Monday 21 December

The last day of our tour started with a wake up call at 6am and the coach leaving at 7.30am. 12 of the 48 on tour are staying here, so we said goodbye to those who were awake, and were leaving Paris by 7.32am. 

Now for a stocktake of what has been lost: Belle left her neck pillow in Hong Kong under a table, we think at the airport, and dropped a little pink Eiffel Tower souvenir key ring someone on the tour gave her on the cruise last night. And Jarrod realised he left his neck pillow in the hotel in Venice…as we were driving out the driveway of said hotel 😕. Two of our suitcases have also not faired so well – a wheel broke off Ross’ and both handles snapped off on mine (and I’m using the Samsonite bag we bought in the US to bring home all our souvenirs! …..I guess they were lighter than all the clothes I’m travelling with this time…). However, all iPods and other valuables are in place, and for that I am thankful! 

On the way to Calais to catch the ferry across to Great Britain, we took a morning stop amongst the battlefields of the Somme, and almost 100 years later it is still mind boggling to think young men were made to climb out of trenches and face certain death (like at Gallipoli). Apparently military personnel are still on hand every week as items from the First World War are still regularly being dug up as the local farmers go about their business.

   
 We were scheduled to be on an early afternoon ferry to Dover, but made such good time and cleared customs so quickly, we were allocated to the 11.55am ferry instead. And that was even with the Joneses holding up quick passage through customs! We were given departure cards to fill out once we arrived at the border, but that is a process that always takes us some time to complete for a party of eight.

On the way in to customs, we drove past high barbed wire fences and a tent city that houses refugees. It was so sad to see. Over 7,000 people live there, some have been there for the last 18 months. They have no education, jobs or hope. The barriers were constructed once they started arriving because they were trying to jump on coaches and on backs of cars to sneak passage over to Britain, where they would be given 60 pounds per week by the government. Our coach was checked over closely including the baggage compartment before we were allowed to drive onto the ferry.

  
The trip to Dover was an hour and a half. We had lunch (sandwiches and paninis, but not as good as Italian ones!) in the food court on board and then moved to the front of the boat so we would have a good view of the white cliffs of Dover. Jarrod and Zac felt progressively worse with motion sickness as the trip went on, so they were extremely pleased to be back in the coach and driving off the boat! 

  
We then had another two hour coach trip before we arrived in the city of London. We said our goodbyes to everyone on tour and caught two taxis to our hotel. We are staying right near Oxford Street, so explored that…along with a cast of thousands! Ross barely coped with all the crowds 😬 – in a moment of weakness he even agreed to the kids having McDonald’s for dinner! He just couldn’t stand searching for a pub or restaurant amongst all the people. Abi bought some little key rings for her friends and we bought a suitcase to replace one of the broken ones. Today is the shortest day of the year, so our exploring which started at 4.30pm was all done under a pitch black sky! It gave us ample opportunity to enjoy the Christmas lights in all the streets. It is hard to believe it is four days until Christmas 🎄.

Sunday 20 December

We were allowed a sleep in this morning…until 7.30am! The coach left the hotel at 8.30am to do a driving tour of the centre of Paris and climb the Eiffel Tower before it opened to the public. This is the day Belle has been waiting for! (And I still had to coax her awake this morning…)

   
   
Being up on the second level was a great experience and just being able to be there was a highlight for the kids. From there we were taken to the Place de la Concorde, and left the group who were doing an optional extra tour of the Notre Dame cathedral. We had a Louvre tour in the afternoon which I had booked months ago, so our priority was getting back to the hotel for a rest time before venturing out again.

We braved the metro system to return to the hotel. I made the mistake when we crossed the border into France of telling the kids I had studied French for many years. But it was many years ago! Sam now brings me pamphlets, books, newspapers etc asking me to translate everything, and everyone expected me to be able to converse with the train station master fluently to find out the way back to the hotel 😬 but the French speak too quickly for me! I need time to analyse each sentence and guess the words I don’t know!

  
Anyway, I managed well enough to navigate the way back and we made it. We had to change lines at a certain station (St Lazare) though, and the maze we walked to find line 3 from line 12 was so long, I felt like we had walked halfway back! Once back in our room, Ross went to the supermarket next door and I enforced a midday rest time. 

