Siracusa (Syracuse) Sicily

We went on an adventure the day after Christmas and boy it was fun. We drove for hours, completely following the Garmin and looking for adventure and new places. New places is what we got. We went geocaching and all around exploring. We left late in the morning and took a long time getting there, we hit Siracusa late in the evening and didn't have batteries for the camera. We will surely go back, it was a beautiful city full of Greek ruins and it was clean and new looking which is very unusual for Sicilian cities.

Christmas Day

Daddy having more fun with the present and not letting Cameron have it.

Cam's best present, automatic Nerf gun.

Pinky's present, which was promptly torn apart in 5 minutes flat.

Looking for the good stuff.

Coming down to check if Santa came.

Before the boy got to it, but after Santa. Don't you remember the version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.."The stockings were hung by the World map with care....!!

Cameron loves living in this time zone, Santa comes earlier. We went to the children's Mass at the NASI base last night. Cameron had a hard time falling asleep. He even tried to trick Santa and the Tooth Fairy when he put his tooth that was pulled a couple weeks ago under his pillow. Man, sneeky little boy.!!

We surely miss having family close especially at this time of year.

Mt. Etna snow day

Snowman in the front yard. The snow iced up a bit.

Pinky's first time in snow

Today we went to Mt. Etna to find the snow. Funny thing, there were hardly any people there. Was it because it was reposo or what? If we were in the San Bernadino mountain of home, you couldn't hardly find a spot to pull to the side of the road without finding your own spot to sled. Cameron went sledding and we even brought a truck bed full of snow home. Did I mention, Mt Etna is an active volcano with lava flowing from it?!

Cameron's First Football Game

Cameron played his first flag football game today. He warmed the bench quite a bit, but he is the youngest and smallest on the team. He had fun though. He is getting better.

Pinky and her Beau

Kisses

Ear nibbling

I'm too good for you, Nero!

BIG DOG!!

We are babysitting, the word baby isn't quite right, Pinky's boyfriend. They look so cute together. For those of you who are thinking we are letting Pinky's boyfriend stay over night, that is not true. He must spend his nights in his own home. We do not allow that kind of behavior in our house LOL.

Caltagirone Christmas

See the steering wheel.

Last night we went to Caltagirone for their Nativity displays. We didn't quite get the "gist"of it. I guess there are grotto's where people/neighborhoods set up Nativity scenes. We walked around for a while, but didn't really find out much. It started hailing and we decided to leave, though as we were leaving we found grotto#5 which had a beautiful display of the Bethlehem Nativity. Also we found a bunch of small Fiats with Nativity scenes in them. It must have been a parade. The pictures are of the Fiats. Of course when you go to Caltagirone you have to go to the stairs, remember back in when they had the stair lighting festival, now they have the Nativity.

Gettin' ready for Christmas

Here are pictures of Cameron decorating the Christmas tree, hanging stockings, and making Christmas cookies. John, Traci we sure miss you, we have had wonderful Christmas' together.

Mistletoe Mile

Mt. Etna with the orange groves.

Puttin' on the speed at the end.

Getting ready to start.

Cameron did the Mistletoe Mile run on base on Saturday. He ran the complete mile and even though he started in the back of the pack he finished in the first group.

Braces off!!

Yes the title is correct. Cameron now has his braces off. There was a little catch though, he was eating soft serve ice cream and a baby tooth broke in half. The dental office wasn't busy, so they took him immediately. They had to pull the tooth and since he was already there and quite sedated, they decided to take the braces off. Now that doesn't mean forever. When he gets a few more permanent teeth in, he will have to have full braces. This just moved a couple permanent teeth so tops and bottoms didn't hit. Thank God for nitrous oxide, it made everything, even digging looking for tooth pieces, much easier to handle, for both of us.

Germany Day 13 (The End)

Hostel Room.

DONE!

Map of our travels.

