We promised the kids that they could have special week with dad the summer before they started high school. Maggie and I went to McCall, Idaho and had great fun horseback riding through the mountains, playing golf, exploring the area and generally hanging out.

This year it was Michael’s turn, but we had the big Europe trip planned. We went through several idea iterations and Michelle came up with the brilliant idea of us going to Venice Italy. We has been to Venice 7 years ago when Michael was 7, but he only had some memories so it was time to make some new ones.

Early Thursday morning Michael and I headed out to Venice via the Tube, a train, a plane and a boat! Turn out the Venice airport is on the mainland so you have to take a bus or a boat to get there. Who would turn down a boat ride.

The boat dropped us off at a nondescript little dock and we followed a couple of locals who seemed to know where they were going. There were only some twisty little alleys for a bit, but we finally found what seemed like more of a main path along a larger canal.

If you’ve never been to Venice you need to put it on your list. It is a truly beautiful and surreal place.

Thanks to Michael’s young eyes we found our tiny little backpacker hotel (one of us had to leave the room so that the other could change his mind).

Next on the agenda was Michael’s number one memory.

Lemon Gelato

Our plan for the day was wander, so we did. Eventually we did see Rialto Bridge and St Marks Square.

View from the Rialto

St Marks

We also saw many beautiful canals and bridges.

We decided to have a nice dinner at a street-side cafe with a great view of the Rialto.

The next day Michael wanted to explore a bit on his own, so I gave him some cash and we set up a meeting time and off he went. Amazing how quickly they grow up.

I wandered through the Jewish quarter and found a lovely necklace for Michelle.

Feeling a bit peckish I was trying to decide if I should sit down for a full meal or just find some interesting snacks along the way. The snacks won out. Nothing crazy, a tiny little pizza from the bakery and some interesting little open face sandwiches from another shop. While ordering my sandwiches who should show up but Michael. He had spent all but 1 euro and was looking for some water.

Tasty

Michael showed me all his shopping treasures then we headed back to our room. Michael wanted a break from the afternoon heat (it was in the 90s) but I was interested in wandering. So I headed back out exploring the side streets. Eventually I ended up on the edge of the island looking at Murano the island where they make all the famous glass. I had suggested to Michael that this might be interesting, but it didn’t hold much interest for him so I bought a ticket a headed over.

Visually Murano is very similar to Venice except that every store sells very cool art glass. Every store also has signs saying please don’t take pictures…

In any case I got to see a bunch of cool art glass and Maggie ended up with some new earrings.

For dinner that night we decided to keep with the snack theme which went reasonably well although nothing exceptional. We also took a stroll around the neighborhood after dark to see if was any different from the day time, but it was basically the same.

For our last day we headed towards the edge of the island again as we had to catch the boat back to the airport after lunch. We lucked out by visiting a couple of cathedrals as they were much cooler than outside (towards 97 and very humid).

We found a great little cafe right on the water and watched the boats buzz up and down the liquid highway while enjoying clams, mussels, pizza and pasta.

A satisfied customer

From there we worked our way back to London to reunite with the girls.

Overall a highly satisfying mini-trip.

We’re staying at what essentially a ski resort, but of course there isn’t any snow in the summer. So they’ve done a clever thing and rent mountian bikes and haul you to the top using the ski lift. So we decided to give it a go.

The trails

The choices

The weapon

We had tried to rent bikes on Monday around 1:00, but everything was already gone. The guy recommended showing up as soon as the shop opened. So today we were in line at 9:15 with a dozen other people. At 9:30 we all nicely filled inside to the rental counters. We were second in line and feeling a little smug. The couple in front of us didn’t rent anything which seemed strange until the clerk explained that she only sold lift tickets. We got in the wrong line. Feeling less smug we got in the right line. 90 minutes later we had our bikes, lift tickets and full face helmets.

We spent a few minutes getting used to the bikes and headed over to the lift. They were using a 8 person lift with some extra bits to load the bikes on.

