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.