Merry Christmas

Three days in Paris

Quite a good November month this year. Maybe it will help me cope with all these rainy winter days that we are having here in Rome. After the week-end in the farm house, the last week-end of November we flew to Paris. We had booked our flight with Ryanair as we had a gift voucher to use by the end of this year. We stayed in an appartment, which was a good solution as it cost less than most hotels and we could cook there if we liked to and the position also was very good, near buses and metros.
The weather was very cold compared to the temperatures we have had in Rome. We went to Disneyland, went up to the Eiffel Tower, walked on Champs Elysées, saw Notre Dame, Quartier Latin, Saint Germain de Pres, Montmartre... There's a lot left to see and do there, but next time maybe in spring! And if I have to choose my favourite between London and Paris, it's still London!

The witch

 

Finally I took myself time to go the hair dresser's. The good thing is my hair looked so terrible that this time you could really notice the change afterwards. Carlotta doesn't like when I get new glasses or a new hair cut or anything, so she said I looked ugly. I said, well first I looked like a witch, so I think it's better now. She said no, it was better when you were a witch! Anyway, my hair dresser said I should never again let my hair become of that yellowish colour that it was, and I think she was right!

Week-end in a Bed & Breakfast

It's raining and raining, but me and Sofia have a good week-end to look back at. I had promised her that we would go to an "agriturismo", a farm house with horses for a week-end. It was my birthday present for her. So off we went, this time just me and Sofia, so we could enjoy the horses without anyone complaining. We found this bed and breakfast in the countryside near Viterbo on the internet. There were also very nice places in Tuscany, but we chose this one because it was closer to Rome.
We left on Friday as soon as my husband had come home from work. Carlotta had accepted this as a big girl, so there were no tears when we left. There was lots of traffic out from Rome, so it took a while before we got to our bed and breakfast. We were quite hungry, so we asked the landlord where we could find something to eat. There were a couple of restaurants a few km from the house and one of them was open, so we went there. We were the only clients, as it was no tourist season anymore and they get clients only on Saturday and Sunday. We had a very good pasta meal and then we were ready to go to bed.

The next morning when we woke up, from our window we could see the riding lessons already going on on the riding field. At 11 we had our riding tour out in the woods. I had a nice little grey horse called Mozart and Sofia a pony called Isabella. We trotted quite a lot and also had a little, but quite fast gallop, so it was fun.

After our ride we went to one of the nearest villages to look for something to eat. As it was lunch time, everything was closed, but in the end we found a bar where we could get a sandwich.
In the Viterbo area there's a spa and also many natural thermal springs outside. We went to the Masse di San Sisto. They are natural hot springs, but you pay a membership fee because they get cleaned and maintained and there are sun chairs, toilets, cabins where you can change your clothes, showers and a bar, but we got a free entrance from our "agriturismo". It was lovely! There was a pool with warm water and another one with cooler water and we spent many hours there till the sun went down.

The next day we took a riding lesson. I had Mozart again and Sofia a pony called Leninka. It was a good lesson with some ground work and then we jumped a small course. Before returning back to Rome we had a little walk in Viterbo and then it was time to get back. Sofia was very happy with this birthday present and I had a really good time, too. It's some thing I don't do often, spend time with just one of the children, but sometimes I think it's worth it - no jealousies, no competition between the children. We had the best possible autumn weather the whole week-end, which of course helped making our week-end really enjoyable!

Summer post in November

This is a summer post I had started to write and forgotten to publish, so I'll do it now, a little bit late:
At least once every summer we go to the camping place Santalahti where you can play mini golf and there's a beach and a cafeteria. In July we went there once. Me, Armando and Daniele by bike and my parents and the girls by car. It's a good solution as we don't all fit in one car and I like to be able to use the bicycle and get some exercise when it's possible. It's about 15 km from my parents' house. It was one of the warm days in July so first we went swimming.

Then we had a pick nick and played mini golf. It's something the children always look forward to, although, when their father is with us it always includes some crying and bad mood in the end, because someone can't stop trying to teach the children how to play and someone wants to show who is the best mini golf player and this someone is not one of the children...

 

Anyway, a good ice cream or a "pumpernickel" usually brings back the smiles to everyone's faces.

Trick or treat?

Yesterday was Halloween. Also here in Italy people have started celebrating it and my children have gone trick or treating for quite many years now. Poor Daniele was sick and couldn't join them or his friends this year. He had a fever and stomache ache and still isn't feeling well :(.

