EURO 2012!!

On Sunday we watched the amazing final of the Euro 2012 on our TV, which was Spain vs. Italy. Two great teams in the finals can only mean 1 thing... A great Euro 2012 final!!

In the end the game ended out being 4:0 for spain, all great goals, the first one was by Silva (number 14), then Alba (41), after that Torres (84), and last but not least was Mata (88).

The first 2 goals were in the first half, and the last 2 were in the last 10 minutes or so when Torres went into the game. The Italians also had a lot of chances but just couldn't get it past the goalkeeper.

Uffizi Gallery - Florence

The day after my birthday, we went to Florence and spent most of the day going to the Uffizi Gallery. By most of the day, I mean 2+ hours in line and about 3.5 hours in the galleries! Since Karen did art studies with the boys, I had been very anxious to see some of the works of these artists that we had studied: Cimabue, Giotto, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and in the nearby Piazza del Duomo - Ghiberti's bronze doors.

If I had to pick a favourite artist at the Uffizzi, I think it would be Botticelli. I love the beautiful colours, smooth surfaces, perfect detail of his paintings. Maybe also because there was a whole room devoted to him and some of the paintings are so large that they just are so impressive - Birth of Venus, Spring, Madonna of the Pomegranate, Madonna of the Magnificat, The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi. 

Now that we are speaking of the Annunciation, I never realized that there were so many paintings of this event in the Uffizi and, in fact, in all of Italy. Here are a few of my favourites for your comparison:

The Annunciation - Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio

The Annunciation - Sandro Botticelli

The Annunciation - Fra Fillipo Lippi (In the San Lorenzo Church)

Another by Fra Fillipo Lippi

Of course, also at the Uffizzi is one of Michelangelo's most famous paintings outside of the Sistine Chapel: The Holy Family, the Tondo Doni. It is a very beautiful painting of the Holy Family and you can spend a long time just staring at it.  I wonder why he portrayed Joseph as being so much older than Mary?

The Stelvio!

There are many amazing climbs in the world of cycling, but the Stelvio (2,758 m, the highest pass in Italy) is definitely among the top 5 in the history of the sport. I was lucky enough to ride it during the PezCycling News 10th birthday party bash at the end of May, only 5 days after the Giro d'Italia finished Stage 20 atop it. There are 3 ways up  the Stelvio: 1) Bormio (1,225 m, the way we and also the Giro did), 2) Umbrail from Switzerland, and 3) Prato from 900 m.

Our Pez story on the awesome Hotel Funivia

The climb just goes on and on. It's 24 km or so of climbing from Bormio, including a few very narrow tunnels that have only recently been lit. There are 40 switchbacks too from this side, and 48 from Prato. From the Bormio side, it's never so incredibly hard that you're grovelling (although there's one stretch at 14%), but it's just relentless and gets really hard with minimal oxygen as you approach the summit!

We started in Bormio on a beautiful sunny and warm day, and it gradually got cooler and cooler as we ascended. Partway up, Rich and I found a part of the original road that was still roughly paved, so we figured it was a fun shortcut to take what we called the "Strade Fausto Coppi!"

On hard mountain stages, the directeur sportif in the car hand out water bottles to riders struggling at the back, and the pro cyclists are sometimes known to hang onto the bottle a bit longer than decent as the car continues to drive along, a trick known as a "sticky water bottle." So since pro rider Davide Vigano (Lampre-ISD) was driving Rich's rental car to the top, we figured it'd be fun to have a pro cyclist giving Rich a sticky bottle! On the right I'm enjoying the sun and the climb at one of the buildings on the climb.

Yes it's the last day of May, but there's still acres of snow near the summit. Indeed the pass usually only gets opened about this time each year.It's apparently snowing there now in mid-June! I'm about 1km to the summit on the left. Like Joaquin "Purito" Rodriguez, I tried an attack within 1 km to go but, unlike Purito, I blew up about 50 m later!

