Shaky Solstice Day

Mike and I got up early and headed down to the Aristide for coffee and a pastry with wifi.  This is necessary because we have not been good at finding wifi with our apartments, just our restaurants. :)  This morning we are trying to decide if we are headed to Verona tomorrow or the Amalfi Coast and we're looking at train tickets and rooms.

We left the kids sleeping and when we returned, we spent the morning doing laundry and catching up on the blog.  We decided to head to the beach in Vernazza on the train.  We looked at the schedule and the time and knew we needed to get going.  Helen went in to change into her swimsuit and the building started shaking!  I turned to Meghan and said, "EARTHQUAKE" and we stood in the hallway hugging.  Mike said something like, "Don't you think that's just a train en transito?"

When it stopped, townspeople poured out of the their homes yelling and laughing with each other.  Mike had to admit it was an earthquake and Helen came out in her swimsuit and had missed the whole thing.

We set off and Mike and Helen went swimming and Meghan and I sat at a wifi spot and looked for places to stay in Amalfi.  We found a couple that were ridiculous in cost for 2 rooms(because they don't do family rooms, just 2 people per room if the kids need their own bed).  I finally started looking at TripAdvisor for apartments and sent off an email to a company who had a lot of apartments on coast crossing my fingers.

That evening, we watched the sun set into the mountain from "our" bench at the end of our walk.  There was a cloud next to the spot where the sun went down.  Meghan likened the sun reflecting up on the cloud to a piece of ash still smouldering.  Perfect!

We talked to a hostal in Amalfi who had a room for us and told us to come through Salerno and call when we got there.  I shot off an email to the apartment lady and told her we'd like an apartment but would be in transit without a phone for most of tomorrow and we'd call to check in.

Put the last load of laundry out and tumbled into bed. 

Tomorrow is a long travel day and just thinking about it exhausts me.  I wish I didn't stress out on travel days as much as I do.  I didn't do it as much in South America.  I think because as we traveled, my grasp of the language improved expotentially, I don't feel that way here because we don't seem to be learning any of the language and it is a little more difficult to communicate.