Day trip to Paestum, Italy and E has a birthday!

Summer is winding down and the kids are back in the school routine.  So far, they are doing good and seem to be adjusting to their new classes and teachers.  We took a day trip to Paestum a few weekends ago.  Paestum is known for their Greek ruins. We took a stroll through the park and then stopped at a beach on the way back home.

Here are a few pictures:

The girls all participated in this year's Mud Run on base. They were pretty excited about it at first, but then realized it involved getting dirty..... 

A dad accidentally knocked LC into one of the mud pits and you can imagine how that went over.... 

The after picture.

E started (Italian) Kindergarten. She is in Miss Brown's class. She loves school. 

This is E in her class with her friend, Adalyn. They were in the same class together last year. 

We went to the Naples High School football game and the base made it into a big production.  They had rides for the kids  and food to eat. We didn't get to see much of the game because we were hopping back and forth on the rides. 

E getting some air..

We celebrated this sweet girls' 5th Birthday.... mama mia where has the time gone?

This was one of the temples in Paestum. They were all built 600 - 450 BC and i think this one was the Greek Goddess Hera..

In fact i just googled them and both of the temples were for Hera.... lucky little lady.

My 3x Goddesses!

Playing in an Olive tree. 

Google says that this temple was for Athena.

After Paestum, we drove up to the Salerno area and went to Vietri beach. It had stunning views and the water was still very warm. This beach is famous because you can find old pottery pieces.... we only found one.

Vacay in the USA

I met up with the girls in the USA towards the end of July.  They had been in the states since the end of June so it was nice to see them once again.  We drove to KY to spend some time with my family and then back to VA to see Shannon's family before departing back to Italy. I don't know where all the time went but the time that we did had was great.

Here are a few pix:

The highlight of the vacay was probably all the animals the girls were able to see and play with.... with puppies being ultimate highlight!  It must have been puppy season back in VA because everyone had puppies! The girls would play with them for hours... although the puppies wished it was only for a few minutes. 

Poor puppy. 

We logged some decent miles in the car while traveling from VA to KY and back to VA.  We did get to see some beautiful countryside and we didn't have to use our aggressive driving like we do in Italy. In fact, we really had to throttle ourselves back and make sure we followed the driving rules in the USA.  

In KY, we went to the Beauty and the Beast play. We had front row seats too! 

Grandma got them all dressed up in Belle attire. 

We spent a little bit of time fishing at my mom and dad's lake.  They didn't want to get to close to the fish that were caught and were more interested in the night crawlers that we used as bait. 

A trophy Bass.

E taking notes from Grampa.

Another highlight was our day at Kentucky Kingdom. I have always had fond memories of many days at the KY Kingdom, going there almost every summer as a kid.  The girls (and grandparents) had a blast going on all the rides, the waterpark and eating good food. 

We were the lasts ones to exit the park, but before we left we had to make sure we sampled the dippin dots. 

We spent some invaluable time with the Great Grandparents too. The kids especially liked Great Grandpa's magic tricks. 

And, LC lost two more teeth over the summer brining the total lost teeth to seven. 

We didn't take too many pictures back in the USA, but that doesn't mean we didn't have any fun. We will keep the memories for years to come. The girls are already asking when we are going to go back to the states on another vacation.  We had to get back because we had to make preps for the kids' school.

But before school started we thought we would have some more fun. We rented some boats with some friends of ours to travel out to the islands that are near by. I still can't believe they allowed us to rent these boats, but as they say in Italia, Va benne (its all good)...

We did a few laps around the islands Procida and Ischia. 

And stopped in various coves to admire the scenery and swim. 

But the best part was driving around the islands, enjoying the cooler temps and swimming in the crystal clear water.

The girls loved riding in the bow and catching waves!

We even found a few caves to explore...

Summer is quickly coming to a end.... 

LC had her back-to-school block party last week where we found out what class she is in and she found out which friends were in her class. She was happy with the results and we were happy to find out that she was selected for the Italian Immersion program at school. The block party was fun, it had food vendors, bands and this scary Italian ferris wheel.

But we rode it hoped for the best. 

And over this past weekend, the girls participated in the Mud Run that was held on base. Here they are showing off medals.

Monday rolled around and it was the first day of first grade... she did pretty well -- although she was a bit clingy and cried a bit... but she said she had fun! 

Ireland without the Kiddos

Shannon and I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to Ireland this summer minus the girls. Shannon was able to pawn the girls off to the Grandparents in KY (thanks again -- we owe you big time) and meet in in Ireland for a week long, kid-free week. 

We both flew into Dublin... Shannon flew out from the US and I flew in from Italy. Shannon had an afternoon to tour around and see some sites prior to my arrival. Once I arrived we hit the streets of Dublin! Knowing that we would be eating a lot of Irish/Pub food, we decided to hit up a Thai restaurant. It was just nice to eat out and have options beyond Pasta and Pizza. 

