Nick and Jen Lloyd

Yesterday my friend got a call from her mom on her cell phone… and I realized that no one has ever called our cell phone soooo……

I would like to remind all of our family and friends that you can in fact call us. The cheapest way that we have found is through Google voice. If you don’t have a Gmail, lookup “google voice” and make an account. If you do have gmail, look on the left hand side when you are logged in, the first option on your “chat” menu is “call phone”. Click it. Load ten dollars to your account. Then pay 12 cents a minute to call us. If we are home we can call you back for a mere 1 cent a minute.

Our phone number is: (+39) 327-263-8481

Seriously, call it. (But remember we are 8-9 hours ahead of you guys….)

In Venice there are boat races on the grand canal that you can go to and watch called “regatta”. This month was the Regatta Storica, which is a historic boat race where before the race they have a parade of boats that look like they would have in the past, even the people on them are dressed up. It is one of the least crowded Regatta, but in my mind, the most fun as you get to see the little parade before hand.

We were babysitting a friends’ kiddo so here is what we would look like as a family of four.

Nick and Aneesa crossed a bridge to try to get some photos of the boat from the other side. When they tried to cross back over the bridge they got completely lost. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s that easy to get lost in Venice. So Nick gave Aneesa the true Venice experience…being lost. They missed pretty much the whole parade and didn’t find their way back to us for almost two hours as they wandered in circles. Oh Venice.

Here’s the whole crew on the train going home, totally exhausted. Megan and Reid are our good friends, my cousin Aneesa, and my friend Joy’s kiddo.

This lovely young lady (below…my cousin, Aneesa) is here staying with us for a few months. We are trying to cram as much stuff into her time here as we can. She is a big help with babysitting and cleaning, it’s wonderful.

I have been meaning to catch an opera at the Verona Arena all summer. So on Sept 3rd (ignore the date on the photos), the very last day of the summer opera season, Aneesa and I decided to get dressed up and go see “Aida”. It was beautiful. We only stayed for half of it because the way it was going it looked like it would be on until 1 am (crazy Italians, they never sleep!).

The story line goes like this: This military dude is engaged to the princess but is actually in love with one of her slaves, Aida (who is actually the princess of another country, but was captured and keeps her identity secret). The princess suspects that he loves someone else. When he goes away to war she tells Aida that he has died and tricks her into telling her that she loves him back. He comes back with prisoners of war and one if them is Aida’s father. He betrays his country for Aida and her father so they throw the military dude in prison and Aida sneaks in just before they close the door to the dungeon and rots with him, so romantic.

On Saturday we gathered our friends and made the trek up and over the mountain to go to Asiago (the town) for a cheese festival. The drive was gorgeous, and the area where is Asiago was beautiful as well. We enjoyed tasting different ages of Asiago cheese including a 4 month old cheese, a year old cheese and a two year old cheese. The younger one was softer and less strong, where as the older was harder and stronger. Then we tasted different honeys, it was interesting to taste the difference in what the bee eats, acacia honey vs. forest honey. (Asiago is not only famous for Asiago but for cheese and mushrooms as well.) Asiago is also home to a WWI monument where 30,000 Italian and Austrian troops are buried. 

Oh Jonah. He’s ready to be a big boy but doesn’t quite have it down yet. He came out of his room the other day having “dressed himself”. This is what he came up with. The neck of the shirt is around his chest, under his arms. His pants didn’t make it over his bum. But he was ooooh so proud to have dressed himself.

So my neighbor invited Jonah and I to go to the zoo with her and her two little ones. Actually, she described it as a “petting zoo”, not totally sure why because this was a full fledged zoo. It was really nice actually, lot’s of trees to keep it nice and shady. They had tons of animals including penguins, camels, monkeys, goats, flamingos, tortoises even a baby hippo. Plus the zoo had a nice flow to it with playgrounds and picnic areas throughout where we could stop to take a break. I was super impressed.

A big thank you to Mandy and Josh for hosting us and being our personal tour guides. We had such a great time!

On our last day in Germany, Mandy and Josh took us to bike the section of the Rhine river that has the most castles per kilometer. We saw tons of castles, mostly up on the hills but one was in the middle of the river. Castles are built next to rivers because they wanted to control river crossings, and collect a tax from anyone who wanted to cross. It was a beautiful ride. We stopped and hiked up to the most infamous castle, Burg Reinsfeld. I’ve decided that I want a castle….

Heidelberg is a fun college town on the Reine with a huge castle up on the hill. We walked around, hiked up to the castle and looked around, then had a traditional German dinner.

Brussels Belgium was a little further than most of our day trips from Baumholder, but when Nick found out it was only 3 hours away, he insisted we had to go. He was right, it was beautiful and we may have to go back at some point. First thing we did in Brussels was eat some waffles, yum! I reccomend the Liege waffle over the Brussels waffles (Brussels waffles are pretty much like the big waffles you get in the U.S., Liege waffles however are smaller and thicker and have a yummy caramelized middle).

I don’t know if this photo does it justice, but this square was absolutely gorgeous. Loved it so much. Brussels is so pretty, the architecture is it’s own thing.

Everyone was touching this statue, I have no idea why but I decided I had to do it.

Mannequin Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing, there are lot’s of silly stories as to why this statue was put up, whatever the truth is it’s a silly statue. While standing there we got to hear an old man sing a catchy little song about it, that still gets stuck in my head from time to time.

 It was a bit rainy and cold that day so jonah tucked his legs up in his stroller and snuggled in, he looks like ET in the basket…

 I love all the neat old churches in Europe, I really never get sick of them.

The Belgian palace.

Indoor shopping street, very neat and very expensive.

Belgian chocolate, need I say more? YUM!

 As we were on our way out of town Nick said we had to stop at “Atomium”, apparently it is Belgium’s “space needle”. It was originally built for the 1958 world fair, it is a huge model of a cell. You can go inside and there are escalators connecting each of the spheres. It was meant to be temporary but was so popular that it gained monument status and stayed. It’s huge, you can’t tell in this photo how big it is.