July 9: Ravenna, Italy
Our last stop in Italy was Ravenna, a cozy little town that was ONLY a twenty minute bus ride from the port. The ENTIRE tour was ONLY THREE hours! It is called “A Taste of Ravenna”, there will be food! Lots of food!
This was my very unconvincing sales pitch to the children. Toby and my brother had left earlier in the morning for the Ferrari museum and I was going solo with the kid wrangling. Fun. We arrived in Ravenna and were herded down the street with our “lollipop leader”. Once again, we were auditorily attached to our guide with those little radios and I was the only one listening. The kids don’t even bother to “plug in” anymore. I am simply to alert them when the feeding will begin. As we moved down a very quaint cobblestone street to our first destination, one of the boys gasps, “Mom! What is that?!” (and NOT in an excited way, more of a disbelieving and angry way)
“Oh. That is the church of San Vitale. It is super famous and has incredible mosaics and….” I never got to finish because Jensen buried his face in my stomach and said, “Mooommmm…. nooooooo! Can we go back?” Well. No. I tried to make it sound better by saying, “Look at the crypts! There are probably dead people in those!” That did get them at least into the gates but it was an excruciating 45 minutes… for them. I chose to ignore their miserable faces and listen to the (very interesting to me!) information about the church and the truly masterful mosaics that lined the walls and ceilings.
By the time we were on the little cobblestone street again heading to our “refreshment”, they had reached a new low in morale. Riley could be heard mumbling, “our refreshment is probably a cup of water and a crouton”, followed by “OR it will be a piece of poop, an orange peel and a dollop of mayonnaise.” To their surprise it was NOT any of those things and it was quite good! After our lunch, we still had 45 minutes before we headed back on the bus and the adorable streets SERIOUSLY had some amazing stores with SUPER cheap prices so I set out to do a little browsing in the shops. I NEVER told them they had to go with me but as I entered the first store I turned to see that they were trudging behind me like I was forcing them on some sort of Outlet Sale death march. It sort of sucked the fun out of any potential purchases for me as you can imagine. Fortunately the bus arrived to take them back to the pool, golf course and endless ice cream buffet and I snuck away to read and console myself with some “adult soda”.
Tomorrow is our LAST stop before two days at sea and heading home. We are off to Kotor, Montenegro (formerly part of Yugoslavia) and I have really high hopes for this day as I have heard that the scenery is literally breathtaking.
No comments:
Post a Comment