Annie & Joe's Travels: Citta del Mare

Fri. May 26 - I worked at ITT all morning trying to get all the final details for this trip ready. I had to run home and pack in the afternoon and I filled Kat and I's cooler with ice, beer, and snacks when I got back to ITT. Michelle (the woman escorting the trip with me) helped me separate all the prizes and get all the luggage and extra things into a pile. Th 53-passenger van arrived around 2:30pm and I started to load it up with our stuff. That van was so overpacked, I honestly didnt think a few final bags were gonna fit. Everyone was one time and we left NAS I at 3pm on our way to Citta del Mare, which is in the city of Terrasini. There was an accident in Palermo (like always) which made our trip take 4 1/2 hours to get there. At the beginning of the trip, we played trivia (I hosted it over the microphone) and gave out prizes. The families were all having a great time, but once the trivia was over, they were ready to relax and nap for the rest of the drive. We pulled into Citta Del Mare and Michelle and I went to the reception desk to get all the rooms and keys settled. We had a few problems with the families who have been coming here for years with their rooms and their requests they made prior to the trip. We asked the resort to put the regular families next to each other so they could all share balconies and share babysitters during the weekend. We also made sure to request that they were all on the 3rd or 4th floors so they could have a guaranteed beach view. Well.....the resort didn't give us any of those things so I spent about 2 hours trying to calm down the families and put the weekend into perspective. I knew they'd all be fine by the end of the night or tomorrow, they really wont be in their rooms much for this all to be a big deal. It was fine though. We all went to dinner together and by then the few complainers chilled out and said VA BENE! (Sicilian for "its okay", "whatever", "cool"). Dinner was excellent. THere are a few places to eat the resort, so went ate at the Superior dining room tonight. After dinner, a bunch of us went to the disco and danced all night long until it closed. Kat, Joe and I were staying in a triple room and man was the view wonderful. The balconies for this resort are really cool, they all connect and our building had an excellent beach view. I felt kinda bad for the families who didn't get a good view, but we made sure to get full usage outta our balcony.

Sat & Sun - The weekend was great and relazing. The days consisted of lying out on our patio, playing in the ocean, going down the 3-tiered slides at the resort, swimming in the pools, snorkeling, goofying around, and just being on vacation. Kat and Joe and I hung out weekend and had an awesome time. We bought rafts for Sunday and spent a few hours chillin out in the bay. The waves were pretty rough, so we ended up just swimming in the pool for the later half of the day. The restaurants were so good and they fed you like you were starving. I haven't eaten that much in a long time, but it was all so good and their house wine that they served at all the meals was tasty. Each night we went and danced at the disco to hang out with a bunch of the people from our trip. I stayed in contact with all the families throughout the weekend just making sure I could help them if they needed anything. It was a lot of fun and most of the group bonded really well. Sunday night at a really funny comedy/karaoke show with the Italian staff. It was so entertaining and hilarious because you would never see idiots like this in America or other big resorts in other countries. We had a short day the next day, so after the show, we went "swimming" in the pool and headed to bed.

Mon. May 29 - We had to load the bus by 2pm, so we decided to wake up early, head to the beach, and have some last minute fun. I woke up early to pay the hotel and check out of our room and then headed out to our balcony to do some tanning while Joe and Kat got ready. Kat wasn't moving to fast so I got quite a but of sun in before headin down to the beach. Once everyone was ready, we did a few more trips down the slide and went cliff jumping with the other families that were already doing it. We got over there and everyone was having an awesome time jumping off the 15 foot ledge. Joe and I wanted something a little higher and traversed the rock wall to jump from about 25 feet. It was cool, the water was crystal clear and I bought goggles the day before so I could swim around the bottom. It was a lot of fun. We all headed back up to one of the rooms that the resort let us use for last minute showers and we were cleaned up and ready to go by 2pm. I got to the bus and a few people were there already loading their bags and everyone else was shortly behind. We pulled away from Citta del Mare at 2:15pm and everyone sounded like they had a great time even though some of the rooms weren't what they expected. The ride home was quiet because everyone slept, including myself. There was no traffic and we only did one bathroom break so we amazingly got home in a record time of 3 hours exactly. It took about a half hour for everyone to unload the bus and load up their cars. We had many compliments and thanks, so it felt really good when I got home. The second I walked in the door, I laid down on my bed and fell asleep for a few hours. The rest of the night once I woke up, I just relaxed and watched a movie.

The slides that Citta del Mare are known for

Kat, Joe, and I chillin in the sea on our rafts

The balconies at this resort were really cool and the ocean view from our room was AMAZING!

This is the oblong pool that we did most of our non-ocean swimming in. It was nice to get out of the salt water every once in awhile. The bluffs in the background outline the northern and northwestern coast of Sicily.