrunk to doll sized, I could have curled up in one of the beds in the Gryffindor dorms.

Traditional Afternoon Tea at the Conrad Hotel

We eventually made our way back to hotel that evening to shower and freshen up before walking to Kensington and going to Harrods’s.  The walk was nice, but pretty long from where we were staying in Mayfair.  Harrods’s was completed overwhelming and not the type of place to go visit after 6 hours of traveling and a full day of sight-seeing.  Eventually we gave up after getting lost several times somewhere between perfume and the gourmet meats and just popped into a pub nearby for dinner before calling it a night.

The next morning we slept in a bit to fight the time difference and then made our way to the Covent Garden area via Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square with a quit pit stop in Leicester square to grab some “The Illusionists” show tickets for the next night.  At 11 am, we met up with a local walking tour guide affiliated with the Sandemanns New Europe walking tours.  I did a tour with the same company a few years ago in Dublin and really enjoyed it. The tour is free and lasts about 2.5 hours.  It is a great way to get your bearings on a new city and learn a bit of history.  Lucky for us, we did the tour on a day where they had the changing of the guard ceremony and we were able to get some great pictures!  The tour ended near Westminster Abbey and from there we did some shopping before making our way to the Conrad hotel for a traditional afternoon tea.

Changing of the Guard Ceremony

One of the things I was most looking to was having a traditional afternoon tea.  I tried to get into the Ritz, but when I emailed the reservation desk they politely told me they book up a year in advance (woops!).  Fortunately, the Conrad St. James Park was lovely and they had a very visually impressive spread.  The tea was delicious and the sweet tray really was incredible.  After tea, we walked over to the London Eye for our Cocktail experience.  From what I read online, I thought we would be drinking the cocktail while inside the Ferris Wheel.  It had just started to rain when we arrived, so there was no line.  I asked around before being directed to the ticket desk inside where I would trade my voucher for a ticket and drink coupon.  That is where I found out we would be having our drinks in the bar upstairs.  The bar was empty and looked like just an empty space where they through a counter and called a “bar”.  I ended up having a good cocktail with Champagne (I also bought a very cute baby bottle of champagne with a British flag label to take home).  After we finished our drinks in the isolated room, we went back outside to line up for the Ferris Wheel.  I really enjoyed the ride, and since it wasn’t busy, there were only a handful of people in our car.  I’m glad I did this at night because the lights were fun, but I wouldn’t do the cocktail experience again.  It was a waste of money in my opinion.

A charming restaurant

We had a late start to our Saturday (due to somebody staying up late for Black Friday shopping online) and ended up not touring the inside of Westminster Abbey per the itinerary.  After stopping at Pret for some coffee and a pastry, we made our way to the Tower of London.  The ticket line was not bad, and even though we bought discounted tickets through Sandemanns, we still had to exchange our vouchers for real tickets.  For the next few hours we explored the dungeon, aviary, various rooms, and stopped to listen to a guide speak about the purpose of the structure and its proximity to the river.  This was a very cool experience and a good way to spend the early afternoon.  When we were ready to leave, we walked up toward the Tower Bridge for a few pictures.

As we walked back to the hotel, we stopped in various shops to look for souvenirs to bring back home.  Around 3pm, we searched for a place to have a quick tea.  By some form of luck or fate, we wandered into The Delaunay, a Viennese restaurant that offered a traditional afternoon tea for about 24 pounds.  The Austrian cakes, Poppy Seed Gugelhupf, and savory bites were all so delicious.  I would come back here in a heartbeat.  This restaurant actually makes me want to go visit Austria now.

We also stopped in the Twinings tea store so I could sample some hot tea (and buy some tea, of course).   After dropping off our goods, we walked back toward Piccadilly Circus to see the Illusionists show.   The show was interesting, but not really worth a lot of money to see.  Each of the magicians did 1-2 tricks.  The best part was the commentary and watching some of the recorded tricks that occurred in the lobby to unsuspecting visitors on the way in.

Photo with the guard at the Tower of London

Sunday morning we woke up early for a 7 am pickup at the hotel with the tour company taking us out to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge & Bath, Evan Evans Tours.  I booked the tour through Viator, but it is always good to know the name of the actual company taking you out for the day.  After missing our pickup time and catching a cab out to the Victoria coach station, we were able to meet back up with the group and get onboard.  Our guide gave us an overview of what we were going to see that day as well as drive times.  She also informed us that some of the guests actually signed up for a Japanese tour.  At first I didn’t think twice about that, but several hours in, I really didn’t want to listen to Japanese anymore.  I wish they would have told me about that in advance. 

Traditional meat pies and chips

Our guide passed out little mp3 looking devices that were all tuned to the same frequency so she could talk to us without screaming.  They actually worked really well and let us spread out a little whenever we were off the bus.  The entire group was pretty big, I’d say around 40-50 people.  If you want a more intimate experience, pick a different company.  The plus side to this tour was that we got all of the information in advance and then explored each site on our own at our own pace.  For some stops, like Bath, that was especially nice because I split my time between the Roman Bath exhibit and the Christmas market out front.

After a full previous day, Monday morning was dedicated to packing.  We jumped into a cab around noon and made our way back to the airport.  I’m very glad I was able to go to London, but it was a lot bigger than I expected.  I’m not sure that I would go out of my way to go again, but I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone else from going.  The experience was wonderful and I’d spend another day or two there en route to another location (like Scotland!).

Stonehenge