Month: August 2011

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.