In Better Hands...: Chocolate Chocolate Chocoalte!

Today was a nice day. Although none of us slept that great. While this is a nice hotel, the beds are hard! My mom and I are sharing a double bed and my grandma has her own twin bed. The pillows are thin and hard and the hotel does not have air conditioning. The hotels turn their air off in September so we have to keep our window open but there are people out late partying outside our hotel. We are kind of lame. We eat dinner late and it feels like we are out late but we are usually back to our room by 9 or 10 and we are all ready for bed! We did a ton of walking today so we are hoping for a better nights sleep tonight.

My grandma was still not feeling well today so she stayed back for the first half of the day and rested. Mom and I went into town for the Eurochocolate festival. This festival is huge! There were so many people there. It was kind of hard to walk through. You are just part of a sea of people and you have to move as they move. We stopped at a booth here and there and bought some chocolate to try and then we found a booth that was selling chocolate bars for 1 Euro so we bought 20! We bought 10 for us to take home for dad and Zach and 10 for Grandma to take home to the grandkids. The chocolate was good. Our favorite was probably these small balls that looked like malt balls. They were different colors and flavors. They had a hard candy coating and inside was a liquid (different liquid depending on the flavor). We had cherry liquor, orange liquor, rum and brandy. They were strong but so good!! We liked them so much we decided to go back and get some for dad and Zach to bring home. Which presents our problem-how do we get all these things back to the States? We have hand bags, totes, boots, jackets, chocolates, liquor, aprons....the list goes on and on. (and we still have a week left!!)

I enjoyed spending the day with mom. After the festival we came back to the hotel and got grandma. We hung out for awhile and then decided we were all hungry. We thought we would eat an early dinner and then just relax tonight in the hotel. We walked to this place that the hotel recommended around 4pm but they did not open until 7pm. There was no place to go because everything shuts down here in Italy after lunch. We ended up walking back to the festival so grandma could see it and so that we could kill some time until 7. Once dinner time rolled around we were so hungry and thank goodness because I had the best dinner of my life! The place was family owned and the chef was a young cute Italian man. My dad told me to find a young Italian chef but this one was married-darn! He came out and told us the menu in English and we ordered. I had ravioli stuffed with cheese and mushroom covered in olive oil. Oh my gosh-it was amazing. I could have had another plate but we split some apple pie instead.

We decided to call it a night after that. We skyped dad and zach (and bella and tiger). I will be sad to leave Italy but happy to see them! Tomorrow we have a five hour drive to Sorrento. I am not looking forward to the drive but I am excited to see Sorrento and the Amafi Coast. I hear it is beautiful!