Disconnected!!!!!

I still don't have an Internet connectionat home and I am sitting at an Internet cafe (curious how this particular one has everything about Internet and nothing about cafe. It should be a crime to advertise cafe in Italy and to not provide any!) trying to write a summary of the last couple weeks...

We moved to the house, then we got our shipment on time! Everything arrived in one piece, and the crew in charge of unpacking was very efficient (none of the 6 men in the crew were Italian, all were from eastern europe). We had boxes and boxes of things, I thought I had acumulated my share of three lifetimes into these boxes. I had not!!! The packing crew had done to good a job, so all the boxes contained a couple things and mounds of paper! Italy recycles everything, so I don't feel as guilty as I should!

Yes we recycle everything! Two Mondays a month the yellow bag with all plastics, two other Mondays a month all the cardboard and paper. Two Thursdays a month the light green can containing aluminum and glass. Mondays and Fridays the little dark green container for the biodegradables (potato peels, coffee grounds, etc.... nice mulch!) and the purple bag with your actual trash (not to much is left in this bag)..... but wait, we still have one more day of the week!! Wednesdays is for green waste (from the garden). Believe me, one needs a diagram to keep track of this system! I am not complaining, I love it! I gladly walk down to the garage twenty times a day to place all my "trash" in its correspondent container/colored bag. Now I understand why when the garbage collectors go on strike, everything goes on disarray!
Back to our shipment... we were able to organize some parts of the house: the kitchen and Nicolas' room (the most important), and because Fernando was off that very week, we decided to have some fun and let all the other things sit in their boxes for a little while more.
Since we got our bikes, we decided it was a good idea to take little trips down the hill, to the lake, and go to a different town each day. It was fun to go down, but it is a different story to come back to the house. The first day was the worst for Nicolas, the second day was really bad for me (It was HOT!!!). Now, we are pros!
On thursday August 16th, we decided to drive up to Interlaken, Switzerland. We figured that if all of Italy was on holiday, it was not a good idea to try and go to a popular Italian vacation spot, instead we headed for the alps. Good idea! Yes, but the rest of the world is on vacation too, and half of Asia was visiting Interlaken! It wasn't too bad, since it was raining, and only brave souls were out and about.
Interlaken is beautiful, situated in a valley in between two lakes (!) and surrounded by really HIGH mountains. We had only summer clothing, and bathing suits and sun protection... we had imagined lounging by the lake, watching Nicolas get in the water with his dog... but it wasn't meant to be: we had rain on our first day, and a cold (but dry) second day. We headed for a nearby outdoor space, where we could have ridden a miniature rollercoaster down the mountain. It was closed for "technical" problems -If you visit Interlaken, please avoid this ride!- so we were all ready for some adventure, and we had no place to go. Driving down the mountain we spoted a series of wood structures high up in the trees of this forest next to the road. We stoped and decided it was a good idea for Nicolas and Fernando to try, and Mocha and I would walk about and take pictures.

This fantasy of a playground is really cool. They started on easy "routes", not too high, stable, and predictable, and they advanced onto more complicated ones, with more exposure and less stability. They were both outfited with harnesses and metal mosquetones (locking units), and they were never off the life-line. It was quite an adventure. I won't keep on trying to explain, I will let the pictures do the explaining...
I see that my time is almost up, so this is it for now, arrivederchi....