For whatever reason with my family, we always seem to have various mishaps while traveling. Get a group of us together and invariably we’ll end up with a slew of “remember that time in Pisa …” or “remember that time with the crowded train …” as a springboard into a story of misadventure from our family lore.

Even still, Tuesday was one for the ages.

Where I thought we’d be at 2 p.m. on Tuesday: at my house, eating some lunch and watching Moana while doing laundry.

Where we actually were at 2 p.m. on Tuesday: the home of a stranger, lamenting my lack of Italian skills, but eating at a feast that included pasta, vegetables the stranger (Pino!) and my dad picked from the garden ten minutes before, and rabbit he’d shot on his farm.

Again: I am overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers! The world seems like a pretty jacked up place lately, but it is a relief to know there are still good people out there.

So, let’s back up.

My parents came to town Sunday after finishing their month-long traveling adventure in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and Italy. My brother-in-law Brett, who met us in Germany for Oktoberfest, has also been visiting us in Sicily since we got back. We had decided to take the crowd to Cefalu for some beach time Sunday and Monday (it was great, by the way!), then Tuesday morning Chris and Brett left early to catch a plane for Rome, where they are spending a couple days before Brett’s flight home. That left me, my parents and the kids to drive the van home Tuesday later in the day after we explored some more and packed up.

As we were heading out of town, we passed a gas station. I looked at my dash, noticed I needed gas fairly soon and decided I’d better stop at the next one we spotted. We were going on a major highway, so no problem, right?*

Wrong. So wrong.

On the way to Cefalu, we’d stopped at Taormina for a while and thus took a longer route along the (highly populated) coast. On the way back we planned to take the quicker route down the middle of the island and over.

So, we were on the lookout from the beginning for a gas station but it didn’t immediately become a huge issue until we’d gone miles and miles and miles without seeing one. Getting nervous, we decided we needed to get off at one of the exits on the theory that surely, surely there will be a gas station somewhere. Nope, waste of gas trying one area and realizing there was nothing there. Next, decided to get back on the highway and keep driving but things were getting critical. Finally, Google informed me there was a middle-of-nowhere gas station only about five kilometers away. Sold.

Except that GPS just led us to a farm. And then informed us we could walk the rest of the way. Our car hadn’t actually spluttered to a stop, but the range had been on 0 for quite some time and we knew we didn’t have much left, so we decided to ask whoever lived there where this mythical gas station was.

So, my Italian continues to be very poor. The farmer, Pino, spoke Italian and Dutch only. We had Google Translate but it honestly isn’t as helpful as it could be a lot of the time (a post on that to follow) and we were struggling with communication. Finally I remembered my fabulous and fluent friend Brooke, who I was able to call on messenger. To my immense relief, she was available and talked to Pino for us – who informed us that the “gas station” we were looking for only had fuel for scooters and that the nearest real gas station was about 15 kilometers away. Uphill. His opinion? There was no chance we’d make it. Since we hadn’t the slightest idea where it even was, we tended to agree.

So, this is where Pino is especially amazing. First he was trying to convince us he could mix some of his diesel with oil and put it in the car, since he didn’t have benzina (we declined). Our next plan was to call our roadside assistance through insurance, but Pino said it would take hours to get to the middle of nowhere and that they would charge a fortune and insist on towing us. He insisted that his son would be there in an hour and a half and either bring us some benzina or drive us to get it. With few other options – and a fear that if we tried to drive back to the highway we’d actually run out of gas somewhere less friendly – we decided to wait.

And then he offered to make us spaghetti. I was in a state of complete nervous panic at this point, but the kids hadn’t eaten and well … it was almost 2 p.m.

So, we explored a little bit while Pino (with help from my dad to go pick some vegetables straight from the garden!) got to work. He either rebuffed my offers to help or didn’t understand my offer because “aiutare” is a hard word for me to pronounce.

In the meantime, we mostly explored the farm (he had chickens, sheep, pigs and a gorgeous bay horse named Farfellina) and played with his rambunctious puppies, while I fought anxiety-induced nausea and apologized profusely to my parents for getting us into this situation. Owen and I also rehearsed what he would say to very politely refuse the spaghetti because – as most of you know – he doesn’t eat pasta and we were worried about offending Pino.

Turns out, we didn’t need to worry because we were served an epic meal and even my picky Owen found something to eat!

First course: pasta with marinara sauce, plus chunks of cheese; Fiona devoured the first and Owen ate cheese.

Second course: bread, roasted bell peppers straight from the garden, a tomato/oil salad straight from the garden, and a platter of meat that we didn’t immediately recognize. Eventually, Pino pointed and said “coniglio” (hey! A word I recognize!) and mimicked shooting. My dad later told us he was pretty sure he was telling us to look out for pellets in the meat because he’s used a shotgun?

Anyway, to my very great surprise it was after we clarified what we were eating that Owen piped up that he wanted some rabbit. We pulled some off the bone for him and – shockingly — he devoured it and said it was great (Pino seemed tickled!). Fiona ate it too. I was actually the only one who didn’t, not because I was opposed but because I was still fighting some really bad nausea (lame!). Our only contribution was a couple bottles of wine that we’d had in the car, and he ended up serving his own wine anyway. Ooops!

Anyway, we used my extremely limited Italian, Google translate and sign language to do our best to carry on conversation with Pino and learned he had two sons, had lived on this farm since childhood, enjoys painting, and loves to cook for his friends. He ribbed me a bit for having been in Sicily for almost a year and not having learned more Italian, which ok, fair point. Later we learned that one of his side businesses is roasting pigs for parties; if anyone I know in Sicily ever needs a hog let me know and I’ll give you his contact information!

