The Dolomites and Lozzo di Cadore Aug 3-6

I love Italy. The language and accents and scenery...and the food! Growing up, we definitely embraced our Italian roots with traditions and foods. Way back when I was still in college, I had visited Lozzo (traveling by myself at the time)with the address of the house that my great great grandfather lived in, written on a slip of paper. This was pre worldwide cell phone use, so after the train-bus-train-bus ride to get here, I went to the local gelateria to see if anyone could help me find this address. Everyone in the place was trying to help but they didn't speak much English and my Italian was nonexistent. A super cute older man lead me to the local English speaker, an Australian lady who was very sweet and made a few calls, and then they figured out where this was, and brought me to the address. No one was (or is, as far as we could tell!) living there, and we haven't looked into who owns it currently. But I was able to call my grandpa from a payphone across the street and tell him I was standing in front of his grandpa's old house. So fun!

However, since that time, I had lost the address, no one else at home was awake yet, and I just figured we could wander around till we found it. (Not the world's best choice with kids.)

One of the memorials in town-lots of familiar Hurley names!

Wandering the streets!

Made it to a beautiful old chapel, and Moni is standing on the site of an ancient Roman road that went through the area (at least, that is what the sign said!).

The girls are getting annoyed with me.

Found it!

Pictures for posterity.

Hooray!!

More lakes and mountains on the drive back to our little town (a few towns away from Lozzo).

Close up view. Couldn't decide what I liked better.

More buildings that just seem to be perched on nothing!

Moni's great photography.

The next day, we went back to Lozzo to see if we could find a cemetary-per my grandpa's request- so many names we recognize from Hurley!

Van and the church.

Relaxing pizza dinner. :)

This girl ate the whole pizza. No joke. She ate the crust with olive oil.

Our cute little town was Venus di Cadore, and had all these great little staircases to make it up to the houses.

The church bells were so loud and fantastic. I loved them.

Leaving Italy! Headed north to make our way up to Copenhagen. Since it was dark on our way into the Dolomites when we got here a few days ago, we had more new scenery.

More pretty lakes en route.

One last picture of the Dolomites. Fun fact! the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in the area (in a bigger town called Cortina D'ampezzo),

co-hosted with Milan. Cortina is only about 30 minutes from where we were staying, so I figured we could stop for some coffee and breakfast there-but it was so busy! Like traffic at a crawl thru the town. I can't imagine what it will be like for thr Olympics. Luckily we found a quick parking spot and grabbed things to go from a gorgeous bakery. To the North we go!