Our Adventure Day

This morning I woke up and was sad that we are leaving tomorrow. I was excited though because today we were going to Grotta del Vento (a cave in the Italian Alps)! I went down to breakfast and said to my dad, "I'm sad we're leaving tomorrow." He said, "We're not leaving tomorrow! We're leaving the day after tomorrow!" Yay!

We made our way to the train station. Dad had already bought the tickets so we didn't need to stop to buy them which is good because we were running late for the train. We ran all the way to the station, all the way to the platform, and just made it to the train in time.

On the train we played some cards. My dad has a book of card games and we've been learning a lot of new games. This particular time we played Ranter Go Round, which just call Change.

We got to our stop and got off. We went to the ticket office and asked how to get to the bus stop for the caves. She told us we would have to walk 1.3 km to the town next door. So we did. There was a really cool bridge on the walk and lots of flowers along the side of the road, but there was no sidewalk! We were walking on the road for cars!

This picture was taken on the bridge I mentioned and that was the only part of our walk that had a sidewalk.  Meanwhile, as you might also see if you look carefully, Arya had a meltdown! Dad had to carry her for awhile, but she calmed down eventually. :-)

We finally got to the bus stop. There was only one place for us to buy tickets, but of course right as we got there the man working at the store left...for three hours! We looked around the town a lot, but there were no other places to buy them. We thought we would tell the bus driver the store was closed so we couldn't get a ticket and that we'd pay him directly. While we waited for the bus, we went to a food truck where we got some tasty rotisserie chicken (by the way, we haven't seen much chicken in Italy, so we were super excited). It was delicious! The bus arrived and we told the driver about our problem with the tickets and he said (in Italian) "That's ok, you don't have to pay me." What a nice guy!

The bus ride to the cave was very windy. Mom, Arya, and I got a bit carsick which was a bummer. Our bus driver had to honk a ridiculously long horn every time we went around a blind turn because it was a one lane road, so that got kind of annoying. We did make it to the top though and the view was pretty awesome. We saw a river below and a forest around us. It's weird to think some people live up there in tiny towns along the mountain side. For me, it's hard to imagine having to drive up and down that windy road every day. We got to the town and asked the bus driver how to get to the caves and he said (again, in Italian) "Oh...I will just drive you there." We were excited! On the way there, we were glad we didn't walk because it was a long way up another windy road and it had started raining!

We finally got to the caves and I was happy to get out of the bus. It took me awhile to feel not sick any more. After buying our tickets for the one hour tour, we went inside. The guide spoke in Italian, but we had headsets that translated it to English. Here are a few pictures of the caves:

The caves were really cool and I mean that in two ways. One, it was cold in there. The temperature is normally 10.7 degrees celsius, so naturally everyone was freezing except Dad. Two, the cave looked pretty cool. There were many stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. I wondered what it would feel like to put your hand on one of them. To me, it looked like wax that could scrape off with your fingernail like a candle. We loved the caves so we think we may come back for the 2 or 3 hour tour.

After finishing our tour we went to the shop where Arya and I both got necklaces, I got a tree made of geodes, and we all got some ice cream. We thought there was supposed to be a bus leaving from the caves back to the train station, so we asked the people at the desk. They told us the bus doesn't come here, but only stops at the station our bus driver had driven us up from! So we ended up walking down that same windy road we had come up. A mile walk later, we reached the town of Fornovolasco, where the bus would pick us up. We waited an hour here and had a chance to look around. It was cool to see the bridges and waterfalls that are part of this town. We even took a little hike to see another waterfall.

editor's note from Dad: This Alpine town was amazing. It was exactly the kind of place we wanted to find this year. Completely off the beaten path and just breathtaking. It felt like a village from a  Disney movie. Back to Ashley...

The bus arrived and it turned out to be the same very kind driver we had on the way up! My dad asked him (in Italian) if this bus went to the train station as we thought it should. He said, "No, but I will take you there!" So he did! No more long walk to that nearby town like we had on the way up.

On the train we wrote postcards to friends. We've just finished a great tasting pizza while watching one of our family's favorite shows (The Amazing Race) on Amazon Prime.

This day turned out much better than I thought it would!

The Wall

Lucca has a very big wall around it. It is about 3 miles around. The wall is kind of like a high, really fat road and sometimes you can come upon some little fields of grass on the sides that sometimes have swings.You can get off and on very easily and there’s even a restaurant on the wall! In the picture, my mom and I are walking on top of the wall. Can you believe it's that big?!

Today we rode our bikes all the way around the wall. My bike was kind of small and Ashley’s was a little big for her. There aren’t too many hills so we didn’t have to pedal really hard going up. Lots of people walk and ride their bikes on the wall, but it’s not too crowded so it’s easy to get around.

