For those of you who lack the patience to click through the linked slideshows below (like myself), I’m going to post a few of my favorite pictures directly to the blog. They won’t be chronological at all, so you’ll just have to deal.

11 hours in a single plane is a long time. We’re about halfway through right now. Ugh.

And the lunch? The one that has yet to come? It is PIZZA.

I can’t offer much in the way of witty messages, but I did want to let everyone know that we’re home and healthy.

Special thanks go out to the Kirks, Garners, and Hickmans who tended to the garden, and to Uncool Brian, who snuck in and left some fruit and milk and stuff. It is much appreciated, and, frankly, needed.

More posting tomorrow, I would guess.

Getting back to the United States from Italy is not a trivial manner. In some sense, it takes two full days. We started the process by checking out of La Filanda at 10am on Day 18. We had originally chosen to come to Lake Garda based on a recommendation from a book called Italy with Kids. It mentioned that Sirmione was a fantastic treat and suggested a visit to Gardaland. Gardaland is a theme park like Disneyland, and we wisely chose to avoid that. On our last day, we thought we would visit Sirmione.

Sirmione has a castle and is a remarkable isthmus, reaching out into Lake Garda. The water around it is an amazing blue (reminiscent of Rae’s Creek at the Masters, when they used to dye it). So, we visited, explored, etc. Sirmione wasn’t thrilling, and my lasting memory is this. If ever there was a city that should have prevented ALL cars from entering, it is this one. The streets are marginally wider than those in Venice, and we were constantly hugging walls so that we wouldn’t get run over.

So, off from Sirmione we went with assistance from the GPS. I will now suggest to all of you that bring a GPS when you come to Europe. The reduction in stress from not having to worry about directions is worth whatever it costs.

We arrived at the Hotel Cardano a few hours later and set up camp for the night. This was our first night staying in a single room together. It made for some funny times, as we were all a little loopy. I believe the bottom shaking competition came down to Jenn and Lindy. I will not reveal the winner here.

A good night’s sleep, and we were done with our last full day in Italy.

I would like it noted that we are very tired of pizza.

I have some connectivity tonight, so I uploaded a bunch of pictures… I have posted several blog posts below (on the right dates) if you’re interested. If you just want to see pictures, though, go here.

Lake Garda offers many options… we could have hopped into a car and explored the far reaches of this marvelous lake. BUT, the time has come for relaxing and indulging our children’s desires before our own. That meant we need to go play rather than exploring.

We headed back to the same beach we visited yesterday, but this time we did NOT walk past the paddleboats. We walked right up to them. Yes, it seems a bit like something from a Chevy Chase movie, but we piled the whole family onto the paddleboat and headed out for Isola San Biagio. Jenn and I pedaled our way out and the girls rode on the front. Yes, it seems like the kind of thing that could be a disaster in so many ways. But, remarkably, it WASN’T. We had a great time even though we couldn’t dock on the island (which was sadly private and required paying a fee). So we messed around in the shallow area around the island and the girls really liked swimming in the lake. (Except Oakley didn’t like wearing goggles, because she could see the “green” in the distance.)

We had a floating lunch (the third of five meals we would purchase from the same butcher in our time in Montinelle) and played in the water some more. And I am only slightly ashamed to mention that I allowed the boat guy to UNDERCHARGE us for the boat. That’s right, we were charged for only one our after having the boat for THREE… So, while Italy has taken a good bite out of my wallet a few times, it gave me back E17 worth today, so I feel like a winner.

The day concluded much like the prior one. Come back, rest, get some pasta from the butcher, make sauce, play at the pool, eat dinner, play at the playground… The girls loved and so did we. Lake Garda and La Filanda have really served us well. Tomorrow, we head to Sirmione en route to Milan in the end. A bit of adventure awaits tomorrow before the pure travels begin. I am both happy and sad…

We got lucky indeed. La Filanda is treating us well (with the exception of more bug bites like we got in Venice). Our place is excellent. No mold, plenty of room, people who aim to please us. It’s a good combination. And, to this point, we’ve seen no one else who speaks English much at all.

