The lesser known beauty of Northern Italy...

Northern Italy was absolutely amazing. I know we say that about a lot of the places we have been, but really, Northern Italy is incredible. We spent a few days on Lake Como, playing in the small Italian towns and of course on the lake,

Sometimes we had a little too much fun on the boat we rented for the day. Justin is just too funny, I can't help it.

and then we spent a week in the Dolomites. We spent a few nights in one of the central towns there called Cortina where we did our first Via Ferrata (roping in to a cable and climbing up huge rock peaks),

Here we are at the top, after the Via Ferrata (for more pics, click below on the link to the album)

and a 40 mile bike ride (don't worry, half was downhill) and then we did some backpacking. We hiked in for two nights to two different mountain huts or "rifugios." If we thought Nepal trekking was cush with all the tea houses, this blows that level of cushness out of the water. The so called huts were unbelievable, complete with full-staffed restaurants, bedrooms with small flat screens, Italian food, Italian coffee, and Italian wine! We had such a great time and we feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to do itl. If Northern Italy weren't so far away, we'd suggest going every year with all our friends and family :-).

We took lots of pics as usual and this time Justin even wrote captions for the Dolomite Album. He took that location on as his own little baby and planned most of our time there. It was great!

Click HERE for the Lake Como pics!

Click HERE for the pics of the super cool Dolomites!