Today was our last day in Germany, our flight left at 1:30pm. So sad. The hostel was surprisingly nice. I thought it would be noisy like a dorm, but no it was great and for such a small amount of money, compared to the Arthotel, it was totally worth it. I would spend our whole Munich time in the hostel next time and would recommend it to any body wanting to stay in Munich. We left the hostel and took the train to the airport which is about 40 minutes outside the city. The flight was OK just about 20 minutes late and packed with babies. It must have been the more babies you fly with the cheaper the ticket. We were in row 6 and there were 5 babies in front of us. The flight was less than 2 hours, so we handled it. It is nice to be home and Pinky was happy to see us. House was in good condition, Pinky hadn't tore anything apart. VACATION WAS GREAT, BUT IT IS NICE TO BE HOME!

Germany Day 12

St. Augustiner Brewery. New friends

Munich Christmas Market, Marienplatz

Munich Christmas Market

Ice skating in Munich

Leaving Rothenberg was very hard and sad. We really liked the place, the city and the people, but it was getting too touristy with many (what we believed to be) American Military people coming in for the Christmas market. There is a base pretty close by, too bad it is Army and not Navy, we would love to get a duty station right in Germany. Off to Munich again. This time we made our reservation in a hostel, yes a hostel. It was nice, we looked at it when we were there and we reserved a private room with 2 beds. Every place rents the rooms by the number of people and you get twin beds, sometimes they are put together and sometimes they are apart. We found this hostel we we went to Augustiner Brewery restaurant, it is across the street. Munich's Christmas market was in beginning today and we were there for the lighting of the Christmas tree and listening to the politician speaking. He had to be a politician because even though we didn't understand it, he was very long winded. Anyway, the Christmas Market was packed and we were colder that night than ever before, the sky was clear that's why. It was about 29 degrees Fahrenheit maybe a bit less. Remember we are from Southern California and recently from Hawaii. We had a bunch of Gluhwein to keep warm, but it didn't work. We finally gave up and took the train back to the hostel, well maybe not the hostel more like the brewery across the street. We had met 3 young (20s) American girls waiting for the train and they were also heading to Augustiner. We got to the brewery before them because we knew a bit about the trains and how to get there. Anyway after waiting 5 minutes we found a table. Now it is hard to imagine this, but there are tables and on each side of the tables are long benches on 3 sides and a chair at the head of the table. In that then, sometimes people are sitting at the table already and you share the table, so you walk on the bench seats, even with people sitting on them, you walk behind the behinds and get to your seat. We just happened to get the back part of the table and had ordered our Dunkels beer (dark beer), when we saw the girls walk in. There was room at our table and so Randy invited them over. They had never been here, so they weren't sure how to get a seat. Anyway they ended up getting to our table and sitting down with us. It was fun, they were just in Munich staying for the weekend, they were students studying in Spain. We had people to talk to. The guys at the head of the table were egging on their young friend to flirt with the girls. It was so funny to watch, the more he drank, the more courage he got. Anyway it was a good time, Randy talked with the guys and they were aerospace mechanics they worked on "We". Huh? What is a "We" mechanic. After a bit of listening, talking and finally understanding accents, he found they were "Huey" helicopter mechanics. It was a very good night, but Anne didn't eat enough and she had a few too many Dunkels, by the time we left Augustiner and walked across the street, Anne was done and Cameron was very tired too. Randy tucked us in bed and went down to the bar in the hostel were he met a couple from Norway.

Germany Day 10 and 11 (Rothenberg)

View of the City of Rothenburg from the wall.

On the wall, looking into the city.

