Italy

How many people in the world can say that they got to see an Airbus A380 take off, see the Saudi Arabian king, see the best preserved Greek temple in the whole wide world, see the ancient city of Pompeii, and meet and get a picture with an Italian film star all in one trip? I know of at least three people who can, the Sullivan family. The first part of our trip was very eventful. We got on the plane and prepared to take off. We taxied out from the gate and I happened to spot the notorious Airbus A380 getting ready to take off. Alas I did not have my camera so I could not take a film, but here is one I got off the internet about one. Click the blue link AIRBUS CLICK HERE.

This airplane dwarfs a 747 its huge. Well after that I personally thought that it would not get any better than that, but i was wrong. We had INCREDIBLE views of the alps going over into Italy, and luckily I had my camera then.

Notorious Mt. Blanc

We finally landed in Rome, and this was a little airport might I add, so it was deserted, it was like a ghost town. Our car was not very impressive, it definitely was not a Ferrari. So we motored on down the road to our beach paradise of Sorrento. Here are some maps which I marked with the area we stayed in. If you have problems seeing the pictures just click on them to see what i wrote.

Just look at the red circle towards the southern part.

This shows all of the cities we went to.

We got to our hotel in Sorento and crashed for the night. We woke up the next day to prepare for our excursion to Capri, the Island off the coast of Italy.

We took a boat to Capri which was about a 45 minutes to get there the island was really busy and there were a lot of tourists (don't you just hate tourists). But as you can see it is a gorgeous island. The emperor of Rome, Tiberius, ruled his empire from this island. He ruled it from a castle called the Villa Jovis, we actually hiked up to the top of the hill and there were magnificent views from the top.

Villa Jovis

We decided to have lunch on the top. We had Italian made sandwiches, I had a local soda called Lemon, and my dad and mom had wine. It was getting late so we hiked down and started to search for desert, and just our luck they were making an Italian movie there and I got a picture with one of the stars (I don't know her name).

While they were shooting the film they wanted us to be extras in the movie. The Italians told us NOT TO LOOK AT THE CAMERA. So of course during the whole entire shoot I was looking right at the camera. We did not get to stay very long to watch what they were doing, so we took the jet home.

We got back from Capri and honestly we were super exhausted, so we went to this incredible little pizza place called pizza franco. My mother shockingly reminded me that we had to meet our guide at our hotel at seven in the morning, so we had to check our e-mail and hit the hay.
We woke up the next day and we went to eat breakfast. We met our guide named Anna and we made our way to Napoli one of the most dangerous cities in Italy. Even though Naples is so dangerous our guide definitely "tamed the lion." We left Sorrento on a big boat and went across the bay. First stop when we arrived there was these fabulous churches. We learned about neopolitan culture and a lot about baroque style of painting. While we were out and about in the city we stopped at this incredible little ally way of (if you know what santons are) Italian remake of santons. Of course we took like an hour on that street, and we even bought some too. Around this time we were getting really hungry, and Anna took us to this awesome pizza place in Naples (even though we had pizza last night this was still delicious). The dough was salty, and the ingredients were fresh it was great. (I did not take any pictures of the churches because I thought that you were not supposed to take pictures). After that we headed over to the archaeological museum. Here are some pictures of what it was like.

The perfect statue, this was the inspiration.

I did not take many pictures because I did not have my camera the whole time. Tune in to the next post for Paestum and Pompeii.

Chamonix and Swiss

The day my dad got home we went on a wild excursion to the very touristy the very good ski area that lies right right in the shadow of the enormous Mt. Blanc. It was so high that I couldn't even see the top. It took forever to get there but we finally did dog and all. To tell you the truth I think he was very content, who wouldn't be if you got to scarf up peanut after peanut that dropped on the seat of the car. It was rather cold , but worth it. After we got settled in to our very log cabin like room, we went out to dinner (without the dog ). We stopped at a nice little (again log cabin like) restaurant. There I got the most delicious... well I don't know what but it was good. It was pasta with melted cheese and ham on the inside, ohhhhh my gosh it was soooo good. After having our stomachs full of melted cheese we had to go walk our critter (who is sitting here reading my every word and he says hello). While out for our strole I felt deprived of a delicious desert that I could have had at the log cabin restaurant so I got a delicious crep. Then we went to bed.
I bet you guys don't really get the point of this trip because it so far has had no historical impact on my schooling so far. To tell you the truth I didn't really get it either. But it was still really cool.

The next day we woke up and packed up, we (including the dog) were going to Switzerland, Martini to be exact. In this city of Martini there is an art museum with a very interesting art exhibition of Marc Chagall, but before we went to see that exhibit we stopped to fill our tummies with hot chocolate and croissants. After we were all content with our breakfast, we went to the car museum that was just underneath the main exhibit. These cars were fabulous, oh my gosh its a shame we did not take any pictures of this. They had sooo many cars, they even had one the oldest factory produced car!!!!! They had Rolls Royce's, they had martinis, they had brands of cars that I had never even heard of. My parents finally had to force me out of that room (I was pretty bummed). After seeing that exhibit my standards were pretty high for the rest of the museum. Being the sports person that I am I was not overly impressed with the paintings (art really isn't my thing). My dad and I had to literally force my Mom out of that exhibit so we could go out side and see the sculpture (so for all of you people out there who know my mom well and know she is a sculpture herself you can imagine that she was not overly bummed about leaving the paintings). I have to say that the sculpture was really cool (all though some of it rather strange). I can honestly say that the whole family enjoyed the sculpture part of the museum. We finally left the museum and went to I nice swiss restaurant where I ordered a very strange combination toppings on a pizza, it was salmon, cream, olive oil, and tomato sauce. I have to tell you it was delicious, the guy who ran the place came up to me and said that was the wierdest combination of a pizza that he had ever heard of. Well that pretty much wraps this trip up.

p.s. due to me bing behind and pressured for time you might have to check out my moms blog site for picutres sorry.

Le Routour du mon pere

The day was finally here. Dad comes home. I have to say that I have been counting down the days since he left. We arrived at the airport with the dog and we walked in. We had lots of trouble. But finally we got to the spot where we were supposed to be and I was so rambunctious and I could tell that the doogie (dog) was to because he was figgiting (if dogs can figit). We had to wait through two planes arriving until my dad's flight came in, but even then it took him forever to get out of the baggage claim because his bag was the last one off. He came out and I gave him the biggest rugby hug that you could imagine. After that we went on a wild excursion that my mom thought up the day my dad got back. Check out the next post for that.

St. Antoine

My mother and I one Saturday afternoon decided to go to a little Halloween market at the abbey of St. Antoine. We got there and had a little picnic and then walked up to the fair. If some of you got our Halloween card, that was from St. Antoine. There was everything from beautiful birds to wooden German toys. If any of you are here for Halloween then we HAVE to go.