Viareggio, Italy

Once we crossed into Italy, we were in unchartered territory with no ability to communicate and the real journey started. It was a pretty stark difference driving from the serene mountains of switzerland into the highly populated, less beautiful valley of Italy. Yet, we were still so excited to be in Italy and go to new places and see new things.

A picture of the steering wheel of our Peugeot 5008 that I took while bored in the traffic jam

Our first destination was the western coast of Itlay, a beach city called Viareggio. We had to drive for several hours before we got there and we took a small detour near Genoa to see the picturesque, Cinque Terre. This was my idea and I was so excited about it. I had read a lot of reviews and other commentary on the area and I knew that it was a must see. The problem is that Cinque (translated 5) Terre (lands) is a cluster of 5 coastal villages with remote access to them. Yes, they have roads to drive to them but it is not recommended by anyone to actually drive on these roads. However, there is a main road high above the villages that connects them all and is much more drivable. This was my plan. Follow this road so that we get the views from afar and don't have to stress the tiny 1 lane roads that lead into the villages.

This is the view that we were searching for! We got it! You can see the village down below, right on the coast. It was amazing!

The amazing didn't last that long. It took a turn for the worse when the main road was closed off near the second village and we were forced to take the road down to the village. Great. We got to the bottom of the road near the village and then the road started to ascend again back to the main road on the other side of the village. We started our way up the hills when all of a sudden I went to change gears and the clutch wouldn't come out more than half way. I am not an expert driver and don't claim to know anything about engines so I had no idea what was happening. I tried pushing it in several times and releasing it. I tried pushing the gas to the floor for more power. Nothing was working. The car was not moving and the clutch was not functioning. Then, smoke started to come out from under the hood. That's when we knew we were in trouble. I pulled the car over to the side of the already really small road. A guy came up behind us and offered to help us. The bigger problem was that we were in the middle of nowhere, near a tiny village at 7:00 on a friday night. It's not like there was a mechanic around. This nice guy offered to drive me to the next village, which was bigger. I was not willing to leave my family there with no phone by themselves. He had no cell coverage, so we couldn't make a phone call. He offered to drive all of us to the next village but we wouldn't fit in his car. I thanked him trying to help us and let him on his way. I decided that I would try to walk back to the village and try to get some help. I got into the car and we rolled down the hill backwards a little ways to a pull off where I could turn us around. We then decided that we would say a prayer. One of the most earnest prayers we have every said together. We seriously needed some help! We asked that we could get out of this area and to our final destination that night. By this time it had probably been 15 minutes since the car malfunctioned. I turned on the car one last time and played around with the clutch, letting it in and out a few times. It seemed to be functioning normally now. It was a direct answer to our prayer!! We decided to try to go up the hill again and get out of this area while we had the chance. It worked! The clutch worked, the car worked, and we drove out of there. I have no doubt that we were blessed that day.

A view of us driving along the main road.

We had only one goal at this point-- Get out of here and get to our hotel for the night. Our adventures were not over for the night. We got to the next village turn off and we got lost and accidently took the road that went into the village. At one point on the winding road down, there was a portion of road that had crumbled away so it really was a 1 lane road. They had a light set up and we had to stop at it until it turned green. Once it turned green, we proceeded down the hill until several meters down when we ran into 2 cars trying to come up the hill. We can't figure out why they had a green light at the same time as us, but it was not good. The Italian lady in the lead car was NOT happy and she was letting us know with her hands and her mouth. But it wasn't our fault, I was following the green light. Well, we tried to squeeze down the road while she sqeezed up the road. It was going okay until we heard a thump and then a small scratching noise. The side of our car had a meeting with the side rail and then it was over. By this time, Trisha and I were both so stressed out that we just wanted to get out of this place! We got down to the village that we didn't want to go to, thinking that we would be able to pick up a road that took us to the next village. Not so. Dead end. We had to go back up the way we came and try to find the main road again. I almost lost my cool! Luckily the way up was uneventful. I just kept praying that nobody would be coming down as we were going up.

