Verona in Italy and Carmen

Carmen was held in Verona, so we took everyone along. It was hot and there were about 10,000 to 12,000 people there according to Geoff's estimate. It is hard to believe. There were four scene changes of 20 minutes which was too much for two of our boys! The stage was huge and the cast included horses, carts and donkeys. The voices were able to be heard everywhere which was amazing! That was another late night as it didn't start until 9.30. Since we arrived just before start we had to sit in the back corner of our allocated area. Nearer the end we moved to the front and dashed off just as Carmen was killed by her upset boyfriend.

Vernazza and the ocean by Henry

The Sea at last. Sand and rocks so we are all happy!

Henry's swimmer

Vernazza is a little village in Cinque Terre on the West coast of Italy and was originally a fishing village with access only by the sea. Today lots of tourists go there and it is easy to see why. The bells ring through the village so you don't need your watches. You do need your togs though.

Henry's Vernazza

Vernazza of the post cards, a seagull eye view...

But look at this shot of a storm in winter, they pull the boats up into the piazza or square and the restaurants on the beach front will need drying out and redecorating. The sea wall we dived from has gone under the waves!

Vernazza was nice.The sea was lovely, very warm and clear. Hundreds of tourists go there every year so I set up and decided might try to sell painted postcards

Henry painted post cards and sold some, he made 22 euro which is $44 in NZ!

George went fishing! You could see lots of fish.

Here is a crab! Adam's and my one.

I met a boy from America called Adam, we went crabbing. On the last night it was Henry and Adam's birthday the next day so we had a cracker on a sand castle. Max got on really well with Adam and went crab hunting with him for ages! He has missed his friends. -ed

The water was deep of the sea wall and it was great swimming

It was so warm and clear with fish

Swimming all the time, and all getting better at it too

This one was for sale, up the hills there were lots of gardens and grape vines on terraces.

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We even hired a boat with an outboard for two hours and looked at the other villages of Cinque Terre from the water. the photo is at the top. Everyone had a great time!

Neuschwanstein and Mad Ludwig

Zermatt and the Matterhorn in Switzerland

Lac (lake) Leman and a real paddle steamer
It is hard to find any real cows on display
One of four thousand plant photos, a gentian
a marmot
The Matterorn
So we did need to pack the parkas and jerseys!
One mountain lake had millions of tadpoles
Zermatt was full of contrasts, a few old barns next to huge swiss style hotels
EIDELWEISS
A butterfly expertly caught by Henry on the geraniums

Zermatt was the town of the pocket knife. very shop could be trawled for the range (the range was almost always identical) Max managed to find one with the Matterhorn on it, George got the 'Camper' and Henry got a slim line version. There was one for euro 470 which you can double for NZ$!!! We hoped that once everyone had one we could ignore the displays, but no! -ed

Switzerland, Grindelwald

We arrived from Zermatt by taking the car on a train, it was a very slick operation, then we zoomed through a tunnel under some giant mountains. Then we went up the valley to Wengen (say that as if it starts with a 'v') . (note that Switzerland and Germany were before the Dolomites, the postings are out of order)-ed

The valley was very steep, so we went on a cog train to get to Wengen. There were no cars but the hotels had electric vehicles, they were small. Each one had two tonnes of batteries! Mum chose the hotel because we found it had model trains (the backdrop was very authentic! -ed) He had at least 45 engines in his shed, one hand made steam type engine. There shingle trucks, oil trucks, passenger cars. He gave us a big thick Marklin catalogue. (It is very heavy!-ed). The shed was under the hotel, he had dug it all out and their were props and piles of blocks to hold up the floor above!

By George
Max Potter on his Nimbus 2000

Prehistory, caves and the Ice Man

French caves

We read Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver. It was gripping and actually a talking book! Thank you library. Henry also read "The boy of the painted cave" by Justin Denzel.

In France we visited a cave that had lots of marvellous creations by dripping water. I had read about Chauvet cave where the best and earliest cave drawings have been found, but no one can enter that cave.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/08/01/html/ft_20010801.6.html

The caves were Aven d'Orgnac in the Ardeche. There was a museum associated with the caves that had some copies of the Chauvet drawings. Also tools and great dsiplays.

