My first post, how exciting! Today I shall tell you of our trip to Italy last weekend!
Ethan served his mission in Milan and is studying Italian at university, so he is fluent and has a massive love for Italy, as do I because of it's amazing food! (And it's beauty etc. but the food there is just so good!) I am in the process of learning Italian which is fun, Ethan has a year abroad next September (six months in Spain, 6 months in Italy) so it makes sense to try and learn before I'm living there.
So we stayed in a 4* hotel that was right next to Lake Como in the north of Italy, it was a lovely hotel! (If you're wondering how we managed to afford a 4* hotel, we booked it though Groupon which has worked a dream the two times we have used Groupon). We also had a hire car included in the price, which proved entertaining...
So we arrived at Milan Malpensa and picked up the hire car, a cute little Fiat 500 and everything had gone very smoothly so far. We decided to drive in to Milan and have a walk round etc so we went to go park by a Chapel that Ethan served in while in Milan. However Italians are CRAZY when it comes to driving and parking, they will park anywhere! So there were lots of people parked on the pavement so we thought, if they're doing it lets do it too. So Ethan went to drive up on to the curb (which are about double the height of UK curbs) and our tyre EXPLODED! It was so unexpected! Thankfully a miracle happened... the Church gate, which we were literally about meters away from happened to be open, which it hadn't been when we had driven past a few minutes earlier so we were able to pull into there to work out what had actually happened to our tyre, and it happened to be missionary transfer day so there were lots of missionaries that were in the car park that offered to change the tyre for us! That was a blessing in itself, however we thought we would have to pay quite a lot to the hire car place because of it, but when we spoke to them we didn't have to pay anything and they gave us a new car! (The tyre the missionaries put on was only a temporary one). So that was an entertaining start to the trip, but with all the help we received we felt so blessed by Heavenly Father because it cold have turned out a lot worse! :)
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| The missionaries kindly changing the tyre! |
The rest of the trip wasn't as eventful thankfully, we enjoyed a LOT of good Italian food and had a really nice time at the lake and driving to the beautiful Italian villages and towns. I learnt some more Italian, I can count up to 1000, tell you the time, days of the week and lots of little phrases like the post title, which means 'the art of good cooking is still alive in Italy'. The time away from Uni work and everything allowed us to reevaluate how we were doing as a married couple. We realised that we need to spend a bit more quality time together, as we had become a little too addicted to the American TV series 24 and spent FAR too much time watching that rather that spending quality time :) (However 24 is amazing and will not be disappearing from our lives, it has now been banished to weekends only and there is a limit on the number of episodes we can watch in a row instead). It was so nice to be able to enjoy the peace and quite of Lake Como, particularly because it isn't tourist season yet.
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| My pizza and Ethan's massive calzone! |
On the last day we were there (3 days all together) we went to go have lunch with Ethan's Mission President and his wife which was SO lovely! They are just the loveliest couple you have ever met and Sister Wolfgramm made the most delicious food! We thought we would only be able to stay for about half an hour as they are really busy but we were there for 2 hours in the end! They are the type of people who make you think, I want to be like them! They were just so loving and happy! They were so excited to see Ethan again and meet me, it was just SO lovely! It was the perfect end to a perfect little break! :)
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| President and Sister Wolfgramm and Ethan and I :) |
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