Salerno/Caserta

December 8th is an Italian holiday to celebrate the "Immaculate conception" - but Italians use this holiday to officially start the Christmas Season. Since Ryan had the day off, we decided to make a weekend of it and headed down south to Salerno.  Salerno is a cute beachfront town, near the Amalfi Coast, but in the winter it turns into the city of lights. We thought it would be fun to get into the Christmas spirit by going to see all the lights. Its hard to see in the pictures, but all the "streets" ( they are more like walking paths) in the downtown area had lights between the buildings. In the town square there was a HUGE lighted Christmas tree and in one of the bigger piazzas there was a huge canopy of lights. They also had the "Central Park" decorated with lights from scenes of Disney movies. Since we went on the holiday- it was packed with people, but still lots of fun!                                                                                    

Whale from Pinocchio

Tick toc Croc

The Jolly Roger

The huge Christmas tree in downtown

Lighted streets

On our way home from Salerno- we stopped in Caserta to see the castle there. If you look carefully- you'll notice that this is where they filmed Queen Amidala's palace in the Star Wars movie.  The castle was enormous and absolutely beautiful. 

I dont know why- but I love to see the old beds

There were the most amazing chandeliers all throughout the castle

 Outside the castle there was this very long garden that had pools of water that came from a waterfall from the mountain way in the back. I think its about a mile from the castle to the end. And yes we walked all the way there and back. They did have bike rentals, however since Charly and JR are too small to ride a regular kid bike, and al of their 'family bikes' were broken- we got to walk the whole way.  But it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the walk together!