May 12 2012

Last day in Italy tomorrow and we head to Venice. It worked out that we could fly from Venice to Bristol UK for as cheap as anywhere else in England and for far cheaper than the train so I get my wish (and on the advice of my mother) to see Venice just for a day. The last few days we have been staying with friends Andrew and Anna in Como Italy at the base of the Alps, English friends happening to live in Italy for the year.  I had no idea that stopping off to visit friends would land us in yet another beautiful setting in Italy...every corner we turn in this country is more and more amazing.  The camper van was fun and interesting. Nice to be able to tour the countryside of tuscany and visit small mountaintop villages while cooking our own food. On the other hand it has been somewhat difficult to contain the kids' energy in a small space while cooking with half working burners and sleeping in hoodies and wool socks in gravel parking lots! We sure felt cold after leaving Thailand peak heat even though Italy was 15-20 degrees.

After returning the campervan we stayed in an apartment in Cinque Terre for 5 nights. The apartment was perfect in a small village with a full kitchen and cozy warm beds. Cinque Terre is a series of 5 villages on the sea with walking paths between the villages along the cliffs. The hikes ranged from 20 minutes to 2 hours but a few were washed out with a land slide last October.  The people in the village were friendly and we sampled many cheeses and pastas...Orrin discovered that he loves pesto. Yay for a new food for Orrin!  Oh and gelato of course! The water reminded me of Georgian Bay temperatures and we were some of the few people swimming (obviously Canadian tourists..).

In two days we will be at our final destination of England to see nanny for the last 5 weeks. The boys are really excited for that and to see cousins as well. Orrin doesn't remember much from 2.5 yrs ago at our last visit but Silas has him convinced he will love the food. If they still have curry and chips we will be fine!

Oh, by the way Meng... thought you would appreciate the photo of Martin...this is what is has come to after our stay with you! xx

May 6th

It's been a little hard to keep up with our weekly intentions of the blog update...Thailand was packed with adventure thanks to our good friend Meng! After our last update we travelled south to the Islands of Koh Lanta then Koh Phi Phi. The six of us (our family, Meng and grandpa Wayne) spent lots of time swimming and snorkelling. A must see area of Koh Lanta was around Koh Rok where we took a boat trip and kayaked around the incredible formations and caved areas. Ko Phi Phi was nice to get away from cars and motor bikes on this very small island. We rented bicycles for 2 days to get around so we could travel easily with our combination of 3 generations!

The one tour we took on Phi Phi was to Maya beach, the famous site of the filming of "the beach". It was a fantastic trip with our own longtail boat driven by a local with good taste for reggae music. The waters were the bluest blue I could imagine with loads of little fishies to peer at. The only thing of course was the masses of people arriving by the minute even though we went at 8:30am to avoid the crowds!
On Phi Phi the view point was well worth the long and hot hike to the top. It gave a great perspective of where we were and of all the little gems around the island.