Finally we made it out of Cinque Terre and onto a real road!

I still love the views that we got and now we have lot of memories but I don't think I'll be going back there anytime soon.

The scratch

We made it to Viareggio much later than planned but we made it in one peice and for that we were feeling pretty good. We were ready to start relaxing...

Viareggio is a major tourist town that lines the beach of the mediteranean. Apparently many Italians vacations here. I chose to spend time here because it has sandy beaches with an extensive boardwalk lined with shops. I really wanted to spend some time at the beach and because we spent much of our 3 weeks on the go, I wanted a place to relax for a bit. This was the perfect place.

We got a discount on the beach, where we rented an umbrella and some chairs. We spent most of the time actually on the beach towels near the water.

Trisha and Sam. Sam loved playing in the sand and running in between the sand and the water

Sam eating pizza at a shop on the boardwalk. He had lots of pizza in Italy and he loved every minute of it. This kid loves pizza!

The boardwalk

One of the many hotels that lines the boardwalk

Our view of the ocean from our hotel

Looking from the beach back on hotels. Our hotel is the white one on the left

The walkway to the water

Me and Kate

Sam playing in the sand

Me playing with Sam in the water. He loved being thrown about and splashing into the water

Trisha (sporting her new, Italian shirt) and Kate at a nice restaurant where we had dinner

A night view of the ocean from our hotel room

Sam fell asleep like this next to Trisha

Because we got to Viareggio so late the first day, we only got 1 day at the beach before we had to move onto to our next destination. It was just enough time to relax and unwind!

We left Viareggio on Sunday morning, August 5th--Sam's 2nd Birthday! We drove 30 minutes inland to Pisa, where we stopped to see the famous leaning tower.

Sam chillaxin' in his new hat while we strolled him around

The leaning tower with cathedral in background and Trisha and Kate in foreground

Me at the tower (with a guest appearance of Trisha's finger)

Our little Katie-bug in her carrier

All of us standing in front of the leaning tower.

Another view of tower and cathedral

On our way driving to the leaning tower we passed a McDonalds just outside of town. We decided that since it was Sam's birthday we would stop at McDo after visiting the site to get Sam a birthday lunch. He was dead asleep once we got the food. I think he ate it a few hours later when he woke up.

More on Sam's birthday and our time in Rome coming soon...

Frauenfeld, Switzerland

We left Strasbourg early in the morning on July 29 in order to drive to Frauenfeld and go to church with Trisha's family. That didn't work out. It was early, we had to get gas, I took a wrong turn, GPS took us on some wrong turns... We ended up in Germany. We got to within about 30 minutes of Frauenfeld when we hit a whole string of towns that were having a roller blading race. Really?! Question #1: Who rollerblades? Question #2: Who has rollerblading races? We tried to get across the race route several times before feeling like there was no way out. Finally, we came across a police officer who spoke English and was able to direct us out and around this nice little race area of Sheisse-ville. We would have been lost there for hours because the GPS just kept giving us different routes that went through all of the cities that were blocked off. We were so happy to finally arrive there, although we did miss almost all of the church meeting.

Sam was so happy to see Nana and Papa and to play with his cousins. We had been talking it up for a long time, so he got really excited.

After church, we got to go downstairs (Todd and Christina live in the top level apartment of Christina's parents home) and have lunch/dinner with Christina's parents. It was delicious, including my favorite cucumber salad. We also took a little stroll nearby on a walking path, while the kids rode their bikes around. Sam got to try out Aaron's sweet balance bike. It was a little bit big for him but he liked it. We hope to get him one soon so that he can ride it as proficiently as Aaron does; that kid was going like 30 miles an hour on that thing.

Todd helping Sam ride the balance bike

The next morning we headed off to Germany and went to a really awesome animal park. Sam discovered slides and that's pretty much all he wanted to do. I had to go down the slide with him several million times.

Trisha and Kate walking into the park

Sam with Papa Cheney in the sand pit

Todd and Aaron. What's that face? Funny!