The hotel is a 20 minute drive from the city centre, but once here, there is a cul de sac downstairs with a choice of five restaurants and a supermarket. Last night the majority of the tour group went to the Moulin Rouge, and we picked a restaurant downstairs called hippopotamus to eat in, and enjoyed very nice steak and salad meals (it was like a Black Stump restaurant). The service was slow, I guess being a Saturday night it was busy and the staff thought everyone was happy to take their time over their meal. With six very tired children around the table, we just wanted to eat and put everyone to bed! To no avail though, we arrived at the restaurant just before 8pm (waiting in our rooms for poor Ross to finish the washing) and weren’t finished until after 10pm.

We fed the kids sandwiches and wraps from the supermarket in our room and headed back into Paris by two taxis. (A maxi taxi only takes up to 7 people). We had two tours of the Louvre booked for 2pm, split by age group. The maximum in a group is 5 people. Ross and I had intended to divide and conquer, but on the first night of the tour a lovely young newlywed couple from Darwin sat with us (oh my, how OLD does that sentence make me sound?!?!) and we learned that they were not doing many of the extras available because of their tight budget. Ross had the brilliant idea to include them in our tours seeing as we were paying for them whether they had five or less participants, so Micah and Sarah took Jarrod, Tim and Abi on the three hour tour with a guide (who was from Melbourne!) and Ross and I and the little three were guided by Vanessa (from Boston) on a two hour tour. 

   
    
 Both tours ran 40 minutes overtime. There is just so much to see and experience and learn about there, and the guides were so good and patient with all of our questions. After our tour ended, I took the little three back to the hotel in a taxi to get ready for our Farewell Dinner, and Ross waited for the others. As the coach was leaving to take us to dinner at 6pm and the other tour didn’t finish until 5.40pm, the others decided to meet us straight at the restaurant. When they weren’t there by the scheduled time of 6.30pm, I started to worry and was wishing we had paid for working phones! But they arrived soon after – they had been told at the Louvre it was only a 20 minute walk, but because of crowds in areas like the Arc de Triomphe it took them an hour!

Dinner was a delicious three course meal, with choices such as French onion soup, snails (Ross, Jarrod and Tim ordered them so there were enough for everyone to try – yes even I tried one!), salmon, duck, creme brûlée and chocolate mousse. This was followed by a cruise down the Seine river and then a coach tour of Paris by night. The “city of lights” puts on an even more spectacular show at this time of year! It made for a very late night though – we weren’t back in our room until 11pm. 

   
    
 Some of the group are leaving the tour here rather than coming to London. The little kids were very sad about saying goodbye to people they didn’t know a week ago!! We have said for a couple of years now that after Europe we would start researching getting a dog, and we had considered a guide dog puppy that needs to be socialised and returned to then be allocated to a needy recipient. I am not sure now if that is a great idea based on the kids’ disappointment in having to say goodbyes! 😉

Saturday 19 December

While our hotel, the Astoria, is beautiful and spacious and well-organised for groups, it appears to have either a nightclub up on the seventh floor attached to the bar and restaurant where we had dinner, or somewhere down at street level, because most of us could hear a party going on, until sometime after 3am!! 😠 I was awake anyway, having a little panic attack about getting back on the bus today – the last twenty hours have been a good reminder for me that, despite my well-intentioned plans, I do not actually have control over my life! 

We left at 7.15am today, the earliest start yet as it is an eight hour drive to Paris. The long bus drive has allowed me to read, reflect, meditate to some songs on my phone, and catch up on my diary (…and not look in the driver’s direction because I have decided ignorance is bliss!). I also bought a couple of children’s books in Italian and French which I am hoping to translate and learn a few more words – Peter has been teaching us some each day on the road. Sam’s favourite is the Swiss word for exit: Ausfahrt, and everywhere we go we say in Italian “undiamo!”: let’s go! 

The kids were well entertained by some movies put on using the coach’s entertainment system. We also used the long drive as an opportunity to catch up on some sleep (which is aided each day by the travel director bribing the kids telling them if they have a sleep he will buy them some chocolate! They have enjoyed a lot of Lindt!!)

Tim and Abi have enjoyed chilling on the bus after the busy year they’ve had, and Jarrod has entertained himself by binge-watching 4unit maths videos – please note those are his words and that is his definition of being entertained, not mine…

There are several other kids on tour, and everyone is very friendly. A family from Brisbane with a 17yo girl and 13yo boy adopt Jarrod and Tim every time we need to split into groups of 6 (they are Tottenham Spurs fans so can entertain J&T’s EPL conversation for ages). Another family from Singapore with a 16yo girl and 9yo boy are also lovely, and adopt the kids every time we get off the bus. Their dad has also taken a lot of photos with Belle and Sam in them!

