Life Aboard Bliss: October 2016

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Local dates and visiting dear friends in Switzerland

While Tessa is enjoying her school, Tod and I are jumping on the occasion to explore some places together on his days off. Having a great lunch is always the center of those dates, but we manage to be active some times too. One morning we climbed up 1500 feet to Brunate (the path started next to our apartment in Como), then took the Funicolare back to the lake. Last week we visited the old town of Bergamo, and enjoyed wondering around inside the old city walls, and eat amazing pastries that we had not seen here before (yes, that was before we had a big lunch..)

With our dear friends Ana and Christian relatively close by (4.5 hrs drive to Neuchatel in Switzerland), we 'hopped" over for a weekend, get to celebrate, meet some of their friends, and as always enjoyed their company. Too short, my friends, we have to meet up again somewhere! Fun to see signs in Italian, German and French during that drive into Switzerland.

looking down to lake Como

you gotta "earn you lunch"

one of the many old and pretty buildings in Bergamo

entering through the old city walls

fun and artistic storefronts

feed me a donkey

ah, the joy of sitting in a restaurant without
having to run after your 4 yrs old

love how Italian offer a digestiva on the house after meals,
this one was home made

Ana, we are missing you in our pictures!

deserted downtown neuchatel on a Sunday morning

getting ready for the Halloween party at school
with little choices close by, I got creative with a needle and fabric

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Update from Italy

We are living a regular life, except it's in a different country on a different continent. Since the last blog post, we have moved away from Como to a small town where Tessa goes to a bilingual school full time. She loves it, gets to wear the school uniform (well, better said, the school colors, as we couldn't get any official school clothes till early December), and gets fed a sumptuous lunch with 4 courses! On the days that Tod doesn't work, we two get some time to explore around, mostly we eat our way around. I will for sure miss the Italian food when we are back in the US.

Very lucky me, I have some awesome friends from high school and university, who come to visit us, and I got to spend a girls-only weekend away in Milan. Jeannine and Marieke, you are the best!

Weather is changing, it's getting cooler (still in mid teens in Celsius), but if you look how Italians dress up, you might think it's winter. When I walk Tessa to school and drop her off, all her class mates dress as if they are ready to go skiing, hats included. We just show up in a fleece jacket and sneakers. Tod says that Italians start dressing like that on a certain date, no matter what the temperature is. Fun to notice these cultural differences.