Asilo End of School Concert

At the end of the school year, the Asilo held an end of year concert and ceremony for those kids moving on to elementary school. A had missed a few days of school the previous week, so he seemed a little dazed and confused, but was totally cute nonetheless. He is sitting in the front row with green pom-poms if you have a hard time finding him. While we have a hard time getting him to speak Italian, and I know he doesn't speak much to his teacher either, when we do get him to say a few words, he says them in a perfect Italian accent. We are all working on speaking more Italian in the home.

Pisa

June 31st found us in Pisa and Tuscany for the weekend. Dan had a 3-day weekend and we decided to make the most out of it. We headed down to Pisa and checked out their tower.
The Baptistery followed by the Cathedral and the leaning tower in the back.


We started our tour in the Cathedral.

The boys inside the Cathedral. It was quite the experience with a real human skull on display and various graves inside. I and A wanted to put up some candles like they saw other people doing, so we had to try to teach them a little theology.

We went into the Baptistery next. We would have started here, but it was actually being used . It was neat that they still use these buildings for their original purpose. The picture is looking down into the center of the Baptistery from the second level. While we were up here a man came and stood right in the center and started singing a chant. The acoustics and echo in that building are amazing!!! On the way back down the stairs a man was chanting softly so A took up the chorus. The echo in the stairwell made quite a neat effect and he was quite a hit with the other visitors.


I sitting on one of the Saint markers inside the Baptistery.


Also, while on the stairs to the second level of the Baptistery, we found the really neat bell. K especially was enthralled.

What the boys really enjoyed doing--feeding pigeons out of their hands.

Finally we visited the tower!

You have to be 8 yrs or older to climb to the top of the tower, so I headed up there by myself. As you go up, the stairs keep getting smaller and smaller.

Here I am at the top trying to take a picture of myself. You go up and think you are a high as they'll let you go, and then you climb up some more. On my tour, there were several people who suddenly realized they were afraid of heights because they started crawling on their hands and knees. It was pretty silly.




















Me and then D in front of the tower. This is actually from the less photographed side, so I don't think you can see the lean so much. It's hard to get the whole family in a photo without making a fool of yourself. We tried a little before deciding to take seperate shots.

K after a long day of sightseeing.

Carrara

After visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and after an afternoon nap, we then headed to Carrara which is about 45 min north of Pisa.

This looks like a snow covered mountain, but don't be deceived. They call it the marble mountain--that's marble you see, not snow.

There are marble caves everywhere and we decided to stop at one that said it had a tour. It was just a guy who gave us a tour of his own quarry. It cost us 10 euro for the family, and we got a personal tour and it was so neat!! His family has had that quarry for almost 1000 yrs (although my memory has faded, so I might be off a little). He told us all about the history of that area and it's marble, how they used to cut marble, and how they do it now. We learned that the scrap (pieces with flaws that cause cracks) are used for building dams and levees and the pebbles are used to making roads. Only in Italy would they use marble to make roads!

Here is A hiding between two marble slabs. Our tour guide was amazing and let the kids run nearly wild. He showed them tadpoles and salamanders on his property. Also, since his marble has grey steaks in it, and not the pure white, he only gets 150 euro per ton. I wish we could get marble that cheap.

Here is I playing on the bulldozer. The boys really did run nearly wild.
This is one of the holes they used back in the day when they had to slide the slabs of marble down the mountain to where ox and cart could pick it up.

So this was actually the funnest part of our whole weekend. We all LOVED this tour. Plus, he told us anything we can carry out, we could keep. So we picked up quite a few chunks of marble. I have no idea what we are going to do with them, but we couldn't resist an offer like that. Next time we'll go with a few strong men and haul out some bigger pieces!

Miramare Castle

On Memorial Day, we decided to take a day trip to Trieste and visit Miramare Castle. It was a perfect day to be outside since it wasn't too hot. The castle isn't very big itself, but it's surrounded by a huge park that we enjoyed wandering through. Here are a few picturess from the day.

Part of the extensive gardens. We had I and A choose which path (since there are several that wind and cross all throughout the park) we would follow until we got to the other side of the park and realized we needed to use the map to find our way back.

As you can see, the castle is built right on the edge of the water. It's a lot farther of a drop than it looks in the picture.

K got tired of being in the stroller after a while.

Skocjan Caves, Slovenia

These caves are located about 1 1/2 hr drive from where we live near Divaca, Slovenia. It's amazing that after just a short drive, you are in another country! We still don't have a camera, so all these are scanned photos, but really a regular camera could not do this place justice. Plus, you aren't allowed to take pictures inside although our tour guide was very lenient towards those in our group with cameras.This is just one of the many giant formations inside the cave. We saw just about every type of rock formation there is (not that I have any real knowledge, but there was such a variety in these caves). There was even one area where the rock looked like flowing water that has suddenly turned to rock.
This is the bridge you cross over this giant ravine with a river running through the bottom. This part of the cave was so enormous, it was breathtaking. In the picture you can make out a little water down at the bottom, but there was much more water there when we visited since it has been so wet lately. The guide talked about a flood in 1965 when the river filled that part of the cave all the way up to the top. I can't even imagine how much water there would have to be in order to do that.
These are some water pools that have formed in one section of the cave near the exit.
This is the exit of the cave. Much bigger than where we entered. Right outside the mouth of the cave, the vegetation is so green I felt I was in some tropical part of the world. This was probably one of the neatest places we visited.

Neuschwanstein Castle

While the all the T families are all going to be going to the Magic Kingdom next Feb, we decided to go to the castle Walt Disney based his castle on. It is located near Fussen in southwest Bavaria in Germany. We accompanied D on a TDY to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and stopped by here on our way back home. Our digital camera actually broke on on way to Germany, so we don't have as many pictures as we would like. We ended up buy a disposable camera for this trip, but we have scanned some photos from a book we bought to give you an idea of what it looks like. It's pretty obvious which is which.

The castle is set on the top of a pretty steep hill. We took a horse-drawn carriage up to the top. The boys thought that was great, and I thought it was amazing that the driver fit all 5 of us into the front seat in a space big enough for only 2.

This is right outside the main doors. These doors lead into the front courtyard.

Pictures aren't allowed inside the castle--like everywhere we've been in Europe--but we did get this picture on the other side of the gift shop. It's in one of the unfinished corridors. Surprisingly, most of this castle's interior is unfinished.
So, of course we are at this really cool place, and all I and A care about is the snow!

Sledding in Piancavallo

I has been sad all winter long that it doesn't snow where we live. So we had to bring the boys to the snow. Here we are in Piancavallo for a day of sledding. Luckily, it's only a 30 min drive from where we live. It was the perfect day for it since the snow was packed down and the sun was out and we were all very warm.

I is in the red coat and A in the blue. The sleds had steering wheels, and the boys used this to full advantage to go all over the hill.

Here D got talked into pulling the sleds back up the hill, which we did way too many times.

This is I in his mock sled accident. He loved falling off his sled at the end of his runs.

Here's V and all the boys at the top of the hill!

A was so cute pulling his sled around.