Monte Cassino

One of the things I tried to do with the kids is to give them a sense of the contributions Canada made to Europe during the two world wars.   We lost a relative here, First Lt. Russell Geddes Douglas.  Cassino was on a line of ridges blocking the Allied advance to Rome from Sicily.   The fighting was particularly tough here and despite many battles it was really only over run once the Allies had also made a landing on the other side of the ridge up the coast at Anzio.   Cassino was one of the sites of the most Canadian casualties during the war.  You can see from the pictures why it was so hard for the Allies to take.

They never found his remains.

Lac Garda

Wow...  No wonder they filmed a great Bond flick here.  The views are just stunning.  The alps, the lake, lemon trees, a beautiful city on the water and an amusement park for the kids.  What's not to love?  By about this time, we'd decided that we were not going to go visit Greece this trip because they were in the middle of their election and we weren't sure we'd be able to get out.  We weren't going to be able to take the car through much of Greece as we wanted to spend most of our time on the islands and the ferry costs were out of our budget so it was looking like we'd have to try to do it by flying and the thought of Greek strikes stranding us for days with all our stuff didn't appeal.  

So we packed up the wagon, left Rome and headed back up past Florence again to Lake Garda.  Not that this was a hardship!   Our plan was to spend a week at Lake Garda and then a few more days in Florence before heading back south of Rome to see the Amalfi Coast and then perhaps further south before flying out of Rome on July 8th.    This was about 3 weeks earlier than we'd originally planned (July 31st out of Madrid) but we weren't able to rearrange the "free" flights we'd booked on points with Air Canada so we decided that we'd book a ticket with Scare Transat instead directly out of Rome.   This left us with our trusty Ford and we'd spend 6 weeks in Italy... a real hardship!

Lake Garda is about 5 hours north of Rome  pretty much in the middle of the peninsula right at the start of the Alps (Dolomites in Italy).  The waters are beautiful blue, the hills and mountains are stunning and I couldn't think of a better spot to just "drive".  I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.  No wonder all the Irish fly into Verona on Ryan Air for 28 Euro's and then spend a week here before turning around and heading home.  It's a very cheap vacation.  We'll be back.

On top of Mount Baldo looking down on the northern end of Lake Garda

The somewhat over aged  steer/calf still thinks he can get milk out of a hand...    The hills are alive with the sound of COW BELLS.  They are deafening up close. I don't know how the cows don't go nuts.  

Paragliders getting started (they are tandem here... but lots of folks learning singles as well).

Limone (Lemon trees all over the hills)

A little tunnel through the mountain they'd dug out and stuffed with high end shops!

This is where they filmed the opening car chase in the second last Bond flick the Quantum of Solace

A bit wet after a splash ride at the Amusement Park at Gardaland

Shawn wouldn't have anything to do with the ride but Rachel loves them more than Jen and I (which is saying something!)

A long day!

This was probably the freakiest ride we've ever done... the car follows the white rail (upside down and everything).    My ears still hurt from Jen and Rachel screaming as we went off the top rail.

Back at the campground, Shawn and Rachel would spend hours doing archery.

Pretty good shots!

Roma!

Well, it only took me almost six months but I noticed that my blogging posts stopped in May.  This coincided with the crappy internet coverage in Italy and then all the racing around we've done since we got home.  Jen spent the last month making up a picture book of our trip and that got me to looking at the blog again and I noticed it didn't go past Florence and that I had a draft post ready for Rome when I got some pictures uploaded.  So here goes....

It took a few days but I got a new favorite city (by a roman nose).  I'm not going to write tons about it as most people have had the pleasure but we had a great opportunity to get to love the city as we stayed there twice for about two weeks in total.  Our camping village (Fabulous - yes that's it's name!) was about halfway between Rome and Ostia Antica which is on the coast.  We were on an express bus route that took us to Fermi (after the brilliant physicist Enrico Fermi) subway stop.  From there it was seven stops to the Colosseum and downtown.

We spent a day around the Colosseum and the Forum, another around the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain (WOW!),  Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, another in the Borghese Galleria (WOW, wow!!!), and of course the Vatican and St. Peters Cathedral.  Sprinkled around that we also saw the catacombs, the Via Appia Antica (the original road to Rome), the Caracalla Baths, Circus Maximus and just enjoying the atmosphere of the town (which is why it ended up being number 1 for me).

It was a great spot to finish off our trip and we all came to love the spot as my Dad does.  I can see why it's his favorite city too!

Here are just some of our shots.

The Colosseum

The basement below the Colosseum floor where they stored the animals and slaves.  

A wider shot for perspective

The Colosseum of course

The Temple of Saturn... it's about 500BC.

The Temple of Castor and Pollux

This is the "House of the Vestal Virgins".  Most of these statues were missing their heads... explains why there are so many heads in some of the museums we saw.

It's a real shame....

She managed to hang on to her head.

A little splash of colour in a 2000 year old flower bed.

The Arch of Septimus Severus (and the Colosseum in the background).

The Spanish Steps

Italian Carabinieri (Carbine carrying police...  I like their purses, goes well with the spurs and the swords).

The Trevi Fountain.  It's almost impossible to get a good shot there because of all the people.  Next time I'm going to go down there at 6am and try it.

The Trevi Fountain... people throw coins over their shoulders into the fountain to guarantee their return.  We returned 4 or 5 times before we threw any coins!  The magic of the place keeps drawing you back.

Astonishing.

The Italians are always doing this... integrating 2000 year old columns into new buildings.  Wonderful.  

The Pantheon... it was a temple to all of the gods and was REBUILT in 126 AD (it was originally built in 27 BC).  Since the 7th Century, it has been used as a Roman Catholic Church.  Pretty amazing that buildings like that were around in the days of Jesus.  

I don't know what kind of flowers those are but they were all over Italy in May/June.  Gorgeous.

Apologize for the blurry picture... inside the Pantheon.

The Pantheon floor

Just a cool building in Roma.

The Pantheon

Piaza Navona... one of our favourite spots.

Piazza Navona

Rachel and a street performer at Piazza Navona

That can't be good for your neck.  We loved to watch the street performers at Piazza Navona.  We made our way back here at least 5 different times.

Great pizza & beers on a hot day!

I loved how you'd have these old churches tucked right into non-obvious locations.  Note how it is fashionably run down...  Ah Roma!!!