The Tiber river with Castle Sant Angelo behind.

The family heading to the Vatican.

Megan, Ashley, and Brecken climbing to the top of St. Peter's. It was tight going in places, and even trickier as the walls tilted in as you climbed.

Megan, Brecken, Ashley, and Ian overlooking Rome from the top of St. Peter's.

St. Peter's is pretty spectacular.

Brecken, Megan, and Ian played some soccer when we got back from Rome.

Fantastic Italian sunset over the Sabine Hills.

6-24-10 Thursday
I did a nice ride this morning. Not too hard, but enjoyable. We had driven up to Fara in Sabina when we first got here and it looked like it would be a fun place to bike to, so I rode up to there. I wanted to see how long the last little bit would take, as I needed to do some 5-8 minute hill intervals this week. It was perfect at about 6:30. I’ll do several hill intervals here later in the week. The ride was great with twisting switch back roads until you hit the final road up to Fara in Sabina, when the road winds around the hill at a constant probably 8% grade arriving at the top with this little medieval town and great views all around.
We went back to Rome today to visit the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. Again, getting into the city, finding a place to park fairly close to where you are trying to go, and then walking to where you are going are fairly challenging tasks that take quite a bit of patience and effort and leave you a little drained, especially with 6 kids. Mitzi is heavy and hard to carry, and doesn’t always want to ride in the stroller. Ian tends to whine a lot and want to ride in the stroller, even if Mitzi wants to ride in it. Brad tends to tease Ian quite a bit. We finally made it to St. Peter’s and Megan, Ashley, Brecken, and Ian wanted to climb with me up to the top of the dome. The views are fantastic. It’s a little weird walking up, as the dome is hollow with the stairs inside it. Because it’s inside a dome, it slopes and you have to keep turning back and forth and the ceiling and walls slant. The views though are incredible. The basilica itself is enormous and almost overwhelming, but spectacular. We went down to the crypt and saw a number of the tombs of some of the popes and went into the treasury. When we were leaving we saw a couple of Swiss guards and were able to talk with one of them and ask him a few questions. They are pretty cool and neat in their old costumes. When we got out everyone was tired and hungry, so we just bought sandwiches and drinks at a nearby stall and ate them on some steps. When we got back to where we were staying Brecken and Ian played soccer. As the sun was setting, it was really quite fantastic over the Sabine hills.

Ian and Mitzi on the cute little wooden horse in front of one of the stores.

Brecken and Megan on the big wooden horse.

The cathedral in Orvieto is one of the most spectacular and beautiful I've seen in all of Italy.

They had some wonderful shops in Orvieto.

6-23-10 Wednesday
Last night it was fairly hot, so Kindra opened the window to our room. We heard a little thud shortly after turning the lights off, and we turned them back on and found a mouse had crawled in the window and fell into our room. I had to get the broom and ended up whacking it with the broom. They have lots of fields around here, and 2 cats where we are staying, so I’m sure they have plenty of mice out in the fields. Pretty exciting though to be chasing a mouse through the house.
We did a day trip to Orvietto this afternoon. Orvietto is about 1 hour north of where we are staying, probably about 1 ½ hours-2 hours north of Rome. It’s a hilltop town and you wind around the hill, then park and take an escalator or elevator up to the town to save on parking as the town itself is very packed with small medieval streets and very little room for parking. Orvietto was great. They had fantastic shops, a beautiful church/cathedral (one of the best I had ever seen), very quaint lanes, and Pozzo San Patricio (St. Patrick’s Well). This is a well built in about the 1500’s on commission of the Pope who viewed Orvietto as a place to escape to if warring factions threatened the Pope, and they wanted a source of water for on top of the hill in the town. The well has 2 sets of stairs so one set could be used going down, and the other set going up. They were wide enough that you could take a donkey or mule down to the bottom to bring water up. It’s about 250 stairs deep (probably about 10 stories). It was pretty fascinating. It always amazes me the things they built during the middle ages without the power tools and equipment we have today. We bought a beautiful hand painted Tuscan plate with matching olive oil and vinegar pitchers that Kindra saw and loved and one of the ceramics stores. For anyone considering a trip to Italy, I’d highly recommend taking a trip to Orvietto and throwing in a little side trip to Civita di Bagnoragio that I’ll talk about in a couple of days. We were planning on visiting Civita today as well, but ran out of time. It’s not far from Orvieto.

Great view from on top of the Terminillo.

