Hey All,

Sorry it's been so long between postings, but we were in the mountains of Italy for several days and had no access to computers. 

We ended up spending three days in Interlaken, Switzerland, but unfortunately it rained the last two days, so we were unable to take the train ride up the mountain.  It was still beautiful, and the people were friendly, and thew food was great.  We would love to go back again someday.

We then moved on to Venice, which we like to think of affectionately as "Tijuana with Canals".  OK, maybe not affectionately - we really didn't care for it at all!  The whole town seemed like it was just three or four tourist shops in an endless rotation, with some extremely overpriced boat rides in between.  We stayed less than a day and then moved on to Verona, the setting of Romeo and Juliet.  This city was very nice - clean and beautiful.  We visited Juliet's tomb and her house, and got pictures of Cadry on the famous balcony.  (They claim that these are the actual locations that inspired the Shakespeare play, but we were a little skeptical - they may have been a bit retroactive in their accuracy...)  We checked out an ancient arena there which is the center of the town, and the local opera company was rehearsing for "Dracula:  The Rock Opera", which we got to watch part of.  We were tempted to stay the next day and see the premiere of it, but alas, the train was a-callin'.

Our next port of call was Assissi, as in "St. Francis of" fame.  We stayed at a cute little bed n breakfast in the hills, and took a hike up to St. Francis' basilica and saw his tomb.  Cadry was not allowed to show her arms there, and luckily I had worn long pants because shorts are not allowed either.  They like it quiet and reverent in the church, so there was a creepy man with a microphone who's only job was to announce "Silencio!" every few minutes when the tourists got excited about something.  He even said it to a crying baby, which was optomistic on his part, to say the least.

After two nights there, we moved on to Castille di Montali, a vegetarian resort hotel up in the mountains of Tavernalle.  This was gorgeous.  We had to rent a car to get up there, and it was a stick-shift, which neither one of us are very adept at driving.  The streets in Italy are very narrow and made up almost entirely of steep hill, which made the driving lots of fun!  The hotel was in the middle of an olive grove, and a gourmet breakfast and dinner were included every day.  The proprietor, Alberto, was extremely charming, and made a huge event out of dinner every night.  He greeted me as "Mr. Busch" and had a special table prepared for us, which was our table for the duration of our stay.  With each course, he would come to the table and quietly announce the food and what it was.  Every morsel was fantastic, and the wine was some of the best we have ever had.  We bought two bottles to bring back with us, we liked it so much.  There was also a fresh little of kittens that lived there, maybe 6-8 weeks old.  Since we have been missing our cats Spike and Jezebel so much, it was fun to play with them for a while.  My favorite was a little "runt" kitten that I named Peaches Patches, as she had two little peach-colored patches over her eyes.  Cadry's favorite was Checkers, a little kitten with a half-black, half-white face.  (Reminded me of the aliens from the original Star Trek episode - if you've seen it, you know what I mean!)

We arrived in Rome last night, and are only intending to stay for a day before moving on to Greece.  We will see the Collisseum today, and possibly the Vatican. 

Ciao for now!

-David