The Pez boys (Gord, Rich, me, Leslie) atop Stelvio with the route towards Prato behind us. Check out all the switchbacks! We drove up from Prato from Verona airport, and it's just dizzying. On the right is my beloved Ritchey BreakAway on the podium and monument dedicated to Fausto Coppi, "Il Campionissimo." The Ritchey has really served me so unbelievably well in all my travels, from the cobbles of Roubaix and Flanders to the epic climb of the Stelvio!
Of course, what goes up must usually come down too, and we had a blast of a descent down the Umbrail side to Switzerland. Wicked fun switchbacks and even 2 km on dirt roads. Here's Rich carving a turn. From the bottom, we continued to fly down this gradual downhill towards Prato, where we got picked up by Marco and the gang from Enjoy Garda hotel for the second half of our birthday party along Lago di Garda! Buonissimo!

Biking the Teglio

Wow, the cycling in Bormio is just phenomenal, with three amazing days of riding during the Pez 10th party. It was a real treat having expert guides such as Giacomo and Daniele, as we didn't have to worry about picking out the route or getting lost. Plus, they always knew where all the great coffee stops are! The first day was the longest at 130 km, taking us down the valley (luckily we passed by but skipped the dreaded Mortirolo climb) towards the Teglio climb, one of the climbs in this year's amazing Stage 20 of the Giro d'Italia that finished atop the Stelvio.
Along for the ride was pro cyclist Davide Vigano of Lampre-ISD, one of Alessandro Petacchi's key lead out men. Davide was a really cool and down-to-earth guy, riding with us and not too cool to help with flats, putting bikes on the truck, or to joke with us. I spent a good amount of time on his wheel, getting the Petacchi view! Davide was actually with us for all three days in Bormio. He skipped the Giro but has just finished an altitude camp in preparation for the Tour de Suisse and Le Tour.

The Teglio was TOUGH for such a short (7 km) climb, with the middle 4 km averaging >10% and bits of 15%. It was also baking hot, not to mention all the heat coming off the freshly tarred road. Lots of road graffiti and also pink decorations everywhere still from the Giro. Despite all my time in Europe, it still amazes me that big races go through such narrow roads through tiny villages. Rich and I rode it together and had some fun in the process.

Gord and Rich pondering how to get home with the minimum of mountain climbing!

Hotel Funivia - Bormio

It's crazy to think, but our website www.pezcyclingnews.com is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, which is just phenomenal in the internet age. To mark the occasion, Rich Pestes organized a week-long party in northern Italy for our crew, consisting of 3 nights in Bormio (heart of the mega-climbs Stelvio, Gavia, and Mortirolo), followed by 4 nights on Lago di Garda. Yes, it was exactly as awesome as you may imagine, cycling with best pals you've never met over mythical Italian roads.

Our first Pez story from Bormio

As I wrote above, the internet age means that, despite 10 years with Pez, most of us have emailed for years but never met. I've met Rich a bunch of times in Vancouver and stayed with Charles once in Phoenix, but that's been it. But the cool thing with our site is that our personalities really come through in our articles, so besides the common link of cycling and Pez, it was immediately as if we've known each other for years. At Bormio, there as Pez, me, Leslie Reissner (Canadian consul in Dusseldorf, Germany, and our literary scribe), and Gordan Cameron from Scotland. We shared the hotel with an eclectic and fun group of Aussies, Belgians, and Americans, so it was a really great time riding with everyone.

Bormio, right up north just on the edge of Switzerland, was so very awesome. We stayed at Hotel Funivia with our hosts Daniele and Giacomo Schena, who run the hotel as a specific Bike Hotel catering to cyclists from Europe, Australia, and America. D&G are both incredibly fit and keen cyclists, so they really know what makes things click for a cycling destination. There's a very well-stocked bike room downstairs, and it was a treat to build up the Ritchey with a nice facility after a year of putting it together in small rooms with no tools or racks!
There's also daily free bike laundry, so you can literally get by with one set of kit! The hotel was started by Daniele's wife's (Elisa - former member of Italian national ski team) grandfather in the 1950s, and it's really cool that it's a family business that everyone shares in. The whole family's incredibly athletic - Giac's wife Barbara was also at the 1992 and 1994 Olympics for short-track speed skating. As I said to both Giac and Daniele, "You have an easy job to love!"
Beyond the hotel, things get only cooler. Daniele and Giacomo lead daily group rides that are fully supported, with a big sag wagon following where you can stash extra kit and they have water, tools, and a ride home if needed.