The kids loved the Ferrari store and wished we could bring one home.

Brad, Mitzi, and Ian waiting for the girls to finish some shopping.

We all had to throw coins over our shoulders into the Trevi fountain. Hopefully we'll all get the chance to come back to Rome again someday.

Kindra and Mitzi looking around in the Pantheon.

We had a fabulous sunset as we drove back to the place we were staying.
6-22-10 Tuesday
I did a great ride this morning up to Terminillo. This is a ski resort that was the end of one of the stages in the Giro d’Italia this year. It was pretty similar to say Big Cottonwood Canyon in time, but more like Little Cottonwood in steep non relenting grade. Up the Terminillo I avg. 8.2 mph for 1 hour 10 minutes. In the Big Cottonwood Hill climb last year, I avg. 14.2 mph for about the same time. Doing the Snowbird hillclimb, from the mouth of the canyon to Snowbird, I avg. 8.6 mph for only 43 minutes. It was a great climb mostly all covered by trees, but as you got to the top, it had fantastic views over the countryside below. It was very chilly coming down though as I was soaking wet from working up a sweat, and it was only about 48 degrees.
We went back into Rome in the afternoon and were hoping to catch the free walking tour I found online that takes you around the city. We parked near a Ferrari/Maserati store, and the kids really liked the sweet cars. Ian has really become a Ferrari lover. The free walking tour was supposed to meet near the Spanish Steps, but we couldn’t find them when we got there. We decided to do our own walking tour of downtown Rome. We saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, and a bunch of interesting churches and fountains, and of course had some gelato as well. On the way back we had a great sunset. We had a great day in Rome seeing the sites.

Brad swimming in the pool with the rolling Italian hills in the background.

Ian not quite sure if he wants to jump in or not. The water certainly wasn't as warm as we keep our pool back home.

Ian and Mitzi love the Nutella.

6-21-10 Monday
After yesterday being a fairly hectic day going to church and into Rome, we decided to have a fairly relaxing day at the place we were staying. I went to the store in the morning to get some food while everyone slept in, then in the afternoon, the kids played out in the pool. It was pretty cold water, but they had a blast anyway. The place we are staying has quite a view. It’s perched up on a hill, and the pool overlooks the rolling hills around it. It’s quite a picture. I think Ian and Mitzi especially have become addicted to Nutella. They always want bread with Nutella on it. Mitzi is always asking for “bread with Nutellellella”.

Mitzi's all ready to go to church.

They had a whole bunch of these bizzare painted and decorated cows in Rome.

He had a great time having lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Rome.

The kids all liked the food and the atmosphere at the Hard Rock.

Megan and Brecken have both been Ga Ga over all the designer fashions, shoes, clothes, etc.

We stopped by one of the huge churches before heading back. They are really ornate and interesting.

6-20-10 Sunday
This was one of my favorite days so far on the trip. I just think it we were able to spend a lot of good quality time as a family. We were all pretty tired after the long drive down yesterday, but we got up and went to church in Rome. They had translators again like they did when we were in Germany. Church was very good. The bishop talked. He said that he originally met the missionaries when he was a small boy and him and his family were baptized. But then he became very involved with soccer and progressed to the point where he played with the Italian national team and traveled all over. Instead of going on a mission, he played soccer and in consumed his life and he fell further and further away from the church. I can’t remember, but he realized that his life wasn’t going the direction he wanted it to, and he was able to turn his life back around and became active in the church. It was really good. I hope that Brad got something out of the talk. After church, we drove a member of the church to the train station who was visiting for work. He lived in Albuquerque, NM and was here with some energy commission meeting with the Italian government. After church we went to see the Capuchin crypt where the monks made designs and decorations out of the bones. It was closed for another hour or so and we were all hungry, so we went to lunch at the Hard Rock Café nearby. It was good to have a nice meal all as a family and after being in Europe now for about 3 weeks, it was good to have some American food as well. After lunch we went back to the Capuchin Crypt the kids thought it was pretty creepy, but interesting as well. Overall, this was a great day building family memories.

Brad hanging out in the van listening to his MP3 player as we waited for the ferry.

Some of the girls enjoying a minute as we waited.

This mega yacht we saw as we were leaving was even bigger than the one we saw yesterday. I especially like the touch of the custom helicopter on top.

