Wednesday, July 25, 2007

12-19/7: Alghero

After a very stressing period at work (let's also why there were no posts for a long time), we had one week of vacation in Sardinia.
It was the kind of vacation that you don't dream about doing, until you have kids :-)
We spent most of our time at the beach and we were really happy to have such a lot of time only between ourselves.

We have been dwelling at Hotel Mistral, and we were happy about the choice.
It was very warm during the whole time and for 8 days we didn't see a single cloud!

Agnese and Rachele had a lot of fun on the beach and Agnese learned to swim by herself with the help of the inflatable arm supporters (who knows how they are called!).

Alghero is a pretty lovely town, with a lot of Spanish influence, well kept walls and other old point of interests.

We have also been by boat to Neptune Caves.

It was a very nice excursion and Agnese and Rachele were really curious about their first experience in a cave. These were discovered during XV century and therefore are quite damaged or, better said, dead, meaning that the stalagmites are not growing any longer.
But they were really beautiful.

And clearly, as probably in any place in Sardinia, the sea water is fabulous!


We had a wonderful time!

First picture: sun set in Alghero's harbour.
Second one: Neptune Caves.
Last one: a coast landscape.

16/6: Lavenham


We have been visiting Lavenham, a cute middle age village.
One of the ancientest building of the village is the "The Guildhall of Corpus Christi", now turned into a museum.
What it is particularly interesting about this village is that there are many old buildings, out of which very few (....or maybe none) are standing in a straight position!
The top floor is very seldom aligned with the ground one.... and one has the feeling that the roof is going to collapse as soon as you turn the corner.
We visited the Guildhall inside and the floor was pending in every room, in some one even about 20-30 centimetres, or more.
Coolest than what I could imagine, the furniture is adapted to the floor: so you'd see tables with four different length legs, wardrobes adapted to stand in a slope and so on!
And I'm sure there must also be a convenient way to wash the floor....

In the picture one of these houses: although the fuzzy-shape effect is not so evident, look at the orange building top floor.

23-30/5: in Italy!

From 23rd to 30th of May we have been in Italy for a wonderful event: the Wedding feast of our friends Marco & Michela!
It was a very nice ceremony and day and we were really glad to be there.
We wish to them a wonderful life together.
During this day we managed to have taken a picture of the all four of us: last time that happened was in September 2005, at the wedding party of our friends Mario and Rosa Elena (is the picture in the first post of this blog).

During that period there was the "Palio di St. Eleuterio", a fest in my village, Cupramontana, which I never had seen before!
It is a very recent recurrence , which was introduced I believe six years ago, when I had just left Italy.... a nice to see one!

We also managed to go once on the beach, since the weather was really good.

A good trip, beside the very bad start: our Ryanair flight got cancelled because of Alitalia personnel was under strike again. The only way to be on time for the wedding was to divert to Forli' the day after and leave from there again (after having paid for Ancona, which is more expensive). It is a bit hilarious that every time Alitalia workers go on strike (well, not really workers, since by definition workers are at the working place) , people are wondering: "would it this be the last strike before the company goes in bankrupt?". The answer is always "no", they'll always manage to strike again!