Val Pusteria

HERE are a few more pictures. This is a beautiful area of Italy, more German in character than Italian. We took a few days off and stayed in a small apartment. On Monday we took the famous 40k bike ride from San Cando to Lienz. It's a great ride, mostly all downhill. I also posted on Youtube a little video of our son Giovanni riding his bike. It's a chuckle. Click on the picture of him on his bike to see it.

Poster Pictures of Italy

If you see any pictures on our site that you would like printed poster size I can print them for you at a reasonable cost. They are fun to hang up even printed on plain paper. But we can also print on glossy paper or maybe even canvas. You can also send us your favorites for printing. Our printer is an HP 1050C + which can print up to 36" wide by almost any length.

Civetta Alleghe

Our friends Steve Kathy and Christopher came to visit for a few days. We took them to see one of the areas we ski in. It was a beautiful day and I've posted some nice pictures. HERE

Il Centro Minerario Di Valle Imperina

About 30 minutes from Belluno near Agordo that for some 300 years was a copper mining area. In fact until the 1960's it was the major if not nearly the only source of employment in the area. What a life those people lived. We should never complain about the harshness of our lives now.

Go HERE to see more pictures. We also had a great hike which ended at an old home being restored as a weekend retreat. The main area of the mining operation is being partially restored as a museum and park.

Old Friends

Did I tell you that after more than 30 years I met up with an old friend, Paul Holland. He and Joe Scott were my closest friends from the 3rd grade through high school. I've kept in touch with Joe over the years and at one point Paul and I made a couple trips to Baja by private plane, we are both pilots, but that it turns out was over 30 years ago.

I decided to look him up last Winter and as I said in a previous post we managed to meet in Venice. Here is a picture. He still has hair. Not fair, that's his wife behind him my kids and Luisa behind me.

Loving Italy

Well not always, but this last Sunday was a day to remember. There is a group here in Belluno that organizes concerts of various types of music, usually in or in the garden of one of the local villas. Sundays was outside a villa on the opposite side of Belluno from where we live. It's up hill from the city and from the garden outside one has a fantastic view of all the city and surrounding valley. We could even see our home. The weather was perfect, the setting beautiful. And the music very enjoyable, it was European jazz from the 30's performed by a young group featuring an excellent guitarist. Actually he was amazing. For a taste of their music you can check out their web site http://www.almaswing.it/ And the cost 5 euro can't be beat. So it was one of those I love Italy moments.

Otherwise, what's been going on. I haven't written much lately. Seems we are always busy and the day ends being too tired to sit down in front of the computer for anything other than a bit of reading. The Summer has past all too quickly. We haven't had much of a vacation. But then this is were much of the family here comes to vacation themselves. Maybe we are already on vacation. Luisa would not agree.

Our time has been taken up working, visits to the hospital for various tests for my upcoming surgery, and lunches and dinners with family and friends. Our big project was to make a connection between the two apartments that we occupy. The hole was cut by professionals and I took on the tasks of painting, and some finish woodwork. The biggest job was the clean up of the dust from jack hammering out the wall. It was everywhere in spite of our efforts to isolate it with plastic sheets. Then came the job of moving the furniture. We moved our bedroom into the room that was once in a while used for guests and converted our old bedroom into a room for Julia and a sometime guest room. In the process I learned the real reason why Italians rarely move. Their furniture is just too dammed heavy. To move one dresser with it's marble top and mirror down a floor of stairs is a major task involving the dismantling of the dresser, taking off the mirror, removing the marble top, taking out the drawers and then taking all the pieces one at a time down the stairs and then reassembling them. Do this for a couple of them and then take our four modern ones up the stairs and one does not want to do it again for a long time.

We have also taken some nice hikes in the fairly local regions. In my next post I will put up some pictures.

In the News

Well sort of anyway. HERE is a story written about us and our Bell Tower project.

Otherwise what's new. We have had some contact with friends from the US lately. Steve and Kathy Tanaka made a tour of France and Italy and stayed with us for 3 days, that was great. Steve got me into Geocaching, and kind of treasure hunt using GPS technology. I think it will be a fun thing to do with the kids.

Then a few months ago I decided to find a friend, Paul Holland, that I hadn't seen for it turns out 30 years. Thanks to the internet it wasn't that hard to find him took all of maybe 15 minutes. He and his extended family are currently on a cruise which started in Venice so we were able to meet him in Venice for a few hours and a pizza dinner. Wow eating in Venice has to be one of the biggest rip offs in Italy. But at least the pizza was good and it was great to see Paul again. He brought at our request 3 dozen corn tortillas and some other things which made the visit even better.