Fall Break Part I: The Eternal City

The kids' two-week (!) fall break from school just ended.  This is the first of three posts about our fall break adventures, which started with four days in Rome.

Inside the Colosseum

Arch of Constantine

Palatine Hill (where the Emperors lived)

With our guide, Guiseppe, at the Roman Forum

Walking up to the Pantheon

(Ami is in jeans and Matthew is in red pants)

We finished off the day with a run in the Circus Maximus, where the chariot races were held.  Well, the kids ran.  Mark and I walked.

And that was just day one!

On our second day, we visited Rome 3-D, an interactive museum near the Colosseum.

We'd fit right in to ancient Rome

The gladiator's life is spared!

Eating gelato (which we did a lot of in Italy) in front of a fountain at Santa Maria Maggiore

Learning how to be a gladiator at Gladiator School

Hanging out at Trevi Fountain

Whew!  That was a long day!  Onto day three.

We started day three visiting the catacombs.  No photographs allowed.

In the afternoon, we took the bus to another country: Vatican City.

Mark and the boys outside St. Peter's Basilica

Waiting on line to get through security at St. Peter's--where they confiscated my Swiss Army knife!  UGH!

Actually, rather than confiscate it, they allowed me to hide it under a garbage can near the security scanning machines.

Would it still be there after our visit?

Swiss guard posted outside St. Peter's Basilica.

He wasn't impressed that we were from Switzerland.

The knife was still there!  Yay!

Day four and it is time to leave Rome.  But there was still one more site on our list:  Michelangelo's Moses, which was located in a church (San Pietro in Vincoli) just up the street from our hotel.

We headed for the train station thinking that was the end of our Rome adventure, but at the station we encountered a loud demonstration, which we think (based on Google Translate) was a demonstration by railway workers involved in a contract dispute.

Arrivederci, Roma!

Fall Break Part III: The Matterhorn

After our Italy adventure and three days back in Lausanne catching up on work and laundry and sleep, we noticed that we were in for a few days of gorgeous weather, so we headed to the Matterhorn!

We took the train from Lausanne to Zermatt (the town at the base of the Matterhorn).  Zermatt is a super cute, no-car village with tons of little hotels, restaurants, and shops.

The Matterhorn is in the Pennine Alps.  As we walked from the train station to our hotel, we wondered which one of the dramatic peaks around us was the Matterhorn.

Is the Matterhorn one of those peaks in the background?

Oh, that's the Matterhorn! Hard to miss, once you look in the right direction!

The photos don't do it justice, but in person it's easy to see why there's so much romance attached to this particular mountain.

We rode gondolas into the mountains, to the Glacier Palace, which is a visitors' area carved into a real, live glacier.

The gondolas were packed with skiers as there is skiing here year round.

The Glacier Palace had ice sculptures and an ice slide.  It was cold, but spectacular.

Matthew on the ice slide

Christopher on the ice slide

Mark and I went on the ice slide, too.  No photos available.

The Matterhorn from an observation deck in the mountains

On our way down from the Glacier Palace, we stopped and played in the snow.

Making a snow man

The next day we hiked a bit under the Matterhorn before catching the train back to Lausanne.

Having a chat with a sheep on the trail.

Alvederzein, Matterhorn!

All in all, a pretty good fall break.  Now it's back to school and work.

Fall Break Part II: On The Tyrrhenian Sea

From Rome we headed south to Sorrento, a lovely little harbor city on the Tyrrhenian sea, south of Naples.

After taking the intercity train from Rome to Naples and the commuter rail from Naples to Sorrento (during which we all stood in a packed subway car for the one-hour trip), we gave ourselves the afternoon off.

Always up for a swim.  Even in an unheated pool with no one else brave enough to go in!

Enough rest!

The next day, we rode the commuter rail to Pompeii.  Wow!  What a site!

At the Forum in Pompeii

Crossing an ancient Pompeii street using the pedestrian walkway

In front of one of the preserved frescoes

Having a picnic lunch at an ancient Pompeii lunch counter.  Really! That is what the archeologists think it is.

Battling in the Pompeii amphitheater.

Outside the Pompeii city gate

The day after that we took a boat to the Island of Capri.

At the Capri Harbor

We took a boat trip around the island.  The highlight of this was a visit to Capri's famous Blue Grotto.  To get into the Blue Grotto you had to jump from the main boat into a row boat for the trip into the Grotto.

On the boat around the Island of Capri.

The mouth of the Blue Grotto is so small that only a four-person row boat can fit through.

You can see why they call it the Blue Grotto.

Eating gelato on the Island of Capri.

The boat ride back to Sorrento.  Arrivederci, Capri!

Our final Day in Sorrento.  How about a hike up Mount Vesuvius?  Yes, that Mount Vesuvius.  The one that wiped out Pompeii and is still a live volcano.

On the rim of the Mount Vesuvius crater

It is hard to see, but there is smoke rising from the volcano in the background!

