Although Julius is a bit sick, we thought some diversion would be good for him and we went to Lingotto, that mall I wrote about several times. (Not much open on sundays anyway) We kinda got stuck mainly at buying summer stuff for the ever growing kid. Towards the end Julius discovered those coin operated cars and things .. something we tried to hide from him so far … But this time he spotted them .. and we let him play … BUT .. so far he has not found out that you are supposed to put money in to make them wiggle or something … let’s hope it stays like that for a long time.
After the shopping trip we went for dinner to that asian restaurant we had been to many times when we still housed at that hotel in Via Ormea. The 2 chinese waitresses recognized Julius right away … we had great food (for little money) and Julius got to play with some little girls (one Chinese, 2 Italian) … and one of the Italian girls kept kissing him 
very cute … I fear she now has some of the germs that are bugging him.
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Northern Italy has a couple a very scenic lakes. And today we joined an organized bus tour to see a bit of Lago Maggiore, the second largest after Lago di Garda (which I had visited as a 14 year old back in the early 80ies).
(click for pan-o-ramo)
The busride was very comfortable and took about 2 hours and we entered the lake area at Arona, and our first stop shortly after was the giant (35m / 100ft) statue of San Carlo. Nice to look at, but the view of the lake was more impressive.
(click for HUGE panoramic image)
Our next stop was the small town of Stresa, which has a couple of really cool looking hotels … namely the Regina Palace (average price 276 USD) and the Grand Hotel Des Iles Borromees (average price 347 USD). After flipping through some reviews of these 2 places I get the feeling that they are banking in on their location and yes, they might have pretty rooms and great views .. but service, food and ambience seem to lack … then again, I have never stayed there .. but from our very quick glance we got the impression that most guests there are over 65. Maybe not the best place to stay with a kid.
Then we took a boat ride to Isola Bella, which has a great palace full of antique furniture and a bunch of nice, touristy restaurants .. I guess with the little time we had, we had the choice between a) extensive palace and garden visit – no food b) hurried palace and garden – hurried food c) nice relaxed lunch at the seafront … we selected c) … we are already thinking about coming back .. so we will do the palace / garden thing when we have more time … but at 1:15 PM we were surprised that Julius had not turned into terrorist mode yet … but we knew that finding food was not the top priority.
After checking several places (most of which had some easy to select and someone cheap looking) tourist menu, we found a place we liked (Ristorante Magnolia), that had some very nice stuff (especially fish from the lake, grilled) and on top of that we had a great table right at the water and some very friendly waiters.
The food was great and when we were done we spent the remaining time exploring the maze of little streets (filled with souvenier shops and cats) and then it was time to return to our boat.
We hopped on the bus again to go back to Arona for some walking around there … that timing was not the greatest for Julius, who just fell asleep before be stopped in Arona .. so we carried around a sleeping baby most of the time … and when it was time to get back to the bus, he was all awake … all through the 2 hour drive back.
In summary: the area is really sweet .. well worth a visit … stay clear off obvious tourist traps … and you will find lots of stuff to enjoy.
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For some time now Julius has shown more and more interest in keys … pretty much everytime we go out, he wants to hold a key bunch too. Which of course is great when one wonders 15 minutes later where it has gone … And we had some great key searches in our house already.
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Sometimes he just has this thing with the camera … that he either has to make faces into it or he is trying to grab it.
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Every couple of months we get the collected works of young master Julius back from kindergarten (See batch #1). And it is always fun to see what they are doing and what they are working with. In this recent batch a lot of different textures and materials.
Julius is mesmerized when I blow soap bubbles (which he calls ‘balloons’, not too far off) and he chases after them and loves to pop them. It is just really tricky to get a good picture of that (blowing and aiming the cam at the same time … )
I will try that again sometime, more bubbles, better light … maybe outside.
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(click for bigger and unfiltered version)
Today is a holiday in Italy which means school is off and Julius and I are spending a fun day together … too bad the sun is not out, but we will check out the playground after his nap.
(Wow, reading about that holiday I just realize that as a German in Italy .. i should probably stay indoors today)
| One year ago: The cutest video of Julius’ Baby Elephant Walk: |  |
Yesterday we went to the playground, which was packed with kids. And since it was warm and sunny, they had turned on some of the water themed play areas. Much to J’s delight, who soaked himself. Why is it that kids his age are fascinated with putting stones and stuff in water? He got into a fight with a bigger kid as he kept filling a certain puddle with stones, which the bigger boy tried to clean out. Result: big boy pushes Julius, Julius lands on his behind and starts crying … so much I have to teach him on how to get around in life. (Interestingly, the parents of the pushy kid did not do anything, like telling their son that pushing smaller kids is not the right thing to do … guess boys here in Italy are still being brought up to be machos)
(click to enlarge)
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As promised, some more pics of yesterday’s trip to the Superga.
One story that is more recent, tragic and always connected with Torino and the Superga is the plane crash that wiped out a whole soccer team (of national heroes). NBC had a nice special on that and gladly it is up on youTube.
Julius was very interested in mommy’s coffeecup .. so I poured some water in it .. and he loved it
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Today we finally went up to the Basilica Superga, a huge cathedral high up on a mountain overlooking Torino. To get there we first took a bus (#61) and then the historic rack railway (vintage video on youtube). These trains leave every full hour (which sucks when you arrive at 3:05 PM) and cost 4.13 EU per adult on weekends and holidays. On summer weekends and holidays they seems to run every half hour. The trip is fun and takes about 18 minutes.
