St. John Tues 2/22/12 and Wed 2/23/12

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We had brought a couple of bananas from home and ate them for breakfast as we left the motel before the meal was available. We read until our flight was called and then we were on our way. Our first stop was Charlotte, NC. Dave's knee has been a bit stiff - too much work on gathering wood for next year - somehow he wrenched his knee, but even though it is getting better day by day, he still feels it if he tries to walk too fast - so, we hitched a ride on one of the people carts in Charlotte to get to our next terminal. We felt quite special. I asked the woman driver if she had ever driven any celebrities and she said she had: Scorza? - a baseball player and Oprah's boyfriend among others. She delivered us to our gate and we had only a short time before our flight was called. This time we landed in St. Thomas around 4:00 (3 PM Mystic time). We had to wait quite a while for our luggage, but then caught a cab to Red Hook to catch the ferry to St. John. We got on the 6:00 ferry and arrived in St. John about a half hour later. We took a cab to the motel (walkable distance, but uphill in the heat dragging suitcases didn't sound like fun). We got settled into our room and then walked down to town for dinner. We had a granola bar and some chocolate for lunch - you know they don't feed you on the planes anymore so we had come prepared with snacks. We found a place on the water called High Tide. The dinner was good, but there were some guys at the bar who were very loud! We walked back to the motel to read and finally to sleep. We didn't sleep too well - lumpy bed and loud motorcycles going by in the night. We had breakfast at the motel and then went for a little walk as the car rental office was not open yet. We walked back there at 9 only to discover that our car hadn't been turned in yet. They said to call at 10:30. We called then and it still wasn't in - call back at 11:30. You have to get used to "island time" - everything runs a bit slower here. At 11:30, he said the car had come in, but there was a problem and it had to go to the mechanic so he would give us a truck for a few days to get us on our way. The truck turned out to be a taxi truck (remember Lana?). We had one of those the last time we were here. He said to call tomorrow and he would see about switching it out. We loaded the truck and got on our way with Dave driving (I don't drive on the wrong side of the road!). It is 14 miles across the island on switchback roads with the speed limit of 20 mph. The first 13 miles are on paved roads and the last one on very rocky dirt roads. We were happy to have the truck - I may call and ask to keep it! We arrived at VIERS (Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station), which will be our home for the next month. We met the director, Randy, and he introduced us to the other volunteers. It will take me awhile to get all of their names, but there are quite a few of them from a variety of places - Michigan, New Hampshire, Martha's Vineyard, New York City. I will sort them out by the end of the month. We are staying in a dorm cabin (just us, but no private bathroom) for a week before we get into a volunteer cabin. One of the leaders of a school group which is here now is using the cabin we will be using later on. The kids are leaving tomorrow, but he is staying an extra week. As far as I can tell, the volunteers do a variety of jobs - cooking, cleaning, making beds, etc. Randy told us to take today and tomorrow off to settle in and get used to the area. We saw two mongeese (mongooses?) on our way to camp and two wild donkeys and a deer in camp. Randy tried to drive the donkeys off with an umbrella - they didn't look too scared! After moving into our room, we took a walk down to the beach. The water was lovely! We chatted with some of the volunteers and had a wonderful swim. When we got back to camp we showered and then tried to get on the blog until dinner. We had salad, fish, corn, rice and cake for dessert. Apparently, the breakfast crew is in charge of making dessert each day. I will have to learn to say no or will come back home weighing 400 pounds! The kids in camp right now are a high school group from Michigan. They eat the first shift and the volunteers eat 10 or 15 minutes later. We chatted with the volunteers for a while until bedtime.

St. John Mon. 2/20/12

Well, we finished the last of the packing, dropped off some mail with Amy, and stopped at brother Ed's to drop off something (and to wish Betty a Happy Birthday) and then drove to the the Holiday Inn Express. We will stay overnight because we have an early flight and also because if you stay the night with them, you get an awesome deal on parking! We took their shuttle to Bertucci's for dinner. We had a lovely dinner and then back to the motel for a good night's sleep.

Trying pictures

I will try to upload a picture.

Nathaniel trying out his new magnifying glass.

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Offline post

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Test Post

Test Post

Here is a picture taken with the rear facing camera on the iPad 2



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End of Italy trip

I had a hard time finding free WiFi at our last hotels in Italy and also at the airport, so these last postings were done from home.