Each night the next day's route is laid out in advance, and you can but aren't forced to join. Being keen cyclists, they know pretty much every path and road in the region, so there's no need to do it yourself. The rides are also the cool kind of rides, good hard rides but also with lots of time to stop for pictures and great Italian coffee throughout the day. Of course, there's also a huge buffet breakfast each morning, ride food prepared for you, and a cafe time back at the hotel.

A huge "Grazie Mille" to Daniele for setting me up with a spare Specialized Toupe saddle after I arrived to find my Fizik Arione cracked down the middle!

The Stories of the Greeks and Romans

Since we have been living out of 4 suitcases this past year, we obviously haven't brought with us our stacks and stacks of books that surround us at home. We have worked very hard at our schooling but in different ways than normal. Perhaps I will go into more detail about that in a later post, but here I just want to illustrate 1 example.

We have discovered a wonderful site called Baldwin Project at www.mainlesson.com. This is a site that is attempting to collect and make available online books for children in all sorts of genres. For example, in the ancient Greek section there are approximately 40 books which cover biographies, histories, mythology, fiction.

We only managed to read 3 of these - The Story of the Greeks by Helene A. Guerber, The Wonder book for Children by Nathaniel Hawthorne and an autobiography of Alexander the Great by Jacob Abbott. We also read a story of the Greek War of Independence by G.A. Henty. With the Story of the Greeks, we would read 2 (short) chapters and then Jacob and Zachary would each narrate one. At first they were dictating and I was typing for them and then about half was through they switched to typing for themselves. This practice of written narration was promoted by a teacher named Charlotte Mason, who is well known to many of my homeschooling friends. This promotes good reading comprehension and summarizing skills as well as the mechanics of spelling, punctuation, sentence structure. If you read their narrations, you can see that we still have to work on that!

The Story of the Greeks has approximately 125 short chapters, so to read and narrate/summarize it took a considerable amount of work.  Here is a link to the manuscript if you are interested.

We spent 3 months in Greece and it took all that time to work on the Story of the Greeks; when we went to Italy, we also wanted to read the Story of the Romans, but in the interest of time (since we only spent 2 weeks there) we read Story of the Romans but did not narrate it.

You can find the BALDWIN PROJECT at www. mainlesson.com

Story of the Greeks

Story of the Romans

Oh Canada!

This year Ryder Hesjedal a Canadian cyclist from Victoria, British Columbia won the Giro d'Italia! We were watching the last race today and it was a time trial which Ryder is really good at! Ryder is the first Canadian to win a big race like this, he only beat Joaquin Rodriguez from Spain after 3 weeks and 3,500 km of racing by 16 seconds! Ryder gained 47 seconds on Rodriguez who is a bad time trialist (But still faster that dad by a few light years!).

Dad's friend Rich Pestes from Pez was actually at the finish of the race (Rich is also from British Columbia but from Vancouver instead of Victoria). We think we saw a Pez jersey amongst the fans. Daddy's joining Rich and the rest of the Pez crew for a 10th anniversary week of cycling next week up many of the same big climbs raced the past week!

The Pantheon - home of all the gods

The Pantheon (Pan=all; theo=god) is a Roman temple for all of the gods. Tiberius, one of the Roman emperors and later another emperor wanted to put Jesus in the Pantheon as well as the Roman gods, but the Roman Senate did not approve of that. The Pantheon was made with 2 types of architecture mixed together, it had the columns in the front of the building and the building itself had a dome.

The Pan-photos of Rome!

Housed in the Pantheon now is the grave of the famous painter Raphael Sanzio (right), and the first two Italian kings (along with many other people, the Pantheon is like a graveyard because all around the edge are graves). The dome is 142 ft high and 142 ft in diameter, and was the inspiration for many famous cathedral domes like St. Peter's Basilica (Michelangelo) and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. There is a hole at the very top of the dome, and the floor drains when it rains. The columns outside the Pantheon are also enormous, and the whole thing is still original from Roman times!

