Now, for the debrief on my wonderful vacation to Italy:

1. The food was fabulous! My sister & I thoroughly enjoyed all the great food we ate. We actually had to keep a list of our meals, because everyone kept asking us what we wanted to eat, and we were forgetting all the time. So it was like this Friday: lunch at Anna & Gugliemo’s (we had gnocchi alla romana, mmm); dinner at Lelia’s, where we ate polenta & spezzatino. Mmm. Lunch on Saturday was lasagna verde at Anna & Gugliemo’s (that’s a pesto lasagna, a specialty of my zia MariaRosa), while dinner was pizza in Milan at an authentic pizzeria. hahaha. And on and on it went. Here’s a photo of the paniscia my aunt made one Sunday afternoon:
   Although I have to show you the BEST photo of the trip: See the pasta with “No Comment”? Yeah, see the shape of the pasta there? Uh huh, that’s right, you guessed it, the full male kit! My zia Lelia tells me that it’s actually a good shape, as it holds the sauce very well. *snicker*
2. The company was wonderful. Here’s a photo of the gang at the Lago Maggiore one Sunday afternoon (that’s me on the far left in the ponytail):
   And a photo of my sister with Dario the Terror (he’s three, he’s cute, and he knows it.):
   And a photo of me with Carlo, and auto-photo of the two of us in Barolo:
   And a photo of me with zia Lelia at Lago d’Orta (yes, this one’s an auto-photo too, and a bit out of focus, but it’s too cute):
3. And not to be outdone in the wonderfulness of the vacation, here’s a photo of all the yarn my sister and I got at my zia Lelia’s when we went stash diving: Now that was fun! We spent the afternoon going through it all, pulling out nice colours and textures. We still haven’t divided up the bulk of the yarn, as we don’t remember who liked what when we went through it. There were a couple my sister definitely wanted, but the rest is up for grabs. We’ll have to spend another afternoon going through it again. haha.

Being over in Italy has renewed my interest in potentially moving over there to work, so I’m going to revive that idea again and see if I can make a go of it. I realized that being surrounded by that much family is a good thing. Growing up it was only ever the four of us, and with my parents gone and my sister living in another city, I realize I like having family around. Sure, I could just move closer to my sister, but I’ve always wanted to live in Europe for a while, so I figure this is a good time to explore the idea again. (Sorry sis!) Then again, that would give everyone an excuse to have a European vacation when they come visit me, so maybe it’s not a bad idea after all. hahaha

I have many more photos as well, so stay tuned, but I thought I’d start with this batch first.
Ciao!