Traveling

Check out travbuddy.com. You can scroll all the way down to see the maps that Stefanie and I made. Apparently I've been to 8% of the countries of the world and Stefanie has been to 9%. And for full disclosure--we are in the "airports count" faction of figuring out what countries you've been too. For me the only one in that category (as well as a few states too, Colorado and Michigan for example) is South Korea. Oh, and I think I've been to Austria, but I can't be quite sure, but I counted it anyway. More cool trivia on that though is that Stefanie has been to countries that don't even exist anymore (East Germany, Soviet Union). And even a few countries that weren't independent countries at the time she visited them (Lithuania, for example). We counted all those too.

An Evening In Roma (and a few days too :)

After decompressing this past summer in Pittsburgh after 3 years in Cambodia, Stefanie, Dylan and Sofia were excited to head to Tunisia to see David after being away from him for 6 weeks. But....... before we did so we had to take a small detour; to Rome, Italy. Cubbie came with us and we all had a blast.

We stayed in a convent that was located just off St. Peter's Square. It was on Borgo Santo Spirito. We could see the Pope's apartment window from our room. The only negative was that there was an 11pm curfew. Not bad when you have kids but a little difficult when dinner isn't normally even served until after 9:00pm.

This photo (right) is the view from our room. It is an awful photo and you can't see us but you can get an idea of how great the location was. I could hit the Apostolic Palace with a rock from our window :) The church bells from Saint Peters woke us each morning. The nuns in the convent were great. They loved the kids. And Cubbie got to practice her Italian with them each morning at breakfast.

Saint Peters Square was one of Dylan's favorite places. He loved chasing the pigeons there. Sofia liked the square too but mostly because that is where a lot of the horse drawn carriages parked. We wanted to do a carriage ride but it was 100 Euros per person for about a 2 hour tour. That was WAY out of our price range so we opted for our own "walking tour".

Cubbie and I were pleasantly surprised that the kids were so willing to walk all over Rome. There were only a few times that we had to bribe them. When they got sluggish we promised that the next stop would be a gelateria :)

This is my favorite photo from the entire trip. Sofia, Dylan and Cubbie are throwing their coins into the Trevi Fountain and making wishes. Shortly after this was taken, we had lunch (fresh mozzarella with basil and tomato panini). And then Dylan's wish was granted. We had even more GELATO. Dylan's favorite was straciatella and Sofia's favorite was pistachio

Rome was GREAT! We had a lot of fun there.

Next time though we will all go together; David, Stefanie, Sofia and Dylan.

As promised, pictures of our ski adventure

We were a bit wary when we first arrived at the Edelweiss Lodge in Garmisch. It is one of the Armed Forces Recreation Centers . The cab driver on the way from the train station to the hotel told us that this was the least amount of snow in the town in over 500 years for that time of year. Not sure how anybody would know that though.

In any case, it was cold.

Sofia and Dylan were enrolled in Ski School for the week so we (David and Stefanie) tried to figure out what we would do with our time. Since David studied in Germany and had travelled quite a bit through Bavaria already he wasn't interested in seeing "the sites". So being the great adventurers that we are :) , we enrolled in a 5 day snowboarding class. The lack of snow in town caused us to have to travel about 1 hour + per day (buses, trains, gondolas) to the Zugspitze for our snowboarding class.

Here is our proof that we made an honest attempt at snowboarding. Notice the church in the background. Perhaps someone was watching over us to save our butts :)

By day 4 we both "got it" and were able to do toe and heel edge turns. Stefanie decided though that she had to make a choice between snowboarding (a re injured tailbone) and horseback riding once she got back to Tunisia. So she spent day 5 drinking Gluehwein at the lodge. David wasn't far behind after "tweaking" his ankle and almost breaking his left arm. It was a blast though. Next time we go though we will rent skis.

The kids finished out the week and their instructors were very impressed 1) that they finished the week out (since apparently a lot of kids get pretty whiny and end up quitting) 2) that Dylan could do "a pizza wedgie" aka snowplow from a fairly high speed and stop on a dime and 3) that Sofia was almost paralleling down red (blue in the States = intermediate) slopes by Friday.

Left - Dylan, David, Sofia and Stefanie on the Hausberg.

Bottom - photo taken from the gondola (15 minute ride up the mountain) once we got above the clouds

Right - photo taken from the gondola of the Eibsee Lake

Now we just have to make enough money to afford 2 vacations per year; Hawaii in the summer and Germany in the winter.