When we completed our time line of the world war, the boys birthdays and so on the painted drawings went back as far as 35 m into the roll of cash register paper. Yet all our immediate family history is on the first 1cm of it!

Italian discoveries

Max, iceman!

A highlight, without a doubt, of the whole trip was the Iceman museum in Bolzano, Italy (after leaving Cortina) of Otzi (You need two dots over the o and say it as "Ertzi") This museum was wondrous and we were all enthralled. It was also cool after the 35 odd degrees outside!

The oldest wet mummy known to us, Ozti is 5300 years old and was found in 1991 in the Gardena Pass area.

"A prehistoric criminal case: we know in detail what he ate and also the diseases he suffered during his life." He is a neolithic or new stone age man and his tribe used Copper (99.7% pure) to make axe heads. His copper headed adze type tool was still attached to its wooden shaft and the glues and bindings could all be admired. The tools, medecines, fire kit and clothing were found with him well preserved and are now on display along with the man himself. We were all awed by the site of a fellow human from so long ago. The boys were all especially awed as they each discovered him in their own time. He was clever and could have easily outwitted any of us in his environment. Reading about Torak in Wolf Brother really helped get a feel for the life of a "primitive" person. This term is used to try to show how simple yet how complex his life was really. All his decisions influenced his life and survival every day. His clothing was recreated for us. We saw how it had been expertly sewn but repaired, probably by Otzi himself in less precise stitches. We learnt how his tribe may have lived as we know his last meals. We tried to imagine his death high in the mountains with fresh arrow wounds to his shoulder. The shaft had been snapped off but the fine barbed stone flutes and their wooden dowel were still in him. Some one tried to kill him and he had suffered severe privations (lack of food) for three periods not long before he died. Yet his undoubtedly surperb tools were not taken. He was obviously of high rank to have a copper tool in a still largely stone age society. What could have been going on. Where was he going?

The history of human endeavour for 1500 years was covered. The Roman section was also great. It showed how romans heated their houses in this alpine region.

To make the experience even better the children's room was sublime, as Henry put it! They had the most beautiful blinds of prehistoric drawings over the windows. Plus costumes, books and resources in all languages, art materials etc. These included earth coloured artists' chalks presented in clay beakers, baskets of string, wood, branches, fibre, copper and leather to name a few crafting materials. We were a bit late to our next stop!

All put on by the tireless Editor....

Stelvio Pass

http://www.s1te.net/general/videos/davos-to-stelvio-pass-road-in-italian-alps-top-gear-video-the-best-road/ get into the middle of it to get near to Stelvio Pass bit

Spaghetti draped over a mountain and other eloquent prose drew us up and over Stelvio Pass. The manual Pugeot didn’t have enough torque at low revs (how car conscious is that, not my words however) to keep going all the time! Well I stalled it a bit on a couple of the hairpins. We felt for the cyclists as it was pretty hot. At one water trough we passed out cherries. There were motorcycles everywhere. At the top there were hundreds of them parking all over the road. Not the boys favourite bit of the trip, travelling just because, but they didn't feel too sick! -ed

It was then that I realised that I didn't know any Italian! I didn't even know what 'Arevadieci' meant. (Goodbye) We knew that Uffa means drat, but haven't got round to using it.

A week in Cortina in the Dolomites

Henry on top of Lagazoui, it was a cable car up.

from the fort and the museum

A wooden performance in the open air museum, Cinque Torri

Falzarego Pass, Cinque Torri

Rounded top mountains.

Shaped like a mass of huge lower case m's

White and pinky

Layered and folded.

The war front betwen Italy and Austria in WWI.

This is where we came down!
5 people after 5 hours, still 3 hours to go. All happy! George has his photo smile on, he is happy
Under the waterfall, see the wire rope that you clip on to.