Photo courtesy of Pino

So, about three hours passed. Eventually, one of Pino’s sons, Roberto, arrived with a couple liters of benzina to funnel into our tank and (after a bunch of back-and-forth with Brooke on the line to negotiate what happened next) the son agreed to drive back into town so that we could follow him to the service station.

And thank goodness, because I don’t think we could have ever actually found our way there ourselves. Roberto drove on the craziest back roads and through puddles and what seemed like craters before we actually made it to the town, which highlighted pretty well how in the middle of freaking nowhere we had ended up. Added to the fact that my tank is so enormous that the couple liters we’d put in actually didn’t move the range from “0” and it was a somewhat nerve-wracking drive!

We caused a bit of a scene at the gas station as Roberto and Maria (unclear on relationship there — she came along for the ride and was very sweet!) told the story to a couple of attendants who ended up laughing pretty hard as Roberto (I believe) explained exactly how deep in the country we’d ended up. And then they couldn’t believe how much gas the van would take, and kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to fill it up entirely. HELL YEAH I DO!

In total, the day’s finances worked out like this:

Gas purchased on the economy: 116 euro

Lunch/rescue square: 20 euro and two cheap bottles of wine. (We tried to convince them to take more but they wouldn’t hear of it.)

Lesson learned and a story to tell: priceless.

Us and Pino and Maria 

*Chris, later: “Didn’t you notice the sign that said it was the last gas station for 67 kilometers?” NOPE. Sure as hell did not.

The post Exploring our island: The one where we run out of gas and eat rabbit first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Exploring our island: The one where we run out of gas and eat rabbit appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

The Casa Delle Farfalle, or Butterfly House, in Viagrande makes an excellent spot for an outing with the kids! While not the largest or most impressive place we’ve been, the Casa Delle Farfalle was a lot of fun.

Oh, hey there. It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, but we’ve been keeping busy over here trying to squeeze out the last bits of summer with lots of outdoor activities. We’re excited for the weather to cool down a bit, but I know soon enough we’ll be missing our beach days!

Today some friends and I finally went over to the Casa Delle Farfalle — the butterfly house. I’ve been meaning to go here all summer, but once it got so hot the idea of standing in what is basically a greenhouse got way less appealling. Today was basically the perfect weather for a visit, and we had a great time.

The Casa Delle Farfalle is located within the Parco Monte Serra in Viagrande. Admission is 5 euro for adults, 3.50 for children older than 4 and free for those younger. They also had a couple package deals; one adult and two kids, for instance, was 10 euro. Parking was 2 euro, which we only found out after a friend attempted to leave and wasn’t allowed to without coming up with the cash. Whoops.

The Casa Delle Farfalle itself isn’t huge by any means, but the kids really liked it. I did feel a little bad for the butterflies though; there were six kids in our group and they were pretty much all shrieking at various points. On the other hand, I don’t actually know if butterflies have ears so …?

There were some really gorgeous blue ones, but I didn’t manage to get a picture of one with its wings open that isn’t super blurry. 

An English-speaking employee at the casa popped by to show the kids a couple of stick bugs, though he couldn’t get any takers on actually holding either of them. He also found some caterpillars and eggs on a leaf to show the kiddos, and explained to them about how once the caterpillars make a cocoon they are moved into a climate-controlled nesting box. According to a sign on that box, 20 or so butterflies emerge from their cocoons each day, but we didn’t get lucky enough to witness this.

The Parco Monte Serra seems to be pretty big, and there are a bunch of other outdoor activities on sight, including trails for hiking and mountain biking. What I’m most interested in is alpine tubing, where you slide down a hill on a tube the way you would if you were going sledding, but sadly this is only available on Sundays and I’m not sure when I’ll make it out. Especially as Chris thinks it sounds dangerous. But isn’t that the fun?

Today, we settled today on just letting the kids play on the playground equipment outside the Casa delle Farfalle. There were tons of picnic tables around, so if we go back anytime soon I would plan on taking a lunch.

If you are planning to visit, I’d go soon — from what I’ve heard, the butterfly house closes in October. Hours are pretty limited as it is; on Sundays and holidays it is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the rest of the week it is only open between 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., with the last admission at 12:30.

While the Casa Delle Farfalle certainly isn’t the largest or fanciest kind of place, my kids had a blast looking at the butterflies. I’d say it is worth a visit!

The post Exploring our island: Casa Delle Farfalle first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Exploring our island: Casa Delle Farfalle appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

First, let me say how overwhelmed I am by the generosity of people!

Second, let me say I’m impressed with the ingenuity and smoking skills of our new Sicilian mechanic.

So yesterday was Fiona’s 3rd birthday. Yay! We had a wonderful day — I’ll get to that later — but we also hit an unexpected snag along the way. One of her requests was to go to our favorite park in Aci Bonnacorsi, so we popped over there before lunch, intending to stay for an hour. Four hours later, we were home.

Look at that sweet birthday girl!! 

First, we happened to meet some lovely people in the park! Cristina and Salvo are a Sicilian couple who went to school together here, then both independently moved to New York where they met again years later. They got married, moved back to Sicily and have a sweet little girl who I think was 2 or 3 years old. Lisa is an American who moved here for reasons that I’m unclear on because a lot of people were talking at once (ha!), and I believe her mother lives here too. She had a cute 3-year-old as well. We had a nice time talking at the park, after which we ended up agreeing to trade numbers and get together sometime as we all live in the area and have small children. Lisa: “Seriously, if you ever need help with anything, give me call!”

