Wintery wonders.

Christmas holidays at home in Whitby was brilliantly, wonderfully, amazingly nice and leaving was not something I was looking forward to at all.

After a delayed flight, annoyingly due to technical problems, not the huge amounts of snow blanketing Europe, the eventual return to a cosy living room with endless supplies of tea, food, and family love was very much welcomed! Cute as my family are, they’d saved the decorating of the tree until I got back, so that’s what we did on the first morning. Then in the last week before Christmas we played in the snow, sat and chatted, played a lot of scrabble, went out for coffee and cakes and visited family; nothing spectacular but just what was needed.

 Of course Christmas day being Christmas day, me and my sister ate far too much chocolate including before breakfast, surrounded by wrapping paper and new gifts! Santa (and my parents) were incredibly generous with me this year, and gave me a shiny new camera to take photos of all Erasmus antics from now on, along with a lot of nice little things like books, CDs, perfume and the like. Dinner was, as usual, epic and scrummy, even the sprouts!

The next day we had a bracing boxing day walk along the clifftop to watch the boxing day dip, where all the crazy people run into the sea for charity, followed by breakfast at Nana’s house, quickly becoming one of my favourite traditions!

After a few more relaxing days at home, I headed up to Newcastle for New Year celebrations! It was so nice to see Rhona, Vicky and Jim for an afternoon catch up, friends that I haven’t seen in a long while, especially seeing as two of them have just finished/are just starting semesters abroad! For the first time since leaving Italy, I got slightly excited about coming back and saw that actually it’s pretty good to be living here doing all the things I do. The weekend then consisted of meeting up with Lorna and Mark, shopping for the new year’s roast dinner feast, getting ready for the party at Caitlin’s, cooking said feast, catching up with all the girls and guys there, drinking copious amounts of wine, celebrating in the street at midnight and playing pictionary with lots of questionable drawing skills! I had the best time chatting to everyone, friends that I have only seen a couple of times in the last two years due to both years abroad, and friends that I spent a lot of last year with! Had lots of encouraging words from those on Erasmus last year, which was lovely.

And the last of my three weeks at home were mainly spent relaxing and trying not to let myself slip into the trough of despond called ‘I hate Italy, I want to stay at home, don’t make me go back!’ Luckily somewhere in there I was inspired, or probably just came to my senses, and decided that actually it’s not so bad, in fact it’s rather good most of the time, and if I survived the last three months I can definitely do the rest of it! The promise of better weather in a couple of months and having friends and a house to come back to made it a lot less stressful than my previous experience of coming here, and I don’t think I quite realised how much easier it was going to be! Of course, I still miss family and friends back home, and others that I didn’t get to see, but ultimately, being back is good! It’s a lot calmer, less stressful (so far), and less extreme at the moment; I’m starting to feel like I know how to live here, how to live my version of la dolce vita, you could say.

Lakeside Ramblings

So instead of a weekend in Verona and Lake Garda, we ended up in the less touristy versions; Bergamo and Lake Iseo. A brilliant alternative it turned out. Although it was in some ways a weekend full of small failures - not being able to go to the originally planned destination, missing buses, therefore missing other buses, and getting on the wrong bus – it was still brilliant! Some things we did/liked/loved…

·      Got very excited on the train travelling northwards and seeing snowy topped mountains and frosty fields!

·      Got even more childishly excited at the Christmas lights all up the street outside the station in Bergamo and the Christmas market. To our great delight there was also a stall selling mulled wine, a perfect addition to the evening.

·      ‘Città alta’, the old city on top of a hill looking down to the rest of Bergamo. So nice to wander around the little streets, all decorated with lights, and look in the cute shops and restaurants, and eat scrumptious pizza.

·      Got up very early to get the bus to Sarnico at the Southern end of Lago d’Iseo. Unfortunately the timetable we had wasn’t actually when buses to the centre ran, so we missed the one we needed and therefore missed the one to Sarnico. However, managed to get one to Lòvere at the North of the lake instead. It was a lovely bus ride, through lots of little towns and villages and then alongside the lake for a while, so nice to see lots of water and some actual scenery! Typically, the tourist information office was shut for a holiday so after consulting a very basic map we set off walking…

·      At the next village up the lake, Costa Volpino, we started heading upwards and just carried on ascending for a couple of hours on roads, cobbled pathways, muddy trails and snow covered tracks. Amazing to get past the height where the snow had settled and stayed on everything, and the views over to the other side of the lake and downwards more then made up for the fact that we had cold wet feet! We met a really cute old woman in one of the churches on the hillside who chatted to us for a while about how it’s great to be young and what a great age 21 is, and how she had grandchildren our age and that we should make the most of everything. Wise words from a wise little lady.

·   Hot food and drink was needed when we had got back down to Lòvere and coffee and waffles fitted the bill.

·      Next transport error – no thanks to the complete lack of information at the bus stop we got on a bus that went past but didn’t stop in Bergamo and just went straight on to Milan. Nightmare. Thanks to a nice young man we managed to get off at the stop nearest to Bergamo and told us how to get back, very kind of him.

·      After expending more energy in a day than we have in a while we were perfectly happy to get a nice warm shower and read back at the hostel, then seeing as it was Sunday there were no buses to the city and no places to go out, so pizza order was on the cards. They weren’t brilliant but filled us, and I definitely took advantage of the coffee/tea/hot chocolate machine.

·      Met some cool people at the hostel, a Syrian medical student living and working here in Italy, and a classical guitarist from London who travels and busks all over the world. It was kind of nice to chat to a stranger with a ‘real’ English accent, and he picked up on ours as soon as we walked in! Delightful end to the evening when he started playing quietly in the common room type area where we were sat reading on sofas. Made for the best relaxing ending to a tiring but exciting trip.