Previously mentioned slide. Sam is happy as a clam!

Nana took a turn helping Sam down the slide

Aaron on the teeter totter. Shortly after this Aaron decided to run off by himself. One second he was right next to Todd and I while we were on the giant hamster wheel and the next second we looked and he was gone. The whole family spent 5 really scary minutes walking around the entire park to find him. Trisha finally found him playing happily in a bounce house. It was a really scary moment.

Natalie on a giant bouncy thingy

One of my favorite things about Natalie is that she would say to me, "Because I said it, it is so," in her Swiss-accented English. It was so funny!

Todd and Aaron jumping

More slides. Papa took Sam down this BIG slide. Sam wanted everyone to take him on this one.

Movie of Natalie, Christina, Aaron, Sam, Trisha, Mike, and Todd racing down the slide

So, I decided that I was super talented enough to get in a giant mouse wheel with Sam in my arms and run. I started moving the wheel and the problem was that it started going really fast and I couldn't stop it and I had Sam in my arms so I couldn't use my hands. Instead, I totally ate it on my knees, with a roll or two after that. Sam was scared and cried but he didn't get hurt at all. My knees took all the fight. This picture shows the battle wounds.

Sadly, Nana and Papa had already been in Switzerland for a couple of weeks and they had to leave the following morning. We were sad that we didn't get to spend more time with them but grateful for the time that we did have. Also grateful to spend a few days just with Todd and Christina and their family. Before Nana and Papa left, we put the kids to bed and played some cards. It was a riot! We laughed A LOT, much of the laughter revolving around this nasty chorizo sausage that Todd unleashed on everyone. Oh man. Good times!

The next day we went to the aquatic center in Frauenfeld. At first, Sam was not at all excited to be there, a little bit scared of the water. It didn't take long for him to warm up to the water, once he realized that in this kid pool he could touch the ground. He especially loved this little slide that he could scoot down on his own. I also forced him to go on some other slides, including a big water slide. He wasn't quite sure he liked them.

Picture of part of the aquatic center. The water slides in the background were pretty fun. The whole park was pretty fantastic. Trisha and I wish we had something like this close to us.

Miss Kate enjoying life

Sam got to borrow Aaron's robe/towel when we were ready to leave. As a side note, Sam loved Aaron and from the very first day, he called him "Aar-bear"

Does it get any cuter than this? Apparently not. His cuteness in this picture broke our camera. The shutter stopped working. We were left to use our iphones as cameras for the rest of our trip. We were so sad that we couldn't use our camera on the rest of our trip, but we were extremely grateful that we both had our iphones with us and the iphones have a semi decent camera. It worked out just fine to document our journeys, it just doesn't have the artistic touch or the high quality. Our camera is currently being fixed by Canon and we hope to get it back soon.

This is pretty remarkable. Todd and Christina live on the 3rd floor of a building, which has a winding staircase that ascends all three floors. Natalie has mastered the slide down the stairs.

August 1- Swiss National Day

The holiday morning we decided to take a quick trip across the border into Germany for some shopping because everything is cheaper across the border. We bought a few things and picked up some delicious gelato and then headed back for the holiday festivities. A ward member invited all of us over to their house for a barbeque. Todd and I decided to run to their house for a good workout, and that it was. Near 100 degree temperatures running up the hills was fun, mostly pretty, but kind of fun. These people had a pool that we played in, a really nice yard to run around in and great food. We all had a lot of fun, despite not really knowing anyone there. Once nightfall came, we went to the top of a hill in their backyard and let off fireworks. The coolest part was to do a 360 degree turn and just see arial fireworks being lit off in every little neighbor and village in every direction. It seemed to last for an hour. It was spectacular!!

The last day we were in Switzerland, Todd and Christina took us to the Alps. What better way to spend last day? There is no place in the world like the Alps. I mean, we live in Utah, amoung many big and beautiful mountains, but they are nothing like the Alps. Toggenburg, Switzerland is a winter resort village, but it is quite extraordinary in the summer.

