Travel Day, Leaving Italy August 22nd

Wednesday morning we woke up about 4:30 to get ready to go to the airport. We had taken home some of our pizza so we had our shake and leftover pizza for breakfast. We woke up Thomas just before we had to leave and the owners brother was giving us a ride to the airport.

It was about a 20 minute ride to the airport from the Airbnb. We arrived two hours before our flight which was perfect timing because we spent pretty much that entire time standing in line to check in. We got to witness some arguments in Italian, some arguments in English, and prevented people from butting in our line. We did get to see my cousin Celine and her husband they were taking a different flight, and a couple of other Americans that were attending the wedding as well. Fun to see people you know when you’re in a faraway land.

We finally got checked in, checked her two bags and headed to security. The security at Palermo was very easy, I think the baby made it easier as well because I had his cup but she didn’t seem to care about anything that was for the baby except smiling at the baby. Then we had to walk through a grocery/gift shop where they had a whole bunch of pistachio stuff so I bought some pistacchio liquor, creme di pistachio, and pesto pistachio. They sealed it up in a duty-free bag, we walked out of the shop to our gate which was already boarding. It was like we got to know the people on the plane because we just stood in line with them for two hours.

Leaving Palermo, no time for coffee.

We got on the plane and had to buckle Thomas into our buckle because that’s what the Italians do. That was a quick 45 minute flight to Rome. When we landed we got off the plane and had to board the shuttle to get taken to the terminal. The stroller that we had gate checked was brought out and we noticed it laying on the cement as our shuttle pulled away. We weren’t sure if we would ever see that stroller again.

We got to the Rome airport and we had three hours before our long flight and we didn’t have a gate assignment yet so we let Thomas wonder around while we got an espresso and some pasta.

Once we got our gate assignment we changed Thomas‘s diaper again then headed to our gate.

Grabbing one last Italian coffee before landing in the states.

On this flight we had seats near the window and just the two seated section. Thomas is pretty tired so he went to sleep for a while in the beginning then wanted to play a little bit. We ended up watching three movies on this flight with a few naps here and there.

Off we go!

When Kyle and I lived in Atlanta we loved Sweet Water beer! It'd been a LONG time since we'd had one.

Thomas getting some play time in, in the space we had...

They fed us lots of food, three meals.

Once we arrived in Atlanta we had to go through customs and get our bag. This was another long line, we had to first check in and answer some questions at a kiosk and get our photo taken. I had to place Thomas in the screen to get his photo taken too, which was humorous. Then we had to show them the merchandise that I bought in the previous airport that was sealed up. We got our bag from baggage claim and had to give it back to the guy for it to make it to the plane. Then we had to go through security again where they pulled my bag aside that had my Pistachio goods from the other airport. The guy open the bag even though I don’t know why he did, he did not need to open the bag. And he was about to take my pistachio liquor then he realized it was under the 3 ounce limit and he was reading the bottle which he probably doesn’t know Italian which is why he just stared at the bottle and then he decided I could keep it all. I almost started crying because I was afraid he was going to take my goods.

Once we passed through that we made it to the train shuttle to our departure terminal. We got some lunch and I already missed the espresso bars. I didn’t even get coffee because it just wouldn’t taste the same.

We let Thomas wonder around and get some walking in, he ended up falling on the carpet and got a little rug burn on his nose. Some couple that was going to be on our plane was fighting, she came up and started screaming cursewords at this man who didn’t seem to care. Although two hours later when they got off the plane in Kansas City they were holding hands and she was holding a flower.

We boarded our flight to Kansas City pretty exhausted by this point because we were going on 20 some hours since we’d started traveling. We started another movie on the Kansas City flights but I ended up getting some sleep. Kyle ended up turning the movie off early because he wasn’t gonna be able to finish it before the flight was over. 

We arrive in Kansas City and the airport was pretty much shut down, that airport was the crappiest one of the whole trip. We took the shuttle to our van and started the hour and a half drive to Kyle‘s mom's house. Thomas pretty much slept the whole time as soon as we got on the flight to Kansas City and into the car. I was afraid he wasn’t going to sleep well once we got to the house but he did pretty well and slept most the night. He did wake up at 4 AM and he was pretty wide-awake but he rolled around in our bed with us for about an hour before snoozing again.