We stopped at a road stop for lunch and everyone enjoyed baguettes, although Ross dared me to order in French but I chickened out and just pointed at the pictures in the menu! The scenery is beautiful countryside. However, it is only now I realise that no photos were taken in the making of this post! 

An optional extra for tonight was dinner at the Moulin Rouge, which we declined in favour of a quiet night and doing some washing! The travel director told us France is now the safest country to visit since the Paris attacks, and we are staying in a good neighbourhood tonight, but it was still suggested that Ross walk the washing to the laundromat 😬 so he is doing our washing for us yet again. What a good boy 😉

Friday 18 December

We were lulled into a relaxing start to each day at the beginning of the tour, albeit a lot of sightseeing and learning is achieved each day. Now the days are getting earlier and the drives longer! I was awake at 4.30am anyway 😕 so being on time for breakfast and the bus at 7.30am isn’t a problem!

I had my first stressful day of the holiday today. The travel director enforces seat rotation so we are not sitting in the same rows on the bus every day. Today was our turn in the front rows of the bus. Unfortunately this new seat gave me a perfect vantage point to watch our bus driver as we set off for the day…doze off… It freaked me out! I spent the next hour just watching him drive, and pretending to cough or sneeze every time his eyes started to close! Ross managed to get the attention of the travel director to tell him and he monitored the situation (as did we!) and we spoke to him at length at our morning stop. 

The morning stop seemed to make the difference to his sleepiness and we set off again towards Switzerland. We drove past Lake Como and through several tunnels (including one that was 17km long), and had lunch soon after we crossed the border. Because Switzerland is generally more expensive, Peter encouraged us to buy lunch at the Italian morning tea stop. However the kids had a good appetite and did not leave us any of the paninis and plain croissants we had ordered (admittedly, we had tried to be stingy and make them share sandwiches and the two Cokes between them). So we took them to a park next to the restaurant for their lunch and to play, and then we bought a salad each inside. The most expensive salad we have ever purchased maybe, but it was SO good! 

  
The coach then pushed on to Lucerne and straight to Mount Pilatus. We took cable cars (in groups of 4) halfway up the mountain and then a larger cable tram to the top of the mountain. We not only were able to see snow, but the kids (and some big kids amongst the adults) got to have a snow fight!! As it gets dark early as we approach the winter solstice here, we had to be back down the mountain before 5pm. 

   
    
 
We then were given some time to shop and returned to the hotel for a three course included meal (soup, meat, vegetables….we have left the pizza in Italy!). Switzerland is famous for its chocolate, army knives and watches. The budget didn’t stretch far enough for watches, but we did buy some chocolate and Jarrod and Tim bought themselves a Swiss Army knife each.

Thursday 17 December

We had to have our bags outside our door this morning at 7am, and the coach left at 8am for Venice. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did – on the way there the travel director talked up how rude Venetians could be, and told us to have very low expectations of our gondolier and waiters.

We caught a boat from where the coach could park over to the island, and Peter took us on a walking tour. Yet another day where our experiences and sights to behold are beyond description! The city is built on wooden pylons, and despite a couple of obviously leaning structures, it was hard to believe. 

   
 Our walking tour ended at a glass blowing demonstration at a murano glass factory. It was amazing to watch and also fun to see the kids react to the creations made. We were then left to our own devices for a late (2pm) lunch, and had to find something quickly for poor skinny Tim who was starving! Paninis and hot dogs down the street from the murano glass factory it was.

After lunch, we met Peter again at 2.45pm to go on a gondola ride. It was possibly a half hour journey but one we all agreed was just priceless and such a good experience. The gondolas only take a maximum of six passengers, so Jarrod and Tim joined another family from our tour for their ride. The tour group went in eight boats, and every fourth boat had an accordion player and opera singer on board to serenade us all. Sam now wants to be a musician on the gondolas, and Zac and Belle want to be gondoliers! Our gondolier was lovely, not rude at all, and gave us some history and information and answered any question presented to him.

   
 
From there we boarded water taxis in groups of 10 to travel down the Grand Canal, in the style of George Clooney on his wedding day. Jarrod proved he could multitask by standing up the front of the boat taking photos and holding the Go Pro steady to get some film footage as well. I took over 100 photos today and everyone else took a lot as well, which makes me think the culling process and organising and categorising and uploading may have to wait until after the HSC!!