Me, literally 30 seconds later, as she is trying to leave: “WAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT HELLLLPPPPPPP!!!”

So, my battery was dead. It is possible that I might have left the lights on. I only think that because the lights were on, and I’m the one who was driving, but how can we ever know FOR SURE?

So, Lisa, her mom, Salvo and Cristina all stopped to help me. None of us had jumper cables, so I urged them to go on and I’d figure it out. Instead, they started asking various people in the general vicinity whether they had some. Meanwhile, I was asking my mom group whether anyone was available for a rescue mission and my sweet friend Tammy offered to come save us. I was about to accept when the Salvo found a dude with jumper cables and that guy went to work.

(Fun side note: I wasn’t sure they were doing this right because I haven’t jumped a car in forever. I must have looked nervous, because Salvo leaned over and told me “if he’s doing it wrong, he’ll blow up his car, not yours.” This was actually very comforting.)

One problem. Turns out the tiny Sicilian car was somehow not powerful enough to jump my big ass van. So they found a different guy with a larger car. It still wouldn’t work. The group decided that the entire battery must be dead, and suggested I really figure out whether I had roadside assistance because apparently most insurance here does. Turns out we did, and I called the number and they agreed to send a tow truck “within 40 minutes.” (Snort.) I sent the crowd off since I had it under control, and went to call Chris again to update him on what was happening.

And then I realized that I had nowhere to go with the kids when the truck came. And then I realized I had 12 percent battery on my phone and no way of charging it, and not a lot of battery to waste trying to figure it out. Cue panic.

Called Chris, told him I didn’t have time for anything but to tell him he needed to get the hell over here immediately (a solid 40 minutes from work). And then we settled in to wait. Chris ended up making it there before the tow truck, so I left him to wait on the tow truck while the kids and I went to locate Owen’s lost Hatchimals. (Found ’em!). While we were gone, a random delivery truck stopped and left a car battery right across the street on someone’s stoop. Ok ….? Chris asked the guy who seemed to belong to the building whether it was for us, and got a look like he was crazy.

About 90 seconds later, the tow truck arrived and we decided to ask him to try and jump it, just in case. He had a portable unit and boom! It worked. Go figure. Of course, the problem then became whether it would ever start again without being jumped. After 10 minutes we tested it and it wouldn’t, so the tow truck driver — who seemed to be talking to random guy across the street who had the random battery on his stoop — decided that it was dead and we needed to go to a repair place for a new one. Since it was mid-afternoon, everything was closed for riposto. Tow truck guy indicated that we should follow him, and took us to a nearby shop where he called a number on the door.

Ten minutes later, the owner  (I think?) showed up. About two minutes later, three other cars of employees? family members? had showed up to help as well. This number included a woman who had in the trunk of her car a battery that looked REMARKABLY like the one that has mysteriously turned up on the side of the road a couple blocks away.

This seems like an excellent time to mention that no one we ran into spoke English, but Chris did an excellent job of figuring out what was going on. Unlike me, he doesn’t panic when he doesn’t immediately understand what is being said. What a guy!

So the guy who seemed to be in charge had a cigar hanging out of his mouth, which is possibly the reason why he didn’t say anything other than “salve” (hi) the entire time until he presented the bill. This thing NEVER left his mouth, even when he was elbows deep in our car with about four other dudes standing around watching.

Our car only barely fit into this garage. 

While we were waiting, it came to our attention that there was a surprising amount of sawing coming from the garage. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t concern us a little because our thought was, really, what the fuck are they sawing for? What is happening to our car?? Are they sawing the battery? Why??

Eventually they finished up, gave us a bill for 90 euro and we managed to both get the car started AND get it out of the garage unscathed. It wasn’t until we got home and opened the hood to find out what all that sawing had been about …

Yep, I guess the battery was a smidge small. I see no potential problems here! 

So, overall this was a fairly annoying exercise but what sticks out to me is how wonderful people were during the whole thing. I had met the four people who helped us not 20 minutes beforehand, and yet they spent a solid 30 minutes trying to help me get everything sorted. The various other Sicilians who got enlisted to help me had no reason to spend their time trying to jump my boat of a vehicle, but they not only did so — and offered to let me borrow the jumper cables until whenever I left like bringing them back! — but also refused the money I tried to give them. Salvo and Cristina also called me 30 minutes after they left, just to make sure that I didn’t need them to come back.

People rock, guys. For real.

The post A Sicilian car repair, and people who are awesome. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post A Sicilian car repair, and people who are awesome. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Well, this post is about a week overdue — it’s been a crazy week trying to finish a bunch of assignments and get ready for Fiona’s birthday party — so just pretend you are reading this last Sunday, k?

Anyway, on Friday (Aug. 18) the kids and I went to the Feste Medievali (medieval festival) in Motta Sant’Anastasia! There are tons of festivals around Sicily during the summer, honestly you could go to one just about any weekend. However, we haven’t been to many at all because they tend to start really late, at least by our standards. I’d heard a lot of great things about this one though, so I decided I’d take them despite it not even starting until after bedtime. Chris wasn’t interested, so he stayed home.

So Motta is the town near base where we lived the first six weeks of being in Sicily. First off, Motta is cuter than I remember! We didn’t really walk around much because Fiona was younger and I didn’t have the carrier yet, plus no sidewalks. We also never really explored the area near the Castello di Motta, which turned out to be full of cute little alleys and great views that Owen kept insisting we stop to look at.

Can you blame him?

