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.

The girls had fund burying Ian in the sand on the Lida beach.

The water and sand were both great.

We found a park to let the kids play in on Venice.

Brad loved the springy things that he'd tip almost to the ground.

Brad and Ian were pretty good troopers while the girls shopped.
6-13-10 Sunday
Everyone was a little tired, so we slept in, then I went to the beach with everyone except Brad, Kindra, and Mitzi. As it was Sunday, the beach was extremely crowded. The girls buried Ian in the sand. I got burned a little on my back, as I was laying on my stomach reading my book.
We all went over to Venice proper late in the evening, not leaving to go over there until about 6-7pm. As we were going over there, I think 3 different cruise ships went past as they were leaving Venice. Most people get 1-2 days to visit Venice, similar to what Kindra and I did when we came here about 12 years ago. It will be nice to spend almost a whole week and be able to take some more of the vaporettos out to some of the outlying islands and wander around a little more. We got off at one of the first stops and started walking towards St. Mark’s Square. We got caught in a micro-burst wind storm that was blowing sand in our eyes, so we huddled around a corner in an alley for a few minutes. We decided to head back, but then it started dying down, so the kids played in a park. Brad got on one of those animal like things on top of springs that little kids rock back and forth on. He tilted it back and forth and side to side almost to the ground. It was pretty funny. We decided to head to the Rialto Bridge and then walk back to St. Mark’s Square. The girls especially loved all the mask shops. They stopped and bought several masks for themselves and some friends. Brad had to exercise patience while the girls stop in shops and look around. I think he’s also though enjoying seeing a lot of the sites. He keeps borrowing my camera and taking lots of pictures of things.

Lake Bled in Slovenia was beautiful, with the church on the island in the lake.

You ride across to the island on these boats rowed over by a guy stanind up in the back, kind of like a gondola in Venice.

Everyone at Lake Bled.

Finally made it to Venice.

Although Ian didn't seem too impressed on the ferry ride over to the Venice Lido where we were staying.
6-12-10 Saturday
Woke up early as we’ll have to hit the road today going to Venice. Got in 1 good hour at recovery/tempo pace, riding to/and around Filzmoos. I think I’ll miss riding in Germany and Austria, it’s been great.
Drove to Lake Bled, then to Venice. On the way down through Austria, we encountered a ton of traffic, and my GPS recommended I get off and take a side road to avoid the traffic. The GPS unit is updated with slow traffic and other reports and tries to find you the quickest way to your destination. It really took us off the beaten path. We were going up and down this one lane road in the middle of no where, and I was starting to get a little worried. The traffic and taking the detour added about 1 hour to our drive time. Lake Bled is in Slovenia, and you can tell when you cross the border. The architecture is much more bland. They don’t have as many nice chalets, and it’s more industrial looking. Slovenia was part of the old Soviet block. Lake Bled was pretty cool though and very beautiful. There is an island in the middle of the lake with a church on it. Right from the water there at about 90 stairs that lead up to the church. I had heard it’s traditional for new brides and grooms to go the island, and for the grooms to carry their brides up the stairs. They say that about 2/3 make it all the way up the stairs. I was hoping to see some new bridal parties, but we didn’t. We took a boat over to the island and then spent about a ½ hour walking around. On the shore there were lots of people swimming and laying out. The kids wanted to stay and swim, but it was about 4pm, and we had to drive the rest of the way to Venice, which I estimated at about 3 hours, then catch the ferry across to the Lido, then try and find where we are staying. We made it to the ferry and it was a little more expensive than I thought, at about $100 just to take us and the car across to the Lido. I was thinking of maybe taking the ferry back to the main-land to go to church on Sunday, and/or maybe a day trip to Verona, but at an estimated $200 round trip just to the main-land and back, I don’t think we’ll do that. We made it to the Lido. We found the place where we will be staying, and we were going to meet the guy who’s place we are staying at the home, but he wasn’t there. I was able to switch sim cards and contact him via phone and he came over in about 5-10 minutes. The place we’ll be staying at only has 1 bathroom, so it will be a little tougher. After we got the car all unpacked, we walked to the beach and took a little walk on the beach. It will be nice being that close to the beach.

