After 6 weeks in Menton, we packed our things up yesterday and started our journey to Rome.
We did enjoy living in the Menton Area and loved that it was so much easier to go places and that there was so much to see.
We just didn't like our tiny apartment too much. It was full of the owner's items, which is unusual for a vacation rental. It was like staying at a distant relative's house from the 1960's. I took some quick pictures as we were leaving. This was mine and Jeff's room. We had a little bit of room in the closet on the left and very minimal walking space.
This is the family room/ Andrew's room. We couldn't all fit in this room at one time comfortably, but the kiddos made it work for school and for movie nights. Andrew chose to sleep here on the couch so he could have some peace and quiet because this room had a door on it.
This room had a bunk bed with full-sized beds. Scott slept on the top bunk and the girls slept on the bottom bed. There was a little closet in the corner that they were able to put their clothes in, but that was about it. It was pretty warm in there and so we had a fan blowing at all times.
This was the bathroom. I have no words to describe it. I'll let the picture do the talking.
We were very pleased to have kitchen with a large fridge! It made it possible to not have to make daily grocery runs! Unfortunately, the oven didn't work and so we made everything on the stove top. The washer was interesting, but it worked.
Quick view from the front door as we were living:
We were so happy to leave that place! We usually try to keep very positive, but this place was a hard one to live in. We learned a lot from it and it was great to keep things "real". I think its easy to romanticize the "live in Europe" idea and make it sound like we are living in fancy places everywhere we go. You definitely pay the price to live in a beautiful location because its very expensive to live here, especially with a large family. I hope that we can add to the list of things that we are trying to teach our children about when they leave and go out in the world to college and or on missions, that they can make the most of any living accommodation.
We walked to the train station at around 5:30 a.m. This picture is a little blurry, but I was trying to capture my proud mommy moment. These amazing kiddos of mine grabbed what they could without being asked and confidently made their way independently to the train station while I was helping Kathryn.
Once we all made there, we learned that our train was cancelled. We tried to get a taxi, but it was too early in the morning. Unfortunately, by having to wait an hour to get to Ventimagilia, we missed our train connection to Rome. Trenitalia sent us on a train to Genova to see if we could find a train from there to Rome.
It was a great ride to Genova. Everyone enjoyed some movies and we had plenty of room for our suitcases and to spread out comfortably.
Once we made it to Genova, we found a place to set up camp while we tried to find a train to Rome.
Trenitalia were very nice and put us on another train (without charging) that left 90 minutes later and told us we could just ask the attendant on the train to help us with our seat assignments.
These guys ventured out to find some Gelato!
We jumped on the train and found this little "room" of six seats and got us all settled in.
We didn't see a train attendant to get the ok, but when a lady came on who had a seat assignment in our "room" we found a attendant and he found her another seat and said we could stay there.
Unfortunately, this happend five more times and the last guy was not going to have us take his seat. Please keep in mind that we made sure that we weren't making these people stand or have to move to a different class. We counted 13 available seats just like ours! The last guy was busy yelling at us in Italian while I was trying my best to explain the situation and showing all the empty seats available. I was trying to help the guy realize that I wouldn't mind giving him my seat, but I don't think he really would want to sit in there with a tweenager who inherited my stinky feet, 2 teenage boys (I don't need explain that), a 4 year-old who has been awake from 5am and was due at any moment for a meltdown, and with about 100 suitcases.
The Italian was not going to back down and so I searched all over the train for the attendant. Finally she came and we showed her our paperwork and helped the guy find another seat. When we left the guy actually got up and moved into our seats. Please keep in mind the train was empty. Usually something like this would bother me for days, but I was easy to chalk it up to the joys of having a language barrier.
After finally getting off the train, we found some food and then headed to the bus stop. We jumped on a bus that eventually became packed!!! Kathryn was buried by the suitcases and backpacks. We had seven stops and our poor travel girl fell asleep. We made it off the bus and walked a few blocks to our apartment. We waited for a bit and then the owner met us and showed us our apartment. I wish we could stay for a few months. It is huge compared to our Menton apartment. We are so grateful to be here after a crazy travel day!
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