The hard via ferrata that stumped us
Medieval weapons caused great excitement

World War I barbed wire, is still ferocious

A tunnel entrance above the snow, Lagazoui

A tunnel, the mountains are riddled with holes

Via ferrata (iron walkways) are a metal rope joined onto the rock that you clip your carabena onto so that if you fall you only fall a small way. You would still hurt yourself as the rocks were sharp. I fell once gently on purpose to see what it was like.

We tried to hire them but the only child one was out for the next two days, I guess that said something to us! So we all bought a set weighing in at more than 4 kilos of luggage!!! We then set forth bravely! -ED

Our first walk was Lagazoui, up on the cable car and around the trenches and we went into the tunnels where the soldiers lived and moved through the mountains! "I felt like I was being shot at in the tunnels" said George They were a bit scary.

The cable bridge was out so we had to climb back up. The walk down had been easy enough, but it was getting late and cold and I was scared and very hungry. We stooped in a tunnel shelter and put our warm clothes on and ate some chocolate that I hated. Then we set back up the mountain which took about an hour. We though we would have tea there.

We rang the rufugio (mountain hotel) and said we were bluffed and they advised coming back. We would miss the cable car and have to walk back on the road which would take another hour. Luckily when we reached the refugio the cable car was having some test runs and we caught it down! Henry found a great piece of shrapnel -ed.

I was very relieved.

The next day we went to Cinque Torri (5 towers)

Lagazoui was the Austrian stronghold while Cique Torri was the Italian on the other side of the valley. -ed.

There was still some snow and some trenches. Some were made of wood, some of stone. They were sometimes covered and some had setups from the war for example troops firing guns or talking on the telephones. They were life sized units. Te casing and shell was about 50cm long and they were allowed to fire 100 rounds a day. At the Fort Tresassi we saw much larger shells too and this is the type that Henry found a piece of. Some of them were a meter long a 200mm projectile! They had rifling on them. This museum was absolutely fabulous.

It had lots of unexploded grenades , shells, mine ventilating gear, bullets, uniforms and a fantastic shop. You could have bought a real helmet and a Austrian officer's hat. We bought some bullets found in the field.

It was interesting that they couldn't put barbed wire on posts in the ground as it was rock, they invented some other cross support instead. The man at the shop was the son of the man who had been a young man after the war and collected metal for scrap as all their other means of making a living were destroyed. Later on he collected the things for themselves and started the museum. The fort was a great site too as it had taken a hit from a couple of giant shells that hadn't exploded and huge holes passed right through the building, now with glass over them. -ed

The next day we went to do a Via Ferrata that was a bit harder as the Lagazoui one was very easy, (although it might have been tougher over the bridge). The Col de Bois was recommended by a guide we met at Cinque Torri. We set off early and came upon an army display day with the Italian Minister of Defense in attendance. She inspected the troops too. -ed

Army display

We saw a Hagglund on display, it was like a tracked alligator. WWI troopers in uniform had set out a first aid post in a blown up building. We saw some helicopters, first we saw the iriquois helicopters, then we saw the Black Hawks or similar attack helicoptres,(they aimed their guns at us wich was most disconcerting - ed.) they were frightfully fast. we also noticed that all the soldiers had feathers in their hats. The Italians like feathers! The main event after the band (with a huge tuba) was the mountain rescue display......

Lots of men were on the mountains, it was like ants crawling on a path! Troops were parachuted down and some slid down ropes from the big choppers. There was rope between two peaks and they sent a stretcher across the rope with flares attached. The flares were red, white and green, the colours of the Italian flag.

The via ferrata for that day was then open and it was a vertical climb (which scared me- ed!) I went to the next bit and I waited there. It was so hard holding on there. (We had to let other climbers with long legs pass us -ed) We went back down and had a feed! (It was harder to get back down as you can't see your feet and they get all tangled up- ed.)

The next day we tried the via ferrata under the waterfalls which were rated as easy. They were just right. The picture of the gorge shows where we went down. The steps were a bit big for small legs so it was like real rock climbing! We walked and climbed for 8 hours! It was beautiful. -ed.