The weather was great, but not clear enough to enjoy the full view of the mountains behind Turin (there is usually quite some fog over the city).
Tomorrow I will write some more and post more photos.
(click to enlarge)
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No, not his birthday. He was invited to a party of 2 of his schoolmates. Around 12 – 15 kids came, all with their moms (the only dad I saw was the father of the kid who lived where the party was thrown). The parents organized lots of outdoor toys for all kids to play with, of course mainly they wanted the car that they saw another kid using. In one case Julius was pushed out of a car by a girl from his class and he was very upset about that. They had even hired an entertainer lady who did balloon animals, magic tricks and a puppet show. The puppet show only interested the older kids. But overall fun was had by all, there was some dancing, some fun interactions and taking pictures was kinda tricky. The sky was bright and white and the kids just kept running around.
Julius loved the icecream cake and the big platter full of potato chips. I had to keep an eye on his consumption.
It was very interesting to see all these children interact (more or less) and to see the different stages of development (oh boy, when Julius gets older … uh oh). The moms were all very nice to me and tried their best English. The kept retelling the story how I brought Julius to school everyday for months by bus and walking. And they also gasped when they heard that Julius is dealing with 4 languages. But I noticed that there were quite some bilingual kids, too.
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Some more cute pics of Julius enjoying the mountains and especially the artificial lake that Moserhof had created right next to the river. Just why are kids so attracted to puddles and lakes? Well, he kept on going until one big sidestep left him very wet and VERY cold
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Look just how much concentration it takes to peel this egg.
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Sorry for the delayed info .. but I am still pushing quite a backlog … we just had way too much adventure and of course took tons of pics and video of it … so bear with me a bit .. and I will create a summary post for the whole Austria experience … if you can’t wait that long? Keep coming back and scroll down .. I may squeeze in new posts datewise accordingly (Just added one for 4/13 and one for 4/15)
A few days ago we went up into the nearby mountains to a farm/restaurant/hotel called Himmelbauer (lit.trans.:”sky farmer”. Initially we had planned to drive one hour to Heiligenblut, which is the starting point for the Großglockner alpine highway. But after we found out that this is still closed due to snow, we followed our host’s recommendation instead.
The drive up there is fun, but in bad weather or darkness potentially dangerous. Once there we met some people who actually had just spent 2 hours hiking up there. The Mölltall below is at 600m above sea, and Himmelbauer is at 1200m. From there you can have a breathtaking view over the whole valley. There are 2 main buildings: the hotel and the restaurant (and then some more farm buildings) and there is a great playground, which Julius just loved. The slide there is very curvey and on his last trip, one of the curves turned Julius around and he hit his face, which resulted in the black eye you can see in the succeeding pictures. Check out the video:
We have not tried the restaurant, but the menu looked lovely, typical Austrian fare. And at the right time you can have your Wiener Schnitzel with a great view.
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The puddle lover’s ultimate gear: a pair of rubber coated pants (courtesy of C&A) .. so that he can get really wet!
Our farm vacation village Moserhof has direct access to the Möll-river and has partitioned off an area for kids to mess around, get all wet, sandy and dirty, without being swept away by the torrent.
Julius had a blast until his rubber boots were filed up and he obviously got cold.
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Our vacation package came with this neat horse carriage ride (well, we could have selected horseback riding lessons … but Julius is too young, Ritsu has a bad back and I would probably cause a horse to have a bad back).
We tried the day before, but due to some miscommunication it all happened one day later. Once again we drove the 8km to Mallnitz and our ‘driver’ showed up right on time. We had an added bonus as we were picking up another family who had booked the 30 min. ride. So, we got that plus our 1h ride. The first half hour was around the village .. and our hour took us into the Hohe Tauern national park.
Julius was very excited about the horses, but it was also his vacation nap time … and the warm blankets, the fresh air, the regular commotion … and he was out after 5 minutes and stayed out for the whole ride. He missed the fun things like farting and pooping horses right in front of us, the occasional speeding up of the ride, the beautiful scenery. This ride was a great add-on to the whole trip.
The daily breakfast basket here at Moserhof is fantastic: plenty of fresh breadrolls, eggs, honey, jam, a platter of coldcuts and cheese, organic milk and yoghurt and some freshly made yoghurt. And this EVERY day … we had so much leftovers which we stocked in the fridge for the occasional emegrency sandwich.
Julius ate very well and he especially loved the fresh rolls. But we also had either fresh strawberries or raspberries to add to the yoghurt.
And here some more random breakfast pictures.
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Click for bigger, unfiltered version.
Many more pictures coming soon once we get back.
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I cannot wait for Julius to be old enough to put him on the slopes … today we ventured out to the Ankogel cablecar station, where we were able to watch skiers come down. The weather wasn’t that great. I checked if going up the mountain was worth it .. but the lady at the station told me that it was very windy and cloudy up there .. so .. we did not go .. but Julius sure loved seeing all these weird people coming down the hill on one or 2 boards .. and yeah, we were in the snow again …
Winter 2007 we will get him skiing!
Which kid this age would not enjoy some crazy puddle dancing when there is the chance for it? So glad we bought these cool rubber ducky boots!
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