When I come back I want to ride and walk on the wall more often. It’s fun to just be outside and be on the wall and just have a good time.

Our new home

Our wish list for the apartment we want to stay in here in Lucca sounded like one straight out of House Hunters International:

• A mix of old traditional, Italian style, but with enough modernity that we would be relatively comfortable.
• A place with a room with two beds for the kids, one for us, and if we were lucky, some provisions for guests to stay as well.
• Two bathrooms preferable, but one would do fine.
• Enough space to for each to have their own space when needed, but still small enough that we feel close.
• Within the walls of Lucca.
• The girls have to love it.
• On a budget of less than €1200 a month.

Our expectation as we went out to look at properties today was that we, like families on HHI, would be playing the settling game at some point. Based on the places we'd been finding on our online research, we were figuring we would have to give up on some parts of that list. We'd for sure be saying any number of the following at some point during the day. "It's great, but it hasn't been updated since 1327." "Maybe a 15 minute, uphill walk to the city would be lots of fun just to buy groceries." "Well girls, you wouldn't mind sharing a single bed for a year...would you?" "€2750 per month is close enough, right?"

Courtesy of what I can only call some divine intervention, the first flat we visited today was the whole package. That picture above? That's our place. No joke. That huge gate is part of the original  Medieval wall (not the current/famous Renaissance wall). Our room connects with and is part of the right hand tower of that picture. We're on the top floor (the 4 floor stair case to our door being the only slight drawback, but a little exercise is a good thing!) in a just renovated apartment, we will be the first new tenants. It has an upstairs (the stairs curve along the interior of the stone tower) loft-like bedroom with two beds for the kids (Arya is excited by the sky light above her bed that will allow her to see the stars at night). It has 2 full bathrooms downstairs plus a half bath connected to the kids' room upstairs. A generous, but not obnoxious living space with a brand new (as is everything) pull-out couch for visitors. A perfect blending of Medieval architecture (complete with wooden beam roof) and modern bonuses (dishwasher, AC(!), and washer and dryer(!!!!)). All right within our budget. Oh, and the kids were begging us to get it!

I'm still unable to quite understand how this treasure fell into our laps. It just became available as it was just completed. One of the realtors Stacey had spoken to about renting for our visit this week remembered our story and let her know he thought he had the perfect place for us and he was right. We sign our contract on Monday!

With this step out of the way, the adventure is getting more and more real which for me is extremely exciting. A huge life shift like this can have so many things go wrong (see Stacey's last post about Plan B!), having this major thing go so well has really confirmed in me that this is not only a good choice, but it is truly what I feel we were meant to do. I can't wait to get back in September.

Now...who's going to be the first to come break in our sofa bed?!

Off we go...sort of

I woke up slowly this morning. It was a restless night at my in-law's house, filled with frequent visits from my nine year old who suffers from nighttime fears. She is afraid of basically every sound she hears, which makes sense considering that this is only one of 13 places we've made home since June 12th when we moved out of our family home of 10 years in Campbell, CA. Once I pried my eyes open, I rolled over and looked at Dave, my husband of 13 years. He whispered to me, "We're flying to Italy today."

For months now, we've been moving towards August 5th as the day we make the big move! The flight is in less than 4 hours. This has always been the day that the adventure begins! Well until we realized it couldn't be... that's right VISAS! Since deciding on this family sabbatical in January, we have made quick work of arranging all the details of selling a house, finishing school, updating passports, setting up a living trust, seeing the doctor, dentist, the list goes on and on and on. But somehow, we missed the memo that in order to get an italian visa, it would take months just to get an appointment at the italian consulate. The soonest available appointment? August 20th. Only 15 days after we booked our tickets to leave. Well, we never thought the adventure would go without a hiccup, but that was a pretty big miss!

So now we are on plan B (stay updated on plan C, D, and so on...)

Plan B: Fly to Italy as scheduled on Aug 5. Stay as planned in our 8 day VRBO. Secure a long term rental in Lucca with which we can show proof of to the consulate in San Francisco. Fly back to SF on Aug 15, meet with the Italian Consulate in SF on the 20th and then wait for visa approval, for an indeterminate amount of time. Since we still have no housing in the bay area, and since we're homeschooling our 2 sweet girls this year, why not make the indeterminate amount of time educational? So on Aug 21st, we're flying to the east coast and spending 3 weeks exploring Virginia, DC, Pennsylvania, & Massachusetts. Ashley is in fifth grade this year, so we plan on tackling a good portion of her social studies curriculum on this trip. Colonial Day? We're going to Colonial Williamsburg! Declaration of Independence? We're going to the National Archives. How does a bill become a law? Our Capitol tour is Aug. 27th!

So when do we actually make the big move? Well the new date is September 12th. At least according to plan B...