Party night in Grindelwald.

The kids standing before a real mountain that for some reason looks like a fake backdrop.

Switzerland is a good place to be a dairy cow.

Switzerland is pretty in summer.

Heading back down from the glacier.

We are attempting to document every hectare of this glacier.

Another view of the glacier. Ansel Adams is spinning like a top.

This time those little black specks are people, not pigeons.

Glacier again.

Can't tell if this is a landscape or somebody's footprint.

And now, some hopelessly inadequate shots of glaciers.

By now, the children pose automatically.

We look good on the glacier, don't we?

Allie and the children pose with a pushy tourist who insisted in being in the shot.

Then the other.

One child zips by.

So long, kids. Enjoy your eight seconds on the zip line!

The children suit up for zip line work.

We borrow a dog.

The family poses in front of the glacier.

Nicholas briefly enlists with the fabled Swiss Army.

The floor of the Ice Palace is like a skating rink. I guess there are no trial lawyers in Switzerland.

Inside the Ice Palace.

Fearful we are taking too few pictures, we decide to visit the Jungfraujoch, home of Europe's highest train station and phone booth (folks, we just report the facts, we don't make them).

Nicholas demonstrates standing outside the hotel.

Home sweet home, the Hotel Gletschergarten, (or Glacier Garden, for you monolingual American Philistines).

A bit of Grindelwald.

And now for something completely different ... Switzerland!

Our taxi arrives.

Piazza San Marco, 6 a.m., the morning of our departure.

Breakfast area at our hotel.

View from our hotel room.

The pigeons are particularly aggressive this morning.

Scary masks of Italian opera.

At the Biennalle, Nicholas laughs in front of a sculpture of men laughing.

Then, on Lido Beach, we rent this high-tech contraption. Both children take a turn at the wheel. I suddenly realize that in less than five years I will be teaching Caroline to drive.

Another gondola free-for-all.

All right children, put down the pigeons, it's time to go to dinner.

This shot has been taken a million times, but never by us in this light.

As you might imagine, we go through a lot of hand wipes in Venice.

Do we look good in this light or what?

Gondola parking lot.

And another. Those little specks of filth in the image are actually pigeons.

And another.

Another aerial view of Venice.

Venice seen from the tower in Piazza San Marco.

Riding out to Murano.

Our hotel. Actually our sister hotel, but close enough.

Here we are relaxing in our gondola.

We take a gondola ride.