End of April - Enjoying Spring

Checking out the tadpoles in the forest

Now that the weather has improved (no more SNOW!!), we're trying to check off some "must see" items locally as well as just enjoying the beautiful weather itself.  We started this past week by joining our new American friends, Gabe and Cynthia, at a tadpole pool they had discovered and wanted to share.  Of course, there were millions of tadpoles and we managed to get very muddy.  Gabe managed to be the first to slide through the mud into the water but Dayna wasn't far behind losing her balance.  I'm just glad for the utility sink in the apartment's laundry room!! That's what childhood is for!

Dayna zippin' along

On Wednesday, Arny and the Icelanders, (sounds like a rock group!) joined us on an excursion to Castle Litchenstein about 40 minutes from here.  Since it was in the 70's we HAD to get ice cream with them to help them cool down!  We tease them that they'd never survive a Dallas summer!  The castle is perched on a cliff and was easily defended because of that.  It's amazing that there are so many castles here - they are everywhere.  This location also had an "Adventure Park" where you put on a helmet and harness and swing through the trees with pulleys and all kinds of contraptions.  We had to add that to our "must do" list!  Anyone want to come and join us??  Since we didn't have the 3 hours to do the Adventure Park we opted for the playground with it's own zip line.  For some reason I bottomed out when I tried it!!  The kids had a ball though!

Thursday we rode our bikes back to the tadpole pool to show Arny and the gang.  This time Dayna spotted a real, live adult frog!!  It was an instant hit as they had never seen a frog in the wild before.  Iceland doesn't have many animals so they got to hold a frog for the first time ever (after only a few squeals and a little hesitation)!!  It was so much fun to share that with them.  There are so many things we take for granted!!  It has been so interesting to compare our lives with theirs.  There are a lot of similarities but there are also a lot of differences too.  I wouldn't trade this opportunity for anything and it has really opened the girls' eyes to see that the whole world isn't like the U.S.!

Views from my bike route

Friday I took off down the road on my bike to capture some pictures
of the apple, cherry and pear trees in blossom.  The view just a mile
down the road overlooking the Schwabian Alb mountains in the distance,
the orchards and the town of Hagelloch in the foreground are awesome.  I
can't imagine that I will ever live in a more beautiful place.  That
afternoon was Dayna's opportunity to take Flat Kayla downtown and do a
photo shoot.  She took the above picture under the title along the
Neckar River.  I complain about all the pictures she takes but she
really seems to have an eye for composition and SHE (unlike me) uses all
the digital functions on her camera!!!  Why are kids so intuitive with
electronics???  Not fair!

Saturday, we took another trip with the Icelanders.  I can't say "the "Petersons" because in Iceland they all have different last names (father's first name followed by son or dottir (daughter)) and our new American friends to the Wilhema Zoo in Stuttgart.  We opted to take the train which would have been a lot easier had it not been a national holiday (Labor Day) with weird schedules.  Jay thought the setting and layout of the zoo was the best he's ever seen.  It was built by King Wilhem in the mid- 1800's as a private retreat.  It's also a botanical garden so it's really a beautiful place.  The girls especially enjoyed the polar bears playing in the water and the baby apes who were hilarious.  Jay and I especially liked the Tom Turkey who was showing off.  I had never seen one fan out his feathers before - it was quite a production.  We are so glad to have such wonderful people surrounding us.  The kids did great even though it was an 11 hour day.  Things are always more of an adventure when they are shared!

Mid-April Happenings

Dayna and Alexander - flower boy

I'm trying to get caught up!!  The weeks after getting back to Italy were hectic but fun filled.  The girls got settled back into school and we ended the first week with a birthday party for Dayna with 15 friends.  Fortunately the weather was beautiful so we managed to have it outside.  It could've been disastrous as that many kids in our tiny living area would have been chaos had it rained.  The kids played on our playground and we played egg and dress up relay races and strung some beads.  I couldn't understand a word the kids said to me nor could they understand me but with the help of a few friends and Karissa we got through it.  We had a blast and Dayna got her first bouquet of flowers from a boy (a Russian no less)!  Grandma Treece came to the rescue with jelly beans, a Betty Crocker cake mix, candles and cupcake papers!

