relief.
We sat down to breakfast and ate. My coffee making skills have definitely
improved anad came in handy today.
Last night was rough. Yours truly had trouble falling asleep.
The humidity was higher than normal. So I think I managed about 4
hours of sleep. This morning I queried Stephen about his foot and
it seems to not be bothering him at all. Which was a relief.
We sat down to breakfast and ate. My coffee making skills have definitely
improved anad came in handy today.
We bummed around the morning playing chess and checkers. I didn't
want to put too much strain on Stephen's foot even if it wasn't bothering
him anymore. Then lunch time rolled around and we settled down to
that. Vincenzo drove by and said he'd pick us up around 16h for today's
drive into the mountains. 
We
walked over to the park and I guess it did rain last night because the
soccer field had mud patches in it. After tossing the frisbee around
and kicking the ball for a while we headed back to the apartment as the
heat was really coming in today. We solved some crossword puzzles
until Vincenzo and his wife came to pick us up.
The drive into the mountains took us to the resort town of Molveno.
It is a picturesque village that is primarily geared for the ski season.
Vincenzo said there are more hotels here than houses. There is a
beautiful lake and some gorgeous mountain views here. Stephen and
Kristie liked watching the parasailers coming in. The start out high
up in the mountains, gliding down to the beachfront. 
Most of the parasailers opt out to land on the beach. But there is
a little dock about 50 meters out that some brave souls tried to land on.
We saw only one guy make it, the rest fell into the water. The water
here is cold. Fortunately for the parasailers there is a motorboat
that goes out and pulls them out of the water. We touched the water
just to see how cold it was. We saw some people in swimming suits
here but that was solely for the purpose of sun bathing. Much unlike
last weeks trip into the mountains today turned out to be balmy weather.
Even so we were not over dressed for it. But there are some hardy
souls out there trying to get tans in this weather. This area has
a lot of recreational things to do. Tennis courts, miniature golf,
sailing, and parasailing of course. There are an abundant number
of playgrounds and plenty of room for the kids to run around in.
The only real problem we had was that Kristie decided to grab a rose without realizing that rose bushes had thorns! Was that ever a painful way to learn. Luckily Vincenzo had his swiss army knife with him. I've apparently lost mine and curiously enough I was looking for it earlier today. The tweezers in it came in handy to pull out the couple of thorns stuck in her hand.
The drive back from Molvenowas via a different route and just as scenic. I highly recommend this place for it's wealth of beauty.
Then Vincenzo surprised me and offered to lend us a military cot. The three of us have been sharing the double bed here and the cot is a welcome addition! No more getting kneed in the middle of the night by one of the kids! We stopped by their apartment to pick it up. He lives just on the other side of Gardolo from us.
By the time we got home, ate dinner and got the kids in bed it was 22h20 and they fell straight asleep! I did have to skip giving them a shower tonight so it'll be a mad house here tomorrow morning getting them showered.
Also, some good news regarding the modem. I think there is some problem with the IBM Global Network Dialer. I examined the logs last night and it is calling an application called rasphone.exe. Apparently this is how they are providing SLIP support in the NT environment. Well, somehow they are not calling rasphone with enough parameters, or the application dosen't provide enough. But whatever it is, I mucked around with rasphone and sure enough I found a way to get it to pulse dial! So, if I ever get my phone line here at the apartment I can start uploading all these journal entries!
Click here to download all of the day's pictures - Warning this will download about 2M of data!
Copyright @ 1997, Alexandre POLOZOFF. All Rights Reserved.
