Allison's holiday show

Allison's preschool holiday show was so cute and the kids did a great job singing for all the visitors!

Here is the bilingual (English/Italian) song they sang for us:

Allison with her teacher, Ms. Donna.

Ethan's holiday show

Ethan's nursery school class put on their holiday show for parents this week. It was very cute. The cutest part was that not one child opened their mouth! They were all stunned to walk in the room and see 20 parents waiting to hear their beautiful little voices that none of them would open their mouths (well, except for the few who cried). It was still adorable and we had a nice lunch together after the "show". Hopefully next year, our boy will sing!

More Hanukkah...

The kids have been having a great time this year during Hanukkah. It's the first year we've really made an effort to light the candles each night and the kids are really into it. They are learning the blessing, and of course, love getting presents. And they really loved the potato latkes with applesauce and sour cream!!

Caserta Vecchia

Last Sunday we hit Casertavecchia. It's such a quaint medieval town. Here are a few pics that our friend Scott took of the Allison with his son, Carter.

Getting ready for tonight...

Budapest

Thanksgiving weekend we headed off to Budapest, Hungary. Odd place to go, but the plane tickets were cheap and we had never been there. Budapest is actually two former cities, Buda and Pest, now united but still divided by the Danube River.

We were lucky to get a hotel within the walls of the Buda Castle. The views from this side of the river were spectacular, offering sweeping panoramas of Pest and the eye-catching parliament building.

Looking east over the Danube and the Chain Bridge. We must have walked over that darn bridge more than half a dozen times in the four days we were there.


The view looking west over the Danube at the enormous Buda palace. Most of the palace is post-WW2, but some buildings remain from that period and are spotted with bullet holes.


Our charming hotel entrance.


Ethan devouring some dessert cake/bread/pastry that we found in the Christmas Market downtown. This is one of the rare dietary finds of the trip, as the Bleichers often went hungry in Hungary. Goulash and other bizarre foods didn't quite do it for us.


One of the monuments to the Soviets. This monument is so unpopular that it is barricaded and has a guard in front of it 24/7. Note the hammer and sickle midway up the obelisk.


The inside of the Great Synogogue. This synogogue somehow survived the Nazi occupation and is now the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world behind a synogogue in NYC.


The Matthias Church in Buda.


Allison and Ethan loving life in the funicular going up to Buda Castle.

Trick or Treat...

The kids had a great time on Halloween this year. Allison decided to be Cinderella for a second year in a row, and Ethan was a fireman. The base here does an excellent job of getting all the housing units to participate in Halloween, and since the time change in Europe happened before Halloween, it was a perfect fall night- dark and cool. We met up with some friends to go from building to building collecting candy. The kids made out like bandits and a good time was had by all!

Allison trick-or-treating.

group shot!

"look at all my candy mama! I will be asking for it morning, noon, and night for the next month!"

Vandy reunion, Italian-style

“Friendships that have stood the test

of time and chance are surely best.

Brows may wrinkle, hair grow gray,

Friendship never knows decay.”

-unknown

This weekend I met up with 4 of my roomates from Vanderbilt for a mini-reunion. We had a truly wonderful time. We stayed in the heart of Florence at the Hotel Calzaiuoli and spent the day on Saturday with our guide, Guido, touring the Chianti area of Tuscany. We visited the market at Greve in Chianti, had a wine tasting and amazing 4-course lunch at the Castello di Tornano, and shopped the streets of San Gimignano. On Sunday, we slept in and climbed Giotto's tower adjacent to the Duomo for an awesome view of the entire historic city. It was a great weekend of food, fun, and friendship!

wine tasting.

Duomo and city view from Giotto's Tower.

Tara and I in Positano.

Michelangelo's Pieta.

London Mate!

For Columbus Day weekend, we hopped on a plane and flew to London. Having been there 10 years ago, we skipped a lot of the major museums this time around and focused on having a fun time with the kids, eating good (non-Italian) food, and just enjoying time together. Nevertheless, we still managed to cover quite a bit of ground every day. Of course, skipping naptime tired out the kids– on Sunday Ethan fell into such a deep sleep that an ambulance with its siren blasting passed 10 feet from him and he didn’t move, let alone wake up!

The kids had a great time…then again, how could they not, playing at the amazing (yes, I’m describing a playground as “amazing”) Princess Diana Memorial playground in Hyde Park, testing out toys in Harrods, catching a show at The Little Angel Theater, and learning seamanship at the English Maritime Museum!

We definitely can’t complain about the food in southern Italy. It’s fresh, simple, and delicious. However, the only type of food you can find is Italian. London allowed us to indulge our desires for everything not-Italian. Allison had cupcakes, Dan slurped an Oreo shake (and perhaps an ale or two…or three), Margaret found fish & chips, and Ethan ate some lollipops, candy, and all things sweet.

On Sunday, we headed to Greenwich. For those non-aviators, that is where the Royal Observatory is and where GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or “Zulu time” is set. The town, home to the former Royal Naval College, is especially charming (yet still no Annapolis). We checked out the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory Museum where we saw incredible pieces on display such as a ticket for the Titanic, logbooks and diaries from Captain Thomas Cook’s voyages, and monoculars dating back to the 1600’s.

Although the sky was often overcast, the colorful autumn colors helped liven up the otherwise gray backdrops. All in all, we definitely put London on our list of potential places to live in the future. Cheers!

Ethan playing on a pirate ship in at playground at Hyde Park.

Dan with the kids in Hyde Park.