Wednesday November 2, 2011

Today after breakfast, we took the train to Herculaneum (see photos). We had gorgeous weather and the site was fantastic as always. We saw some lovely frescoes and mosaic tiles. The nice thing about this site is that it is much smaller than Pompeii so it is “doable” in a shorter time. When we returned to Sorrento, we ate at a restaurant on the square. Everything was delicious. The “girls” are going out again at 4 to do a bit of last minute shopping. We will have our farewell dinner at 6:45 tonight. Dinner last night was very good. We had three different types of pasta and Manuela gave us the recipes for them. It should be exciting to try them at home. Tomorrow will be a travel day. We will go by bus to Rome, stopping along the way for a side trip to Monte Cassino. We will be home Friday evening.

Thursday November 3, 2011

We got on the bus after breakfast and headed toward Rome. We stopped to see the Abbey at Monte Cassino. It was heavily damaged in World War II. It was rebuilt, but the interior is done in different colored marble and not to my taste. When we arrived in Rome, our driver took us on a sightseeing hour of the city by bus. We drove by the coliseum, the forum, the Victor Emmanuel monument (nicknamed the wedding cake), the Republican garden (where Julius Caesar was killed and where many cats of Rome reside – fed by little old ladies of the neighborhood), the Baths, and the Circus Maximus. Our hotel was out of the city center and was a huge surprise. It was very modern and huge! We had a sitting room and a bedroom as well as a huge bathroom. There was a lot of color everywhere. For example, the bathroom was all red tile, the dresser was bright yellow and there was a Jackson Pollack poster on the wall. John, Lana, and Kelly took a taxi to Trevi Fountain before our final dinner. They each tossed a coin to ensure a return trip to Rome.

Friday November 4, 2011

We got up early this morning and had a quick breakfast before our taxi ride to the airport. We spent our last few Euros on bottled water for the flight. We were a little late getting off the ground, but the pilot made up for it in flight. I sat next to a man who was in Naval Aeronautics. He had just spent the last month in Sicily at a NATO base there and was on his way home to Virginia Beach. The man next to him was an Albanian Orthodox priest who was moving his whole family to Boston to a church there. At one point, I was standing near the restroom and noticed a section of the plane that was curtained off – it was the cabin crew resting. A woman came up the aisle and tripped on something and fell into the curtain and onto a couple of the crew. She was very embarrassed and we had a good laugh, as it was so unexpected! We arrived in Boston, went through passport control and customs and then caught the bus to Providence (fortunately, Susanne spotted it – otherwise we could have had a long wait). The bad thing was that we were in Friday night rush hour traffic so it took a lot longer than usual to get to Providence. It was nice to get home and we look forward to seeing everyone soon.

Thoughts about the trip: Pinocchio everywhere, umbrella pines, cedar trees, garlic, olive oil, red wine, homemade fresh pasta, smoke in Sorrento from the burning of olive branches that had been pruned, motor scooters, Smart cars, fresh mozzarella, huge lemons and tomatoes, giant Nutella, piccolo mini, Andiamo y'all. We had a nice time . . . I wonder where we will go next?

November 1, 2011

Happy 11/1/11! Dave didn’t feel well last night so he decided to stay in bed for a while and skip the trip to Capri. The rest of us took the elevator out of San Antonio Square down to the port. We bought tickets on the fast ferry to Capri (about a 45 minute ride). Our first mission was to go to the Blue Grotto, as Lana and I are the only ones to have seen it before. We took a small boat (the Olga) out and then had to wait a bit, as there were boatloads of Japanese tourists ahead of us. Finally, we were able to get into a rowboat and into the grotto. It was a lovely blue, but maybe not as blue as the last time we were here because the sun was behind light clouds today. The blueness is determined by the refraction of the light coming into the grotto. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures inside the grotto as my camera was set on no flash and it took me most of the time in the grotto to figure out how to change it as it was quite dark. The good news is that Kelly and John will share their pictures and we do have some from our last trip. When we got back to port, we took the funicular up to the town of Capri. We did a little window-shopping, but noticed that many of the shops and hotels had closed for the season (see photo). We strolled around and found a garden where we could overlook the sea and some 500-foot tall rocks jutting up near the shore of the island (see photo). One of them is called the rock of love. We ate in the main square - just a small snack as we are having a pasta buffet at the hotel tonight. We took a bus up to Anacapri. The bus ride was totally awesome! We had to stand and we could look down forever into the sea – a little disconcerting, but quite a thrill! We walked around in the small hill town of Anacapri enjoying the architecture and flowers. I took a picture of a flight of stairs decorated with lovely ceramic tiles (see photo). We then eventually reversed our steps – bus and then funicular down to the port. We got back to Sorrento a little after 4 to find that Dave was feeling much better. I am going to put my feet up for a few minutes before it is time for dinner.