The Adventure Begins in Earnest  7/19

Ran errands all morning, sold my car to Matthew, got the last boxes ready to ship, the last few things into suitcases. Extra special thanks to Kay and Alison Standifer, who took up ALL my slack and mailed the last packages and letters I needed to get out, and took charge of the shipping of all our boxes. And at 4:00 pm EDT, we arrived at the Aer Lingus ticket counter to show our passports, drop off our bags, and get through security, which was surprisingly fast. As I write, we’re 3 hours into the 6 hour flight to Dublin. The girls have been able to find things on the tv to watch, Aurora has her paper dolls, courtesy of Alison and Kay (again! Saviors!), Elise has the Nook, I have the computer and the blog to keep me occupied.

I still can’t really believe we’re on our way. Who picks up their whole life and just takes off for a year to Italy? I know it’s going to seem mostly like just an extended vacation for the first month or so. But once the girls start school and I start work in earnest on my grammar book and research, it may start to sink in that we live there now. The movers came and took my stuff away, but they did that two years ago, and a few weeks later I was back in Milton with all the same stuff, just at a different address. This time, not so much. This time the universe will have changed a lot. It hasn’t really sunk in that it’s going to be real for a whole year. Elise is becoming moderately bored with my occasional outburst of “Oh my God! We’re going to ITALY!!!”

Fresh Tuna and Arugula Pizza: Your Argument is Invalid. 7/20

Minimal sleep on the flight to Dublin. Terrible sleep on the flight to Naples. The cabbie from the airport was willing to be chatty and to correct my Italian (though I was interested to note he corrected some things that I knew were correct for Tuscany, just not for Naples :) ). Our room wasn’t ready when we got here – frankly, I hadn’t expected to get out of the airport as quickly as we did! Customs consisted of “Passports please. Anything to declare? No? Thank you. Next.” As I think of it, I’ve only ever had to go through customs in any meaningful way going into the US. And going through security in Dublin was SO much more pleasant an experience. You get to stay fully dressed! Wearing jewelry! No being naked on machines! Who’s the first world country again?

Once the room was ready (and we figured out how to use the electrical system, which involved putting the key card into a special slot to turn all the lights, tv and a/c on), we decided to take an hour nap before going up to the roof deck seawater pool. 3.5 hours later… But we all felt far more civilized for it. Aurora, of course, found a friend immediately. Marie is 9, French, and speaks about as much Italian as Aurora. Papa was nearby and was able to translate some, but mostly we limped around in bits and bobs of French, Italian and English. Turns out, however, that for small children, when playing is at stake, there is no such thing as an insurmountable language barrier. They played tag and swimming races and had a groovy time. 

Approached the Pit of Despair when I realized that none of my European adapters would work for my computer 3-prong plug. How will we live? But the concierge had an adapter that worked, and he said the glorious magic words: "No charge." Hooray! Unglorious unmagic words: wifi is free in 30 minute chunks and in the lobby only, and they frown on your asking for more than 3 or 4 chunks a day. Since I wasn't about to pay the 12E a day to have it in the room, I managed to do a lot of writing but not a lot of posting. Thus the bundles of posts as we go.

We went to a pizza place (what? A PIZZA place in Naples? :) ) where the girls got ordinary margheritas and I saw "tonnarella": fresh tuna and arugula pizza. This would not have been my first thought for a pizza combo. So I had to have it. We carried it out and ate on the balcony on the 10^th floor overlooking the bay. Gorgeous. And tonnarella is amazing. White pizza, no tomato sauce, just yummy. Came back in, wrote this, now bed. Once I figure out how to embed pictures there will be many. And starting tomorrow: European dates. You have been warned.