Right next to the Pantheon is a church that looks pretty plain (Daddy's colleague Laura says it's the "Roman" style) on the outside, except for another Egyptian obelisk (this time on an elephant) that the Romans took from Egypt. But inside, the church was big (no church can claim to be "really" big after seeing St. Peter's!) and featured Christ the Redeemer by Michelangelo (right).

Circus Maximus

Circo Massimo (or Circus Maximus in English) is a place where the Romans had many chariot races and other contests. There are chariot races like the chariot race in the movie "Ben-Hur". One problem in that movie is that they do nine laps instead of seven. For counting the laps there is a contraption where you pull down either an egg or a dolphin after each lap. The laps are pretty big, so the stadium must have been very very big.

Run laps around this big flickr album if you can!

There's no end of neat stuff in Rome, or the Vatican in this case. On the left is the back view of Christ and the apostles above the entrance of St. Peter's Basilica, taken during our descent from the dome. While there, we also got some Vatican stamps and sent some postcards.
For those of you wondering, not only does the Vatican have its own post office, but countries like Canada have embassies to the Vatican. So in Rome, there's the Canadian embassy to Italy, and also the Canadian embassy to the Vatican. There's no way you can fit all the embassies into the Vatican itself!

Trevi Fountain

The day we arrived in Rome when we were heading back to the hotel we saw a big crowd so we went to have a closer look a we figured out that it was the Trevi fountain, and the story is that if you throw in a coin you will return to Rome so me and Zach did but then mom was out of change so mom and dad didn't get to. Zach thought that if you were a Roman soldier before you left to fight you should throw in a coin so you would return again!

The Swiss Circus Guards

The Swiss have always been the guards of the pope. Swiss mercenaries have been bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and palace guards. Michelangelo actually designed the yellow and blue "costumes" for the Swiss guards or the guards of the Vatican. The Swiss guards (The ones at the Vatican) are the only  Swiss guard left in Europe. The Papal Swiss guards are now at the Vatican but used to be in France.

The Swiss Guards also double as traffic cops for cars going into the Vatican, minus the court jester uniforms. Mommy is just outside St. Peter's Basilica with the Guard in the background.

St Peter's Basilica

On Monday (May 8) we went to Vatican City (country #15!) and St. Peter's Basilica. We were hoping to go to the Vatican Museum, but the lineup was so long that it went along the Vatican walls almost to St. Peter's Basilica (>1 km!). Daddy took the picture here during his February visit. We walked up all the 551 steps to the top of the St. Peter's dome, designed by Michelangelo and inspired by the massive Pantheon dome built by the Romans.

Our Roman Holiday

From the top there was a great view of the area around (we also though we saw the CN and Eiffel towers!).

After that we went into the Basilica itself. It's massive - each of the side naves were as big as other big churches! Remember the last blog about the words and letters? Around the whole basilica there are giant mosaics of all the words that Jesus said to Peter in the bible, and the letters are 7 feet tall! The letters were black and around them there was a gold outline.

Also in the Basilica were some bodies of dead popes who had been well preserved like Pope Innocent XI and Pope John XXIII (on the left), while most of them were actually below in the crypts.

Housed in St. Peter's is the famous Pieta sculpture by Michelangelo, of Mary holding Jesus after he had been crucified. There are many other sculptures and paintings in St. Peter's but the Pieta is by far the most famous. Next to it is one door that the Pope only opens once every 25 years for one year. At Christmas Eve he ceremonially opens the door and the next he plasters it up. The next time it will be opened is Dec 24, 2024 - mark your calendars!

The guy this whole place is named after, St. Peter. The Basilica is built at the site where Peter was crucified by the Romans (upside down as per his wishes, as he felt he was unworthy to be crucified as Jesus was). He is most often depicted with keys, symbolizing the keys to Christianity. The statue on the right is bronze and inside the Basilica, and the right foot is constantly kissed and rubbed by pilgrims, so it's pretty shiny.

 Everything is just BIG in St. Peter's Basilica. See the altar (up close on the right)? It's bronze and it's 7 stories high!

More big things at the Basilica. The left shows the shrine to the last Pope, John Paul II, who died in 2005. The painting goes almost the whole way up the whole huge wall, which is just unbelievably big. And speaking of big, check out the angels behind us!