- Umbria

"The Falconer" tower containing our apartment

Margarita, one of the two ponies on the grounds

We spent a week in Umbria in an apartment in the Spoleto hills. It was a nice place with a beautiful saltwater pool. All of Italy has been under a heatwave and we spent just about every day in the pool. We also caught up on the basics like laundry.  It was a good week of downtime. Beatrice, our host, also had two ponies and about 8 cats that lived on the property and the girls immediately befriended

- Spilamberto and Bologna

Spilamberto in Emilia Romagna is a sleepy little town between Modena (Moh-dah-nah) and Bologna. However, like so many other Italian towns it wakes up at festival time. On our last night in town there was a craft beer festival scheduled. All of a sudden this sleepy town was wall-to-wall people, full of cool music and great craft beer. Funny how many people at this festival knew where Portland Oregon was too. As we introduced ourselves to the vendors at the

Spilamberto town clock before the festival

- Enzo's workshop

Also while in Spilamberto we visited the Ferrari museum. The girls enjoyed this more than I expected. Learning about the family history and seeing all the cars spanning so many years was intriguing. Part of the museum included Enzo's fathers workshop on the original property that they now use to showcase Ferrari engines. This was a fun way to spend a couple of hours. Each car on display had a brief description of its history, its technology and so

- Wine in the cellar and vinegar in the attic

Picture taken inside Italian tunnel

One of the reasons we we came to Emilia Romagna was to see and taste the regions DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) balsamic vinegar. In the late 70's a consortium established a series of controls and rules for producing "true" balsamic vinegar based on century-old methods. In the early 2000's the European Union granted the product from this region DOP certification. Balsamic vinegar now produced under these rules, which strictly define the materials, methods, the bottling requirements and

- This is my post

This is Cailin. I do not like that my Dad blogs. He is very weird.

Here I am in Turin in the Cat Cafe

OMG, only 12 days left. I can't wait to get out of this place. There has been some cool stuff though like the Ferrari museum and Piran. Piran was great actually. Ok, bye bye fam.

- Venice, is that you or did another marmot die in my bathtub?

Street musicians everywhere

We enjoyed our time in Venice. Upon arrival, we managed to navigate the parking, the land and water buses, ultimately arriving on the lagoon unscathed. Our apartment was perfectly located in a quiet Dorsoduro district with reasonable access to everything (with a bit of walking). It was really comfortable with air conditioning throughout the house (emphasis on "throughout").

Venice is a great running town provided you go early enough. I got disoriented one morning and quickly learned three rules to

- Romeo, Juliet and a dirty bandaid

Juliet's Balcony

On our way to Venice we made a quick stop in Verona to see Juliet's Wall made famous in the movie, "Letters to Julia". The wall most certainly does exist and it most certainly is packed with tourists. Despite my feeble attempts to contact Juliet though...I failed. I couldn't find a spot on the wall to leave my message. The walls were covered, and I mean covered, with small notes written on everything. I saw notes on scotch

-...sure he's 5300 years old but he's been on ice!

Artwork on building in Bolzano

Bolzano was our last stop in South Tyrol before moving on to Venice. Sometimes when you are traveling you visit great places...to visit. Other times you find places you could actually live. Bolzano was one of those for me. Two rivers converge here and it is surrounded by mountains with easy access by tram. Like so many European towns, Bolzano comes alive at night as the old town center lights up with activity. It's rich in history and appears to be fairly diverse. It's home to active convents and monestaries, the Italian special military forces, as well as containing a young population attending the university which we learned has strong Art, IT and MBA departments. When we first arrived Bolzano looked a little "dusty" as our friends from Revy would say, but upon further exploration we found the people friendly and the town safe.  Our apartment was clean, comfortable and within

- Pale Mountains

Sassolungo

The Dolomites were named after Deodat Gratet de Dolomieu, who first discovered the rock that resembles limestone, but does not effervesce in weak hydrochloric acid. These mountains constitute a unique area covered with spiky pinnacles, grassy meadows and long narrow valleys and pasture lands. The highest point in the Dolomites is Marmolada at 3343 meters. We stayed in Val Gardena of the South Tyrol province where the highest point is Sassolungo at 3181 meters. This peak was visible from our hotel room and one day we rode the tram to its base. We sat on the nice flat grassy plateau below Sassolungo and admired the surrounding scenery.

- Through the Dolomiti

NOT traditional housing in South Tyrol

We hit a good number of places in the Dolomites after Venas, including Lake Misurina, Passo Valparola, Val Gardena, Halfling and Bolzano. After leaving Venas we sailed along the mountain roads into Cortina d'Ampezzo and straight up to Lake Misurina for views of the Mountain Tre Cime. This was a beautiful spot indeed. We had some nice clouds that moved in, and a little wind cooling things down a bit. Ali went on a short venture to photograph some ducks. She spent considerable time along the lake shore getting the perfect shot (I've included her favorite picture below). Cailin

- Cadore

Our first night in the Dolomites was a one night stopover in the small town of Venas just west of Valle di Cadore in the Southwest Dolomites. We planned this stop to break up our drive through the mountains. This is a beautiful but less traveled section of these mountains. We really liked it. Our hotel had outstanding views and was adjacent to a bike path that runs a considerable length of the Dolomites utilizing a converted small gauge railroad track much like "rails to trails" in the states. As soon as we unpacked our stuff we jumped on the hotel bikes and headed into the next village for dinner. We were unsuccessful at finding an open restaurant but the ride was

- The boys of Slovenia

Over the past week in Slo Cailin and I have met a few friends, two of which are guys. The more we hung out with them, the  more we realized the differences between the American and European guys. First of all I would like to emphasize (and no offense to American guys) that guys in Europe are extremely nice. One night when we stayed out late, the boys would not let us walk home alone. They insisted they walk us home before they went home, and not only that their home was in the complete opposite direction.

Anyway, we did make good friends in different places of our trip. In Final Liguria we met friends from Canada. And like I said in Piran we met the locals who we still text and talk with on line.

The Piran square we hung out in

< Ali

- The Skocjan Caves

Column formations

Before leaving Slovenia we stopped for a tour of the Skocjan caves. Wow! Not to compare everything to American landscape, but these caves were on the magnitude of seeing Yosemite or the Grand Canyon for the first time. No photos were allowed because of the potential for harming the stalagmites and/or stalactites. Therefore, I have included some downloaded photos to give context to this post. These caves were immense. The tour lasted nearly two hours and

- You say kaffe, I say coffee

Food and drink is always fun when traveling and coffee on this trip has been no exception. We've become more familiar with the intricacies of Italian and Slovenian coffee. The cappuccino's are dangerously good, but they do vary greatly between Italy (smaller but stronger espresso taste) and Slovenia (larger size but more cream). Here's a short list of coffee drinks we've