Ciao, Venezia.

I attached the pictures as small thumbnails here on the home page. Venice was just too amazing to post small photos, so click on each one for a larger view.  

Three days roaming Venice yieled over 350 pictures between Andy and I – yes it was that beautiful!!!

It was evening and very overcast when we arrived. And since cars are not allowed in Venice you travel by boat or foot.

These are taken from the boat along the southern coast.

The next morning started gloomy and rainy as well, but the girls didn’t care.

 There were masks to try on, and pigeons to feed.

 Not shy at all, are they?

Just around the corner we stumbled into the piazza San Marco. 

You may recognize some of this from the movie The Italian Job. The girls did, so now they were convinced that they were truely somewhere ‘cool’.

More wandering led to beautiful little streets such as these  and much gelato! Can there ever be too much gelato? Yum, yum!

And then there were the canals…        

And the canals filled with gondolas… 

I could have stood here all day and watched the boats glide by.  But there was still more to see.

  This is the Grand Canal (largest canal that passes through of Venice) as the sun started to peak out for the first time.

We had dinner at a great little place just down on the right. Sat outside right on the water and ate tons of fabulous pasta while watching the boats go by.

  Ciao for now.  Tomorrow I will add more pictures.

Swoosh!

Winter break started last Friday and yesterday we do what all good Swiss families are supposed to do during the holidays – we went skiing. 

Weather was perfect – blue skies, temp around 30 degrees, little wind, clear view for taking in the scenery.

Both girls are doing great and will be downright scary-fast after their lessons in January. 

Mira riding the T-bar up to one of the littler runs.

Arianna riding up.

Mira

Fabulous views. What you can’t see is that between the houses and range of mountains beyond is a valley that’s about 1000 feet down. Makes for a fun car ride up!

There is about 3-4 feet of snow on the ground.

Think they’d let me move in here?

Took a few videos of the girls. Double click the picture to go to our YouTube account to see all 3.

Swoosh!