We were left to explore on our own then, given two more hours on the island before we had to return to the boat. We walked many backstreets and explored many areas…and got a little lost (although Ross assures me he had it under control all along!). After purchasing a couple more souvenirs (the girls chose a small Venetian mask each for their bedroom wall), we found a suitable restaurant for dinner. The kids chose…pizza….but only had small servings as they were still comfortable from our late lunch. Ross enjoyed a salad and I chose a seafood risotto on the recommendation of a fellow tour member who was finishing her dinner as we arrived.

   
 
Our hotel tonight is the Novotel, which is not far on the mainland from Venice, so we were in our very modern and well-equipped rooms by 8pm. This is the first room that has provided tea and coffee, so I enjoyed a cup of tea for the first time in a week! 

Wifi is better here than in Florence, but still not fantastic. I will have to upload photos when the Internet connection is more reliable.

Wednesday 16 December

We are doing so much each day and crashing at night, so I am falling behind schedule in my diary! 😬 I am sleeping well every second night, but Ross and I are both waking up at 4.30am-5am, and once I am awake, I can’t get back to sleep! Can I really blame jetlag on day 9 of our trip? I thought I would be in sync by now.

We left the wonderful city of Roma this morning for a three and a half hour drive to Florence. According to UNESCO, almost a third of the world’s art treasures reside in Florence. Once there, we met a local guide called Rosa who took us for a walking tour of the city. We saw many famous buildings, cathedrals, and sculptures such as the statue of David. It is quite an academic town as well, with highly sought after courses on offer being in art and art history, architecture and engineering.

  
   
 (Zac loved the gold door!)

We also learnt more about Leonardo da Vinci. Some absolute geniuses came out of Italy! Ross pointed out to us a gold ball and cross on top of the Duomo. Da Vinci’s master created it but had no idea how to get it up on top of the cathedral, so Da Vinci at the age of 17 drew specs and created a crane that could lift it onto the top of the building! Amazing! 

  
Rosa left us in Piazza Di Santa Croce (don’t quote me, I need to check my memory is right!) where there were some Christmas markets. Our travel director took those who were interested to a leather demonstration, while we checked out the markets. I bought my first and favourite souvenir – a wooden jigsaw puzzle of Europe along with flags of each country, and Abi and I bought a scarf each (we both forgot to pack any!).

After a donut at the market, we further explored the streets of Firenze (Florence in Italian) and made our way back to our hotel. Jarrod was interested in buying a leather wallet given we were told this city was best for leather products and gold and silver jewellery, but we talked him out of it once we saw the prices started at 60 euros!

The majority of our tour group headed off to a many course dinner at a restaurant in the Tuscan hills, so we decided to relax in the hotel. A laundromat was a couple of streets away, so Ross took his novel and the two bags of washing to do, while I worked with the kids on catching up on their diaries. 

We intended to eat at the restaurant next door to the hotel for dinner, only to find it was closed for a private function. Ross, Tim and I trekked four blocks to find something for dinner, but to no avail, so we ended up eating at the hotel restaurant, with main course being…pizza! We aim to have the cheap, easy and quick option each day, and while the kids are stoked with the amount and varieties of pizza they are trying (although there is always a Margherita pizza…), Ross and I are looking forward to getting to an apartment where we can cook! 

Tuesday 15 December

Today started with a wake up call at 6am to allow us to have breakfast and get ready to leave at 7.30am. We had an 8am appointment at the Vatican museums (otherwise known as privileged early entry!). Our travel director handed us over to a local guide, Chinsia, who took us through the museums and into the Sistine Chapel. She taught us so much in the three hours we spent there, and everything we saw was just so amazing and indescribable. And the kids were very impressed we left Italy for another country by visiting Vatican City! 

I have Catholic friends who are quite disheartened with the church currently, and while my knowledge is limited, I can see the difference the current Pope is making at this time in history. Everyone here speaks highly of him and he seems very humble, turning down the large papal apartment to live amongst the people, and refusing to wear gold crosses or Prada shoes for example. 

One of our tour members caused some excitement in St Peters Basilica when she fainted while Chinsia was speaking to us. Tim felt bad he was right next to her and not quick enough to realise and catch her (he may have been squashed if he tried!). She told us later that she suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, and couldn’t cope with the crowds in there. And she is travelling on this tour alone – wow, brave!

Jarrod and Ross took some good photos on our “proper” good camera, but nothing I took on my iPhone could do justice to what our senses took in today. I learnt so much about “The Judgement Day” by Michaelangelo and other paintings and tapestries throughout the museums. I have a new appreciation for and interest in art and art history. No photos were allowed in the Sistine Chapel because the company Fuji paid for the restoration, but below is the dome of St Peters Basilica and the tomb of Pope John Paul the second. We will take some time when we get home to go through and organise all the photos we took, and then Jarrod will upload them.

