Great day in Pavia

 Pics taken with the blackberry...

Extremely nice 5 courses lunch in Ale and Angela's place.

Aloha and I

Angela, Alo and Mando

The Nordic team

Little walk around Pavia center

Aperitivo with Andrea and Giose in piazza

Giose

Andrea

After the aperitivo Andrea and I helped Giose to move into his new flat in Pavia

Andrea, myself and Giose

Too tired to write anything else but for sure I have had a great day in Pavia!

xoxo

You should not wait to get into the mood to go to the gym...

...You go to the gym and get into the mood! That's what Erika said so that's what I did :) And I am glad I did because as always I left the gym feeling much better than before.

Unfortunately the weather is not getting better, actually is getting worse and the rain is now coming down heavily, so I guess my Saturday evening will be spend at home with some warm tea and a good film.

xoxo

My Saturday morning...

What a boring Saturday! Yesterday when I was working until 6.30 pm it was sunny and 26 degrees, today when I have the whole day off it´s constantly raining...

I got up at 10am, fixed myself a warm green tea, put on a moisturizing masque on my face and snipped back into my bed to read for a couple of hours. Then I picked up my phone and started chatting on what's up for another couple of hours when I had to drag myself out of bed to get some lunch.

Now I just feel like going back to bed but I think I gonna put on my wellington boots and go to the gym for a while. I know I need to move my body to get some energy so....

xoxo

Dinner at ristorante Love with colleagues

New colleague Natalie and Mando

My sushi plate

Aschii with lots of grilled meat

Mando and I

Ristorante Love is a new restaurant in North Milan. It is kind of a strange place. It is massive and always full of people. The food they offering is Japanese, Cinese, Mongolian bbq, wook, Italian and Brazilian. Every type of food has his own buffet corner where you serve yourself except the Brazilian that obviously is serves directly from the grill at your plate. There is only a "all you can eat" choice for 20euros.

I had one plate of sushi and one plate of grilled Mongolian bbq plus the Brazilian grilled ananas with cinnamon. I got out feeling like exploding...

After dinner we went for a walk and then for a drink at Bar Frida.

xoxo

Aperitivo at Siddharta Café

Pics from this evening's aperitivo at Siddharta Café with a little group of friends.

xoxo

Cross Fire by James Pattersson

I was reading it on the beach in Riccione :)

Cross fire is James Pattersson's 17th book about Alex Cross but the first one for me to read. I think that on the market there is nowadays 20 books by James Pattersson in the Alex Cross series and that says quite a lot about the great success they are having over the world. Reading on internet though I think to understand that the first 12 of the Cross novels are the best so maybe I should start reading the set from book number one and onwards. 

Detective Cross has his hand more than full. He is planning his own wedding, trying to his family safe and he is involved solving two different serial murder cases. For that the book keeps you busy from the first page and all the twists and turns in the book makes you keep on reading.

I like the fact that the chapters in the book are very short which is perfect for me that usually mostly reads when travelling on trains and few minutes before going to sleep in the evening.

I loved this book but I do think that Don't Blink by James Pattersson that I read in the beginning of this year was slightly better...

My rating 4.0/5,0

xoxo

The wonderful feeling to get home after a long day to a super clean house

Rainy day in Milan and I feel a bit without energy. I did manage to work well and finish my whole "to day list" at work and I also managed to force myself to go to the gym to do one fitness course. But I have felt a bit weary the whole day...

What can be a better day to get home and find the whole flat perfectly clean, nice and tidy. All the dishes in the kitchen cleaned, the bathroom shiny and my room super tidy. I just love coming home these evenings when the cleaning lady has passed by :)

Now I gonna end this gray day early, going to bed at 10pm and read my new book.

Good night

xoxo

Five beautiful brunettes

A picture from tonight's after work aperitivo with Silvia, Valentina, Roby and Ilii at Noon Milano.  Always nice to meet these girls and Noon is always a beautiful bar in a great location. The food isn't that great though...

