Bella Italia, Part Three

Here is the final installation of pictures from my Italy trip.

As you saw in the last two posts (here and here), we visited quite a few places in Italy during our tour. We saved the best for last, though. On our last day, we went to the town of Sorrento and then to the Isle of Capri.

Alright...let's get on with the show.

Here's a view of Sorrento, looking up from the docks. We were getting ready to board a ferry, after having spent only an hour or so in the town.

 

And a view as we sped away...

 
It was such a beautiful day, but the wind was a bit chilly.

 

A first glimpse of Capri. I have been enchanted by the Isle of Capri since I was a little girl. I played the glockenspiel in a marching band (yes, I did - band geek) and "Isle of Capri" was one of our songs.

 

After we got to Capri, we boarded another boat to take a tour around the island. It was about this time that my camera battery died. I have a few pictures from one of the chaperones, but I'm still waiting for the others. I'll share what I can.

 

Many rich and/or famous people own villas on Capri (who do they think they are?).

 

We didn't see the famed Blue Grotto, but these rocks are kind of cool. Our little boat went right through that hole!

 

We took the funicular up to Anacapri - the town at the top of the island and visited the gardens. The scenery from up there was exquisite.

 

We had lunch (I had mussels and clams), poked around in the very expensive stores (Prada, etc.) and not so expensive souvenir shops, had a gelato (or two - who's counting?), then headed back down to meet the rest of the group by the docks.

There was a rocky little beach, perfect for a few quick photos. I was very much in love with giallo (yellow) this whole trip and came home with three yellow scarves and a yellow shirt, plus a dress and another top with yellow in the pattern (all bought in Florence). Our tour director, Claudia, called me the Giallo Girl.

I also bought the cute little shoes I'm wearing on this trip - I got them in Rome.

 

We took the ferry over to Naples where we met up with our bus. Along the way we stopped for a farewell dinner. The kids had loads of fun goofing off and singing along to YMCA and we met another group from Edmonton at the restaurant.

 

Before we departed for our hotel, we had a little ceremony and made a presentation to Claudia and to our bus driver, Andrea. Somebody has a picture of him somewhere, but like I said, I don't have everyone's photos yet and my camera battery was dead that day.

Here's Claudia hamming it up with Tom, our drama teacher. He loved every second of it.

 

The next morning, we had to say goodbye to Claudia at the airport. There were lots of hugs and even a few tears. Claudia hugged every single person! Some twice. You can see from this picture how much the kids loved her.

 

It was tough to leave. I know some of the kids were eager to get home but, honestly, I could have spent another week or so there (without them haha), especially considering the mess I came home to...

As I mentioned in this post, our bathroom (our only bathroom) was to be renovated while I was gone. It wasn't even close to finished and I ended up spending two nights in hotels last week. It's still not done - going into week 3 - and there are some problems that need to be fixed. It seems that every room in the house is turned upside down: bathroom stuff in the spare room and sewing room, tools in the computer room, holes in the ceilings of the kitchen and dining room where leaks occurred, and a fine layer of dust on everything.

I haven't touched my sewing machine in weeks and it doesn't look like I'll be working on any projects in the next few days either, at least until this mess is cleared up and our house is back to normal.

Work has also been crazy busy, although it might slow down this week.

Thank goodness I have such wonderful memories of Bella Italia to keep me going. I hope you've enjoyed the photos and stories!