Doing animal rights can take a lot away from your soul. It can bend your heart to see all the suffering and knowing what the toll it takes on our planet. This was a last minute decision to go, and felt it was a much needed break from all the ills of the world.
Befitting my children, young adults aged 23 and 21. We all felt it was needed. College pressures, anxiety call for a V A C A T I O N.
Hanz and Katrina 
Ravello 
Town of Amalfi 
Beach in Ravello 
Best pasta ever in Amalfi 
Katrina 
Pasta w Capers, Tomatoes 
Blue Grotto 
Relaxing in garden 
Ravello~ You will love walking the beautiful towns!
After seeing some posts on NextDoor for Travel agents that plan for Italy, I picked one, her name is Ann of Frosch Travels whom I highly recommend. It was very complicated planning last minute trying to find flights and hotels, but so worth it! She found us a direct flight to New York to pick up my son, and from there my daughter and I, the three of us headed straight to Rome. She arranged a driver for us. To say the ride from Rome to Ravello, Amalfi Coast was anything short of gasping for risk of death over and over, would be an understatement. The driver spoke Italian on his cellphone the entire time with earbuds of course! Sped, tailgated and zoomed around traffic, the amount of panic attacks were over the top. When you have children you are thinking of in the car, it only added to the mix. I did say something like, “Is it normal to talk on the phone like this whilst driving?” That didn’t seem to do the trick as he continued. He replied, “If I don’t talk I could fall asleep!” Well let’s see which is worse? The good news is we made it and all the way through highway traffic and up to the top of a winding small road to Ravello. One thing I noticed were the gorgeous overpasses for animals full of wildflowers and grasses, and high walls to keep the animals out of freeway traffic. That was so beautiful to see!
We were greeted graciously at the hotel. All of us jet lagged as it being over 6:00 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. arrival in Rome a long journey from San Francisco. We rested the first day and layed in the sun, I dined alone at the restaurant and had a lovely meal at the Palazzo Avino to a fancy dish of Black Eyed Peas infused with truffle, and beets. It felt a bit too romantic a place to be dining alone, but survived with conversations from nearby American diners and the staff was very nice and vegan accommodating with a Vegan Chef’s tasting and special vegan flatbreads served with their exquisite specialty olive oil.
The next day we journeyed around Ravello with a nice walk through town and around the village. We ate an amazing lunch of Pizza with Argula salad, down this beautiful path of flowers. At first the girl who waited on us said, “We don’t serve vegan”, and she seemed unwilling. When I asked again, she retrieved someone else, who made the salad without cheese, and a pizza without cheese and with olives and artichokes, upon which we added some of our arugula from the salad, and it was divine!
The third day we took a car to the town of Amalfi and walked around, we had lunch at a cafe with air conditioning as it was very hot and bustling with tourists. We wanted a reprieve, and as you have probably heard the Europeans take time to eat and dine. We had the rigatoni dish without cheese, and it was the best pasta I think I’ve ever had, and again an arugula salad, which seems to be the popular lettuce which was always so fresh and peppery perfect. After touring some more we headed back and relaxed in the sun. This vacation was about just doing what we wanted with no agendas, a true R&R vacation, la dolce vita! Oh yes, and breakfast at the hotel was always toast without butter, and fresh fruits, we didn’t stress over the food, we were grateful we had some vegan options.
Day four we shuttled to the private beach of the hotel and we again met more Americans than ever on any vacation all over Amalfi. We dived into the beauty of the Tyrehnniansea deep blue waters and it was the perfect temperature for a hot day a little cold, but beautiful. We ate a lunch of salad and pasta.
Day Five was more spectacular beauty and highly recommend to hire a boat guide, he took us to the Blue Grotto, along the island of Capri, it was packed with people waiting on row boats that paddle you into a narrow tunnel. Inside this natural sea cave of bright azure blues, which is caused by reflections from the limestone, as told by our guide. If you plan on going which I highly recommend, check with someone at the Motoscafisiti di Capri Pier about sea conditions and wait times during peak seasons which I heard can be up to two hours. We lucked out with little wait time to embark on the small row boat to get us in. Just stunning!