We had plenty of time to wander around because while the fest didn’t start until 8:30 p.m., we’d heard that we needed to get there by 7 to be able to find a place to park. That was definitely decent advice because we found a good place to park, but I think next year if we go we’ll probably go later and just park further away because an hour and a half was a long time to kill. Alternatively, we could have waited to eat dinner and had a meal in Motta while we were waiting.

These look like scared faces, but apparently they are “cute faces.”

Volcano in the background.

Castello di Motta Sant’Anastasia 

The festival is a pretty big deal in Motta — it runs more than a week and overlaps with Ferragosta, an Italian holiday that falls on Aug. 15 and also marks the Feast of the Assumption. The fest was much larger than I realized, stretching out a long ways between the castle and down the street for probably a kilometer at least?

Castello at night 

Once the festival (finally, ha) got started, the kids got some food and I got some wine. This giant pork sandwich and a glass of wine for 5 euro!

One of the booths selling food. Apparently there was a really good soup here too, which seems like a weird choice because a) August and b) festival. But whatever! There were some picnic tables by the food stalls, though they filled quickly as time went on. 

He was a big fan.

Early on in the fest I somehow lost my damn mind and impulsively bought the kids WOODEN SWORDS. I know, I know. I have literally no idea why I would have done that, and it wasn’t 10 seconds after I handed them to them that I couldn’t even remember why I had decided to do it.

Another fun bonus was that about 20 minutes in I ended up carrying Fiona’s sword for her because she was “tired.” They were super thrilled at first though! 

The feste included people and musicians parading around, though I think it is possible that we might have seen people practicing rather than the actual parade since the groups were fairly disjointed. That’s what we thought also at Carnivale in Acireale though, so possibly it is just Sicily!

We parked ourselves for a while by the castello to watch various performances, including an acrobat and these dudes throwing flags.

Our intent was to hang out longer in our spot by the castle because we really wanted to see fire jugglers and figured they’d show up there, but unfortunately the kids started complaining that it was “too loud” with the drumming. I was a little bummed, but what can you do? Have gelato, that’s what.

Honestly the festival was really just getting started by the time we left a little before 10. I saw people arriving with their babies and young children when mine were exhausted and ready to go home, but from what we’ve seen everyone seems to stay up late here, even the kiddos! Next year when the kids are older (and we haven’t already spent an hour and a half wandering Motta before it even starts) we’ll maybe stay longer.

Worth it just for Fiona’s face in this picture! 

The post Exploring our island: Feste Medievali first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Exploring our island: Feste Medievali appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

(Not volcano related).

At least, that’s what it feels like — everytime we drive somewhere for the last few weeks we see actual fires or at least the tell-tale smoke. On the way back from Celafu we saw a big one near Taormina, and we’ve seen plenty of roadside ones as well. In the last few days though it feels as if it is intensifying.

Yesterday in particular the kids and I were driving to base and we saw huge plumes of smoke from various fires in every direction. When we were getting on the highway, we saw a decent-size fire right next to the onramp (up to the metal guardrail) and Civil Protection guys were there keeping an eye on it. I wish I’d gotten a picture but I was getting on the highway.

Chris took this one a couple weeks ago.

I wrote this part of my blog entry this morning, but now it is midafternoon and we are back home after a trip to the pool. The way back required a detour because when I got off at my usual exit, the cops were immediately turning people around and sending them the only way available — back onto the highway. There was a massive amount of smoke down the way I’d usually drive, though I couldn’t see the actual fire.

Snapped this one today from further away.

I also just learned that they had to evacuate 700 tourists by boat from a resort near San Vito Lo Capo, a beautiful beach town on the northwest coast of Sicily. On the mainland, Mount Vesuvius is also ablaze.

According to this article, firefighters in Sicily and Southern Italy have intervened with more than 10,000 instances of vegetation fire since June 15. The big problem is that it has been exceptionally dry this spring and summer — the article says we’re about a month behind our expected rainfull — and it has been much hotter than usual. All the Sicilians we’ve talked to say that while it is usually as hot as this in August, it isn’t normal at all for it to have been 100+ so much in June and early July. My takeaway from this is basically that when there is a tiny spark, the vegetation is going up like a dry Christmas tree right now. Chris and I have been speculating that perhaps the reason we’ve seen so many fires on the side of the road specifically is that people flick cigarrettes out the window, but that’s just our theory.

Family members — don’t worry, we feel plenty safe. But seeing all these is definitely a little disconcerting.

One from a few weeks ago when we drove through a lot of smoke from a fire next to the road. 

The post So half of Sicily is on fire right now. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post So half of Sicily is on fire right now. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

The weather has been beautiful (and HOT!) here in Sicily, and we’ve been keeping busy! Our main goal on a daily basis is to leave the house, as even though it is about 10 degrees cooler up on our mountain than it is at base, it is still broiling. We have air conditioning, but currently the main AC system isn’t working so we only have air conditioning units in specific rooms to use. It isn’t a huge problem, but it is is better to be out of here during the heat of the day when possible. Plus, what’s the point of being on an island if you aren’t going to go enjoy it?!

As anyone who knows me in real life knows, I don’t so much tan. At all. Ever. But if there was ever a chance that I was going to tan, it would definitely be this year. If only because I become so freckled that they just sort of meld together into a tan.

What we’ve been up to: 

1. The beach! 

The beach is basically why we were excited to come here, and it has finally been warm enough to go! We’ve been going to Fontane Bianche, a sandy beach (many of them near us are rocky) about an hour south of us. We always cough up for a couple of chairs and an umbrella — 17 euro for the whole day, worth it not to have to haul our own. It is a pretty spot! 