When we got there we went to Fara in Sabina which is a very old hill top town. The views were incredible.
6-19-10 Saturday
Leaving Venice and heading to Rome. We were hoping to leave by about 10am and be able to visit Florence on the way to where we are staying about 30 minutes north of Rome, but by the time we finally got out of the place at about 11am, then caught the ferry it was nearly 1pm by the time we made it to the mainland. The GPS said we weren’t going to make it to where we were going until about 6:30, so we thought we’d better keep going. It was a pretty long slog and everyone was getting pretty tired by the time we made it. As it was, we made it by about 5pm, and the people that were going to meet us where we are staying weren’t there, so we went to the store, then drove around for a little bit. We ended up driving to Fara in Sabina, which is a little village at the top of a hill. The drive up was really cool, and I’m looking forward riding my bike up there later in the week. We were all excited to see how nice this place was after staying in Venice. I did my best in planning things out where to stay, but you are never sure how nice someplace will be until you get there.

This would have been the best way to tour Venice, in your own personal mega-yacht. Maybe in my next life.

There are some really cool huge clocks on buildings around Europe. They are very interesting.

Here's Mauro making Ian a glass frog. It was really interesting to watch him make it. The kids really liked this.

Venice has so many very unique beautiful old buildings. We took a tour down the Grand Canal listening to an audio tour tell us about what we were seeing. The audio guides are great to help you understand what you are seeing.

Megan, Ashley, and Ian took off their shoes and waded in the water outside St. Mark's Basilica.
6-18-10 Friday
I did a 50 mile ride in the morning. I was thinking I needed to do a 15 minute time trial to see what kind of watts/power I could put out. I was just riding along fairly fast putting out about 280 watts then ramped it up from there. I didn’t exactly start, but looked down at my time when I was putting out about 320 Watts and decided to try and hold it above that for 15 minutes. At about what I thought was 13 minutes, I was going to start ramping it up as you can normally hold watts about 10-20% above what you can maintain for only a couple of minutes. Right then I came to an intersection and a car kind of cut me off. I lost all my momentum and had to stop, so I ended my time trial there. When I got back and analyzed it, it was actually about 14 minutes long, and I ended up averaging 330 watts, which is pretty good for me. A month ago, I did a time trial out at Salt Air, and did the time trial in just under 15 minutes and averaged only 305 watts. I do think I’ve gotten stronger in the last month.
I took Megan, Ian, and Ashley into Venice while Kindra, Brecken, and Mitzi went to the beach. We went to a place I had found in TripAdvisor that was one of the highest rated things to do in Venice. He’s a glass artist and will make what you want while you watch. We had Ian pick something for him to make, and he made a frog for Ian. It was really cool to watch him form the body, the fingers and toes, the eyes, and everything. The kids really enjoyed it, then I bought a vase for Kindra. We had recorded audio guides of some of the things we’d see from Rick Steve’s website, and we listened to his guide as we rode the vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square. We then toured St. Mark’s Basilica. Because of some of the rain a couple of days ago, some of the square and in front of the church was flooded a little. The kids enjoyed walking through the water and over some of the raised walkways. It’s amazing how the domes, ceilings, and walls of the basilica look like they have beautiful paintings, but they are really mosaics. There is a great big golden thing that’s made out of gold and is probably 4-6’ tall by about 6-8’ wide and decorated with gems. It has intricate pictures on it and was pretty amazing. We then toured the Doge’s Palace. The Doges were the rulers of Venice. Brad especially liked the display of weapons including cross-bows, swords, and arrows. Ian especially liked the prison and the Bridge of Sighs. I had a great day with the kids in Venice.

We went to Murano and saw glass blowing demonstrations. It was pretty interesting.

They had a huge glass sculpture in Murano.

Went out to dinner with Brad tonight. It's nice being able to spend some one/on/one time with the kids.

