We made it home to Regina at 10:00 am, and arrived to weather much cooler than we had experienced for the past two weeks.  It is too bad we couldn't have 'shared' some of the 30+ weather we experienced in both France and Italy! :-)
If you haven't seen enough photos already, and would like too see more photos, click here. I am not sure if this is all the photos, but it is probably more than you need/want to see :-).
 

From Naples we flew to Frankfurt, Germany. We had an hour and a half layover, and even though we had been served lunch on the plane, we knew we couldn't leave Germany (even if it was just an airport in Germany) without having some of their food. We thought it would be neat to have eaten a frankfurter in Frankfurt! :-) In the end we went with a bratwurst sausage, and it was excellent! I have a feeling that I might have gained some weight if we had stayed any longer in Germany. Even though it was just the airport, the food smells and food sights left your mouth watering!

Then we boarded the plane for our 8.5 hour trip to Toronto. The 8.5 changed to about 9.5 hours, as we could not take off from Frankfurt due to weather. All we could see was that it was raining.

Finally, we were in the air and on our way to Toronto. Unfortunately the delay took too long, and by the time we got our luggage and cleared customs in Toronto, it was too late to board the flight to Regina. Air Canada had rebooked us for 8:35 the next morning. Off we went to a hotel for another night.

We left Naples at 1:35 in the afternoon, and by the time we got to Toronto, it was about 14 hours later. I don't really sleep in planes and hadn't slept much my last night in Italy, so when I finally fell into bed in the hotel about 11:30 p.m. Toronto time, I fell asleep very quickly. I knew we had to be up about 6:00 a.m. this morning, so I figured I would be able to get a 'decent' night's sleep. I guess my body thought otherwise though, and it must still be on Naples' time, as I have been awake since 1:30. That would be 7:30 in the morning in Italy. I guess I won't have to worry about being late for our flight to Regina this morning. All I do know is that it is going to be great to be home (hopefully at about 10:00 am Regina time), and I will be ready for a nap shortly after! :-)

The mad dash to try and get our luggage, get through customs and board the flight to Regina. Unfortunately it didn't work!

 

The last two weeks have flown by, and I truly can't believe all that we have seen and done. It has been a truly memorable holiday, but I am also glad to be heading home. All that is left to do now is pack up and head to the airport to begin the trek home. We returned to Naples yesterday and fly out in a few hours. We should be landing in Regina about 11:00 p.m. tonight :-).

 

The day all 60+ of us travelled to Italy has arrived - The Wedding Day! Words cannot tell you how absolutely beautiful this wedding was, so I will just post a few photos to try and show you.

And last, but definitely not least, here is a picture of my beautiful granddaughter and 3 very stunning young ladies - my nieces! :-)

 

We were once again treated royally by the future bride and groom with a boat trip out to the island of Capri for the day. It was a short ride down the mountain and then about an hour boat ride to the island. I got smart and took some gravol for my motion sickness, and this really helped.l

This is my niece and nephew. They went to Hawrylak School when they were younger. They are both in university right now.

We spent the day just touring the island and relaxing. Some people went swimming, but there really was no beach - just large rocks to sit/lay on.

Then it was time to get back on the boat and return to Ravello. We did tour around the island on the boat first, and then we headed to shore. It was a great day, but everyone was quite tired. That didn't stop the younger crowd from heading to the Square to party a bit before calling it a night! :-)

 

On Saturday night, my nephew and his fiancé treated us all to a pizza party at the local pizzeria! Now I know what people mean when they say you have to eat Italian pizza! We had the best pizza I have ever eaten in my entire life, so good that we went back the next night!

This is my nephew and his bride-to-be thanking everyone for coming.

 

The next morning my husband and I decided to go for a walk. We decided to walk down to a neighbouring villa that had a beach. It wasn't overly far away, but remember this is up in the mountains and the weather, even early morning, is mid 30s. Here is a picture of the pathway down to the villa of Minoli.

Every so often, you get a bit of a flat spot, but for the most part it is stairs, and not all uniform, nice even stairs like we have.

We took just under an hour to get down, but we also stopped a lot to take pictures, as there were many spots where the view was breath-taking! The walk back-up was about an hour and 20 minutes, and it was much harder! There were many times when we wondered why we had decided to do this, but by then it was too late. It was kind of neat though, as all along the stairs were doors to houses that were built into the mountain. It was amazing to see how many people lived along that path, and more amazing to realize that they walked those stairs every day and probably more than once!!!



One of my nieces did the walk on another day, and she used a step-counter app on her phone. It said the round trip was over 7000 steps - not ALL stairs, but the majority of them were.

We did take off our shoes and walk in the Mediterranean Sea when we got down. We took pictures of our feet to prove we went all the way to the bottom! Journey was off kayaking with the younger crowd that morning, so she hadn't come with us.

 

We spent most of our first day (and lots of the other days,as well) by the pool.

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We did leave the pool long enough to go to the Ravello Festival Concert and then out to dinner that evening. That evening the Belfast Youth Orchestra was playing. Symphony is not really my thing, but you couldn't help enjoy yourself with scenery like this!

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I have been kind of quiet for the past few days, but that is for a couple of reasons. The day after we climbed Mount Vesuvius, we headed off to the wedding location, Ravello. Ravello is a small town up in the mountains along the Amolfi Coast of Italy. We went by taxi, and I would love to tell you how beautiful it was, but I can't. Yes, it is beautiful, but seeing as I had to have my eyes closed, I didn't actually see it. My motion- sickness kicked in again :-(.



Ravello is an absolutely wonderful place to visit. It is a quaint little old town set in one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is very clean and has quite a few little shops to browse through. It is definitely not very big. You can walk it in about 1/2 an hour and see everything.      



There is a large gathering spot in the center that everyone refers to as the 'Square.' The 'Square' is busy pretty much all the time with people visiting, kids playing and lots of eating, drinking and partying going on.



We stayed in the same hotel as pretty much everyone else who was there for my nephew's wedding. It was a lovely place to stay with exceptional service - all except for the wifi, that is. The only place where you were sure to get wifi was in the lobby, and even there it was running pretty slow. That is one reason why I didn't post for a few days. The other reason is that we were pretty busy with our family and friends.

This is our little courtyard off of our hotel room.

This is a view from further back showing the courtyards off the other rooms as well.

 

I just had to include this little video. It doesn't show much, but it is the sound I wanted to have. We were pretty tired after our big climb to the top, so there was no talking on the way down, only the sound of our feet as we walked on the lava rock path.