   
 
I also have a new appreciation of Michaelangelo and his genius, the optical illusions he created, his ability to sculpt and paint, and even his humour and the way he could exact revenge on Popes and employers that he didn’t agree with.

We had lunch (paninis!) in a cafe nearby, and Ross was very disappointed to learn from our guide that the beggars were not genuine and almost all were related to the mafia. He had been wondering how we could do more to help them, but the guide told us to stay clear of them.

After lunch, we crossed the border back into Italy and headed over to the Colosseum. Chinsia took us inside to give the explanation and some history and then gave us half an hour to explore it for ourselves. Bucket list item achieved 👍 and more inadequate photos which do not do justice  to the experience. 

     
We then returned to the hotel for a two hour rest before heading back into Rome for a walking tour and dinner. Chinsia took us straight down the street in which we started our journey of Rome, to the Trevi fountain, back streets to the Pantheon and on to Piazza Navona. She did tell us it was an area for locals, not just tourists, which was comforting for someone who had sat at home months ago not knowing where to book accommodation! Once the commentary was complete, we were given one and a half hours to explore on our own and find dinner.

    
With so many restaurants in the streets surrounding the Piazza, Ross made me choose where to eat. I picked a restaurant called Saltimbocca – surely it must be good with a name like that? It was delicious, and for dinner we had…pizza, but by a whole pizza not just a slice. Either way, we are eating quite cheaply here – the eight of us can eat in a restaurant for 20 – 50 euros, but our diet is limited to mainly pizza, pasta and paninis! 😬 The hotel meals when on offer are more varied, and there is plentiful fruit which I am encouraging everyone to avail themselves of! Our waitress brought us a free lemonchello (?) after our meal – so lovely of her but not to my tastes!

     
(Last photo but worth including – the stock exchange!!) 😉

Monday 14 December

We were sad to have to pack and leave our apartment this morning. We finished off all the cereal we had brought with us, and Ross and Jarrod wandered down to the Yum Yum cafe for pastries and coffee while I finished folding laundry (yes our roles here are similar to home 😉).

The boys returned with our breakfast part 2, as well as an autographed poster. It turns out the waiter at the Yum Yum is a famous singer! He signed a poster to his “favourite big Australian family”, so we spent the next ten minutes googling him and his pop songs.

I had asked Federico to organise another car service for us this morning once I had researched the cost of taxis and where we were going. So at 9.45am we headed downstairs for the last time, and a driver took us across town to the hotel where we pick up the Trafalgar tour. While the tour didn’t begin until 5.30pm, we were able to check in and meet the travel director, who showed us where to get the public bus back into the centre of Rome to keep exploring areas we hadn’t yet been. 

We caught bus 881 and walked down Via Corso, lunched at Da Vinci cafe along the way (the majority of us chose delicious paninis but were then jealous of the Caesar salad Abi and Zac chose!), past Area Sacra and across Ponte Garibaldi to explore the island Tibertina in the middle of the Tiber River. We then wandered back up to the bus stop past Teatro Marcello (a theatre with a facade of ancient ruins – below) and through Piazza Venezia. 

  
On the way back we passed an installation of red and white umbrellas down a side street. I feel like I should know what this is for, but I can’t find any information about it! 

 
The traffic and drivers in this city are a little crazy. They park wherever they can, and try to respect other drivers and pedestrians, but I do feel like I am taking our lives in our hands to cross some roads! It reminds me of New York. I wish I could have waited around to see how the cars got out of these spots? The population of Rome is 3million (64 million in Italy).

  
Once we returned to the hotel, we enforced a rest time until the tour officially started. We all went on the coach for a tour of Rome by night, with a stop to climb Capitoline Hill and view the Roman Forum, and then returned for dinner at 7.30pm. The kids (and adults!) were exhausted and ready for bed by then.
  

Sunday 13 December

I love warm weather….I intensely dislike winter at home….and yet, I signed up for this? 😉❄️

  
We didn’t head out until after 9am today, and instantly realised how warm our apartment is! 😬 We wandered back down past the Trevi fountain in search of the Pantheon, following instructions I had found online. I found a site offering Rome walking tours for a fee, but their description was so detailed I was confident I could walk the family there for free! (Minus the expert guide of course).