Here's the girls at the Sound of Music gazebo, and to think, Brecken is 16 going on 17.

The kids really liked the fountains at Hellbrunn Palace.

The trick fountains got you wet if you weren't careful, but that was 1/2 the fun.

After the tour of the fountains, the kids played in the park.

One of Mitzi's favorite parts of the trip has been the parks.
6-11-10 Friday
Didn’t wake up until a little later, so didn’t have time to do full bike workout. Did hill intervals and was going to do 5 X 6 minutes, but only did 3 X 6 min at 327W, 328W, and 331W. Felt fairly easy and felt like I could have easily done 2-3 more.
Haven’t made it to Salzburg yet, so we went to Salzburg. We went to Hellbrun Palace that has the glass gazebo from the Sound of Music. Then we took the tour of the water fountains. The archbishop/duke who built the place put in all these water fountains that were hidden in his gardens. They would squirt the people he took there,when he would push various buttons and such throughout his garden. He loved to surprise his guests (and to think that this was all done way before electricity! ) We got a little wet and the kids had a great time with all the “trick” fountains. We drove through Salzburg and saw the castle on the hill, but didn’t really have time to stop and visit much more. Kindra and the kids were getting tired.
Went into town later in the evening with Kindra and walked through Bishopshoffen. Went to the internet café and was able to make a couple phone calls as well as check up on emails.

This was the view from the swimming pool we went to today. Pretty amazing.

The kids had so much fun yesterday they wanted to go swim again.
6-10-10 Thursday
Recovery Ride. Weather was perfect. Rode to Filzmoos and back twice. Filzmoos is a cute little ski resort town. They have a bakery there and riding by the bakery while I was hungry with the smell of fresh cooked bread was tormenting me.
I went to the internet café near the train station to update emails. They had Skype, but it is 4am or so back home, so I decided to come back tonight to follow up on emails and try and make a couple calls. Kids once again weren’t ready to go until about 2pm, and I didn’t get back from the internet café until about 1pm. The kids had so much fun yesterday swimming that they wanted to go swimming again today. We went back to where we rode the alpine slide that goes on rails and they swam there. The weather once again was great, but a little warm.
Went back to the internet café in the evening, which is also a Kebap shop. I had a Doner Kebap and went onto the internet. I tried to call my mom using Skype, and I could hear her, but she obviously couldn’t hear me. Again frustration.

Although very difficult, the climb up the Grossglockner was great.

Me on top of the Grossglockner Pass.

Still alot of snow for being in June. It would have been awsome to ride this about the first of May. I'll bet the snow banks would be 50' high.

I took the 5 oldest kids for the afternoon, while Kindra stayed at the chalet with Mitzi. We rode an alpine slide ride that runs on a rail. It was like 1.2 miles long. A lot of fun.

Then me and the kids stopped by this deep gorge.