Who knew? Even carved real eggs!

The next week I went with the ladies from our International Tea here in the apartment complex on an outing to a small town nearby that has an Easter Egg Museum.  Sounds kind of odd but the collection of  eggs was phenomenal.  It is quite an art in much of Europe and each country/area has their own techniques.  There were even cross stitched eggs - real ones!?? Some of them were amazingly intricate - not your plain old dyed in a coffee cup variety.  (Although we did get to introduce our Icelandic friends to that tradition before Easter!  They had never dyed eggs before!) 

Spring has sprung in Tubingen

The following weekend was crazy.  Karissa and I took Flat Ryan downtown for some pictures, her first gelato in Tuebingen for the year and gymnastics practice.  The gelato doesn't compare to Italy's but she sacrificed!  I walked around the old city during Karissa's practice and got some spring pictures of the downtown area - something I've never gotten to do by myself since Dayna was at her first German birthday party (Geburtstag Fest).  They hid a treasure chest in the woods and the kids had to find it with clues (no Chuck E Cheese here!).  It was so nice to see her so happy compared to earlier in the year when she "had no friends".

Enjoying the nature at the Botanischer

Look out Danica - here we come!

The next day we rode our bikes to the Botanischer Garten for some spring photos.  The flowers are gorgeous - I think spring is here!! The girls managed to discover hundreds of little tadpoles in the lily pond. Later that day the girls competed in their very first Pinewood
Derby with
their Awana club at church.  They started with a block of wood and we
had to design a race car.  It was a lot of fun and both girls did quite
well - each winning a few heats.  Dayna came in 3rd in her age group.

Game face!

The next day, Karissa competed in her first gymnastics competition.  Her little group came in 3rd and it was fun to see her with her game face on doing the short routines.  We finished the night back in Stuttgart at Awana.  The pace was a little "too American" for us!

April 11th Birthday in Italy (Part 6)

The birthday girl at Paestum

April 11th, Dayna's 7th birthday and Grandma and Grandpa Treece's 57th Anniversary!!  I got up early and headed out for a walk by myself.  Lemon and orange trees were loaded with fruit and flowers were beginning in window boxes.   The Italian way of life is so different - they eat their meals about 2 hours later than we do.  Dinner at 9:00 pm is the norm (after their "stroll").  Even the grocery closes from 2 until 4 for "lunch".  That said, the town was dead at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning or any morning for that matter.  The only thing happening was an early mass in a gorgeously decorated
small Catholic church sparsely filled with old people.  

Dayna started out the day with an Italian Donut (pretty American looking).  Today we were taking our last train ride, heading to Paestum, about an hour's ride south along the coast.  We took the local Circumvesuvia train to Pompeii where we walked through a volcano exhibit and then found our way through downtown modern Pompeii to a different train line.  This train line, the Trenitalia, was much nicer with upholstered seats and no graffiti!

                                                          The temple swallows Jay

The Flat Family in the Lonely Paestum station

Paestum was a Roman city and has 3 surviving temples that are on par with the Parthenon.  It was deserted after a major league malaria outbreak and the temples were not pilfered or demolished or covered by volcanic debris.  The pictures speak for themselves.  It is one of the best preserved Roman sites in the world without all the tourist crowds!!  It was like taking a walk in the countryside - the middle of nowhere and a gorgeous day.  The trees were blooming and we appreciated the green grass as opposed to the dusty ruins sites we visited earlier!  We enjoyed a picnic lunch and walked around the small site and its museum.  Our plan was to get home early and finish the birthday celebration.  There was just one little problem....the train we had planned on taking never came (seems it doesn't run on Sundays - ahhhh, when the schedule says it doesn't run on holidays that also means EVERY Sunday!).  It took us about an hour and the help of some Americans who read Italian to figure it out!!  We waited an hour and a half for the next one (of all places to have to wait - not a thing in site but a lonely train station!  Not even a gelato stand.)  Finally some other people started to show up and we ended up having a great visit with a couple from Ann Arbor Michigan while we waited.  We helped them make the connection at Pompeii by running a mile and standing in the door of the train until they could catch up!!  This whole trip was definitely tiring trip due to the crazy transporation system!!



