Amalfi Take One

Our day in Amalfi was here! The day we were most looking forward to. A day of relaxation on the sea seeing the breathtaking views along the coast. And the weather was sunny and warm.

You know this doesn’t end well, right?

We showed up at the designated meeting spot by the train station in plenty of time to meet our guide at 7:15 am.

Unfortunately, we had been told the wrong meeting spot. So we missed the guide. And the train.

There we were, standing outside a train station cafe, tired and disappointed, not knowing quite what to do with ourselves.

Nicole started sending texts and making phone calls to the people she worked with to see if they could help us make other arrangements, but it was a little early for them to be in the office. So we picked up some prosecco and orange juice at the cafe and a stick of salami and hunk of cheese from the market next door and took a taxi over to Villa Borghese to regroup.

We found a bench and enjoyed our mimosas. I may have said something along the lines of “Alcohol makes everything better.”

Okay, that’s exactly what I said.

Once refortified, we spent 3 euros a piece for the opportunity to row boats for 20 minutes.

After that, I was in a heat-induced, exhaustion-induced fog. I don’t remember quite where we walked or what we saw from there. I do remember Heather finally saying, “Let’s go back to the hotel, Mom will take a nap, Dad and Chris will go have a drink, and Meagan, Nicole, and I will come up with a plan.”

When David offered to help with the planning, Heather didn’t hesitate in honestly telling him, “Dad you need to be far away.”

Yes, he had been getting on the kids’ nerves. And they were worried I was going to have a complete melt down.

What? You think our family can spend a week together without some tension? What family does that?

So while I was napping and Dave was drinking, they shuffled tours around and squeezed in a different tour to Amalfi in a couple days.

And our new last minute plan for the afternoon was to visit Castel Sant’Angelo. We purchased tickets and got there at the appointed time just to be turned away. In looking more carefully at our skip-the-line tickets, we noticed that we were supposed to pick up our real tickets at a location 15 minutes away.

Nicole was starting to feel the pressure of keeping five other adults fed, entertained, and safe. She had been the one figuring out taxis, trains, restaurants, and what to do to fill up our time. She had been the one answering any and all questions. This responsibility can be exhausting. So she became upset and started making a bee line for the ticket office.

Heather decided to stay on location to see if a guide showed up there.

So, I told her to take one of the two cellular phones that we had and told Meagan and Chris to stay with her.

I high tailed it after Nicole and Dave. Afterwards I was questioned about this decision. I’m the slowest out of the group by far and was physically exhausted. All I can say is, a mother goes with her most upset child even if there is little she can do to help.

And Dave is often under the mistaken impression that when a woman is stressed and worried, she wants to be comforted. When he tried to hug Nicole she slapped his arm away, used some colorful language, and ran in front of on-coming traffic.

I did my best to keep up. When Nicole disappeared around a corner, Dave briefly turned to look for me and then gave me a look that said “You’re on your own.”

But we found the ticket office, and they printed us real tickets, and we got into the Castel even though we were late. And we had fun making our way to the top.

After Castel Sant’Angelo, we focused on what we do best. Eating and drinking. At three different establishments. The general consensus was our family dinners were the best part of the trip.

Unfortunately, we had one more disaster that day.

We didn’t get our gelato.