BIRTHDAY NUMERO DUE

And this time it was MINE!

Yes, I turned 21 earlier this week, and whilst my family and friends from home sadly weren’t here to share it with me, all the lovely people I know in Italy were!

I won’t make this into a recount of every single one of the day’s activities, but basically I had a wonderful time, eating, drinking and doing whatever I liked (yes I broke Lent for a day) and the sun was shining which made everything even better.

In true British style, I decided to have a bit of a house party and then go out to a few bars, with one classic twist – fancy dress! After much deliberation the theme was ‘anything beginning with S’, which sparked many weird and wonderful ideas including a sealife centre, string, snow white, and a storm! Mega bonus points for effort guys!

Gus and I 

Girlies enjoying curry time

The storm and the sailor

Sad face, string and smiley face

Snow white and the sea-life centre

So now I have many thanks to give…whether these people will see this or not I don’t know, but…

Thank you Emma for birthday breakfast, Eve and Gus for cooking curry, Lydia for morning coffee and also Jess for the joint birthday cake effort and to ALL for dressing up so amazingly and for all the beautiful presents which I shall treasure!

X

Birthday number one

So yesterday Italy as a unified nation turned 150! Buon compleanno Italia!


This of course meant a national holiday for all, and so we took the opportunity to have a day out in Parma, doing some wandering and making the most of the day and the sense of celebration. 

Thursday antiques/vintage market on the street where I live

Various reactions to the newly unveiled statue of Garibaldi

Properly getting into the holiday spirit with an afternoon mojito

Happy St Patrick's Day for yesterday also! We partied for the Irish too last night.

Pretty pointless ramblings

Recently appearance has been on my mind a lot. Unnecessarily so, I think. Nevertheless, my thoughts of appearance have taken on new perspectives since moving to Italy, the ‘country capital’ of the style world.

Italian fashion and our (the British Erasmus collective) opinions on it is quite a common topic of conversation; it is mostly quite conservative, with little variation in style even amongst youngsters and students, unlike British universities, or Newcastle anyway. But then every so often a few people will have a quirky twist to the conventional style, a dash of bright colour or an alternative way of wearing something. To me, that’s what style is - taking whatever you like from what is around you and then adding your own personality to it. And with Italians, it seems as though many appear to make little effort to put details into what they wear, and are quite unbothered about their appearance…maybe they really are just elegant and stylish, or maybe they just want everyone else to think that. Because when you look closer, the details are more obvious, the subtlety of a mother’s make up, the shine of an old man’s shoes or the tailoring of a young lady’s coat. If there was a way to describe their style in general, I think it would be the old saying ‘less is more’.

a nice photograph, completely unrelated to text

As vain, shallow and sometimes trivial the topic of appearance can be, thinking about it has helped me draw some conclusions about other aspects of my life – ‘less is more’ is often a good thing to keep in mind. Or as Thoreau puts it, ‘Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify.’ Simplicity often helps calm, serenity and relaxation, and with these comes the space to enjoy life, which afterall, is what we’re all here for. 

'The best fancy dress party in the world' - Jess Watson

Picture postcards from a Sunday day trip to the Carnevale di Venezia, with Jess, Emma and Steph. 

outside the station

Emma, Jess, Steph and I with newly decorated faces

Basilica San Marco

Gondole and the Ponte Rialto

After getting our faces decorated for a bargain 7euros, we set off through winding streets, across little squares and over more bridges than I’ve ever seen to get to the Ponte Rialto and eventually Piazza San Marco. Everything is so cute and pretty, and looks exactly like the films and photographs that we’d seen so many of, and added to that the multitude of weird and wonderful costumes, dresses and most importantly masks, made it quite surreal wandering round. 

To our pleasant surprise, the signs did lead us to the right places and we didn't get lost once, mainly because we didn't have any plan of where we wanted to go, which I think is definitely the best way to visit a city like Venice. And despite the dull sky and occasional shower, it was possibly the best trip I've been on so far in Italy...and the fact that we didn't make it out to any of the islands in the lagoon gives us the perfect excuse to come back again!