After dinner we ran into Ashley, Ian, Megan, and Mitzi who had gone to the beach and all had gelatos
6-17-10 Thursday
Found a place that has Ferrero Rochere gelato. Big mistake. I had one of them on the way to the store, then another on the way back, then another with Kindra when we went to find a farmacia. It’s almost 3pm and we still don’t have everyone ready to leave for the day. It doesn’t help that we only have 1 bathroom here, and nobody really got up until almost noon today. We decided to go to Murano anyway. Got there quite late, but we were able to watch a couple master glass makers making some glasses. Then we walked into a couple of the glass galleries. They have some beautiful stuff. Kindra and I took Brad out to dinner tonight as Brecken wasn’t feeling too well. There was an American couple who were sitting next to us, and they ordered fish like I did last night. When it came out whole, they had the waiter take it and take off the skin and take out the bones. I think this is a bit of an example that Americans can be a bit inflexible and always want things their way. We had told the other kids they could walk to the beach. It’s pretty amazing that families are out pretty late here. Megan, Ashley, Ian and Mitzi all went to the beach by themselves at about 9:30pm. So many families and kids out at night, that it doesn't feel unsafe to have 4 small kids go to the beach by themselves at nearly 10pm. They walked right by us eating dinner and only Megan saw us, and we told her not to let the others know. We didn’t want Mitzi interrupting the rest of our dinner. I had a spicy pizza and it was really good. Of course I had a galato for dessert.

Finally got the chance to go on a date with Kindra.

It's nice just walking around Venice or the Lido.
6-16-10 Wednesday
It was raining pretty had in the morning, so I didn’t bother going on a ride and just slept in and read in bed. Nobody got up until late in the afternoon. I figured after a couple of weeks, if we wanted to have a bit of an off day, this would be a good one. I went on a date to dinner and a walk on the beach with Kindra. It was nice to spend a few minutes with her, as the kids occupy most all of our time. I ordered the grilled sole, and it came out whole. I had to take off the skin and take out the bones. It was delicious though.

Ian and Ashley having fun on the vaporetto ride to Burano. One of the benefits of the trip is having the kids spend so much time together and with us.

The brightly colored houses and tiny canals on Burano made it quite cute.

They also had beautiful flowers.

Brad is quite good with Mitzi. They are pals.

Mitzi is playing conductor on the boat.

Ian and Kindra.

6-15-10 Tuesday
I did a 1 ½ hour ride with 2 laps of the Lido in easy tempo. It gets a little boring going back and forth on the island that’s very flat.
We went to Burano. It was very pretty with different colored houses. We had to take a couple ferries to get there and had to try and figure out how to get there. Kindra had to buy a linen and lace table cloth for Thanksgiving dinners. We went into the little church there, and there was 3 beautiful very old paintings. They could have been in most any museum. We stopped at a little café area and had 2 pieces of pie. One was a kind of almond pie, and the other was a lemon flavor. They were both fantastic. I bought a bunch of fruit for the boat ride back. The fruit was fabulous. We had some cherries, peaches, bananas, and apricots. They were all perfectly ripe and very large.
Kindra and I took Mitzi and Ashley to dinner, but Mitzi didn’t last for long. So I took her back and then had dinner with Kindra and Ashley. I had some Lasagna and it was great. Then I ordered the fried fish, which sounded good, but turned out to be fried squid, fried little whole anchovies with the head and tails on, then fried whole prawns with the heads and shells on.

I find Venice a magical place with the churches, canals, boats, etc.

Mitzi loved the beach even more than the parks.

But found it all a little overwhelming at times.

I went up St. Mark's Bell Tower with Megan, Brad, Ashley and Ian.
6-14-10 Monday
Good ride on the bike with 2 laps of the Lido. Did some harder efforts, but nothing structured.
I went to the beach with the kids. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as yesterday. Mitzi had a great time digging in the sand. I laid on my back and tried to take a nap and burned my stomach a bit. I figured after burning my back yesterday, I might as well even it out. Brecken and Kindra came to the beach a little later. I went and swam with Brad, Megan and Ashley, then I went back to the apartment to start lunch while they stayed at the beach for a little.
We ent to Venice proper in the late afternoon/early evening. Went to St. Mark’s Square and went up the bell tower. I was wearing my Tour de France shirt and a lady up on the top of the bell tower asked me if I was going to the tour in a couple of weeks. She said she races bikes as well, and will be traveling around with team BMC. We wandered around for awhile and ended up near Rialto and took the Vaporetto back to the Lido.
Kindra and I took Megan and Ian to dinner. We’ve decided to trade off taking each of the kids to dinner with mom and dad either by themselves or with 1 other child.
The place we are staying here in Venice, isn’t nearly as nice as the last couple places we’ve stayed, but because it’s in Venice, it’s the most expensive place we are staying at on the trip. The floors look like they need to be replaced, there is only 1 bathroom, the kitchen is very small and has very old appliances, but it makes up for it in location. It’s just a block or two away from the beach, and a block or two away from the vaporetto stop that takes you across to St. Mark’s Square.