the vacay story #1: La Bella Italia

A long post...and in English. Bear with me.

The day of vacation finally arrived. At times during the months before I could not believe that there would be a time this year when I would not be working all the time. Yes, it has been a rough Spring and start of Summer. Absolutely wonderful in many parts, but insanely busy. But that wasn't what this post is about.

The family went on vacation abroad. Daughter has not been abroad since she was one, so this was a big, BIG thing for her. Due to very cheap airline tickets we chose to fly, in spite of actually preferring to go by train. It's insane that it costs three times as much to take the environmentally friendly option. But that, of course, is not what this post is about either.

(This promises to be a very chatty post.)

Anyway, we went. Kiddo was excited. She basically skipped the whole way to the airport, on to the plane, off the plane and on to the airport train that took us to the centre of Milan. She didn't skip as much when we had arrived, it was very late. We stayed at a small hotel in the old city centre, which, we realized, meant that it was superquiet at night, when all the bankers had gone home to their villas somewhere in the outskirts of the city.
Day two we walked and walked, and saw all the sights except The Last Supper. Kiddo was not too pleased with the temperature (it was hot!), but very pleased with the suddenly very liberal rules regarding how much ice cream she was allowed every day.

Anyway, the Duomo was insane. Very beautiful and very impressive. Daughter liked the relics and the treasury most. Mommy agreed in secret.
We went to a park and saw butterflies (husband has apparently developed something of an obsession since he has insisted on visiting every single butterfly exhibit during this journey). Funny dogs and rides and carabinieri lounging in the shade. Daughter pulled us into the archeology museum, which was mildly interesting.

We had pizza and pasta and kiddo disliked everything.

The day after, we rented a tiny car-ini and went south to the mountains of Piemonte. Wow. The scenery was amazing! We drove and drove until we arrived in the tiny village of Montecapraro, 800 m above sea level. There we stayed in an apartment and enjoyed the silence (and had water fights, destroying the peace for everyone else).

The day after, day four of the vacay, we left la Bella Italia to go to England. But that post will come little later.