Chris' mom and Dad visit: Italy and France

  Venice, Italy
Sunday, September 11, 2005

In September, Chris' mom and dad visited. It was off to Italy through Switzerland. Melanie joined us in Venice and Vincenza for a four day weekend in the two week trip.

Here is what Chris' mom Martha had to say about the trip:

"We hit a number of high spots on our trip to northern Italy and Bordeaux and Champagne country in France.

Bellagia is a beautiful resort town in the Lake Como region. Then on to Florence where we saw several of its famous landmarks -also many tourists and much traffic. There is surely only one Venice! It surpassed our expectations - all those old, old buildings - although some are pretty crumbly. Everything is done by boat - ambulance, police and laundry pickup. Often the water comes right up though the pavement and people have to wear boots and walk on planks. Of course, we took a gondola ride.

Verona and Vincenza had many less tourists. Verona has a beautiful town square. We had our rainy weather in those towns. Nevertheless, we really enjoyed a number of museums and quite a few goodies from an outdoor market. The umbrella Jim bargained for came in handy!

They were harvesting the grapes when we were in Bordeaux and Champagne country. That added a lot to the local flavor. We had a roadside picnic and stayed next to a vineyard. All in all, it was a great trip."




Chris and Melanie have lots of travel planned for 2006 so stay tuned.