Neapol Day 3: Hiking Castello di Arienzo

Previous day was for Wojtek, this day was for me :) Before we arrived to Neapol, I checked thoroughly the best hiking routes for families and this was one of them. And it was a real blast! Pretty close to our stay, just enough demanding, completely stranded... The weather was amazing, I didn't expect such heat in April even in Italy. And the views were magnificent. See yourself.

I'm not going to lie - I know nothing about the castle we visited :) There was a table somewhere down the path but it was all in Italian so no help for me. But it really didn't matter. I was truly exhilirated by the surroundings and by the charm of the moment. Even the kids were way more better behaving than the previous day.

On our way back we made a stop in the shadow of a tree since Kamila decided to take a nap :)

But the day wasn't over. As always, after coming back to the house we needed to go check out the running routes around. I thought it might be difficult to find a better circle than the last year (see here). But I was wrong. It was equally charming if not even better! I guess you'll see more of the running photos in the next post, here is a teaser.

Neapol Day 2: Vesuvio and Herculanum

So how did it happen that we landed in Neapol? The story is simple, our 4-year-old son was fascinated with volcanos. He wanted to know everything about them, every day we had to read a book about volcanos, we would watch documentaries about volcanos etc. And when we sat down and thought where to go for holidays, we came up with a "volcano" idea pretty fast. There are two big ones in our vicinity - Etna and Vesuvio. There are no flight connections to Etna in May, so we didn't have to think too long :) And so, the day after our arrival, we set on a path for volcano adventure :)

Although it was not the best idea to start our stay with such a demanding day, we had no choice - Wojtek wouldn't want to hear about any other options. In general, the road to Vesuvio crater is a hiking route. It can be longer or shorter (we chose the latter) but one needs to hike. On the way up we saw the remains of lava and recent fires that burst on the slopes - a truly interesting landscape. The day was very hot and children not so much cooperating but in the end we reached our destination - the heart of a volcano.

Wojtek was in heaven but for us it was also pretty cool. Only Kamila somehow decided not to cherish this longly awaited moment. Let's forgive her, she's not even two y.o. yet. From the top except for the great view inside the crater we had a nice sight on Neapol itself. Although... the smog over the city was impossible. I thought Poland was polluted but what I saw in Neapol was so far the greatest smog mist in my life :(

When we finished our geology trip we headed to Herculanum which in the past was flooded by mud when Vesuvio erupted. Now it's a renowned archeological sight definately worth visiting.

After a pretty action-packed day we were happy to return to our countryside to breathe in fresh air, delight in sunset over fields and oranges and to indulge ourselves in peace and quiet!

Family trip to mountains - Karkonosze

There are two weeks in a year when our kindergarten is closed. It's a good opportunity to get out of the city and this year we decided to drive to Karkonosze mountain for a week of stay. I won't call it holidays - 3 adults (my sister, my mom and me) and 4 children aged 1-5 - yo do the maths - it doesn't add up :) It was a challenging stay of course but we tried our best to benefit from good weather, beautiful surroundings and family time. We even did a couple of excursions that I will describe in the following posts. Stay tuned :)