Our Pension (Boarding house)

We woke up that morning, had breakfast, stopped at the Info Center and "got out of Dodge". I know Augsberg must have many many beautiful sites, but we were done with that city and decided to continue on the Romantic Road and forget our last evening. Traveling by car through Germany is wonderful. Randy was so surprised that snow sticks to places that are not mountain. He had only see snow in mountains and figured that was how it was. Our trip up the Romantic Road proved that one wrong, there was snow all over, but not on the Autobahn (freeway). Our traveling was nice today, at a very comfortable pace. We looked through towns and even walked up a church tower. I don't remember how high that was, but I will say it was REALLY high and very scary because beside walking up the old wooden stairs there was a walk way outside of the top where you could walk 365 degrees around the tower. I think we could even see the Munich Olympic monument, maybe not who knows. Munich was only 70 miles the way the crow flys. It was in the City of Nordlingen. We also found a quaint little Gasthof Zimmer Frei there, so if we didn't find anything we liked further on, we could always go back there. Gosh this trip was beautiful, we stopped in so many little towns, some of which were ones we stopped and really looked around, like Harburg with it's castle or some just were good with a drive thru view. This was a wonderful day and boy did we need it after last night. We ended up in the Medieval city of Rothenberg. This was the town to stay in and again we went to the Info center and they booked us a room, but we decided to walk the town to see if we could get better on our own. Anne likes to have a room half booked just in case it gives her peace of mind. Anyway while walking the town we found Zimmer Frei in the window of the local market. Quaint, cute and nice. The owners, father Eric and son Klause, were great, they showed us 2 rooms, one with a bathroom/shower and another with the bathroom down the hall. For almost 15 euro a night less, we chose the no bathroom. This was fine the first night because we were the only people. Next night we shared the bathroom and these people didn't know much about the sharing thing because they took the key to the bathroom and left their stuff in there. Again all our night stays included breakfast which included lunch meat, thin sliced salami, ham, boiled eggs, juice and coffee and of course kaiser rolls. These breakfasts were good, filling and full of protein. The next day we spent the whole day in Rothenberg, not leaving the Pension until after 11am and we walked the wall that enclosed the entire city. The town was so beautiful and had such a history. We took the walking tour with the NightWatchman and that was very informative and fun. The Christmas market didn't open until Friday night and we were leaving Friday morning, but it was still nice. There were many many stores especially Christmas stores. We loved this town and felt it was the best place we had stayed in and an all around great city. We want to come back in spring to bike the Romantic Road. We had dinner both nights at a small local place which served wonderful food, great beer and reasonable prices, what else could you want.

Germany Day 9 (Driving a lot!)

One side Switzerland, the other Liechtenstein

Am I in Liechtenstein or Switzerland?

Bondensee

On the road.

What a day today was. We left Innsbruck and went driving to find our next destination and went driving and went driving and went driving. Anne really wanted to go through the country of Liechtenstein, just to say we had been there. It was only a 10 kilometer loop out of our way, so we did. Today we went through 4, yes count them 4, countries. We started out in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and finally Germany. We intended to stay in Switzerland, but they didn't seem all that friendly. We stopped at the first Info Center we saw, which was in Arbon on lake Bondensee and the lady there said there wasn't much to do in the winter and if we wanted the mountains or fun things to do we should go to Zurich or Luzern. That was a bit more south and West of where we wanted to go, so we pushed on. We decided to catch up with the Romantic Road in Germany and when we finally caught up to that we just kept going and going. It was a very long day and I say the hardest we had for the whole trip. We ended up stopping because we were beat, not because we wanted to stop there. We stopped in Augsberg, Germany. It is a big city and well, we didn't like it. All the hotels were booked, it was too late and too big a city to look for Zimmer Frei's, so we finally stopped at the Info center and they found us a place. I will not use the word hotel, so I guess the word motel might fit. It was clean and OK, but I feel we weren't in the best part of town. We were hungry and so we checked into the place and the signs said Christmas Market open, so we went to find it. A couple turn arounds, a red light violation picture and we got there, but it was too late and everything was CLOSED!!!! We were starved because to keep the budget low we had been eating the breakfasts included in our rooms and then not eating until dinner. It was now 8pm and we were starved. We drove around a bit, nothing open we liked, went to the restaurant in our place, it was tacky. There was a McDonalds close, so we hit that and went to bed.