Day 2: June 9th...Bella Baita...Hiking..

10 Hours of solid sleep doesn't hurt, neither does a 10:30 am breakfast start time :)))  We awoke to a delicious fresh fruit, homemade yogurt and organic granola starter.  The sweetness of each piece of fruit with that yogurt and granola glaze caused each taste bud to rejoice and then explode with an intense fruit bomb blast.  This lingered through the first sip of dark roasted, slow heated Italian coffee.  Followed immediately with baked raisin and fruit pastry and we were reminded again why we love Italy, and this specific location, so much!!!

  

Hike Time:  We found the starting sign for this hike, just a few kms away from our B and B, but we didn't believe it (or we couldn't understand Italian)...so we walked a bit further and took a detour into the deserted village, which finally did end us up at the same sign at the end of our 2 hour, 4 km, straight down then straight back up "stroll".

This was not for the faint at heart, or for the inexperienced ciangale fighters.  As some may recall, on a recent trip to Italy, I had the honor of hand fighting a pack of wild ciangale to protect my bride.  BTW, ciangale is Italian for ferocious, fanged wild boar!  Thankfully on this hike, we only saw a sign indicating the presence of ciangale...and I made sure to take the photo so that the proximity of the photo was identical to the actual distance the pack of snarling ciangale were from us on our last adventure.

Be sure, this was not the only potential danger that I had to protect my unsuspecting family from...poisonous, man eating giant lizards.  When this one saw me in attack mode, it scurried to find refuge from the wrath of G Money ...  good thing too...

With danger averted, we enjoyed the numerous waterfalls, bridges and views from this lovely trail...wait who took this unique photo???

 Dan loves being with his momma too....

 Pondering the flume, Dan was our fearless leader through our descent and ascent amidst this glorious verdure.

That is except when he decided to climb to the cross at the top of a very rocky precipice, that was so dangerous I actually had to ask Peggy what would we do if he ....well...no need to ponder that since he made it safely back down.  He said there actually was one spot that gave him a bit of ahem..fright...

Upon our return to the Bella Baita, we knew it was beard shave time.  First the before picture:  I did trim it over these last 7 months since I was host to our School's Graduation and had the privilege to preach on the previous Sunday...and having the raucous facial wasn't going to work.  Nonetheless, while trimming did happen, I never cut it as promised until face to face with Danny.

Then let's chop it up and try to look like Nick:

Obviously, it was immediately clear there is no copying the neighbro when it comes to chops...so it was time to return to the original plan...and Tiffany W, this is what I've looked like for the last 20 years or so:)

It was a great 6 month adventure dedicated to remind me to pray daily for my son, Danny, while he was in France.  By God's grace, it had the intended effect....Not only is he my beloved son, but he is a man after God's own heart.  His international experience will serve him well, and the joy of being with him for these next 3 weeks is indescribable.  Bye bye other facial hair....Yeah!!!

Dinner included gnocchi (soft pillows of potato heaven), beautifully carved meat marinated in local beer, with eggplant, fennel and zucchini grilled and smothered in the roasted gravy:

 and for dessert, homespun 4 ingredient vanilla gelato.  They smothered the gelato with Apricot coulis and meringue...The best description is ... wow ...

It's after dinner now and let's see, we just finished 2 games of Scrabble and Danny asked for a 50 point handicap per game...hmmm....which means he would have tied the first game and won the second by 5 points.... Oh yeah, because he has lived in France I let him use words like lanings and neh:)))  Nonetheless, a great time was had by all, especially with my use of apen receiving a triple word score.  Things do get a bit looser after a verbana infused beverage...ciao bella!!!