Our last summer mini vacation, before we became tied to a
public school schedule, was spent in Lipari.
We took a drive on a sunny day up to the town where we were going to
catch the ferry. Arriving a little
early, we decided to have a quick lunch, but still managed to leave ourselves only
a few minutes to find where we needed to park the car. As we are driving around in circles and the
GPS is on a mission to send us out into the middle of the water, serious storm
clouds moved in. We found the car lot
and the next thing I knew, strong storm gusts began blowing signs and the
restaurant located next to the lot had foam tiles from their roof sailing
through the air. We missed the first
ferry, so we waited around 2 hours for the next ferry to come
in. As we waited, it rained and rained,
and when it stopped raining, we could see the vapor rising from the water and
collecting into new clouds.
We finally
board the hydro-ferry and proceed to bounce, I’m talking airborne bouncing, for
the next hour. The kids on the ferry
were exclaiming “WHEEE!” as I’m curled in a ball holding tightly to a trash bag…
just in case my guts decided to try and escape.
We stepped off the boat to find a full rainbow stretching
from one side of the sky to the other.
After suffering from my motion sickness, I was immediately reminded of
God’s promises. He never promised I
wouldn’t suffer or experience pain, but He did promise He would be with
me! I was happy to be on land, happy the
rain had subsided, and happy that once again our personal travel agent had done
a superb job with selecting our lodging.
It even came with a cat… to Brady’s delight and Juliette’s horror.
The next couple of days were spent relaxing at the beach,
walking through town, and roaming the castle grounds.
Our final night we found a restaurant and sat
at a table just in time to see the bottom drop out of the sky. The rain seemed to subside as we stepped out
to make our way back to our apartment.
That assumption was very wrong! The
choice was to find a place to wait it out or just try to tough it out and make
it back. With no real end in sight, we forged
ahead. It was raining so hard I was
finding it difficult to keep the water out of my eyes. The kids were screaming, we were drenched,
and it was an all around disaster!
Thankfully, we happened upon a hotel with a kind owner who called our
hotel to get us a ride.
It turns out that the hydro-ferry is much smoother when it’s
not riding through stormy weather! We took the long way home and drove through
the mountains—I love seeing as much of our island as possible!
