James & Vilija

In the second exciting instalment of Mum and Lizzie come to Genova, our story takes us to Largo di Como in search of George and his villa.

In a brief interlude, the big news of the early part of last week was that our part time cat/food processor, also known as the cat known as Fatty, developed a nasty infection of the eye. This then developed into an equally large and nasty infection on her head.

Upon discovery, Vilija was horrified and locked her in the house whilst she ran up the street to the local vets. There the vet kindly made an appointment straight away to see her. Returning to our house she collected up the cat and walked back to the vet. Read the rest of this entry »

Over a month ago, Chiara started wording me up on the upcoming Chestnut (Castagne) season. Every year when Castagna season (said like Elmer Fudd) arrives Chiara, Ottavio and other volunteers (cheap labour, read: friends and family) pack up for a weekend at Chiara’s family’s house in Toscana.

Last Friday night after work we went over to Chiara and Ottavio’s place on the trendy east side of Genova from where we set off. Chiara’s family’s house is located in a tiny village (if you can call it that) called Veggio, in Tuscany. It is about 40km south of Bologna or 60kn north of Firenze. It’s really more of a group of houses (called a Borgo in Italian) where apparently the population peaks at 20 in the summer and dips to 7 in the winter. Her family have owned it forever (well not exactly but at a minimum, longer than the age of Australia European settlement). Read the rest of this entry »

Mum and Lizzie arrived in Genova two (three by now) Thursdays ago. A little late but were treated to a lovely European spring day when they did finally reach Genova. Vilija met them at Milano and accompanied them on the train back to Genova and their accommodation.

We had found them a lovely little bed & breakfast right in the centre of Genova called L’Albero. L’Albero is run by Adriana who, fortunately doesn’t speak much English and allowed Mum & Lizzie to put into practise their Italian that they swatted up on before coming. Read the rest of this entry »

The last 3 weeks or so have been totally crazy here, with so many things happening, so much to see and visitors to boot

We’ve been mushroom picking in the forest outside Savona with some new work friends of mine and James’ mum and friend came to visit as well. They’re still here, but James will write about that, for my part, this update is about Michaella’s visit… Read the rest of this entry »

I know it has been a while since we have last posted a story and I promise that we will put update very soon. In the mean time, here is a little piece of information to get you thinking.

The European Commission recently did a study (here for the full paper) and found that a huge amount of electricity is being wasted by phone chargers remaining plugged in once the phone was fully charged, or not even plugged in. They estimate that if 10% of all mobile phone users unplug their chargers once their phones are charged the electricity saved will be enough for 60,000 European homes per a year. (Let alone the smaller electricity bill at the end of the month )

With the number of phone/camera/laptop chargers that are around at the moment your challenge for this week is to unplug them from the power point when not in use. ie: Laptops at night, battery chargers when not being use, even computers/TV/etc when they aren’t being used.

Jimbo

We saw this little cartoon ages ago, but saw it again yesterday. Having lived here, it easy to say that it is scarily true! Click here for full screen.

Hey all,

Well I guess that I’ve been a little slack about writing these blog thingies lately so I’ve been given the task this week.
It was great seeing so many of you on our whirlwind trip back home a week ago! But now the dust has settled and normality kicks in, or the new normality anyway…

Read the rest of this entry »

QF029
MEL-HKG-LHR
ETD - 8/9/2006, 23:00

Having returned to Australia unexpectedly, our flying trip was over when we headed to Melbourne Airport to fly back home. We originally thought that our flight went through Singapore we quickly found out that it was actually through Hong Kong. Oh well, no duty free shopping for us we thought and what another great opportunity to appreciate Renzo Piano’s architecture again.

Everything went well, we had secured emergency aisle seats and quickly boarded. Sitting there we introduced ourselves to our row mate and chatted as you do when waiting for the flight to leave. We were advised by the captain that we were slightly delayed because of a slight “engineering problem”. This was soon sorted out and we continued to wait for the final bags to be loaded. Read the rest of this entry »

After a two day stay in Genova and a visit to Portofino with James and Malene, we were again away this time to Paris, to James’ place (James lives in the 11th arrondissement, about a 10 minute walk from the Bastille). Unfortunately it was a very short trip – only three days long.

Paris was interesting in August, with most of the Parisians away on holidays (with the rest of the Europeans) the city felt empty, but yet was packed with tourists. As good a reason as any for the Parisians to jump ship It was nice as the city had a very relaxed vibe. Although we did a bunch of touristy things, we mostly tried to soak up the atmosphere and weren’t too fussed about missing out on doing some things as we decided that… we will be back! Read the rest of this entry »

August, empty august… Its a time when Europe shuts down, everybody goes on holidays and normally buzzing metropolises become ghost towns complete with rolling tourists being blown down the main street by a hot northerly wind. At risk of boredom we decided to join the mass temporary migration and planned a holiday to Corsica & Paris with Vilija’s friend from Paris, James (henceforth referred to as Paris James) and his girlfriend Malene.

Stage one in the grand plan was to meet Paris James in Milano. He arrived on a cattle plane (mistakenly labeled as Ryan Air) from Paris and we wondered around Milano, the first real time for all of us. This was our first introduction to Europe in mid August. The Sydney of Italia was empty, streets that were death traps when I was there waiting for my flight last time were perfect spots for a spot of backyard cricket. Read the rest of this entry »