We got back to Sorrento in time for our final Jhonny's pizza, gelato and oceanside sunset complete with birthday candles.  Don't worry, we celebrated again when we got back to Tubingen!

Karissa's favorite Mosquito trucks and Fiats

The next day, Monday the 19th, we had to say goodbye to the cute little cars and the "mosquito trucks" - glorifed 3 wheel vehicles that buzz all over the narrow streets delivering things, picking up trash, making a horrible noise!  We were a little sad to leave our Italian home.  We caught the bus back to the Naples Airport for a crazy, curvy hour and fifteen minute drive.  We thought we were going to lose a couple of girls on the way!  They were glad to get back on flat, straight highways!!  From Naples we flew on Air Berlin directly back to Stuttgart and guess what?  Caught two buses to get back to Tubingen!!  Very exhausting, but very gratifying!

Goodbye to the beautiful coast and our Meta beach below

Capri (Sorrento Part 5)

View from the top of Monte Solaro - highest point on Capri

View of Sorrento from the Ferry

On Saturday we had reservations to go back to Pompeii and see some "by reservation only" sites.  After thinking about it, Jay and I decided that he should go alone.  The girls had been really tolerant of being drug around lots of piles of ancient ruins and we knew that we would all be happier in the end if we split up.  Karissa and I kind of wanted to go back to Pompeii (it is so huge and amazing) but we also thought it would be fun to head out to the island of Capri.  Unfortunately for us, Jay managed to "bump into" Mattia Bulindano who works for the site and is THE official Italian government guy who tours dignitaries (e.g. Bill Clinton)  through the site.  Jay was able to spend about 3 hours with him and a small group he was leading.  He saw some pretty amazing and "private" areas of the site which I'll share in the next posting.  To say the least he was thrilled - a true blessing from God that we never expected to happen.

Capri as we arrive, Monte Solaro in the background

Alas, we missed that incredible tour but the beauty of Capri more than made up for it.  We thought the Amalfi Coast was cool - Capri even silenced my chatty girls.  We caught a 30 minute ferry from the nearby port out to the island.  From there, we caught a 15 foot bus (big buses can't navigate the roads) up to the not so touristy town of Anacapri on the other side of the
island.  A little Italian Grandma helped us figure out the bus.  She must have said "Mamma Mia" twenty times to us while we were waiting for the bus-hilarious - and they really do use their hands to talk!  She was especially aghast when she saw the girls smearing lipstick all over their faces (stick sunscreen which she had never seen before!).

Karissa heading up to Monte Solaro

View from the lift of Ischia Island and Anacapri

Watching the bridal photos-what are they thinking right now?

Looking straight down at the boats, blue water and birds

Anacapri was a quaint little town that had a chairlift to the highest point on the island,  Monte Solaro at 1900 feet above sea level.  The views were the most beautiful I have ever seen.  The water was a beautiful color and there were thousands of seagulls swarming around the rocky cliffs below.  We took a million pictures, ate our lunch on some rocks overlooking the ocean (Karissa chose to eat hers in a tree she had climbed), swung in a swing, watched a bride and groom get their wedding pictures taken, picked wildflowers and just savored the view.  Dayna did not want to leave.  She fell in love with the place - who wouldn't?

View of Capri town from Villa San Michele

After the trip down the lift we wandered over to an old villa called Villa San Michele.  It was built around 1900, by Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor and author, before Capri was such a tourist destination.  The views were fabulous and it made us all want an island retreat.  His gardens were fabulous, with millions of flowers and a bird sanctuary.  After that we took a bus down to the city of Capri.  It was totally touristy and was a real turn off.  A huge shopping destination with all of the famous designers from Ferragamo to Versace and others I've never heard of.  Needless to say, when we stopped for our gelato they asked us to leave the outdoor seating since it wasn't for "gelato only " customers!  We bolted and headed for a hiking trail - not our scene at all!

