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”.