The streets had character and there were bars and restaurants at every corner. Of course, very cliche, but the temps immediately got our attention. We wore pants and a light jacket which is a complete departure from the temps we've both left. 

The Liffey River splits the city in two -- the blue collar part of the city to the north, and the white collar part to the south. 

Our first stop the next morning was to the Trinity College. We took the Book of Kells tour and checked out the library. 

Beautiful school grounds. 

And an impressive book selection in the library. 

The Dublin Castle wasn't your typical castle.. the only remaining part of the original castle was the circular tower. 

This is the Christ Church Cathedral... we both got a chuckle at the grounds because there were food vendors selling funnel cakes and hot dogs. 

We departed Dublin after hearty Irish breakfast and headed to Waterford. 

We toured the Waterford Crystal factory and was pleasantly surprised. Shannon got to hold a people's choice award and I held a The Players Championship gold trophy. 

And just like the Mercedes-Benz tour, the tour ended in the Waterford Crystal store where you could buy just about anything. 

The next stop was in Cashel. The picturesque castle is really the only thing happening in the town but we happened to find a pub that had good food and live music. The Bed and Breakfast we stayed in shared the field with the Abbey. 

The next morning we walked up the hill and took the tour of the Rock of Cashel. The views from the top were pretty sweet. A lot of green... which was a common theme throughout Ireland. 

Celtic Crosses in the cemetery area. 

We then headed to the Dingle peninsula. This was the weather we were anticipating -- fog, mist and cool temps. 

We parked the car near the beach and hiked up a hill to catch some more views. 

We weren't the only ones on the hill that we climbed. There were a handful of people but there were more sheep. We noticed that Ireland has a lot of sheep, in fact, more sheep than people. 

The driving was interesting. They drive on the opposite side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle. This is how we drove in Japan, so it wasn't that big of a change, but all the cars in Ireland are manuals. This was the first time I've had to drive a manual from the other side of the road and from the other side of the car. We drove through a pass that seemed harmless but the ceilings dropped and the road narrowed. We were not able to see what was on the other side of the shoulder, probably a steep cliff, so I just kept my eyes on the road and followed the car in front of me. 

The spent the next day mostly at the Cliffs of Moher. 

We were blessed with a blue sky day. 

We took advantage of the awesome weather and hiked all around the Cliffs. 

The pictures didn't really display the size of the cliffs. If you zoom into some of the photos you can make out little people walking around on the cliffs. They were unreal.

The highlight of our trip to Ireland. 

"If only we could do these kid-free trips more often...."

We quickly stopped at the Burren Nat'l Park. The scenery here was quite different then what we had seen in Ireland up into this point. Everything was a dull grey. 

We overnighted in Tralee and Shannon bought tix to a traditional evening of folk songs and dance. It was really good but we noticed we were the youngest people in the theater. We briefly commented on that leading up to the show, but this solidified that most vacationers we ran into were old. haha. The next morning we drove out of the tip of Clifden and climbed a hill to see the 12 points (mountains). 

This was the Kylemore Castle. Breathtaking views. 

Fresh mussels were popular in western Ireland so we ordered a few. 

This was our overnight in Sligo. We walked the small town before calling it a night. Because Ireland is so far north, the sun didn't set until 10pm. 

We woke up the following morning fairly early to hit the road to Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. 

Pretty interesting landscape. 

"The Organ" at the Giants Causeway. 

And then it was on to the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede. Another blue sky day.... maybe Irish weather isn't so bad! 

Shannon on the rope bridge. Only 8 people were allowed at a time on the bridge. 

One impromptu stop was to the dark hedges. We noticed a lot of Game of Thrones ads and tour busses out and about and realized Ireland was used in a lot of the filming. The dark hedges was one of those spots. We stopped for a few minutes to check it out, along with dozens of other nerds. 

Then it was on to Belfast. Another great weather day! 

Belfast City Hall. 

The Titanic was built in Belfast. The Nomadic was a sister ship of the Titanic. We walked over to the Titanic Museum (pictured in the background) but didn't take the tour. 

Then it was back to Dublin for the last night. 

We got a little rain on our Food and Drink tour of Dublin, but it cleared up on the walk home. The tour was good... a lot of good foods and drink and we were taught how to make Irish Coffees which ended up being pretty tasty.
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We had a great trip. The people were really nice, it was easy to get around and we loved the Irish countryside. We kept joking on the lack of "I'm hungry...", "Are we there yet?", "I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore...",  and "I want Ice cream..."We jammed packed the trip and was able to see most of Ireland. Thanks again to Gramma/Pa in KY for watching the kids! Let's do it again next year!