It never ceases to amaze me how many monuments and historic buildings are around every corner. The Pantheon took our breath away as we approached yet another piazza full of people, cafes and shops and there it was.

  
Our photos do not do justice to its magnificence! We watched a Catholic Church service underway inside from the doorway, and then moved on. We found a church we could visit, the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Piazza della Minerva. Zac is quite disturbed by the fact there is a beggar at every church door, so we are trying to keep some change in our pockets – for toilets (which are few and far between, and cost at least 50 cents to use!!), and for him to give to those holding a cup at the door asking for help.

Side note: the public toilet system is not good for potential kidney stones! I am not drinking enough water because of the cost and general unavailability of bathrooms…😕

From there we visited the Altar of the Fatherland, a massive building dedicated to Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. The terraced area there gave us views of the Roman Forum and Colosseum, both of which we wandered through before we trekked back to our apartment. 

   
 We picked up coffee and lunch from the Yum Yum cafe where we bought croissants and pastries the first morning we arrived here. We have been in search of pasta as an alternative to having pizza every day, but no restaurant seems to offer pasta as a takeaway option. Well the manager of Yum Yum remembered us, immediately gave us cutlery and plates for 8, and sent us home with shrimp and salmon salad, spaghetti marinara and lasagna. Yum!

Everyone had a rest after lunch, and I tried to catch up on some washing (I’m having withdrawals! And managed to trip a fuse twice in trying to use the washer and dryer simultaneously…). We then went souvenir shopping and had a quiet night in the apartment (after paninis and sandwiches from the supermarket for dinner) playing scrabble and watching the soccer – Jarrod came up with a grand plan to attend a Roma v Napoli soccer match while here, to which I had to play bad cop and point out the time and cost to get to Napoli to see the game. I could have saved the bad cop routine for another day because the game was a sell out anyway 😉

Saturday 12 December

And now for a recount of my parenting fail: remember the scene in Night at the Museum 3 where the cowboy Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and the Roman soldier Octavius (Steve Coogan) land in the Pompeii exhibit and everyone is telling them to run but they don’t? So lava from the volcano looks like it will catch up to them?

   
 
Well I may have emphasised that scene too much in trying to describe where we were going today 😬 I had three visits from Sam and Belle at different times during the night last night, because they had bad dreams about erupting volcanos and fears we were going to die while climbing the volcano!

Our day began before the sun rose, picked up by a 20 seater bus which was just for us at 7am. Our driver took us on a three hour drive to Mount Vesuvius and handed us over to Roberto who was our guide for the climb. After a steep 1km walk, Roberto gave us the choice of climbing to the mountain summit along the edge of the crater or taking the flatter pathway around the other side of the crater. 

Once I heard the road less travelled had no fences and we would have to walk in single file, I made an executive decision and pulled the little kids to the easier path. Abi decided her duty was to help me with them, so we left Roberto, Ross, Jarrod and Tim to take the edge-of-the-crater walk and agreed to meet them at the kiosk in an hour. We had time to pose for photos (see below) and buy coffee and water at the kiosk before they arrived.

  
  
(Above) The boys in the distance. They actually walked down into the crater, felt the steam and heat on the ground, and examined the minerals and fertile soil. They said it was an awesome experience, and I’m really glad they had the opportunity, but…no fences….apart from feeling unfit for the journey to begin with, I don’t think I would have coped with trying to keep everyone from falling into the crater or off the side of the mountain! 😬

From there our driver took us to Pompeii, where we enjoyed some paninis for lunch at a local cafe near the entrance, and then were taken on a private tour by our guide Claudia. Thankfully the food is not too expensive – Sam’s appetite has grown so we can’t make him share meals with Belle anymore! 

Our tour was very informative and gave us a lot of detailed information. Our guide was wonderful and could answer all of the questions the children presented her with – it turned out she had studied art history and archaeology at uni, and had spent some time working in the restoration process at Pompeii. This place was one of my lasting memories from being in Europe with my parents when I was 6, and I was very thankful to be able to share it with my own. 

  
(Above) we were divided about whether this person was crying, praying or covering his nose to try and avoid suffocating from the ash.

  
(Above) The wall at the bottom left is the harbour where boats were docked back in AD 79, and Mt Vesuvius looms large in the background.

Our tour finished just after 4pm, so we returned to our bus for the three hour trip home. Surprise, surprise, we had pizza for dinner! And then took the kids in their pj’s back down to the Trevi fountain to view it at night and buy gelato for dessert. It is surreal that such a monument is just metres from our apartment.