Well, we all survived Munich, with a little help from cheapo pants from H&M so the girls didn't freeze their little legs off. Flew some random carrier called EuroWings (worked fine, but the legroom is less than zero), ate a ton of schnitzel, pretzels, and beer, and weathered some tantrums.
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Pretzel as big as her head! We gave her money and sent her to the little stall
to buy this. She was SO excited to buy it on her own. |
Our AirBNB was more centrally located than we are here in Naples, and Munich's public transportation is WAY better than here in Naples, so we saw a bunch of great stuff, like this awesome palace. The girls were pretty impressed that palaces exist in real life, not just on Sofia the First.
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| Nymphenburg Palace, Munich |
Just as the girls were acclimating to having to walk places (as opposed to driving everywhere in Florida), the funicular stopped running for the summer. We're living on Posillipo, a lovely hill near the water on the west side of Naples. The convenience of the funicular railway (which goes to the train station, which goes to the main station, which goes down to site) was one of the reasons we picked this place -- but it's now closed for the summer, with no warning, but with a replacement bus that comes every 30 minutes instead of every 10. But now the girls don't want to go down the hill to the water and the good gelato place, and they're getting a little stir crazy.
To add to that, I got sick of spending roughly 5 hours round-trip every day getting to and from site. It left me exhausted and cranky at the end of every day, which isn't fair to the family. So I'm sucking up the cost of a rental car (which I may or may not be able to use the lingering amount of grant money I have to pay for), which turns that into a 30- to 45-min commute each way. Much better than being pickpocketed too, even with the anxiety and stress that come with driving in Italy.
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| There is a gelateria at the top of the hill, at least. |
I did meet my driving-in-Italy-anxiety quota today, though. We were looking for a laundromat. You'd think this wouldn't be hard to find, but you'd be quite wrong. When we booked this AirBNB, I knew there wasn't a machine in the apartment, but there was a
lavanderia literally next door.
Va bene, I figured, laundry isn't that expensive here - I've dropped it off in Rome before to get done for me. Turns out, they only do dry cleaning. Each sock would cost like 3E. So Patrick found another
lavanderia about 1/2 mile up the road near the
pizzeria that we like. Dropped off a load of clothes last week on Monday, had to wait until Thursday to get them back, but that was fine. When he went back with a second trip this week, though, they had bad news: their machine was out of service. We looked up a self-serve coin type laundromat - 2.5km walking, but a 5km drive away. Now that I have a car, we went to find it tonight. It took roughly 25 minutes to get there, and was in a not-so-great area of town. There was no parking -- cars were literally triple parked in places. Driving was no picnic. So we came back home, dirty clothes and all. Tomorrow, I'll try a place I found down at Pompeii, hoping that showing up when it opens will mean clean clothes by the time we are ready to drive home from site.
And then yesterday, Cecilia had a minor incident in the garden. She fell off a razor scooter, banging up her knee and getting a surprisingly long thorn from a mysterious bush stuck just below her patella. She complained she couldn't walk this morning, and I fielded texts from Patrick about the state of her knee and where/how to find a doctor here for a couple hours. So far, it looks like it's mostly just banged up, as she's doing a lot better with the maximum daily dose of kiddie ibuprofen in her, so no doctor seems necessary. But it certainly added to the stress of not being in a familiar city and not understanding how best to deal with this.
Tomorrow there promises to be a public transportation strike, and Mt. Vesuvius is still on fire, and I'm still crap at understanding about half the people I meet because their accents throw me off. There's definitely some homesickness and ethnocentrism going on in this apartment -- wishing that everything worked like it does in Pensacola and missing the comfort of a routine and the optimism that comes with being in a familiar place. But at least the food here is good.
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| These tomatoes taste like MAGIC. For real. |
On Friday, we head back to the airport. This time, we're doing a weekend in Barcelona. (Did I mention we chose these getaway spots based on: 1) cheapest direct flights from Naples; and 2) countries Patrick and I have never been?) I think that Cecilia, with her love of art, will enjoy the city immensely. And both of the girls, with their love of food, will undoubtedly find something good to eat. Thus far, Cecilia is a major fan of pizza (in Naples) and schnitzel (in Munich), and Linnea would eat
caprese salad and chocolate cookies three meals a day if we let her. I suspect they will both be sorely disappointed in American tomatoes and pasta sauce when we return. But at least they'll have their beloved Mexican food back!
7/19/2017
Kristina Killgrove
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