My fitbit watch still hadn't synced and we had woken at 4:30am and it was 6:12am before laying down in bed again. LONGEST DAY EVER!!! 

We woke up after a great night's sleep! Felt so good to sleep! We got to see the kids and share all about our trip. We loaded up the van and got back on the road for the ten hour drive home! Thomas getting some time with Grandpa Del:

Felt so good to be home Thursday evening. It was an amazing trip, just lots of traveling to make it happen. I can't wait to take the kids when they are older! 

Terrasini and Cinisi August 21st

Tuesday morning we woke up and got all our bags packed because we had arranged to stay at a different location Tuesday evening prior to our early departure on Wednesday. So we took the hour train ride from Cefalu to Palermo Tuesday morning. It was kind of a mess getting everything packed into the bags but we were going to check both bags so we just need to organize what would go where for the long flight the next day. We left fairly early so that we could take our time walking to the train station which was about a 15 minute walk. Kyle did not enjoy pulling the luggage down cobblestone Streaks.

When we got to the train station we saw my cousin Nicky and we all took the train together, it was really fun to get one last visit in with him although he was utterly exhausted because they got back even later from the wedding and went down to the beach. We had a coffee at the train cafe before getting on.

Once we got off the train in Palermo we located the bus station to get a bus to Terrasini. We had been in touch with the lady of the Airbnb we were staying at who gave us directions and had stated to take the bus toward this town but to get off at a linguistic high school. I had mentioned it to the bus driver who at first was not sure what I was talking about but after a few more tries he understood. The bus was a nice little tour of Palermo and we got to go over by the water and see some boats and see some statues.

We had a little time at the bus station waiting for the bus so we used this time to eat through some of the snacks we had in our bags and to just chill out for a bit. 

Thomas took a little snooze on the bus as did I because it was about an hour or so drive out to where the airport was in this town that we are staying at.

We chose this Airbnb because it was as close to the airport as we could get. Even though the airport was a Palermo airport it was not really near the city of Palermo. When we arrived in Terrasini at our drop off that the driver so kindly dropped us off at we were a bit lost.  This was where we were dropped:

The map on our phone did not load because I forgot to load it when I had Wi-Fi so being off of Wi-Fi I had nothing to help us. Kyle walked in one direction to see if you could find the road that we were looking for per the owners instructions the drop off was only a few blocks away from her street but we had to figure out where the street was first. After Kyle came back from walking one way I decided to walk the other and saw a bakery so I went into the bakery to chat with the two women workers. Neither of them spoke any English so it was pretty humorous trying to communicate what I needed. They appear very concerned that I did not have a car and I was trying to get to this address while wearing a baby on foot. They ended up asking these two delivery truck guys for some help as well. They all appeared very concerned that I was lost and not anywhere near the address I was giving them but I knew that we had to be close because this is where the owner had stated to get off the bus. They were able to load up the address on their map and we could see that it was just a few streets down so I thanked them and bought a couple of cookies and we hauled our luggage down the road.

It was still a hot and tiring walk as we approached this desolate location. It ended up being a very nice tuck-away Airbnb on a beautiful piece of land but my was it a pain in the ass to get to.

As we were walking down the road before entering the gate the owner was driving out and he saw us so he loaded up our big bag into his car which our big bag was basically the size of his car. And he came back to the house and helped us with the check in process.

We were up on the second floor of a beautiful upstairs living area with a porch and couch. We sat down on the couch and realized it had been a long time since we had sat on the couch. The other Airbnb had a very hard bed and two chairs that we had sat in but honestly over the prior days we hadn’t done a whole lot of sitting besides a cramped transportation vehicle with the baby strapped to me. We took some time to relax and let Thomas rome. The porch had some sand toys and it was a perfect space for Thomas to do his thing without getting into much. We knew that we wanted to get to bed early so we decided to walk into the city to explore a little bit of the area.