The kids all playing with the chimes. The sounds of the Alps.

A view looking out on the mountains from some lakes/ponds that we walked around

Todd, Natalie, Aaron and Christina on our walk

Trisha and Kate

Another scenic view

It wasn't quite Sam's birthday but we knew that we would be in Italy on his birthday and we didn't plan to have a party for him once we got home, so we thought it would be fun to have a little party while we were with family. So, Trisha set out to make a cake. She made a pretty sweet Train cake. It isn't the same as a traditional American cake because you can't even find the ingredients to make those. Instead it was all European; unique and fun. We also bought him some Kinder eggs and a wooden train that I found at the store. This is the video of us singing "Happy Birthday" to Sam. I love the look on his face when he realized that we were singing to him. He got his birthday song in English, Swiss German and French. The video camera went dead before we finished singing but this is a tender memory for us to have. Sam has loved "Happy Birthday" ever since.

Thank you so much Todd, Christina, Natalie and Aaron for letting us come and stay with you and spend a week with you. We loved every minute of it! We did some awesome things, but we are mostly grateful that we could spend time with you guys! We love you and maybe in a few years (or a decade) we will come back to visit you again!

We left Switzerland on Friday morning and this is what we were greeted with. A 1.5 hour stand-still traffic jam waiting to get into the LONG tunnel. It was insane. Everyone was out of their cars just hanging out. It was not our last traffic jam in Switzerland on this trip. We were really sad that we didn't have any cards to play at the moment.

Strasbourg, France

It was something like a 6 hour drive across France to arrive in Strasbourg, which is snuggled right up against the German border and close to the Swiss border as well. It has a really interesting history of switching between being part of Germany and part of France. Because of that it has lasting German traditions and it makes it a very unique corner of France. It was my very first city that I served in on my mission. I remember arriving in Brussels from the MTC and having a day or two to adjust to things before gathering in the family room of the mission home and opening our first calls. I was assigned to Schiltigheim (which I could not pronounce at the time and which is a suburb north of Strasbourg) and I was assigned to serve with Elder Strasser. Everyone kept talking about how cool this 'hick' from Idaho was. It made me a little bit nervous. I had nothing to be nervous about. Elder Strasser was as good as they come. He treated me like his best friend from the first time we met. I wish that everyone could have a trainer like I had. He taught me a lot and he set the tone for the rest of my mission. The one thing that I will always appreciate about Elder Strasser is that he always made me feel important, even though I was at the begining of my mission and I was more than likely useless at most things. I also remember that he used to make me bare my testimony to him every night before bed and then he would bare his. I didn't like it at first, but I grew to love it. He got me addicted to collecting ties and gave me a few to add to my collection. While we were walking down the streets, sometimes to entertain ourselves, he would teach me his old army calls that he learned at basic training. He introduced me to my favorite hymn "Abide with Me." I had obviously heard it before but when we started singing it everytime we went to visit Alex Bajee, it was forever different for me. It has a tender place in my heart and always takes me back to that hospital where Alex lived.

According to mission lingo, Elder Strasser was my dad and I killed him. For the next 6 weeks I served with Elder Hardy from England. He was an equally great guy. It was actually like I served with 3 missionaries because we all ended up in the same apartment, after all the riots caused by the events surrounding 9/11, forced us out of our apartments and our neighborhood to relocate downtown where it was more safe. We spent the holidays in Strasbourg, which is famous for it's christmas lights and christmas shops that lined all of the streets downtown. It was spectacular!

We had some pretty awesome P-day's in Strasbourg. There is so much culture around and so many things to see. When planning this stop in Strasbourg, I wanted to show Trisha how awesome the area is and the best way that I could do that was to take her to the places that we used to go on P-day.

 

Sam and I hanging out the window of our hotel at Place Les Halles; Trisha's idea. We had a great hotel near downtown and Sam had his own bed, best thing ever.