We took some new people who we are sponsoring to Fontane Bianche last week, and we all decided to have lunch at a place right on the beach. The food didn’t end up being anything too special, but it had a great view! 

2. The pool! 

The base pool is open, and for the last couple of weeks we’ve basically been living in it.

The kids are taking swimming lessons right now, and so far it is going pretty well. Owen is making great progress! The last couple of lessons with Fiona have been a bit rocky, but overall she is also doing surprisingly well considering she isn’t even 3 years old yet. Today was a bit odd because she was “too scared” to go in with just her teacher so I had to join the lesson, but once in she repeatedly tried to kick away from me and from the teacher because “I swim without floaties BY MYSELF.” So now she seems to be a little too confident.

3. Eating all the granita

Ahh granita, how do I even begin to describe you? It is a frozen snack (I hesitate to say dessert because I’ve recently learned that people here eat it for breakfast as well) that is sort of between sorbet and a slushie. It is less solid than sorbet but you don’t drink it like a slushie? Anyway, it comes in a lot of flavors but the most traditional (according to our tutor) are pistachio and almond, though lemon, strawberry, coffee and chocolate are also common. I prefer stawberry, Chris likes pistachio, Owen is obsessed with lemon and Fiona is all about the chocolate. It is eaten with brioche on the side and all four of us love those too.

Anyway, we’ve been hearing about granita for ages and finally got around to eating it and well, now we’re obsessed.

We’ve also learned that this annoying whistling noise that we’ve been hearing for months? It’s been coming from a guy with a granita/gelato cart who whistles to summon people for their snack. As you can imagine, being able to just run outside our gate to grab some granita has not helped our habit.

4. Hanging with friends 

Of course, we’ve been doing all of the above with friends as well! I am feeling so lucky that all four of us have found great friends to hang out with. The kids are never happier than when we are doing a play date with their little buddies, and it is even better when people are meeting up with us at the pool! As a bonus, several of our friends happen to own a trampoline!

5. Sitting in traffic 

Ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. But not very. I feel like we’ve spent half our lives stuck in traffic lately as there has been a ton of construction and a ton of accidents on the highway. Blerg!

But just for fun, here are some other sights from driving around recently …

Goat traffic! We always stop and let them get around because apparently if you hit one of them you’ll find out just how pricy goats are.

Why yes, that is us driving through a bunch of smoke. The side of the highway was on fire (the flames were right there) but everyone just drove on through. According to my friends who have lived here longer, this is a pretty common sight. I’m not sure whether the fire was on purpose since are constantly burning brush around here, or the result of someone flicking a cigarette out the window. 

Only in Sicily!

The post What we’ve been up to lately: summer edition first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post What we’ve been up to lately: summer edition appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

OK, “conquering” may not be the best possible verb to use here.

We did huff and puff up a small part of Etna though. Verdict: 100 percent worth the effort.

We’ve been meaning to give hiking a try for a while, and when the weather started to get milder we decided to go for it. We chose this particular path because it came highly recommended by our friends Natalie and Billy, who had dragged their two kids up there a couple weeks before. We figured that if their 3-year-old could do it all under his own steam, how hard could it be?

Answer: pretty freaking hard. Natalie and Billy, you guys are rockstars!

Google says this means “path of the donkey’s back.” Appropriate, since there were a couple times where we definitely felt like “asino.”

The first bit was a little extra challenging because of the snow that was still up there, which made things a fairly slippery during the initial steeper half-mile or so.

At this spot we could just walk kind of next to it, in others we had to walk on top. There are limited photos of this because I was trying not tumble to my doom. 

Once we were out of the forested area the snow disappeared, and it was considerably easier to walk. (Though not exactly a walk in the park). We took it slow and tried not to tumble off of or into any rocks.

Eventually the trail leveled out in a lot of places, like this. 

We passed plenty of the big black lava fields on the way up, but saw a bunch of slightly more random looking lava rock formations throughout the walk. 

I look like that because lava rock does not make a comfortable seat. 

It was a nice day, so unsurprisingly we saw quite a few other people walking on the trail, including one large British tour group (though I think they went a different way than us because we didn’t see them until we hit our destination). Slightly irritating was the large number of people with tiny dogs, none of which seemed as winded as I was. Embarrassing.

There were plenty of gorgeous views along the way, but Natalie had told me that we shouldn’t give up early because the end would be totally worth it. She was right.

We expected walking back to be considerably easier because, duh, downhill. But that first slippery bit we struggled with on the way up though? A bit more perilous going down, it turns out. Experienced hikers are probably laughing right now.

Afterward, we rewarded ourselves with the WORLD’S BIGGEST PIZZA. We knew it must be large because the woman at the bakery verified several times that this was what we wanted and offered to make a half-size one. To hell with that! Bring on the maxi.

It fit in the car, but barely. A note about the pizza: I’ve only recently verified that this bakery (the one right near the preschool) offers pizza all day long. This is unusual because pizza here is generally an evening thing and there isn’t anywhere around our house where we can order one before 8 p.m. I’m thinking that this pizza is not wood-fired, which is why they offer it during the day. According to our Italian tutor, wood-fired pizza ovens take forever to heat up and that’s why they aren’t generally open at lunch. 

We’re glad that we went when we did because the next day Etna got a new layer of snow. Still, I’m eager to go back up sometime!

The post Conquering Mount Etna. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Conquering Mount Etna. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Alternative title for this post: My cannabis has brown, black and white hair and a cold nose.