Now I am stucked in front of The Apprentice Italia at TV.

xoxo

Dancing at great levels

What makes me really happy is to have fun. My dancing course on Mondays, not always, but often is lots of fun and I get out feeling so good. 

Tonight the dancing course was much better than normal. A couple of fitness dance instructors joined the group and that obviously put the lever up higher and made it great fun! I didn't want the hour to end and got so disappointed when the yoga group stepped in saying we had to stop...

Before the dancing I did one hour of total body that wasn't as much fun as the dancing but at least I tone up my back, legs and shoulders well doing that course so I try to do it from time to time. And... before that I even went running to warm up. 

That's what I call a good evening at the gym and a great start of the week!

xoxo

Jazzy aperitivo

Evening walk in Sempione park with Torri

Aperitivo at Jazz Cafè

Quick blog update before getting to bed... Like I wrote in my earlier post tonight I first headed for a walk in Sempione park with my boyfriend and then we went to Jazz Cafe to meet up with Steppy and Sarah for an aperitivo. It was long time ago I went to Jazz Cafe but it was as nice as always. Quite nice food and drinks but I live the place itself and the live jazz music mixed with trendy house. It is unique!

xoxo

Making it a good Sunday

What started off as a lazy Sunday with tea and toasts in the kitchen with Luisa, both feeling tired and lazy without any will to do anything, ended up being a quite efficient day...

While Luisa did millions of washing machines I cleaned, organized and sorted out my wardrobes followed by the drawers next to my bed. Now everything is nice, tidy and organized as I want to have it. 

After the "cleaning" we had lunch together and then I left for the gym where I enjoyed an hour of aerobics. It had great music and I had a great time while pumping out my energy :)

Now I gonna go for a long walk with my boyfriend and tonight meet up with two girl friends for a Sunday drink.

A good Sunday in other words :)

xoxo

Dinner at Ristorante Imperiale

Yesterday was such a lazy day. I woke up at 1pm and just hanged out on the sofa with Luisa for the first couple of hours awake...Then Lu went back to bed while I took a long warm bath, did both a hair and a face masque and got out feeling new. Went out for a walk in the sun.

A couple of hours later my boyfriend came and he (and his car!) joined me to the supermarket to do LOTS of food shopping. But later on I didn't feel for cooking so we went out trying out a Asian fusion restaurant like 10 minutes walk away form my place, at restaurant Imperiale. It restaurant was over full and we were lucky there we had reserved a table because otherwise we wouldn't have got a table.... Crises in Italy? Yea right, the Italians here in the north eat out at least 2-3 times a week and if you don't reserve a table it is hard to find a nice place to dine out...

We ate well and got back home satisfied ready to fell asleep in front of a movie....

That's my lazy Saturday! :)

xoxo

Drinks at Deseo with Anna and Anne

Anna and I

Anne and Anna

Anna

Me and my banana daiquiri

Great night out with the girls! Went to Deseo for aperitivo and in the end Anna and I stayed out late just drinking and talking. Anne is my colleague while Anna is my ex colleague that I got to know better after the actually left the company. And hope to get to know her even better.... :)

xoxo

Tiziano Ferro - Per dirti ciao

- Tiziano Ferro - Per dirti ciao - 

Just sharing the latest lovely song from Tiziano Ferro before I will head of from work for a relaxing weekend.

Happy Friday!

xoxo

A small part of the Italian TV

It ended up being a quite lazy evening in the end. I passed the gym for one hour step tonification. and then I just went home. Was supposed to meet up a friend for an aperitivo but neither of us didn't feel very weel so we postponed it. Step tone is the perfect fitness class to make if you're a bit tired or if, like I was supposed to, would go out directly afterwards. It is a good training but it doesn't tire you out like some fitness classes can do. It is just a bit tricky step dance warm up followed by upper body free weights training. The hour passes before I even manage to blink...