Arco Naturale

The trail took us over to Arco Naturale.  An incredible natural arch with a killer view down to the sea.  We blew back down to the harbor (again, through narrow pedestrian streets and stairs - don't know how these people would ever get a mattress delivered!) in order to catch our ferry.  As we ran up to the departing ferry we begged the crew to put the gangplank back down as the Coast Guard officer had told the wrong info about our ferry location.  I guess we looked pathetic and so they reluctantly backed up this huge ferry and put the plank down for us!!  What was I thinking????  Stuck on Capri overnight, not so bad.....suppose Jay would have been worried??  One day was not enough for Capri!  Dayna especially dreams of going back someday - maybe she'll have her wedding pictures taken on Monte Solaro??

Amalfi Coast (Sorrento Part 4)

Bonding at Positano

The view from the bus of the coast

Our bus doing the shuffle on the road!

Day 5 was another "too tired of ruins" day so we girls took off for the Amalfi Coast which is on the south side of the peninsula (Sorrento is on the north side).  Jay headed back to do a little more thorough tour of Herculaneum.  Our bus ride was quite a thrilled.  The coastal highway hugs the cliffs and we were warned not to even TRY to rent a car here.  You'll see in the pictures that the roads are skinny, people park along the side and buses have to do some fancy footwork to pass each other.  Sometimes it took several minutes to maneuver around a curve or a congested area. It's amazing that no one got car sick!!  We made a friend on the bus.  Her name was Augustina and she was a 28 year old Argentinian attorney traveling alone.  She hung with us on our little adventure and we enjoyed lunch with her and learning about her life.  It's so fun to meet people from all over and most everyone speaks some English.  It makes me feel so stupid not to speak at least one language apart from English.

Positano hanging on the cliff

Our first hop off the bus was in Positano.  The bus had been stopped and barely moving because of the congestion so we decided it was a good time.  I small village that tumbles down the mountainside with a pebbly beach.  The bus stops at the top of the village so we hiked down the little narrow paths toward signs that were painted tile that said Spagna Beach.  Sounded good to us and Karissa managed to keep us from missing our little turns down stairways.  As always the girls loved the beach.  Since it wasn't high tourist season it was fun to wander through the streets, find the next bus stop and to wait with the locals for the next bus toward Amalfi.  By the way, there are no real schedules on buses in Italy - they come when they come!

 

The Duomo and our lunch spot in Amalfi

We curved along the coast taking in some of the most spectacular cliffs I've ever seen.   Unfortunately, the windows of the bus were fogged up so the pictures are a bit fuzzy!  The bus drivers are absolutely amazing.  It would be hard to drive it in a small car, let alone a bus!  They must all aspire to be Grand Prix drivers!!  Our next stop was Amalfi.  Another beautiful coastal town, where we ate lunch at the bottom of the steps to the famous Romanesque style Duomo di Sant' Andrea church.  Augustina and I shared a locally caught fish (brought to the table completely intact and the waiter cut it up for us) and the girls ate pizza (again) in the sunshine.  No one eats inside unless it's raining I think!  We said our goodbyes to Augustina and boarded an open air bus for a twenty minute ride up the mountain to the little town of Ravello.

The fabulous view from Ravello

The drive up to  Ravello was fantastic.  There were only two others on the bus with us so it felt like we had a giant convertible to ourselves!! Ravello was so quaint and charming.  Very quiet but with incredible views.  The girls managed to make friends with the local cats (what views these cats get!!) and find a playground with the locals.  We bought some locally painted pottery and just savored the views (of course waiting for the bus back to Amalfi called for a gelato break!).  We barely managed to make our connection for the bus back to Sorrento (the first two "scheduled" buses back to Amalfi from Ravello just never came!).

On the very long and circuitous route back to Sorrento (nearly 2 hours and we definitely got a tour of the whole peninsula - too bad it got dark!) we got some incredible sunset views up the coastline.  Could the scenery get any better?