Adventuriety
We spent the night in Segovia and drove back towards Madrid the next day to see El Clasico (more on that in the next blog). Since Segovia is only a short distance from Madrid, Scott had planned a route on the back roads that would allow for a long hike along the trails of Peñalara National Park. We left Segovia without breakfast (or coffee), stopping at a tiny logging...
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Adventuriety
We spent two restful weeks recovering from our frantic Italian pace and learning the rhythms of Toledo. The call of “Lotteria!” became part of the normal sounds of the day and the Italian (ironically) owner of the coffee shop around the corner tried to teach me a few Spanish words during my daily visits for his amazing coffee creations. There were many times that I wandered lost without a...
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Adventuriety
The kids are enrolled in an online school and part of the curriculum is P.E. which I am in charge of (along with History and English). We have been able to stay very active with a lot of hiking and walking and an occasional swim or bike ride but lately the kids have added their own twist to our walks, parkour. Parkour is a discipline developed in...
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Adventuriety
Toledo is an old and beautiful city. It is known as the “city of the three cultures” for it’s history of Muslim, Jewish and Christian peaceful cohabitation for centuries. There are churches, palaces, castles, fortresses, mosques and synagogues behind the medieval walls that surround the old town on the hill. Toledo, a World Heritage Site, is like an open-air museum, you don’t even need to venture inside the plethora of historically significant structures...
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Adventuriety
Our last day in Sorrento (and Italy) was spent visiting Mt. Vesuvius and I say visit because I don’t know what else to say. We had considered hiking Vesuvius on a whim after we finished our Pompeii tour, since there were a few hours of daylight left and we were close, as evidenced by all of the Vesuvius Tours advertised at the train station in...
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Adventuriety / Inspirietry
Today was definitely a day for the books. It was like we fell down the rabbit hole early in the morning and didn’t emerge all day long until after a late dinner. We took a tour of Pompeii our first full day in Sorrento and our tour guide recommended the Path of the Gods or Sentiero degli Dei along the Amalfi Coast. Scott did a...
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Adventuriety
We went to Capri to visit the Blue Grotto. Capri is a twenty five minute ferry ride from Sorrento, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and has been a resort town since the Roman Republic. There is evidence that the island has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, that’s 10,200 B.C. folks, and that is a long time ago and makes the Roman Empire seem like...
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Adventuriety / Inspirietry
We visited Pompeii today. I am learning a lot lately about all kinds of things, one of them being history, and the other is that sometimes a good tour guide makes all of the difference. When we planned our trip to Italy part of the draw was the historical smorgasbord. The kids are both studying World History, which I seemed to have missed in school,...
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Adventuriety
I speak no Italian and I can understand a little Spanish, so with this knowledge I would guess that Cinque Terre has something to do with the number five and land, but after spending three days hiking the trails in Cinque Terre, I am convinced that it actually translates to “Land of One Million Steps.” In reality, Cinque Terre translates to “Five Lands” because there are five...
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Adventuriety
When we told the kids we were going to spend a couple of weeks in Italy, Ashley immediately asked if we would see the Tower of Pisa. Since it was on the way to Cinque Terre we stopped for one night in Pisa and while we completely underappreciated the city, we enjoyed the tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa or Tower of Pisa is the...
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