Croce di Lumignano

 Just a short drive away from us is a great hike with gorgeous views. It is a popular spot for rock climbing and biking too. Lumignano is the name of the adorable little village and the backdrop is the hiking. Kiwi led the way (literally) for our hike - she definitely has to work on pulling a little bit. (We think of Kiwi as such a baby, so it is funny to see her innate abilities of jumping and climbing come in to play - after all she has been a Florida- beach dog her entire life with no elevation climbing skills previously needed. It was a perfect Sunday morning hike and we hope to go back often!

Over the years, the little caves have been built into the massive stone.

The destination is the cross at the top! 

lots of cool vines

Leading the way! :-)

You can see the cross at the top a little better in this pic

our fearless leader!

The adorable town of Lumignano

Love these guys!

You can see the building built in to the mountain - so cool!

Xuey!

So many neat rock formations

Mia and I

If you look close, you can see one of the rock climbers - definitely on our bucket list!

Soave

 Soave, Italy is an adorable little town that is famous for it's dry White Wine - perfectly named: Soave :-) There are acres and acres of Vineyards, a quaint little walled city and an amazing castle over looking all of it. It is only about 25 minutes from us and we brought Kiwi with us for a nice little hike around the area. It is great to have these little gems so close by - you can explore in the morning, have lunch and then be home still to relax in the afternoon. Since we drove, we didn't do any wine tasting, but we did buy a bottle to enjoy later. The character is so cool - one of our favorites so far!

Buon Compleanno, Bryan!

 Buon Compleanno (Happy Birthday!!!). We had a great day celebrating Bryan's birthday. We went for a hike up into the woods on the outside of the town and found a beautiful old villa with a cafe to sit at. Kiwi joined us and we are learning quickly how to handle her craziness when in public. She is actually pretty good, but we need to make sure we find an area to sit near a wall (opposed to out in the middle of other tables). She did really well and after 6 miles - she had a great afternoon nap. We finished with Doner Kebabs (one of Bryan's favorite things from Germany). It was a great day celebrating Bryan!

Venice

The equipment from the Tom Cruise - "mission impossible" set in St. Marks Square

St. Mark's Square - completely empty of tourists

St. Marks square

Took masks off only for the picture!

The Canals were empty

The Vaporetto was empty

Mandatory mask!

The only thing happening was the packing up of the "Mission Impossible" set (not a huge Tom Cruise fan, but still neat to see!)

Red carpet rolled up from Mission Impossible Set

 Because of Covid, Bryan has a lot of vacation time that he wasn't able to use this year, so we are enjoying catching up and using up leave that he will lose if he doesn't take advantage! Our region of Italy is called the Veneto region - it is famous for a lot of things (prosecco, the Dolomites, the sea, Verona, and perhaps most famous of all - Venice! Being such a weird time, people obviously are not traveling, so we literally had Venice all to ourselves (I actually think we were the only real tourists - everyone else was a local - I know (or I think I know) this because we were the only ones with a backpack, bright Tennis Shoes and our navigation open up on our phone (ha ha). Anyway - it was absolutely beautiful, yet sad at the same time. There economy is being hit so hard and it is obvious that they have a long road ahead of them. We enjoyed meandering along the canals and taking in the scenery. So pretty - we even saw fish swimming in the water and the pedestrian areas were clean (one of the mixed blessing of having things shut down). A funny highlight is that we keep running in to the Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" shooting (we saw it in Vicenza and then we ran into it again in Venice. I guess they are taking full advantage of the quiet time!