Hello friends and welcome to the first travel blog of 2011! We brought in the new year with suitable pomp and ceremony- we attended a Croatian folk music festival in the centre of old town Dubrovnik. As we didn,t understand a word sung by the musicians we made up our own lyrics and interpretative dance moves....I am embarrassed to say that video evidence does exist.....
Dubrovnik was a fabulous and amazing city and one I am so glad we were able to visit. It is honestly a place I would recommend for anyone and everyone to visit- it is a beautiful place, the food is good, the people friendly and it was the most wonderous place to spend 5 days doing nothing much more than watching the ocean, talking and the odd bit of poker (i lost horribly...)
Croatia also gave us the rare oportunity to see the sun again, something I don,t think we have done since we left Australia in October. Now I know when we booked our tickets to come to Europe that we were doing so over winter, and I fully accepted the fact that it would be cold, wet and dark. And we have done very well indeed in not complaining about the weather or letting it dampen (excuse the pun) our spirits.HOWEVER- seeing the sun in all its glory shining on us for 5 full days was enough to make me just a little excited about coming home to Australia in just over a month (how have 3 months passed already?!?!?!)
But as with all good things our time in Croatia had to come to an end so we boarded a plain and flew to Frankfurt,home of the humble hot dog. After three hours of hanging out with the Germanic people we again boarded a plane bound for Torino, Italy (believe it or not that was the most direct way we could find to cross the Adriatic sea). Torino is a beautiful city and a very important one in Italy,s history. I knew almost nothing about the place (except that it had hosted the winter olympics a few years ago and that it was the home to the Fiat motor vehicle) but three days and several museums later I am the full barrell of Torino related fun facts.... such as: did you know Torino was at one time the capital of Itlay? And that it has the greatest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo? Or that the Italian royal family was exiled from Torino to Spain at the start of WW2? Interesting place! And also home to some of the best gelato I have ever tasted- favourite flavour at the moment is a four way tie between chocoalte rum, black cherry, pistacio and coconut........scrummy! We are staying with our very gracious hosts Robyn and Roberto, which is proving very entertaining as Roberto speaks only limited English so in order to try and include him in our coversations we keep attempting to talk in Italian, which we are very bad at, and (generally after a few glasses of wine) I get very confused and just start talking in French - makes for some rather amusing dinner table conversations!!!
But again alas the open road is calling and so tomorrow we will head south to Florence to hang out with David and a few other historical dudes......and so, dear friends, I hope you are all having a lovely start to 2011 and I shall update you again when circumstances allow!
Love
Lauren the leggenda and Adam the affoghato
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