A look at the city from our hotel room

Sam learned to love the Kindle with Scooby Doo and Super Why. He did so good on all of our very long car drives.

We left very early in the morning for a day packed full of sightseeing. Our first stop was an hour outside of Strasbourg, up in the Vosges mountains. Struthof concentration camp. It is the only concentration camp in France and it is a sacred site.

This is a remodel of the entrance gate. Most of the camp was destroyed (several different times) after it was vacated at the end of 1944. It is documented that 52,000 people were sent to this camp or it's annexes; many inprisoned for being part of the resistence, some for being jewish, homosexual, gypsy or any other groups targeted by the Nazi forces. Of those 52,000 prisoners, 22,000 died on these grounds, making it one of the most murderous concentration camps!

A view looking down upon the camp site from the outside of the top fence. Check out that view. It might be a little twisted, but I kept asking myself, "I wonder if despite the terrible circumstances that brought the detainees there, and despite the horrendous treatment they recieved, could they look out on this view and enjoy a little piece of God's creation? Could it have brightened their spirits?" I don't know. I can't even imagine.

Looking up the hill at the memorials for each individual killed on the site. There are a lot of crosses. It is hard to imagine that each one of them represents a person who suffered and died there. I loved the wild flowers that grew all throughout the camp site.

More crosses.

I found this one very touching. "Inconnu" or Unknown. They know someone died but they don't know who. There were a lot of these. Not surprising but very sad.

Another view looking down on the camp.  Hanging was one of the many awful ways that people died here.

This table, an experiment table, was in a building at the bottom of the camp. It was used for "scientific" experiments, which I would call torture, although they had seperate, specialized torture tables. This building, I believe is still in it's original form. Very rundown.

The oven. unspeakable.

I found this pretty cool. It is a door frame that divides the hallway in the experimental building. It is worn almost to the point of not being there. It represents the condition of things at the camp and even more, it represents the worn spirits of the prisoners as they drug their feet down the hallway of torture and/or death.

This is a torture room. They used this to get prisoners to their breaking point, both physically and emotionally. They were locked up in these boxes (which are not tall enough to stand in) for hours and even days. Thisha refused to get in there, but humored me by taking a picture next to it to show it's height.

This is the crematorium.

Barbed wire lined the camp

We spent a few hours at Natzwiller-Struthof walking around the site. In one of the museums they were doing a special exhibit that highlighted the sports that occured at the camp. It was very interesting. It highlighted some of the most well known olympians of the day that were imprisoned at the camp. It showed pictures of them as olympians and then as prisoners, you can imagine the difference. The exhibit also highlighted the sports that the prisoners were forced to participate in even when many of them were starving to death. It was ironic that Hitler and the Nazi's forced sports upon the prisoners to satisfy their idea of perfect physique, yet the prisoners were malnourished and emaciated which definitely doesn't fit in the perfect physique category.

Our next stop was a drive down the mountain to a small village called Ribeauville. It is a typical Alsacian (Alsace region of France) village at the foot of the mountains. When I was a missionary we came here and spent a day hiking up the mountain to the 3 castle ruins located there.

A view looking up at the castles in the hills above the village

The Alsace region is known for it's storks. I can't remember why. This is a stork nest on top of a cool spire.

A cool building with a vinyard in the background.

Downtown Ribeauville

A street in Ribeauville

We stopped in centre ville to eat lunch and above us, atop the adjacent building, was this stork nest with two storks inside. While we were eating, one of the storks flew out and over us. It was pretty sweet.

Sam waiting for lunch, with sweet building in the background.

Me and my coke chilling outside under an umbrella at the restaurant. I ate a smoked duck salad and it was delicious.

Kate loved acting like a big girl in Sam's stroller.

Trisha had her first tasted of escargot. Despite her face that clearly shows how nervous she was to try it, she actually really liked it! She also had the famous alsacian choucroute (a cabbage, sausage, potato mixture) for lunch.

