Graduation Friends

We were in Prairie du Chien this weekend helping to celebrate a graduation. There he is in the right hand corner with his brother. I've known these two boys almost their whole lives it seems. Seems too soon to see him graduate and be ready for college. Oh I know, it happens. I know that the two little ones in the other picture will probably graduate one day too and I'll be hobbling in on a cane saying "I've known you two since you were just the twinkle in your father's eye!" And check out the bride and groom there. They look pretty happy. That's the way of it too. It's so good to have such friends as these. To share in their family life, and even better to be brothers and sisters.
The last picture is taken of the Mississippi River from Pikes Peak. What a fantastic view. What a great weekend.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this was our first camping weekend. Good start to the summer.

Castles and France

Last post on my trip. I promise. We had one side trip to France. To the little town of Rebling which was right across the German Border in the Alsace region. We went to a castle. What trip to Europe would be complete without a castle? This one even had a dragon! A tour of a castle makes you appreciate your house. Who in their right mind would like living in a castle? They're dark and dank and as it turned out for this poor castle, not necessarily safe. They were missing tons of modern amenities, too. You know, like running water and bathrooms. But not to worry, once outside the castle ice cream was available. Can't get any better than that! We wandered around the little town as well. It was pretty touristy but quaint.

Milan by train.

Milan. Expensive. Busy. Rode the subway here. The Duomo in this town was unbelievable!!

Favorite story: we sat down in a little cafe. We were hot and tired and hungry. We shared a cold...well, the best I could describe would be it was shped like a pizza but it had a paper thin crust with a bit of cheese, some tomatoes and some green things on top. Cost us 24 euros. (that's close to $40) Oh my. After that we found a local grocery story and bought ourselves some bread, cheese and salami. Much cheaper. More satisfying. Glad we only stayed a day, though we missed signing up to see a re-enactment of the Last Supper.

Lucca

One of the best things we did was to take a half hour train ride to the little town of Lucca. It's famous for its olives, olive oil, and ceramics. The town still has the old Roman wall all the way around. The top of that wall is wide enough for chariots to go around it 3 or 4 wide! It has a wonderful shopping area, a huge shady plaza with Sycamore trees, a carousel, horse drawn buggies and lots of shops to rent bikes. That's what we did, rented a bike and rode around the whole town. We passed lots of walkers, families, other bikers, men playing dominoes, workers, and just people lolling about on work day afternoon. The day was perfect, and the whole way was lined with trees. This had to be one of my most favorite memories of this trip. Everything that I would have pictured ahead of time was all right here!

Pisa

I had to pinch myself when we first walked into the piazza that held that famous leaning tower. It really looked like all the pictures I've ever seen!! Beautiful marble from the 12th or 13th century. Wow! We could have gone to the top of the tower but it would have cost 12 euros and that was waaay to much. So we opted to see the cathedral and the baptistry. There was something I'd never imagined= the most amazing pulpit. It was at least 12 feet high so the preacher would have towered over his congregants. The pulpit itself had these carved marble panels all around that depicted the life of Christ from his birth to his death. Actually they were centered more on his early years and then one panel of his death and one of his resurrection. This whole thing sat on lions. It was really the coolest thing! There was so much detail. How did they do that?

Florence

We spent four days in Florence. Believe me, I can find four days worth of pictures to share with you! It was a wonderful city, and very beautiful. Here is just a sample of some of the things we saw!

Europe part ???

My week here in Europe is almost at an end. I can't believe I actually have time to sit in front of a computer and write this for everyone. No pictures but I'm sure you'll see some of those later. I am in Germany today and will probably have a little time to spend in France and then it will be back to Switzerland and home again. We spent the majority of our time in Florence, (4 days) 1 day in Milan (very expensive) time in Pisa and Lucca. I loved Florence but a real highlight was Lucca! We took the train one day to both Pisa and Lucca. It's an ancient Roman town about an 1 1/2 from Florence, with the old walled city fortifications still there. In fact, we rented bikes and rode around the top of the walls of the whole city. That was amazing!!(in fact I think you'll hear me say that word a lot in the next couple of posts) Lucca is also the place where the best olive trees are and they are world famous for their olive oil and olives! It had the coolest shopping district as well! We were able to navigate the train system with ease. (thanks to Amy...on my own I would have been a bit nervous about that)
The Italian countryside was absolutely lovely. Little Lucca enhanced it all. Wow!