We took a little tour around the property before walking to the town.

I needed a break from baby wearing so Kyle wore Thomas, we walked the short path of the property to explore a little bit discovering a lime tree and some other pretty things. Then we walked the half mile or so into town. The outskirts of town were very run down and fairly trashy. They almost looked dilapidated and abandoned. Not quite as bad as parts of Palermo that we saw but still not very attractive. Once we made it into the middle of Terrasini they also had a Piazza Duomo in the middle of town and it looked a lot like Cefalu. Except a lot less busy. We had hit the time of day were everything was closed again so we just walked down to the water where there was an amazing view of the clearwater is a less crowded beach and mountain views in the distance. 

I like the stone awning over the windows, how the plaster pieces are formed to make a covering.

Clocked from our AirBnB the beach was 1.8km's walk away.

This was a Natural History Museum. We debating going in and said if it was less than five euro we would otherwise we were too tired and it wasn't worth it. I think it was six euro each. 

This sky looked almost fake with how blue and cloudy it was. Oh before we went for a walk when we were sitting in the porch we were hearing lots of thunder but it didn’t look like it was gonna rain in that area.

We were debating on food but decided just to get a brioche con gelato off of the plaza and then go get pizza later. Even though most everything closes in the afternoon gelato cafés are usually the only thing open. We sat down and enjoyed our gelato sandwiches while using the free Wi-Fi in the café before walking back.

On our walk back we discovered a one euro store and decided to go in, it smelled just like the dollar stores in America. Must be the made in China plastic. There wasn’t really anything of interest in there but we did stop at a supermarket down the road to pick up some coffee for a family souvenir. We continued on toward our house because the pizza place was on the other side. It was pretty warm and our feet were hurting. We had looked up the pizza place earlier and saw that it opened at six.

Pomegranate tree!

Pear tree!

That's our road! The pizza place was 750m from where our AirBnB was (on the OTHER side of the town we had just walked to)

 

Not really an exciting view on the other side of town, busy street, grown over sidewalks. 

Everything is so small in Europe, even the construction trucks! haha here was a tow truck. 

The pizza place was by the train station which looked completely deserted and run down. It look like nobody ever uses this train station and I would have thought that but while we are standing there we saw train come through but nobody got on and nobody got off. 

We went over to the pizza place where it was clear they were not open as they were setting up all the tables and then they explained to us that they opened at seven not six. We had to verify this a few times because we forgot our Italian book and we weren’t sure if she was saying six or seven since six is "sei" and seven is "sette". And she held up her fingers but she held them up with the thumb and forefinger so kind of looked like six so it was about a five minute conversation because of the language barrier. We sat down and I nursed Thomas while we decided if we should go back to the apartment or wait for the pizza place to open or walk down the road to find another place to eat.

We decided to walk down the road although it was a very busy road and it took us about five minutes to get across it because there was so much traffic. Then we get to another pizza place and they also did not open till seven. But we are so tired that we sat down and had some water while the waitress googled over Thomas. Everyone loved Thomas, everywhere we would go the wait staff would seem rude until they saw the baby and then they would melt. After we had our water we decided to just go home to rest for a little bit and then go back after seven when things opened. The thing was we were just so tired and we wanted to go to bed but we knew that we needed to eat before hand because we would be waking up early for an early flight.

We went home and kicked our feet up until 7 o’clock then we headed back to the train station pizza place. Oh we did open up our wine from Lipari since we didn't want to mess with packing it or trying to get it home. It was super sweet!

At this point we were getting pretty tired of dealing with rude waiters and waitresses and a menu that didn’t make sense. They had a pizza menu of like 65 pizzas but the first one I pointed out was "not a pizza" even though it was listed under the pizzas.

Thomas's face pretty much sums up how we felt at this point:

We ate our food, great pizza just shitty service, then headed back home in the dark. We wanted to shower and get our bags all ready to go for the 5:00am departure.

Oh I had to share this photo of our trash process at the AirBnB. Great that they sort trash like we do in Minneapolis, lol.