So Chris and I are about six weeks into Italian lessons! They have some lessons on the base, but since we live kind of far away and have an — ahem — history of enabling each other in skipping classes we take together (I’m looking at you, bowling and billiards) we decided to go the tutor route. After a couple of false starts, we ended up with one recommended to us by a friend and we absolutely love her. The tutor, let’s call her Ro, comes to our house once a week and is endlessly patient with us and the children who are constantly interrupting.

But man, this stuff is hard.

So, one of the first things Ro explained to us is that Italian is a very up-and-down language. Almost all words end in vowels, which gives the language a flowing, musical quality. Emphasis is very, very important and can change the words’ meaning; Ro says this is why Italians frequently sound like they are yelling when they are just having a regular conversation. Double letters change the way a word is pronounced and, obviously, its meaning. And this is one area in particular where I’m struggling. Because I’m not hearing, or speaking, the emphasis all that well. And while Ro assures me that from context a listener will figure out what I’m talking about if I say hats (“cappelli”) instead of hair (“capelli”), there are some less cute potential landmines.

Penne = kind of pasta. yum, pasta.

Pene = penis

Anno = year

Ano = anus

Cane = dog

Canne = slang term for marijuana.

There’s lot more I could say about Italian, for example, our endless struggles with masculine/feminine/plural articles that feel like they are everywhere, contrasting with pronouns like “I” and “we” and “you” that aren’t usually used at all. But instead I’ll just leave off by reporting that my homework got corrected in several places today after I spent a considerable amount of time describing my short, fat, tri-colored marijuana. It has a cold nose, but is still very sweet.

The post Of penne and pene; or, Why Italian is Hard. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Of penne and pene; or, Why Italian is Hard. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Reunited with our car, that is. It arrived while we were away, and we got custody of it last Friday. Yay!

Unfortunately, of course, it is missing its driver’s side wing mirror. You’d think when they noticed it was messed up in the shipping container, they might have picked up the mirror and chucked it into the car. But it seems not.

Anyway, based on comments I’ve received I’m sure some of you are wondering what driving a massive minivan on Italian streets has been like. To my surprise, it has been totally fine so far. Admittedly I haven’t been out a ton because it has been raining cats and dogs for days and we’ve had movers coming and going, but I’ve driven around town and on the highway and in the Ikea parking lot and so far haven’t had any major issues. Even merging — while somewhat frightening without mirror — is easier than it was with the rental car because a funny thing happens when I step on the gas. It actually accelerates!

I will say I am having one major battle with driving the van, however. And it is getting it in and out of our own damn driveway.

Whoops

The Sienna just barely fits through the gate, so you need to approach it dead center. Then, the driveway is pretty narrow and made more so by a million planters that line one side, so you have to drive far enough down to be past the planters so there is enough room to get in and out. The van’s sliding doors are actually a huge help with this.

Why do these need to be here?!

So far, I haven’t done any damage to the car but there have been some casualties.

Sorry, my dear landlord.

On the agenda: asking our landlord if she can have someone move those damn planters.

The post Reunited and it feels so good first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Reunited and it feels so good appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Well, it has been a little while again! In that time, the following things have happened:

1) We moved into our new home on the 21st

2) We found a car! Right after we gave up on just about all of our parameters (detailed here), we found one that met all of our original specs. We are picking up our Ford Fiesta tomorrow! (Also possibly our Sienna, which has just arrived! Albeit sans wing mirror, ugh.)

3) We spent six days in Naples and Rome with friends to celebrate Thanksgiving and Chris’ birthday. You may have noticed we don’t announce trips before we leave — small concession to security. A follow-up post about this to come!

Chris and his buddy had quite the adventure trying to get to a Roma soccer game (my birthday present to him), thanks to a brief train and taxi strike. More on that later.

4) Our household goods arrived yesterday! Most of them. Seven of nine crates arrived, and it was really impressive to see the movers lifting stuff onto one of the second-floor balconies using a portable elevator they installed. Unfortunately, we are still missing some of our stuff. The most notable of the missing items are: our television, the frames of three bookshelves (but not the shelves themselves), a mattress, the legs to our patio table, half of our couch and the footboard for our guest bed. I have many, many questions about why some of these things would even be separated in the first place. I was very worried because a friend of mine noted that her neighbors didn’t get a couple of crates and they ended up being lost forever, but we just got notice that the two stragglers should arrive tomorrow and we should get them Monday. We won’t be entirely convinced until they are actually here, but it seems like a good sign.

So the last 10 days have basically been a whirlwind around here and we are exhausted, but happy to be in our home at last. And BEYOND HAPPY to be reunited with our bed after months of shitty mattresses. I do need to do a post about the many ways our house would make the perfect setting for an ax-murder movie, but that’ll have to wait for another day. I know you’re all disappointed.

I spent most of today unpacking the million of boxes of kitchen stuff, washing it all and trying to find a place for everything in a kitchen with considerably fewer cabinets than our last.

We had less than 6,000 pounds of items to ship to Italy, but I swear half of it was kitchen things.

The kids and I did take a break to go walk around our new town and try to find some milk* to make cappuccino, and it turns out that — holy cow — we actually *did* pick a house that is walkable to town. Somehow we were so dazzled by the house that I guess we never properly explored enough to realize that a bunch of shops were right down the street (and across the roundabout). I ended up strapping the kids into the double stroller, which hasn’t gotten much use lately since there wasn’t anywhere we could really walk with it in Motta (the town where we were staying in the hotel) because of the lack of sidewalks. I won’t say our new town has perfect sidewalks — they are narrow and end randomly and there are a lot of curbs — but it has some and that is an immediate upgrade!

Anyway, probably about half a mile away ended up being a variety of shops and this giant church in the middle of the downtown (such as it is — this is a small town). Isn’t it gorgeous?

