The Sweet Life of the Shutlers: Italian Adventure part 2

Kellen was such a trooper through this whole trip. I guess it shouldn't surprise me given the extremely good-natured baby that he is. Most people swear he must never cry (he does-- but not often!). He is so smiley and happy the majority of the time. One thing that did happen on this trip-- all the time-- was blowouts. I think this was partly because I was weaning him to formula but mostly it was his body's response to the stress and heat. The worst of these happened when we began the next leg of our trip...
Lake Como
We were supposed to leave Naples for Lake Como around 11am, however the day before we were told there was going to be a bus and train strike the day we were leaving from 8am to 2. Luckily, this did not include the high speed train we were taking but it did include the bus and train we would need to take from Nerano to Sorrento to Naples. So, in order to avoid this we woke up early to catch the 6am bus and then 7am train. We arrived in Naples around 830 and hung out in the train station for 3 hours until our train left. We could have tried to get on an earlier train but we had assigned seats on the 1130 train and there was no guarantee we could get seats on an earlier train (and I didn't want to risk not having a seat with K for the 5 hr train ride). When we got on the train, right away we realized the air conditioning wasn't working in our car. It was miserable. It was so hot and stuffy an the little man was so uncomfortable. I attempted a diaper change in the puny bathroom without any changing space and then decided to just change him on the table at our seats. He was doing pretty good given the fact that he was tired and sweaty. I was holding him in my lap and I could feel him poop. The next thing I know, I feel something running down leg. I look down and there is poop on the seat, on me, and of course on him. Poor guy! And of course everyone is watching us. We cleaned it up as best we could and I quickly carried him to the bathroom. But in my haste, I accidentally hit his head on the door to the bathroom. So now, I'm hot, sweating, standing in the smallest bathroom on a moving train holding a screaming baby over a sink and trying to quickly change his diaper and clothes. It was horrible. After that I fed him which calmed him down and then we walked a bit from car to car. A really nice lady in the next car over was standing talking on her phone in between the cars and she offered me her seat in the air conditioning. Once we got seated in there he was out like a light until we reached Milan. When we got to the train station in Milan we went to the car rental. Bri and I walked to check out where it was and then walked back to the train station to get everyone and all our luggage. We got settled into the cars and set off. Milan is a big city and driving in Italy leaves a lot to be desired. I have always said I could not drive there because you have to be extremely assertive and aggressive. They do not abide by traffic signs like we do, even if they have two "lanes" on each side, there's always more than two cars across, scooters weave in and out all over (including along the center line), roads are not marked well, etc. It's can be crazy stressful. So- we're in two cars-- my mom, Ben, Geaneen, and I in one and then Brian, Dave, Britany, and Kristin in the other. We start out following each other but pretty quickly get separated. Of course our cell phones don't work in Italy so we have to basically hope and pray that the other car has their directions (my mom had hers in our car) and that we end up at the same place. The house we were staying at was a bit outside of the town of Lake Como way up high on switchback roads. Anyway-- we got lost a little, went the wrong way on a one way, had to pull over because my poor guy had another blowout all over the carseat... but finally we found ourselves at our beautiful little villa-- and the other car had made it as well! By this time it was probably around 7 and we were all starving. Brian, Ben, and I said we would go to the next town over and get some groceries quick. Well... we didn't take into account that it was Sunday-- and everything was closed. We drove all around to several different towns in the Lake Como area... no luck anyway. After about 2.5 hrs, we finally stopped at this little rinkydink bar that was open and they had prepackaged sandwiches. We bought those, some bags of chips they had in the back, a container of some sandwich sauce they had, and some cokes. Of course again, our phones didn't work so we couldn't call to say why it was taking us so long...but we finally made it back to the house. We all quickly ate our (disgusting) sandwiches and went to bed exhausted. The rest of the time in Lake Como was pretty much spent relaxing. The house had a pool which we hung around and did some reading. We explored the little towns nearby as well (and also found a proper grocery store! Let me tell you- grocery shopping in a big shopping center was a whole other experience). The area was absolutely beautiful. I would have liked to have had a couple more days there to just explore and take in the views. One crazy thing that did happen was one afternoon we went to visit the town of Menagio which was about 20 minutes from where our house was. When we were driving there we saw they were setting up for a festival of some sort in a town along the way. We got to Menagio, explored and enjoyed our time there, and then got ready to head back. We had purchased stuff for burgers (getting a little tired of pasta and pizza at this time) and were excited to go back and grill out. We got part way down the road and we were stopped by police. They inquired as to where we were going. We told them and they said okay-- that the town of Como was closed for fireworks but because our house was not all the way into Como, we could go ahead. We then went a little further and were stopped again. This time they told us we could not go at all. They told us all the roads were closed down until midnight for this festival. I tried to play the "I have a baby" card and said I wasn't prepared for him to be out and about until midnight (this wasn't true-- I had a fully stocked diaper bag :)) but they still wouldn't let us through. This was about 7. So we said, well what else can we do besides hang out until midnight? They told us we would have to go up the mountain and back down the other side. We decided to do this (and told us it would take about 1.5 hours). It actually was a nice experience! The drive was really pretty and we got an unexpected addition to our trip-- a drive into Switzerland. We went into a very pretty town in Switzerland and ended up eating at McDonalds there haha (we were starving and had had our hearts set on burgers!). I really enjoyed our time in this place. The house was amazing and like I said before, the area was absolutely gorgeous. Here are a couple pictures from this leg of the trip!