Twenty Eleven Dropdown Menu Issues

First off, using a child theme.

Okay, so here’s the issue i’m having. The whole page is on a custom design, the navigation sits on a background image that is part of this design, so for this reason i don’t want any of the main navigation to have a background color when selected.

BUT, the client also wants a dropdown menu.

Now, if i style the dropdown menu just as is out of the box, with the styles applied to the main menu that i’ve coded, it shows the selected item with a transparent background like the main menu item.

If i change the background color for the selected sub menu item, it also makes it so the main menu changes its background color, and it doesn’t look good at all with my custom design.

Also, the sub menu seems to be really high up when it does pop up, it pretty much covers up the main menu item all together. Is there a way with padding that I can easily move down where the sub menu starts?

I am using Twenty Eleven, i’m OKAY with coding, but i’m no master. So any help would be greatly appreciated. I feel like this could be something easy and im just being an idiot?

Screenshots:
This is the background i’m talking about that i don’t want there
https://i.imgur.com/lrPXY3g.png

this is what it looks like when i use the dropdown menu with the background set to that color
https://i.imgur.com/0bxThV6.png <— Also this is a good example of the sub menu being too high. See how it cuts off hotels? Is there any way i can make the sub menu start a little lower down?

And when i set the background to transparent on the ui hover, this happens
https://i.imgur.com/lPki2Di.png

So how do i make it so all the sub menu selections have a background color, but the main navigation stays transparent, and how do i move the submenu down?

Thank you, sorry if this was confusing, i wanted to do my best to explain it as best i could, this has been driving me NUTS