So the trip was basically exactly what I pictured when I imagined us moving to Italy. We popped into a bread shop and picked up a bunch of rolls, we stopped by a vegetable shop to buy some fresh broccoli for dinner and we would have gotten some pastries for dessert if we didn’t forget that everything closes for riposto time. Whoops. Turns out, Chris’ coworker also lives in our town (this is a pretty small town and further from base than most locals want to live, so that’s an odd coincidence) and so Chris was texting me recommendations from the coworker while we were walking.

Walking around did reinforce, however, that we absolutely need Italian lessons. I went into a panino shop so the kids and I could have lunch (our kitchen still looking like it did in the above picture) and ordering a plain hamburger turned out to be a whole hilarious ordeal. The shop had hamburgers listed on the menu, but trying to explain “plain” or “only meat and bread” was definitely confusing. The cashier ended up yelling for a guy she saw walking across the street to come translate, and while he seemed to understand what I was saying and — I thought — told them, after he left they still had a lot of questions. They seemed fairly mystified that we didn’t want prosciutto (bacon, here) on the burger and, I mean, fair point. The kid is weird, what can I say? At that point we turned to Google translate to explain “just bread and cheese” and ultimately this was the finished product.

So close!

Incidentally, I reached out to an Italian tutor today. Let’s hope we can start in January!

*I did not end up getting the milk because I’m an idiot. I walked into a shop that was labeled as selling milk, and when I couldn’t find it I asked. I was all pleased with myself for remembering the Italian word for milk, but then the clerk tried to hand me something from the shelf. Confused, I went “refrigerated?” And he gave me a weird look and said, “No ….” At that point, I fled because apparently I’m still 8 years old at heart. I have no idea whether he was trying to hand me powdered milk or what (Chris suggests formula?) and now I’m pretty sure I’m too embarrassed to ever go into that place again.

The post First days in our new house first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post First days in our new house appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Hey all, it’s been a few days.

I’d say we’ve been super busy, but honestly we’ve mostly been relaxing. And, ok, a little busy (finishing my first new freelance assignment since I got here, woohoo).

Anyway, just a quick recap of the week:

1) Friday night Chris and I got our first date night since we arrived! The base childcare center had a parents’ night out event and stayed open from 6 to 10 p.m.; originally we signed them up to stay just until 9 because we didn’t want them up so late (for some reason?) but quickly realized we wouldn’t be able to do much in that time and extended. You can’t really get dinner here until 7:30 usually (and it looks weird when you are that early as it is, haha) and dinner usually takes a couple hours. So, we went bowling on base beforehand to kill some time. Despite a couple power outages randomly, we had a great time. For some reason, bowling is one of the few games that I can so consistently lose at and still enjoy. I’m not sure whether that says more about bowling, or about my own character. Eeek.

If you are wondering, neither kid got bitten at the daycare this time.

2) Saturday we had vague ideas of doing a day trip somewhere, but we decided we were just tired. We ended up spending some time at Ikea and started kind of hunting around for ideas about furniture for our new house. Turns out we should have brought all our stuff and then some, but we had figured we ought to be paring down our stuff in preparation for having a smaller place. Turns out, not so much. Thanks a lot, House Hunters International!

Pretty good view from Ikea!

3) Sunday we played at the park and then decided to check out our new town, though naturally we didn’t anticipate that everything would be closed on Sunday afternoon. Give us a break, we’ve only been here three weeks and haven’t figure it all out yet! The kids did get to see the outside of our new house though. They were exactly as impressed as you would expect a 2- and 4-year-old to be when presented with the outside of a house to look at.

4) Annnnnnd Monday was Halloween. Italians don’t really do Halloween, but there was trick or treating at the large housing complex where most of the American military personnel (and some civilians) live. Fiona got a little freaked out by the Big Bad Wolf and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, but otherwise we had a great time.

Owen INSISTED he was going to be a ghost. The costume was super creepy and he loved it

Much cuter without the mask

She was a witch but wouldn’t wear the hat

Other than that, we’ve just been rolling along! We’re still hunting for an island car, and later this week we sign contracts for our house. Our absentee ballots arrived, thankfully. And today Owen had his 4-year-old shots, which went amazingly poorly. I decided not to blindside him this time, so he was obsessing all day about it and bargaining and begging to avoid them. Once the time actually came, he had to be restrained for FOUR pokes and screamed at me that he hated me and he hated the doctors and THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER AND I HATE IT.

However, he DID tell me repeatedly on the way home that polio germs were trying to get into him and his body was blasting them (pewwwww pewwww pewwwww), so I think some of the message did sink in though. And now we are done with shots until he’s like 10, supposedly. I’m not sure if that is a bigger relief for him or me.

The post Just a little catch up! first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Just a little catch up! appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So it turns out that what we thought was true love with the vineyard house was just a temporary infatuation.

We have THE HOUSE. We’ve signed papers. Failing any disaster with inspections or something, we’ll move in to the house in a little less than a month.

Telling you right now, pictures don’t even do this house justice.

So, backing up. This house is one I first saw on homes.mil before we even left the United States. I loved it immediately, but figured it was unlikely to still be available by the time we arrived. To my surprise, it actually was. Since our arrival, I’ve been stalking it even more obsessively than before, like a 13-year-old with a crush and access to Facebook. Every time I logged on I was sure it would be gone. When it wasn’t, I was sure it already was gone and they hadn’t bothered to take it off the website. (Possible: there are houses from 2007 on there still). To our great surprise and relief, it was STILL THERE when we compiled our list for housing and we were intending to see it last week with the others. However, the owner’s husband was hospitalized and we found out that morning that we couldn’t see it. I was pretty crushed, at the time (though the vineyard house helped solve that!).

