Pasqua - Easter

Easter Sunday this year was a beautiful occasion as we travelled to Piacenza, a mountain about 1 1/2 hour’s drive from Milan. Family friends Cristina and Luca own a house on a mountain there so we went to spend the day with them and their family.

The house is absolutely stunning; I was told it was a stable before they converted it into a house, and we arrived just in time for lunch.

For the first time in my life I had a “real” easter, at the beginning of Spring when everything outside comes to life. And in fact, this day was the very first Sunny day we’d seen in weeks and the warmest day all year, so after lunch while the others took their chairs and sat outside to soak up the sun, I went with Francesca to explore the house and the yards.

The beautiful house

The view from the backyard

The lower level of the backyard, looking back up at the house

On our walk we found ourselves a number of wonderful flowers, including the first daisies of the season! So, naturally, the rest of the day after that was spent sitting around, eating chocolate and making daisy chains.

Alice, our daisy-chain making God

Remember the traditional Easter cake called "Colombo"?

Opening the first Easter Egg

To satisfy everyone's curiosity, I found inside a shoe-shaped keyring...my new most prized possession

Chiara and Louise

Fra and I, flower-crown making

The finished product!

And one for Louise

The pretty views just keep on coming

There's always a selfie

Mago's nap being sabotaged  hahahahahahaha

This right here is the coolest Easter egg I have ever seen. I don't recall ever even hearing about something of the sort, but it's basically a hard sugar egg that is the size, shape and sometimes colour of a real egg, although maybe a little bit heavier, and you have to break it like you would a real egg, but with more force because it's super hard, and then on the inside it's chocolate! And tastes amazing!

Death by European chocolate

That night the temperature dropped and I began to feel a bit sick and feverish again so we snuggled up on the couch with a blanket and some tea and watched the new Spiderman movie, that I hadn’t seen before, in Italian with Italian subtitles; and I was extremely excited to find that I understood it all! Baby steps in the language department.

On Monday the Easter break continued but still feeling a bit sick I over slept and was warmly woken up with breakfast in bed made by Alice and Francesca.

A wonderful selection of my favourites; green tea, freshly squeezed red orange juice, nutella on toast, my favourite biscuits and strawberries dipped in nutella

The rest of that day was then spent resting up at home watching movies and hair braiding in a nice American-movie-slumber-party kind of way.

And Alice's hair just keeps growing for me!

On Tuesday, feeling a bit better, when Alice had to go into Milan for Greek and Latin tutoring with Eugenio Fra and I tagged along and went to a park nearby Chiara’s office to walk around and enjoy a gelato. Although the weather was still much, much colder than Spring should be in any country I was overjoyed to find the city’s flowers finally starting to bloom!

Finally, Wednesday, the last day of the Easter break Alice, Filippo and Fra studied while I packed to go to Florence the next day! We stopped only for a brief but beautiful lunch at Guzzafame.