Last week we decided to make use of a Friday at home with the kids, courtesy of an Italian national holiday, to tear the kids away from their ipads for a couple of hours and take them on a long uphill hike to the top a small hill from which one can get a panoramic view of the city - and on a good day, a great view of the Alps too, but this was not that kind of day. The hike is not that long really (Google tells me it is a 700m walk from the nearest bus stop) but I told the kids it would be, in order to limit the amount of complaints I would receive later.
I think that the most tiring part of the trip was waiting for buses on a day with reduced service, but the uphill walk still drew the most vocal moans. Fortunately it wasn't sunny and in fact it rained a bit on our way up, which I took as a good thing, but not everyone agreed.
On a good note, the older brothers did try to encourage their sister. I overheard them telling a story of how we were all on a mission to defeat the Wizard of Steepness on top of the hill.
Here you can see the happy hikers admiring the view before tackling the last few meters of our ascent.
And this is where the Wizard of Steepness lives, apparently.
A disappointing panoramic view I tried to capture with my phone,
and here are the victorious heros celebrating the downfall of the Wizard.
We spent a short time looking at view and keeping the kids alive and all in one piece,
and then we headed down on a different path,
to end our walk at the Church of the Great Mother of God (where the kids tried to crash someone's wedding).
This is where we should have declared victory and just gone home, but hubris led us to want to top it all off with ice cream from Fiorio.
There was seriously good mango ice cream, according to one of our testers,
but was it good enough to justify missing the last bus running on schedule?
After that we had to spend about an hour waiting around the bus stop. It turned out that a march in the center of the city had unexpectedly disrupted the bus routes. The pictures below might deceive you into thinking that the kids waited stoically for the bus without causing trouble, but that is most definitely not what they did.
Still, the long wait allowed me to take a few more pictures, and I am especially happy with this series of snaps of Lila sitting on her special pyramid (this is how I sold it to her when she refused to sit on an uncomfortable stone after I was too tired to keep carrying her).
This is my Lila!
And so evening fell on our poorly timed attempt to return home,
but since we were waiting for the bus right in front of a rosticceria I at least grabbed the chance to buy a roasted chicken (pollo allo spiedo), which made for a satisfying dinner when we finally made it back home.
I think that the most tiring part of the trip was waiting for buses on a day with reduced service, but the uphill walk still drew the most vocal moans. Fortunately it wasn't sunny and in fact it rained a bit on our way up, which I took as a good thing, but not everyone agreed.
On a good note, the older brothers did try to encourage their sister. I overheard them telling a story of how we were all on a mission to defeat the Wizard of Steepness on top of the hill.
Here you can see the happy hikers admiring the view before tackling the last few meters of our ascent.
And this is where the Wizard of Steepness lives, apparently.
A disappointing panoramic view I tried to capture with my phone,
and here are the victorious heros celebrating the downfall of the Wizard.
We spent a short time looking at view and keeping the kids alive and all in one piece,
and then we headed down on a different path,
to end our walk at the Church of the Great Mother of God (where the kids tried to crash someone's wedding).
This is where we should have declared victory and just gone home, but hubris led us to want to top it all off with ice cream from Fiorio.
There was seriously good mango ice cream, according to one of our testers,
but was it good enough to justify missing the last bus running on schedule?
After that we had to spend about an hour waiting around the bus stop. It turned out that a march in the center of the city had unexpectedly disrupted the bus routes. The pictures below might deceive you into thinking that the kids waited stoically for the bus without causing trouble, but that is most definitely not what they did.
Still, the long wait allowed me to take a few more pictures, and I am especially happy with this series of snaps of Lila sitting on her special pyramid (this is how I sold it to her when she refused to sit on an uncomfortable stone after I was too tired to keep carrying her).
This is my Lila!
And so evening fell on our poorly timed attempt to return home,
but since we were waiting for the bus right in front of a rosticceria I at least grabbed the chance to buy a roasted chicken (pollo allo spiedo), which made for a satisfying dinner when we finally made it back home.