Anyway, so you know we were completely smitten by the vineyard house from the first. But the longer we stayed away, the more my concerns grew about the location. In particular we were worried about internet access (I work from home and need internet) which might be limited to very slow/unreliable options, and about getting Owen to school on base in a few years. I was also wondering whether we’d regret not having a house with neighbors closer by.

This villa, however, had almost everything we liked about the vineyard house (except the vineyard, obviously, and a sea view), minus the concerns. It is located in a neighborhood, with one American neighbor with a kid on one side and the rest mostly Italians.

Neighbors are close but not on top of us

It has an amazingly beautiful yard with flowers and fruit trees, which thankfully (for the plants) a gardener tends so I won’t be able to accidentally kill them. Plus, it is entirely fenced and there is plenty of room for the kids to run around and even a spot that is practically made for a basketball hoop. And did I mention there is an awesome view of Mount Etna?

See the volcano?

The landlord says the oranges will be ready in December, and there are mandarins too!

Even better, it may even be walkable to a grocery store and possibly a restaurant or two because it is right in town. I’m not sure how much we will do that because, as I think I’ve mentioned, there aren’t a lot of sidewalks here and since the roads are so narrow it can be a little nerve-racking walking on them. But I like that it is a possibility!

So, we were already practically sold before we even walked into the house because the grounds were so nice. And then it got better!

On the first floor is a living room, dining room, two bathrooms (curious thing here, often they’ll put two bathrooms right next to each other), a guest room and a kitchen. A main floor kitchen! I’d given up on hoping for that. Just about every room has a door to lead outside, and the kitchen is bright and sunny and large by Sicilian standards. It has a ton of storage space as well.

Not pictured: large pantry unit in the kitchen. We’ll get loaner full-size American appliances through the base. Only tiny complaint is that the dishwasher will have to go in the storage room next door. Minor thing.

Upstairs are four more bedrooms, which is great for us since we can all be on the same level. There are two very nice bathrooms, one of which is actually an ensuite, which we haven’t seen many of. Each of the bedrooms opens up onto at least a small balcony, and the room that Chris and I will probably take opens up onto an ENORMOUS balcony.

They said this balcony is great for watching eruptions!

Five bathrooms in all, and they are all pretty nice!

The basement is enormous and we can even park our car down there (though I’m not sure we’ll bother since the doors don’t open automatically and it doesn’t get too cold or snowy here). More likely, the kids will just be running around like crazy people down there because there is an insane amount of space. Woo!

There is also a wood-fired pizza oven we should learn how to use

We were supposed to go see the vineyard house after seeing this one, but we ultimately decided not to bother because we were so sold. We didn’t even end up asking for much from the landlord because the things we wanted were mostly already done, including screens on many of the windows. Sicilians seem to LOVE having the windows open at all time (and who can blame them, the weather is great) but it seems like we rarely see screens on the windows. Partially as a result of the maids’ insistence of opening the windows whenever they clean our room, we all have a bunch of mosquito bites. I was SURE that there was something I was missing — some kind of Sicilian remedy of keeping mosquitoes out — but when I asked our housing counselor she said no, “mosquitoes are a really big problem.” Glad we’ll have some screens!

The housing counselor also warned us repeatedly to be conscious about our heat and air-conditioning use in this house, lest we run up huge bills because it is so large. She said the last people left because they thought the utility bills were so high, but she insisted that the problem was that they were “using them like an American. You have to adjust because it is Sicily.” She said that we should turn off the heat/AC when we leave, and flip them back on when we get back and “it’ll warm up in like half an hour or 45 minutes.” She also said we shouldn’t be trying to keep it “as warm as American houses always are.” This seemed a little funny, given that Sicilians around here seem to think that it is now winter because it is the end of October, even though it is still about 80 degrees. So many people are bundled up already!

The kids have not yet seen the house because we decided to take them to the base daycare for a few hours so we could look in peace. They both had a bit of a rough morning — Owen threw an epic fit this morning because he didn’t want to go, which we eventually figured out was because last time they tried to make him eat his lunch and he was worried they’d be on him again about “eating disgusting food.” (By “disgusting,” he means noodles. Have we talked about how a few months before we moved here he randomly decided he doesn’t eat noodles?). We finally got him to pull it together by promising to tell the teachers that he didn’t have to eat anything at all. Fiona, on the other hand, cried as usual at drop off but we assumed she’d stop. Instead, we got a call an hour later when we’d just finished walking the grounds of the house, telling us she was still sobbing and asking for suggestions. We couldn’t exactly rush back given that we were like 35 minutes away, and the landlord had left her husband’s bedside to show us the house. Apparently they got her calmed down without Owen’s assistance (our suggestion), but then when we were almost back home we got the call that a kid had bitten her and she was upset again. She was calm by the time we got back, but man — the kid really did take a chunk out of her back. Poor thing!

But really, I’m sure they’ll get over their trauma when they find out we got them a house where they can pick their own oranges!

This picture again, because PRETTY.

The post It’s love — for real this time. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post It’s love — for real this time. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Words used to describe driving in Sicily, according to the U.S. government:

“there may seem to be no logic to traffic patterns”

“seemingly erratic driving nature of Sicilian traffic”

“Although some drivers may take what seem like unnecessary and dangerous chances to gain only a few feet of road space …”

This should be fun.

The post Driving in Italy first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Driving in Italy appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.