Then we went swimming.
6-9-10 Wednesday
Great ride up the Grossglockner pass. Weather was perfect. Sunny and cool climbing. That was one epic ride. It was very steep right from the start and never leveled out much. The upper section had a little respite in the curves, but for a 1:45 climb that gained about 5500’ in about 11 miles, my average rpms were only 65, and that is with a granny gear of 39 X 31. I wished a lot of the climb that I either had a compact crank or a triple, as a lot of the time my rpm’s were under 60. It felt like the longest tension interval I had ever done. The descent was fun, except that it was so steep and had so many curves my arms were starting to ache from squeezing by my brakes so much. I was starting to get worried I’d totally melt my brakes and not be able to stop.
Mitzi has had a bit of a fever and hasn’t been feeling too well, so she stayed at the chalet with Kindra, and I took the other kids up to a place to ride an alpine slide type ride, but it rides on a rail. It was quite long as it was about 2km (1.2 miles) long. The kids really liked it. We did the ride a couple of times, and had ice cream up at the top and a little terraced restaurant that overlooked the valley. Then we stopped by this really cool gorge. It is extremely narrow with this river at the bottom and you walk along these stairs and wooden walkways. The water is this cool aqua green color. At points the gorge was only a few feet wide, by probably 50’-80’ deep with the river swirling at the bottom. Then we went swimming. It was very sunny and warm. It’s hard to imagine that only about a week ago I was riding my bike in the morning and the temperature was only 41 degrees. Today it felt like it was about 90, although it was probably a little cooler than that, but the humidity makes it feel pretty hot.
Went into a nearby town to try and get internet hookup or use an internet café. Connected my Wi-Fi card and briefly connected to a network and got internet but it was extremely slow. Tried to get a better hookup and lost it. Drove around trying to find another network I could hook into. Finally stopped at a sports café and asked if they knew where an internet café was. He showed me where one was near the train station, but when I got there, they were just closing. I’ll have to come back tomorrow morning. It’s extremely frustrating not having immediate internet.

This morning's bike ride was awsome. Pretty steep in places though for me trying to do a recovery ride.

This was the view at the top of the climb on my bike.

Today we went to Hallstatt, Austria which was one of the high points of the trip so far. It's a beautiful little old town right on the lake.

Mitzi has liked paying at the parks we find.

We rented a boat and rowed around the town. The views change out on the water and you can see even more of the town.

At the town church is a cemetary, and when they ran out of room, they would dig up the remains after a certain number of years, gather the bones together, then paint the skulls with the names and dates on the skulls. Pretty interesting.

6-8-10 Tuesday
I was going to do a recovery ride today, but it’s kind of difficult doing a true recovery ride here, as there are no flat areas to ride. I picked a canyon to ride up from a little town. It felt like riding up the upper part of Bald Mountain Pass and ended at a ski resort. I think I got passed by 2 cars the whole ride. At one part towards the very top I passed a sign that said 12% grade, and I was trying to keep my heart rate and power low as I was supposed to be doing an easier ride. I was doing 275W, and going 5.0 mph, and my cadence was 50 rpms. Pretty steep stuff to try and do a recovery ride on, but the ride was fantastic, the temperature was perfect (about 60 degrees), and as usual the scenery was great.
After threatening them with their lives yesterday if they didn’t get ready sooner, we actually left the chalet today by 11am. Pretty impressive as we only have 2 showers, nobody really does much until I get back from my ride, and every has breakfast/lunch before we go. Today we went to Hallstatt. I had seen pictures of Hallstatt and it looked pretty amazing. In fact, I have a picture of Hallstatt as my desktop on my computer at my office I thought it was so pretty. We had also got a picture/puzzle of Hallstatt and put it together a few months ago. It didn’t disappoint. It’s a pretty enchanting/amazing place. It’s build right onto the lake and very steep with the village going almost straight up. There are 2 churches and a couple dozen homes/gausthauses. We found a sign at a hotel that said internet so we went in and they let me use their internet to again catch up on emails. I’m really disappointed that we don’t have internet here where we are staying. There is an internet connection, but I can’t pull up the internet when I plug in. I also bought a wireless card to be used around WiFi zones, but can’t pull up a wifi connection either. I was hoping to check and respond to emails each night, use Skype to call the office and others at home, check the weather each day as well as the sites we were planning on visiting the next day, etc. That’s probably been the biggest frustration of the trip so far, especially because I thought I had it all covered ahead of time. After the kids going for ice-cream cones while I caught up on emails, we walked around the town a little bit, and got doner kebaps and sausage sandwiches for lunch. Then as they we family was sitting near the lake and playing, I went and rented a row boat. They didn’t have any of the pedal boats, or I probably would have got one of those. I surprised them as I rowed into view. I took everyone out in turns on the row boat. I’m glad we got the boat, as the views from the lake are even better as you can view the town from a bit of a distance. After the boat Mitzi wasn’t feeling well (she had a bit of a fever), so Kindra and a couple of the kids went up to the car, while Megan, Bradley and I went to check out the old church up on the hill. They had a really cool cemetery around the church and a church-house where they stored bones and skulls that had been dug up, dried out, and painted. A little flyer they had indicated that due to limitation of size in the small grave-yard, that after about 10-20 years the skeletons were dug up, and because flowers and other pretty things were used to decorate the graves, flowers and other things were painted on the skulls along with the names and dates. We drove home and had a great dinner of caprese salad (tomatoes with mozzarella cheese and basil and olive oil), soup, and rolls. After that I’ve spent about an hour catching up this journal/blog for the last couple of days. I’m now 100% caught up. Whew!