Good thing Sam was going through a phase of loving hotdogs and fries. He had a huge variety of weird european hotdogs during our trip. He loved them all.

The whole time we were eating, we were debating whether we wanted to try to hike to the castles with the kids. Trisha was weary and I was pushy. I knew it would be hard but I also knew that she would regret it if we didn't do it. So, I convinced her to hike. This is a view of the castles from the bottom of the hiking trail.

This is the first part of the hike which leads out of the city. Sam did so well at first. He wanted to walk by himself. I was really happy.

This is by far the best shot we got in Europe. I LOVE THIS PICTURE!

More of Sam walking up the steep trail. He occasionally triped up the trail and sometimes he felt like it was so steep that he need to crawl up it.

Sam with St. Ulrich castle in the background. That is the one that we hiked to. Shortly after this picture, Sam didn't want to walk anymore. I ended up carrying him up the rest of the way. I didn't think it would be too bad. It was 95 degrees and extremely humid and Sam didn't want to be held and he refused to walk. I fought him for the remaining mile of the hike. Trisha had Kate in a baby carrier on her belly. Kate also began to get hungry and thus fussy close to the top of the hike. We were both sweating like crazy and we did not bring enough water for all of us. We were stopping every 5 minutes for breaks. It took us over an hour to reach the bottom castle.

It was worth it!!! The view was breathtaking! Skies like this are rare.

Sam exploring the castle ruins.

Trisha and Kate with the ruins.

A really cool wall on the lower level of the castle.

Can you see the village below? It's a great spot for a castle, they had a view of everything coming at them. Just one question? How did they haul all of the supplies up the mountain to build the castle, it's insane. I was dying with a 25lb child.

Another view from a window.

Sam, Trisha and Kate with the adjacent castle in the background

A view looking down from the upper levels of the castle.

Me and Kate.

Because the way up the mountain was so frustrating, we did the old swaparoo. Trisha took Sam in the baby carrier, so he was stuck in it. I took Kate in my arms. It turned out better. I did slip on a rock and fall down, but Kate was unharmed. She didn't like me holding her and screamed most of the way down but it was still better than the way up. We have never been so hot and thirsty and sweaty in our lives. If we can do that with two kids, we can do anything! It was incredible!

The city square at the begining/end of the hike.

After the hike, we decided that we would meander back to Strasbourg by taking the Route des Vins (translation Wine Route), a small two lane road that stretches just over 100 miles and winds through all the small villages with thousands of acres of vinyards on both sides. It's something I had read about online and thought it looked cool. It was beyond cool. Here is what we saw along the way...

Haute-Koenigsburg castle. One of the few castles in the region that has been fully restored to it's original form. It is massive and beautiful.

More castle ruins. Most of the castles in the region are still in ruins.

The vinyards.

Small winding roads.

Dozens of villages.

Hills and mountains.

If I were to go back to this region again, I would start at the begining of the route and take my time stopping at all the villages along the way, hiking to all the castles, and staying the nights in the quaint hotels. This is a must do if you are ever there.

We took a slight detour to pass by the chapel and my two first apartments in Schiltigheim. Again, crazy to pass these places that are so familiar, almost felt like I knew them from a dream. We got back to the city with just enough time to hit some stores in the commercial center next to our hotel and then head over to the famous gothic cathedral at the center of town.

This was a view from out of the hotel window. It is called Woman Walking to the Sky. Apparently it is modeled after Man Walking to the Sky which is located in the neighboring town in Germany. I'm not sure why it exists, but it's unique.

This is Place Homme de Fer.

This is the cathedral. It is impossible to get a picture of the whole thing because of how tall it is and it's location between lots of buildings. We just got a snap of it before the heavens opened on us and sent a flood of rain down. We had to run back to our hotel, each of us with a kid in arms. It was raining so hard! We ran from one store front to the next trying to find cover. It was the France that I remember.

Another shot from our hotel. You can see the cathedral jetting above the other buildings.

Other direction from our hotel.

It was a short trip to Strasbourg, but it was amazing!!