Dolceacqua

 Italia! What a change to come here from Scandinavia! HOT out, but oh, the food!

I'm behind on my blogging! Levi took a week off of work, so we have been traveling all over. We said goodbye to Norway and flew to Nice, France. There we rented a van and drove about an hour to a tiny medieval town in Italy called Dolceacqua. What a gem!

Monet himself actually came to Dolceacqua and painted a picture of this bridge.

Andrew and Christina traveled with us to Dolceacqua, and we also met up with Andrew's sister Katie and her husband and three children. They live in Bahrain (they are military), and got a free military flight to Naples. They have been traveling around Italy and are spending the tail end of their trip with us.

The kids have had a blast together! When they're together we hardly ever hear the chorus of: "I'm tired; I don't want to walk; I'm hungry; I'm thirsty!" They are adventuring together.

Andrew's cousin and her boyfriend drove over from France and joined us for a day.

The kids found all these hats in our house and put on multiple fashion shows for us. Luca called his hat "the sorting hat" haha.

In front of our house. Olivia, Amelie, Quintana, Luca, and Levi

The Airbnb house we stayed in was incredible! It was so authentic. There were three suites, so each family got a bedroom, a bathroom, and a sitting room with a sofa bed for the kids. There was this adorable playroom, too, that the kids practically lived in. But the real showstopper was the roof terrace, complete with its own kitchen! Every night we would put the kids to bed and spend hours on the roof talking, eating, and relaxing.

In front of our house. The kids were obsessed with the little fountain they're standing in front of.

The play room

The inside kitchen. Adorable!

View from the roof

The outside kitchen is in that little cave

Grown ups relaxing as the sun goes down.

We had some great food in town. I had to keep reminding myself that we will be in Italy for the whole month, so I do not need to eat everything in the first three days! But YUM!

Levi played soccer with some kids while we waited for our restaurant to open.

Hysterical!

Where Quintana ate almost my entire plate of Truffle Penne

The boys did two canyoning trips during our Dolceacqua stay. One was very similar to the ones they have done before; the other was called a Via Ferrata, where they rock-climbed up the cliffs using iron rungs and cables in the rock.

While the boys tried to avoid death, the girls hit the beach! We swam in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, and enjoyed the Italian Riviera. The beach was not very sandy; it was mostly soft pebbles. But the sun was hot and the water cold and we enjoyed it way too much. I say way too much because all the adults got sunburned!! 

I didn't have my phone or camera, and I'm super bummed this is the only picture I have of such a wonderful day.

This is Katie's picture and Katie's kids but it is such a lovely picture that I just had to share!

The kids looked for sea glass and pieces of sea-smoothed tiles for hours, and then they sold their rocks to people on the beach. They actually made about €1.50! They swam and made sand castles and climbed around the large rocks and enjoyed each other's company. We were there for four hours and they still were not ready to leave!

I forgot to add pictures of the cathedral in town, but I'm having trouble putting them in the middle of the post, so I'm just going to throw them here, haha. The bells rang every hour, which I kind of loved, but others in our party got woken up very early by them, lol.

The bell tower, as viewed from our house. The bell tower dates back to the 1800s. The church itself was built in the 1600s.

A few more medieval Italy and France pictures to post later! And the Rome! Must catch up, aaah!