Michael enjoying the ride up

Maggie and I switched bikes because her seat wouldn’t go down and when we got to the top all of a sudden she couldn’t peddle. The chain had gotten jammed at the front sprocket somehow. There were some basic tools cabled to a post which I was attempting to use when a couple of guys who knew more about bikes than me helped us out. 2 hours after we walked into the bike shop we were finally ready to ride down the hill.

On the way up we noticed a crazy twisty path through the trees and decided it must be the black diamond most difficult trail.

Crazy trail

So we start down the easy blue trail and guess which one it was. The crazy one we saw on the way up!

Michael took off like he’d been doing this his entire life while Maggie and I kept a more sedate pace. It was definitely challenging, but fun.

View from ground level

We did 2 trips down before our legs started burning (and lunch was calling). So we rode back to the apartment to eat and report on our day so far.

After a nice break the kids decided they were done, but Maggie and Michelle went back to the lift with me and rode to the top to walk around and enjoy the view and have a little refreshment at the cafe on top.

The girls

I did another 8 trips down the mountian and quite enjoyed myself. Although I was in desperate need of some Advil at the end!

Good times

One of the promises I made to myself was to not eat at any American chain restaurants during our vacation.

Well it turns out that there aren’t many choices once you’ve left Stockholm unless you want a full sit down meal.

We had some trouble getting the rental car which was ultimately due to the fact that American dates are written month/day and European dates are written day/month and somewhere along the line our reservation got entered as 6/7 instead of 7/6. Little things.

So we were a little later leaving Stockholm than we wanted and it was too early for lunch in any case so we headed out. We spent the first hour trying to figure out all the crazy buttons on our Volvo D-40 (automatic turbo diesel baby) and trying to interpret the street signs, road map, construction zones and driving etiquette. Not to mention a quick stop at an Ikea.

We planned on eating at the first city that we had to change highways on assuming there would be lots of services where multiple roads intersect a city. In a word “nope”.

From there on out we kept an active lookout for food and ultimately rejecting a reststop restaurant we pulled into the next town that appeared to have any size to it.

Wouldn’t you know it, but the only fast food was McDonalds. I argued against and was soundly and quickly overruled. They were hungry now.

American chains do tend to reflect the local culture as well as having the normal stuff.

My lovely assistants are indicating that you can order Swedish meatballs at McDonalds.

We ended up ording the WorldCup specials – Brazil burgers and Italian wraps.

On our way out we noticed the somewhat complicated trash can.

A little more complicated that paper, glass & trash.

While we were at Skansen checking out all the cool historical Swedish houses we ran across this:

The firewood haystack

As a stacker of firewood for many years (although no longer) it never occurred to me to stack in this way. What a cool idea.

My translation:
Continue reading →

Just before leaving Steve Hockett gave me a pointer for Hortus Botanicus. This is a great little (emphasis on little) garden oasis in the middle of the city. I didn’t realize how much city noise we’ve been dealing with for the last week until we spent a few hours at the garden.
Actually we spent quite a bit of time at the cafe inside. They we’re have a special lunch and entrance deal and it was about lunch time, so why not. Turns out it will likely be the best meal we had in Amsterdam.
Kalfsgehaktbal it turns out is Dutch for veal meatball. It was served with a nice assortment of roasted vegetables and real balsamic vinegar. With a lovely fresh greens salad first course and a delicious ice cream and lime sorbet dessert we were in taste bud heaven.
To top it all off a string quartet started playing some amazing modern music. Fun without being too strange. A perfect accompaniment.

Poffertjes are tiny little pancakes cooked on a special grill. Each pancake is about 2″ and a serving seems to be about 20 of them with a side of fruit syrup, fresh fruit and coated liberally with powdered sugar. The pancakes themselves are a little sweet and have that lovely crispy fried in just a bit too much fat texture.

Delicious!