Hotel Relais Orsingher Trento

... for Montage sequences in Renee Zellwiger movies.

On Sunday morning, we were absolutely sad to leave and enjoyed one lingering breakfast on the hotel terrace before pointing the Fiat Westward.

With a complicated travel day in front of us, the stars would need to align in order to make everything work.The four hour drive to Malpensa seemed on track until we realized that most the Gas stations near the airport were closed on Sunday or took only ...

... whole thing.

Last night the student association UniParty had a `Rookie Party` in the basement of the museum. This was a lot of fun! Apparently the student associations, which are like clubs in Canada, organize lots of events.

As for school, we just had the info session on how to sign up for classes today, a day after they started! I`ll have to take care of that tomorrow. There aren`t that many classes to choose from though, because only a third are in English and only ...

... for good reason as it served quite simply the softest and most delicious pasta I've ever eaten.

It might not stand the test of time however, as I'm about to be served real home made pasta by an Italian in her own home. We are here at Elena's again. Regular blog readers will be familiar as this is the 3rd visit here. I feel like a local now in the little town. Thanks again for the wonderful hospitality.

Ok, back to the relaxing. That's the main task of the day over..

xxx

... The open the door and sit down and begin to question this guy. I have my music playing so I was not really paying attention but I figure this guy has no documents with him. He appears to be fluent in German and wrote down his name, date of birth, phone number and maybe where he originated from. I could kind of hear them talking about some of the places this guy came from but I am not really sure what he did. They got off at the next ...

... returning to Cortina, Cindy slept off an upset stomach while the kids relaxed and I did a 10-mile run exploring south of Cortina. We all went on a stroll (hike is a bad word now) afterwards to enjoy the first extended period of sunshine since we arrived in Europe a week ago.

... were gone, Cindy and Alycia walked around town some and went to a market next to the hotel. They grabbed pizza at a new restaurant, which all of us returned to that night for a nice dinner. Trey and I ate several meals apiece in a single sitting to make up for the energy expended during the day. We have a newfound appreciation for the bikers competing daily in the Tour de France this month.

... views of the river, surrounding mountains, and the forest.

Alycia was feeling ill about 2 miles into the hike and rested at a picnic area while Cindy and I continued into a very rugged section of the hike. Later, we would discover that we had missed the unmarked turnoff for the falls. I made it out almost all the way to Paso di Limo before realizing the mistake. I backtracked to Cindy and we explored the wilderness some, finding some ...

Sonja, Regine and I met in Toblach (Dobbiacco) in South Tyrol, Northern Italy, in the Heart of the Dolomite Mountains. Our aim was to walk a few days from hut to hut along the high altitude trek Alta Via 1, interspersed with some via ferrata (Klettersteig) climbs. An added bonus was the fact that we'd be passsing through an area that is quite literally steeped in history.

The Dolomites are home to 3 different cultures, Italian in the south, German in the ...

... square centimeter of the walls in the walkway to the courtyard with the balcony. People even wrote on post-its and band-aid's to be able to get there message onto part of the wall in some parts! This past weekend I think was really helpful, especially Trento, in getting me to feel better about Italy. We were all having kind of a hard time last week, adjusting, especially while Padova is still so very out-of-commission because of the August mass vacation ...

... stank es bedenklich. Und der Fakt, dass ich einer Bushaltestellenschmiererei mit Aufschrift "Juden raus" begegnet war, machte mich leicht nervös... Zumal sehr komische Typen überall um uns herum im Park waren. Lustig zu beobachten war aber, wie ein Typ die ganze Zeit bewegungsunfähig auf einer Bank saß - und dann sein Kumpel mit einem Motorroller ankam und ihn mitnehmen wollte. Kurze Zusammenfassung: Helm 2x runtergefallen, Betrunkener 1x ...