We made our way back to Sorrento just in time for a sunset swim in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

All good things must come to an end, and here ends our Italy adventure.

Weekend Diversions

The past two weekends have been fun.

The weekend of October 1-2, we broke the shopping barrier!  Thus far during our time in Switzerland, we had been pretty restrained in the shopping arena (except for groceries, of course).  But this weekend certain consumer needs overcame us, and we ventured out to the Outlet Mall.

Before that, though, we had the pleasure of going to another désalpes. (See the previous post, where I threatened to take the family to go to a second désaples.  I was successful!)  This one was held in Saint Cergue.  This désalpes had the same wonderful mix of cows on parade with their fancy headgear and loud bells, local musicians (this time including group of yodelers and a marching band of people carrying cow bells of various sizes), and stalls with food and gifts for sale. 

Saint Cergue desaples

We decided to take the plunge and buy some cow bells.  We had been thinking about what we might bring back as mementoes of our trip, and we were having a hard time coming up with items that are quintessentially Swiss.  There is chocolate, of course, but chocolate is meant to be eaten, not displayed on your mantel.  Cow bells seemed just the ticket.

So many cow bells.  How to choose?

On the way home from Saint Cergue we stopped at Ikea, which was located in an outlet mall.  Here we purchased a floor lamp (yes, we broke a lamp in our rental apartment. Oops!), and we also bought new sneakers. Everything at Ikea (even the Swiss Ikea) is pretty inexpensive, but we were particularly surprised at what a good deal we got on the three pair of sneakers we purchased at the Adidas store in the Outlet Mall.

Falling asleep outside the mall.  Rough day!

So, a little shopping in the old world (Saint Cergue) and a little shopping in the new world (outlet mall). Not a bad day!

This past weekend (October 8-9) was equally diverse and interesting.

On Saturday, Mark and Christopher played in a chess tournament in Echallens -- a town about 20 minutes outside of Lausanne.  This was particularly fun as the tournament was held in the “grand salle” of the local castle.

Getting ready for the Echallen chess tournament at the castle.
The 12th century castle tower is in the background.

We were really looking forward to seeing what a chess tournament in a castle would be like! And it was different than what we expected. It was indeed a 12^th century castle, but it’s still in active use as a community center, so the “grand salle” -- which we imagined would be a castle banquet room with a gigantic fireplace, tapestries on the walls, and narrow windows for the archers -- was in fact more like a church social hall or the common room of a small elementary school: tile floors with circles and lines painted on them for gym class, gymnastics equipment pushed to the side, a stage at the front for the school play, etc. Probably the only part of the building that’s left from the 12^th century is the tower. The rest looked to be modern add-on.

Matthew helping Mark with some pre-tournament practice.
Christopher and a new friend in the background.

Inside the "castle"

As Mark noted, though, playing in this sort of castle is, in a sense, at least as much of a historically “authentic” experience of castle life as touring the castles that are now museums. One of the amazing things about visiting places here is the realization that people have been living on the same sites for thousands of years, transforming them as needed. Part of the reason all these castles have lasted so long is that people adapted them for various uses over the years: government administrative buildings, jails, markets, warehouses, rich people’s houses, and community centers. Only sometimes did they get converted into museums and rehabbed into what somebody imagined a medieval castle might have looked like.

So, in a sense, by playing a chess tournament in the castle-turned-community-center, we were participating in the ongoing, living history of the medieval castle as much as, maybe more than, when we tour the ones that have been reconstructed to look like “castles” and imagine ourselves to be medieval knights defending them. Or maybe castles just have different historical trajectories, each of which is authentic in its own way.

Enough history.  The big news here is that Mark won first place in the under-1600 class with 4 points and Christopher won second place in the same class with 3.5 points.  A clean sweep for the Chaves family!  And, these wins came with money prizes (80 francs for Mark and 50 francs for Christopher)!   Not too shabby!

Christopher takes 2nd place U1600!

Mark takes 1st place U1600

On Sunday, we went to see the Knie Circus, which is the Swiss national circus.  Knie is a family run circus in operation since 1803. The Swiss are very proud of the national circus, and it was recommended to us several times as a not-to-be-missed event.  And it lived up to its billing.

Maybe the most fun aspect of it is that the Knie Circus is a single-ring circus that happens under an actual "big top" tent which was actually pretty small.  This smaller venue meant that we (and everyone else in the house) were really, really close to the action.  

Boys sitting on the edge of the ring under the Knie Big Top

They had elephants, horses and llamas, a tightrope walker, multiple acrobats, and even some modern-day clowns (not the rubber-nosed, big-shoed, pancake-makeup wearing types, but three guys doing a lot of breakdancing and silly antics.)  Mark's favorite was the tightrope walker. Mine was the acrobats, all of whom were incredibly talented.  And the boys?  They liked the three silly guys.  


Something for everyone!