We went to the Nazi Documentation that told all about Hitler's rise to power, what the Nazi's did, the key figures in the Nazi party, and saw the bunkers they had built at Hitler's "Eagles Nest" at Burchtesgaden. It was pretty sad.

After the Nazi Documentation we went on a walk through the pretty forests of the area.

Then we had a treat on at a restaurant that overlooked the whole area. Brecken's was huge.

We had a great family dinner.

6-7-10 Monday
Hill intervals, went to go to Eagle’s Nest, but ended up just doing the documentation tour on Berchtesgaden, Hitler, and WWII. This morning I did hill intervals. One nice thing is that although we are about 12 days into our trip, I’ve actually been able to lose a little bit of weight. Not much, but I’m down around 178, which is about 8 pounds less than I was about 3 weeks ago. I’d like to get down under 170 by the time we hit the French Alps in about 4 weeks, and then stay there the rest of the trip. One of my cycling goals for the year is to have a descent time up Alp d’Huez, and I can’t do that if I’m too heavy. The other key is to get in some good workouts and build up my climbing strength. Part of that is done by doing hill intervals which aren’t particularly fun, but do make you stronger. I rode to Filzmoos which is a small ski town about 8 miles from here, then did intervals up the hill just past the town. The grade and scenery are kind of like the upper part of Big Cottonwood canyon.
We still didn’t do a great job being ready and leaving any earlier, and didn’t leave the house until almost 2pm, despite me telling everyone they needed to be ready to go by about noon. I threatened them that they better be ready earlier tomorrow. We went up to Berchtesgaden which is where Hitler had his Eagle’s Nest. We took the Documentation tour which tells all about Hitler’s rise to power, the history of the area, a lot of the Nazi history including the atrocities committed, and ends with a tour of the bunker complex there. It was pretty complex with lots of shafts and rooms. It was pretty sad hearing about all the atrocities of the war that were committed and kind of amazes me that there were so many “smart” people that went along with Hitler and were exterminating the Jew, gypsies, and anyone that got in their way. It was too late after our tour to take the bus up to the Eagle’s Nest, and they said that it wouldn’t be real great anyway as there were too many clouds, so after the tour we went on a little hike, then I took them to a gausthaus to have a treat. They had a flyer for this place advertising their desserts at the ticket place to the documentation tour. They were these huge puff pastries filled with ice-cream and whipped cream, and covered with cherries and sauce. They were pretty dang good, and the view over the valley was fantastic. We came back to the chalet and made linguini and salad for dinner.
This is kindra. It has been pretty fun with the kids, they have been better than I thought they would be and have been helping with making dinners, cleaning up and doing chores. The “chalet” is beautiful and it is on a very steep hill with forests surrounding us. It has 4 floors and tons of room. The doors in the chalet are all very old salvaged doors. One has a date painted with toll painting which is dated 1627. I love the doors here, they are all very unique. We are watching “spongebob” in german. Ha! It is pretty funny that they have a lot of the same things that we have at home.