At home I had a simple dinner in front of the TV watching the final of "The Veline", a beauty/dance competition where the winners gonna be, for one year, the show dancers for one of Italy's most seen TV shows, Striscia La Notizia. It is a great TV show that exposes holes and shames in the Italian media, government, politics, welfare and other scandals with help of local reporters. And like all the Italian TV shows it obviously needs to have some good looking girls too... (no comments)

This competition has been going on for the whole summer and I am glad it is finally over an the real program will start again.

One joke made me laugh tonight... one of the juries (a editor manager from a gossip magazine) turnes around and looks at the public saying,"it was very nice to see the boyfriends to these beautiful girls tonight. I wonder if they know how many serie A football players that are waiting for the two winning girs out there...." The sad thing is that it is true. All the below finalists are normal university studying girls but in a month or o two of them (the winners) will be hanging out on the trendiest restaurants and night clubs dating millioner football players. It has always been like that and I guess it will always be...

And by the way, the wrong girls won. The winners are the second couple on the picture (in yellow and blue) but I liked the last couple both dressed in black...

xoxo

Pulcino Pio

Good morning people! This morning I wanna introduce you to the chicken Pio...

The original music video

Here is the dance! I haven't even tried to learn it even if I would for sure have fun knowing it...

 

This song is this years biggest summer song. A real pain. But at the same time it is actually lots of fun, both the idea, the song and the dance.

I have now heard that they will translate it into English, German, Danish and Swedish so I guess it's gonna reach also other parts of the world... Have fun ;)

xoxo

Italian studies on my own

One other of my missions/goals for this autumn is to restart studying Italian. My idea is to study one hour a week, 30 minutes of grammar out of the very nice grammar book I got and then read in Italian for 30 minutes.

One hour a week is nothing, also because the half an hour reading can be done out of an interesting magazine before going to bed but it is important that I start getting used to read in Italian. For the half an hour of grammar I thought of doing one chapter a week, just reading the rules and then keep them in mind while speaking and ask my closest colleagues and friends to correct me if I am making mistakes.

I feel motivated with my one hour of Italian studies a week. I live in Italy and there is nothing I want more than learn the language at a very good level.

Tonight I started of easy and just read the first chapter of the verbs and now I gonna go to bed and read some intriguing articles.

Buona notte!

xoxo

Zumba Fitness

Tonight I went back for my second lesion of Zumba.

Zumba has been a fitness trend for what I know maybe one-two years but even if I am a big fitness fan I haven't tried it until this year.

Not knowing anything about zumba I thought it was some kind of mix of aerobics and latino dance. Don't know where I got it from but I was sure it some like a latino fitness dance. I was wrong!

Zumba is a resistance training practiced with mixed music with fast and slow rhythms. The music can come form the following dance styles; cumbia, salsa, merengue, mambo, flamenco, chachacha, reggaeton, soca, samba, belly dancing, bhangra, hip hop music, axé music and tango. It is not a brain training/coordination course where you need to remember a difficult dance combination, instead you just follow the instructor doing lots of different dance movements - without any logic.

In other words it is just a lot of non stop moves to different kind of music styles for an entire hour. Zumba helps to build strengths, improve motion and posture. It burns lots of calories!

I can't say I have fallen in love with zumba as I have done with the different kinds of fitness danced but I kind of enjoy it anyway. I found myself smiling throughout the whole class which means I had fun and as it is for sure good training I will start doing it from time to time.

xoxo

Mexican dinner at Mexicali Bligny

Now it was a while ago I went for a Mexican dinner. Mexican food feels a bit too heavy summer time so it might have been like three months ago I went last time...

Tonight Torri and I tried on Mexicali in Viale Bligny in south Milan. Merve and I tried Mexicali in north Milan like 6 months ago and I really liked it so it has been on my "must try list" to visit also this Mexicali down south.

We had mixed starters that contained cheesy thingies. Then obviously we took a chicken fajitas to share and it was delicious. On top of that we also enjoyed a one liter fruit shake :) Got out feeling super overly full but very satisfied.

Mexicali
Viale Bligny 7

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa  

Absolutely great dinner place for whoever likes Mexican food. 

Now we gonna watch the Italian apprentice that starts tonight. Interesting...

xoxo