Around the Island of Capri, which was more dessert, a different landscape of beauty and mountains surrounded by azure waters, as opposed to the beauty of the forests and greenery from the Amalfi towns. On your way around Capri you can see huge mansions on top of cliffs one being George Clooney’s if your into that sort of thing. It was interesting to see how high up these mansions were on the cliffs and the few restaurants were scattered around the island. The first seaside restaurant was awful with fish heads/bodies being served around and the lobsters in tanks, I asked for a different restaurant hunting down our boat guide and didn’t mind asking as we ended up with a much better restaurant. This new restaurant also having poor lobsters in tanks but much better aesthetically. My daughter who is vegan abruptly said she had to rescue those lobsters in the tank. So I spoke with the manager and she was happy to sell us six lobsters, we had to choose which was rather difficult piled on top of each other, with rubber bands tied to their claws. We took them down to the water, as I opened one bag he was looking straight at me as if he knew what we had just did. We took their bands off and released them with a crowd of Italian children watching and cheering on. The mother said did you buy them from the restaurant? “Yes, I replied, and said, “I hope this helps people to see they deserve to live too.” She smiled. Italians are such lovely people and easy to most speak english. This lobster rescue was something that my daughter, Katrina, instigated and I’m just so proud of her!
The past three nights we dined at Hotel Villa Maria, it has a separate vegan/vegetarian menu we had pasta dishes, seitan and artichoke lasagna with salads, the views were gorgeous and the walk there and back through the cobbled streets made for a delightful evening.
Needless to say, we had a lot of pasta! Usually when I travel I hunt out the health food stores, but they were few and far between, one local store I did find a vegan cheese, and some plant milks.
MILAN
Our last stop was Milan, we drove to Naples and flew to Milan. Stayed at a modern hotel, Milan Il Duca, which was centrally located. Exhausted the first night, they did their own adventuring as I caught up with sleep. Plus I had a foot injury, a hairline fracture on a toe that I banged trying to enter into a bank with a round about door I wasn’t used to, and had to go the emergency room in Ravello. These things happen!
My daughter studies fashion and wanted to see the fashion capital ~ Milan, we ventured around the shopping areas, one area reminded us of New York, very upscale and beautiful. Beautiful architecture in many parts of Milan.
We wanted to go to the museum to see “The Last Supper”, but time slipped by and we had to leave. We did catch two vegan restaurants, one was more upscale called “Joia” and we had a lovely lunch, a plate tasting exquisitely plated and very delicious. Also, we had a quick bite at “Flower Burger”, very tasty, packed with locals and just a fun veggie burger spot.
I highly recommend traveling, especially if you want to see what beauty is left of this world and show your children and give them hope. It was just so beautiful, words cannot describe you must go, and if I had the chance to go again would have done the hike called “Path of the Gods”, but the charm of walking all the villages is a great work out too! One of the best parts of touring Europe is all the walking. Flip flops were my choice of shoes to get everywhere without issues. Way too steep and bumpy to walk in heels.
The only downside of this whole trip was the plane ride, seeing everyone eating animals and the stench in the airplane from it. We have a lot of work to do to wake up the masses! But this was a break from Animal rights and thinking of venturing in a new direction with food as it has taken a toll on me far too long. Don’t let anyone tell you not to travel, you must see this world!
And if you cannot afford to travel like this, you can certainly drive to any place a beach, hiking, camping in parks, forests and just have down time enjoying nature somewhere! Eating vegan in your state or traveling for vegan food, travel is limitless for anyone! Downtime is essential for everyone!
Grazie beautiful Italy and readers! Please comment if you’ve ever been and any questions you might have.