We took a bit of a lazy morning while Jenn did her run and collected some pastries in town. She came back, cooked up some eggs and we ate before heading out for our morning hike. The hike started literally at our door, and within 30 minutes, we had reached the pinnacle of the climb. Yes, I know, 30 minutes sounds like it can’t be much of a view, but you will be corrected by the pictures I’ll post here later. The Rocca, as it’s called, is a startlingly beautiful view in 360 degrees. The lake encompasses at least 300 of those degrees and the ruin that’s at the top is fun to explore as well. I honestly can’t think of a view I’ve encountered in my life that exceeds this one. And it was accessible enough that only Lindy required any assistance in reaching the top. Pretty awesome.

From there, we descended the mountain, stopped at the apartment, and headed in to town to collect some salami, cheese, and bread, our lunch. We packed that and ourselves in the car for a 3 minute drive down to the water and had lunch at a pebble beach with about 300 Europeans. The water is remarkably warm and the rocks weren’t a problem in our Keens so we had a good old time. Eros and Eros are happy to note that there was a nude sunbather in addition to several speedo clad men, so the European influence is in full force. Fortunately, we didn’t end up having to discuss it with the girls.

A bit of gelato and rest time at the apartment leave me where I am… hoping to get internet access to post a week’s worth of posts… I’m off to try again.

(Continuing later…)

Not much else of note on Day 16… We decided we were tired of going out to dinner at restaurants that were both expensive and not very good, so, we created our own. I bought some pasta from the butcher (yes). It was ravioli, that I could tell. It contained zuca. Any ideas? The butcher and I worked it out and it tasted excellent (think Halloween). Jenn created a sauce from some tomatoes as well.

An evening of pool time, homemade dinner, playground time, and sleep is a good one. I like the slower life of these smaller towns.

The fish market at Rialto isn’t open until Tuesday, so we had to head over and catch a few looks at some obscure fish. Not a bad way to start the day, and we checked out flounder, octopus, scallops, and plenty of other obscure fish. The tuna were noteworthy in their girth.

From there, packing ensued and we hiked over to the Ferrovia (train station), boarded a train for Verona, and got out of Venice. In deciding to leave early, we certainly needed somewhere to go. That somewhere was an extra night at La Filanda, our home as of this evening. La Filanda is an agriturismo (working farm of sorts) on Lake Garda. Lake Garda is a less frequented northern lake than the famous Como, but you’ll hear more about that in coming days.

Our train dropped us in Verona and we made our way over to the Hertz office at about 12:30. And the stupid office was closed. Seriously, the midday siesta thing is a little odd regardless, but in a service/travel industry? Lame.

We had planned to head into Verona regardless, and so we used the buses instead of the cars and took a quick trip in. Verona is coverable in about 90 minutes, and we did just that, stopping for a shot of gelato as well. I liked the smaller size of the town, the Roman Arena, and my gelato by the river. I was struck by the old square. Its winged lion, acknowledging the victor Venice, was fine. But I was overwhelmed by the immense pile of junk being sold in the square again. When people complain of America’s commercialism, they need to come look at the defiling of these old squares by the sellers of crap for tourists. Jenn and I literally could not FIND the famous, 2000 year old fountain in the middle of the square because it was obscured by the “market”. God knows I should have bought the mask in Venice (where they are famous), but at least I can get it in Verona! Or probably Milan, or maybe even in Atlanta when we land.

So, Verona was fine, we bused back to the train station and loaded into the car. (Note: Renting a car seat in Italy for three days costs substantially more than buying a comparable car seat in the states. What is one to do with that fact?) We were off to the unknown… the world that was not suggested by Rick Steves, the western coast of Lake Garda.

As Jenn and I were driving along, we considered the possibilities. We could already see the massive mountains beyond the lake. They were stunning, and boded well. And then it occurred to me… were we about to head into Gatlinburg East? Why don’t American’s visit this beautiful land positioned well between Venice and Milan? Were we making a huge mistake? Was their website misleading?

