Geo-Caching...Romeo and Juliette Style!

Our friends invited us out to go geocaching with them. Basically, this is where you type in coordinates into your GPS and you try to find hidden treasures. This paticular geocache was near Romeo and Juliette's Castles. Our friends Randy and Jolanta are serious Geocachers. We...well, we like to spend time with friends, explore, and then eat good food. Randy and Jolanta are real fun people to be around. Easy-going, free-spirited friends. They did an excellent job explaining to Maddy, Shelly, and me the how's and why's of geocaching.



The weather around here has started to turn for the winter, but on the day we set out...it was fantastic. Perfect weather for geo-caching. The geocache we set out to find had significant meaning for Randy and Jolanta...They named it "star crossed lovers," after Romeo and Juliette...and their one-year anniversarry. They use geocaching.com to set and find all of their geocacaches. If you go to that page and type in "star crossed lovers" this is what you will read. (You don't need an account, but why not sign up...it is FREE!)

This cache helps to discover the story of 2 lovers who could never be. You can hike to it from a variety of nearby roads, or park close by in the parking lot.If you want to see a movie you could even wait until 2130 to see new movies in a national landmark. The cache is a short drive from Vicenza or Verona and is even near a popular site for weddings and parties. The plastic container is clear with a blue lid. After you find it please share a story of love or romance that you have experienced. My wife and I placed this for our 1 year anniversary and hope to hear for years to come stories from all who find it.



Here are a few pics of the four of us checking out Romeo's castle before we set off on the hunt. The castle in the background is Juliette's.

The girls strike a pose to prove they are indeed ready to actually walk on a none paved surface.

After Randy typed in the exact location into his GPS, it was off to the hunt.

Maddy took the GPS and was a real pro. I think she had the most fun of all of us.Maddy saw this rock and thought it had to be the rock...she was right!

Maddy found the geocache!

Lazy Blogger Update

A rare family photo...complete with Nigel!

I had such high hopes and good intentions about blogging once we were settled here in Italy. Time seems to always escape me. I received an e-mail from a lovely friend last week that reminded me how much I wanted to keep in touch with everyone while we were here. So, on that note this is the official, unofficial Do This! blog re-launch!

We don't own the whole thing!

So, here is a short recap of the last nine months. We live in a great house in a suburb outside of Vicenza. It is a circle of newer houses with a playground in the center. It is the only house we looked at, but we knew right away it was a good choice for us. The winter went by not in a flurry of activity but rather a slow trickle of things getting done on "italian" time. I have to say that Chris' co-workers were so welcoming and we have had many wonderful evenings with them.

The school year seemed to zip by, especially knowing it was Nigel's last year. I think we all just went along with the flow trying to adjust. Nigel graduated in the historic Teatro Olimpico. We sat directly behind Italian and American Generals and I cried like a baby. Nigel is turning 18 in October and plans to do a little traveling then.

We have visited many cities that are close by to us. Venice, Verona and Ikea...oh, wait, Ikea's not a city. Oh well, it's in Padova (Padua) and that IS a great place to visit. We went on two week-long vacations. In spring we went to Florence, Pisa and Lucca. It was drizzly and Ollie was not too excited about the crowds. I had been to those places before but it was still a nice trip. Early this summer we drove to Germany to stay with our great friend Sharon, who was also our neighbor when we lived there. We had the best time, and none of us wanted that vacation to end. Since then we have only managed a few visits to the local beaches here. There are three that are all about 2 hours away and we tried each of them. We plan to go back to our favorite one more time before fall.
So, that's it for now. I hope to post some more in depth details about my favorite places and hopefully lots of new things too. Check out Chris' Taste This! blog for our first venture into an Enoteca! Yeah, I didn't know what that was either. Talk soon!