I then left Carlotta home with her candy and her dad and brother and went to the horse stables with Sofia and our friends. There we had a nice evening with dinner and karaoke. I had no idea that so many of the girls who go horse riding with us sing like angels! And also our riding instructor is very good. He is able to change his voice in different ways when he sing, so he doesn´t only have the shouting voice that we hear when he teaches us :))

October

Time runs very fast. It's almost November now and Halloween is this week-end. The first ten days of October my parents were here. Unfortunately my mother caught a cold and couldn't enjoy her stay her so much, which was really a pity because the weather was lovely here all the time. We didn´t do all the things I had planned, but some small things anyway, like going out to eat pizza and to a chinese restaurant, we celebrated Sofia's birthday, we went to our summer place in Fregene once and had lunch there and then we went to the little village of Ceri and had lunch there in a very crowded restaurant. We also went shopping and had many cappuccinos in different cafès.
Sofia and me continued with our riding lessons and last week-end we partecipated in a show jumping competition, which was great fun. Daniele went to a football camp to Bracciano with his father one week-end. Daniele and Sofia also got new bicycles when my parents were here and especially Daniele has been using his very much. Then we had a birthday party for Carlotta with her new school friends. Her birthday is in July and we always celebrate it in Finland, so this was the first time she had a party also with her friends. She has made lots of new friends at school.

 The girls brought their roller blades to Fregene. It was too windy for the beach that day. Afterwards we went to a market near our home and Sofia got a necklace and Carlotta a flute.

In Ceri

Sofia 10 years

Sofia has turned 10 and we had a birthday party for her at home together with friends and her grand parents. My parents spent two weeks here, so they celebrated her birthday here with us. The weather was good and we spent a nice day with our friends. Sofia got lots of nice horsey things, like a horse book, horse t-shirt etc. My present will be a week-end together in an "agriturismo" in the country side where we will go horse riding, as soon as we can organize it.

More photos from Sardinia

Some more photos from our holiday in Sardinia. Looking at the photos there are so many I like and so many nice memories, but as I have to choose, here´s just a small selection of them.

 

 

La Maddalena and Caprera

One day we took the ferry from Palau to the isle of La Maddalena. From there we drove to the isle of Caprera which is connected to La Maddalena by a bridge. We visited Garibaldi´s house and then we went to two different beaches at Caprera. The first one was more stony and the second one had white sand - lovely. One more beach at La Maddalena. It was nice too, but windy and there were lots of medusas. Daniele enjoyed himself capturing them in a bucket.

The next day we went on a boat trip to the Maddalena archipelago. We visited the little town of Maddalena again and then we were taken to the most wonderful beaches to isles were you only can get by boat.

What a lovely day!

Day two in Sardinia

On the second day we went to the beach by the little train from the hotel. The beach was nice, but we wanted to see other beaches, too, so we used the car the other days.

Every afternoon the children wanted to have a swim in the hotel pool, too. We preferred the lovely beaches, but the children always enjoy the pools, so it was good that there was one in the hotel. While they were swimming I sometimes was able to read one or two pages of my book.

September holiday in Sardinia

Before school started, we spent the first week of September in Sardinia. We were lucky, the weather was nice all the time, only a bit windy sometimes. This year we went to Cannigione and stayed in Blu Hotel Morisco. It was near the sea, but to you had to take the car or the little train from the hotel to get to the beach. We took the hotel transport to the beach once, but otherwise we went by car, so we could try different beaches in the area. The position was really good, only 30 km from Olbia where the ship comes from Civitavecchia and there were lots of nice places to see. You could go to the Costa Smeralda or take a boat trip to the Arcipelago of Maddalena and we even took the ferry to Corsica once. It took only one hour from Santa Teresa di Gallura which was about 40 km from Cannigione.
We took the Tirrenia ferry which left in the morning and it took about 5 hours to Olbia. The ferry trip was quite boring, there were no sun chairs out side, no nice play room for Carlotta and with the dog we were only allowed to stay outside. Our hotel was nice and the children wanted to jump into the pool right away, so we went there and then we went to see the nearest beaches and in the evening we had dinner at the hotel and after the baby dance we all were very ready to go to bed.

Walking

Next morning we packed water, sandwiches and juice in our backpack and went out for a long walk with Marzia's family and their friends. We decided to walk to Fonte Tavoloni, which was supposed to be about 1 hour away.

 Well, it was quite a lot more than one hour. Daniele is a good walker, but Sofia and Carlotta weren't that happy all the time. But as I already noticed in Trentino, it's possible to take them on these long walks, as long as you bring enough biscuits and juice and let them rest often enough. And of course some good company makes it a lot easier. In the beginning Sofia wasn't so happy because the other girls had bicycles and she had to walk, but in the end they had to park their bicycles, because it got too heavy and it wasn't easy to ride a bike on the stony road.

We kept walking and then finally we came to the "rifugio" were we had our lunch. Wonderful! Then we saw some free horses and went to see them. One of them wasn't afraid of us. Cute!

In the evening we went to Rocca di Mezzo and the children put their jewellry on sale again. Rocca di Mezzo is a really charming little village and we continued dreaming of a flat up in the mountains.