As we pulled of the Autostrade at Desenzano, our fears grew. The ferris wheel was clearly visible. The mass of humanity in place. Gatlinburg it was. Jenn kept saying, “Keep driving. We could make it to Lake Como tonight. It’s only 3 more hours.” We managed to plow through the first hit of commercialism without turning around. We moved on and grew closer to La Flianda (according to the GPS). We were within 2 miles of home, and it was looking SOMEWHAT better, but we were still unsure. And then we saw it. The sign, in bold black and yellow:

<---- SEXY SHOP... Eros e Eros

Uh oh. Not good at all. This cannot bode well. My fears changed from trailer parks (which we did see) to nudist camps. This was not a good sign.

The long and short of it, though, is that we were wrong to be concerned. La Filanda is pretty neat, actually. It is sort of a walled fortress of its own, including a pool, an olive orchard, and about 20 family focused apartments. Less than five minutes out the back door is a little town, complete with somewhere for dinner and a little forno (bakery, not porno). The girls got in a quick swim before the pool closed (the other guests are almost all German, complete with speedos at the pool).

Lake Garda appears to have fantastic potential. Whether we take a ferry to Sirmione or a hike to some castle ruins, we’re going to have a good time. We may even just vacation by the pool for a piece of the day. All of the options are good ones. I am thrilled to be free of the piles of people in the bizarre theme park that is Venice. I’m thrilled to see some grass. I’m really excited about exploring a part of the world that is beautiful in any language… So, I’m excited, and tired. (I am now aware that 2 weeks is the point at which I feel like I’ve been away from home for a long time.)

More tomorrow, from Montinelle.

So, Jenn and I spent some time planning this day the night before and concluded the following… we were pretty well done with Venice.

NOTE: If you don’t want to read negative thoughts, skip this post. I am going to speak freely about Venice as compared to other places we’re visiting. I DO believe that Venice is worth a day – two and interesting to experience briefly, but, the following are my honest thoughts, so take them for what you will.

We plain and simple planned too much time in Venice. To my untrained eye, Venice is unbelievably homogenous. As mentioned previously, St. Mark’s is quite impressive, as impressive as St. Peter’s or any other we’ve seen. Other than that, though, There are very few places where you could drop me in Venice where I would know exactly where I was. All of the streets are of similar width, all of the squares are of similar size (Campo San Polo is slightly larger).

Rialto, while distinct, is some sort of queer bottlenecked crap selling mall. I have seen the same 40 masks and cups of fruit in so many places, I don’t even see them anymore. (Note, I have now seen the same stuff in Verona, along with the same international football jerseys. Still boring.)

And you know what else? Venice stinks, but not in the manner for which we had prepared. I had been warned that it smelled, like sewage in my imagination. But, in fact, the stink was different. We had major mold problems in the anteway of our apartment… black crap hanging from the ceiling. If you arrive at this post based on the key word www.veniceapartments.org, know now that you might want to avoid veniceapartments.org or venice altogether.

On top of that, Venice smells like smoke constantly. The Italians smoke a lot. We passed a picture of a famous composer whose music was going to be played in a concert. He had been photographed, intentionally, with a cigarette in his hand. It struck me that in our culture, that would be an embarrassment. In fact, it’s been 50 years or so since Sinatra thought it was cool to be caught with that in a photograph. Not the Italians, though. They still flaunt it, enough so that I swear I took more polluted breaths in Venice than anywhere I can remember. Frankly, the air doesn’t seem to circulate very well.

So, now that my negative thoughts are well documented, I can move on. We decided that we didn’t need to kill time in Venice… we needed to get out. So, we canceled the last day of our apartment to the extent we could, and planned for only one more day. We decided to go for some “fresher” art, and made our way across town to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, which focuses on more modern art, early 1900’s. This worked out well because the art was more appealing to the children in our group, Aspen, Oakley, Lindy, and Tim. In fact, we took a good tip from a book for children and had the girls sketch their own copies of some of the art. Once we return to the states, I’ll be sure to post some of their work. When the rain came, we even added another piece or two to their repertoire.

I want it noted, though, that by about 3pm, we had already had gelato twice. And by 9pm, we had added a third. It was a good day in that regard. The freedom that came from departing a day early was excellent.

We wallowed in the sage decision to leave early, and prepared for our departure. Day 15 would take us away from Venice, and we were happy about it.