Buongiorno!

Greetings from the homeland...well Tyler's homeland. We arrived in Venice this afternoon and have been having an awesome time so far. Here is the update...
We went from Prague to Salzburg, Austria about four days ago. Really? Only four days? It seems like a lifetime when you are country hopping. Salzburg was one of my favorite stops thus far. It was such a beautiful and quiet place. The buildings were really well preserved and there were not too many tourists which was a relief from Prague. We decided to be ambitious in Austria and do two things...Try the local food, and go on a bike ride through the country. First came the food. Tyler had bratwurst (Sorry Scott we are going to butcher the spelling on these!) and I had wienerschnitzel. We were both hesitant about what would come out on my order because none of us really knew what wienerschnitzel was. Well it came out and guess what. It was amazing! Tyler's food was good too, but man that wienerschnitzel sure hit the spot. Until I found out what exactly wienerschnitzel was made of...veal. Ok so while we were in Spain I was on this PETA crusade to not eat the local baby pig dish and here I am in Austria enjoying baby cow to my heart's content. I am sorry for all you animal lovers out there. I am hooked and there is simply nothing I can do about it.
So the second part of the trip was the bike ride. We decided to go to a mountain lake just outside of the city. It was, according to my dear husband, "not too far" so we rented some bikes and set out. It was mostly uphill and pretty difficult after awhile. But the countryside was gorgeous and the villages we passed through were just picturesque. I loved it. Until the trouble started. Tyler is a pretty fit bike rider so he was ahead of me most of the time. When I started to notice him stopping quite a bit, I knew things were taking a turn for the worse. At first I thought he was not feeling his best, but then I noticed he kept getting off and fixing the pedal of his bike. When we finally caught up to each other he told me that his pedal was loose and he had to stop every so often to fix it. Well, we were about half way to the lake by then so we decided to keep going and try to find a bike shop along the way. Slowly and surely the pedal got worse and worse. It came to the point where when you rode the bike you didn't have any power in your left leg so your right leg began to really get sore. A little more than 2/3 of the way to the lake was uphill so it was pretty hard to get there. We were exhausted by the time we pulled in. We did find a bike shop and they were able to give us a wrench and some glue for the screw but unfortunately we found out on the way back that didn't help. Side note to the bike drama. The lake was AMAZING! It was the most beautiful color of blue I have ever seen and sat right between two large mountains. I really wish we could have spent some more time there. So back to the bike drama...On the way back we thought we would be ok because most of the trip would be downhill. Well when I was taking a turn on the dud-bike the pedal actually fell off completely! It was a disaster. We were able to screw the dumb thing back together and continue hobbling our way back to the hostel. 11 hours after we had set out, we pulled back into Salzburg exhausted. For some reason the "not that far" experience seemed a bit too far. So we did the math and found out that we biked over 37 miles! That may not seem a lot but factor in the mountains and the bum-bike and see if you can do any better. Tyler was furious and had a speech ready to demand his money back on the bike because we discovered the problem was due to a long overlooked repair on the pedal, but luckily for her, the receptionist was nice enough to offer a refund and the speech was put away for another time. All in all, Austria was wonderful.
Then we set out for Switzerland. We decided to go to a small town called Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps. It was Tyler's favorite part of the trip so far. The town was beautiful and I felt like we were Heidi and Peter off to find our goats on the mountaintop. Well, sort of. It was great and as if our 37 mile excursion wasn't enough to kick our pants off, we decided to go on a hike as well. Our consisted of 7 hours of hiking, 900 meters up in elevation (2952 feet), and one heck of a steep trail. They don't believe in switch back trails obviously so we pretty much were going straight up the darn mountain! But it was amazing and we got to see some pretty cool glaciers and tried some local soup on the mountain top while looking over the valleys below us. To inspire us to keep hiking we borrowed a phrase from Spencer as we were climbing the Swiss Alps on 08/08/2008. "We are living the dream!" On the hike down we kept seeing curious structures on the side of the path made of rocks, branches, pinecones, etc. Tyler said it was a mark to tell us we were going the right way, but I think the Swiss hikers worship Pagan mountain gods and build these shrines as offerings. If somebody can Wikipedia it for us and let us know to settle our bet that would be great. Thanks! We really loved Switzerland and even better, they had Dr. Pepper! Woot! Woot! So now we find ourselves in Venice, Italy about to embark on the last week of our travels through Italy and are so happy and blessed that we have been able to see what we have seen. Thanks for all the love and support. We miss you all and see you next time!