Wonderful homemade Christmas presents

My sweet friends Cristina, Aloha and Anna this year all gave me homemade Christmas presents. Aloha made a pretty bracelet, Cristina made me a CD with her favourite Italian songs and Anna did a whole basket full of homemade body products like soap and body scrubs.

Big applause for these amazing girls!

Now I am heading off to the airport... fingers crossed there won't be too much traffic on the way or too much people at the airport.

xoxo

Christmas present from SVP

This is one of the Christmas presents I got from my job. It is so nice! A mix of delicatessens and specials from the Italian region Toscany. For me, Swedish girl that love to try new things, these kinds of gifts are fantastic.

Will bring some up to Sweden for Christmas and some will I keep here for when I get back :)

Merry Christmas SVP Europe and thanks a lot!

xoxo

Trenord train delays...

For more than two weeks Trenord, the overground shuttle train I take to go to work, has been constantly delayed or sometimes even cancelled. They say the reason is the change of computer system they had done to make the train traffic smoother the future but such big problems for two weeks sounds slightly redicious....  I am going crazy! And for sure I won´t miss them while being away on Christmas holiday...

xoxo

Another beautiful Christmas Garden outside Milan...

Can not even be compared with "la casa di Babbo Natale" but very nice anyway!

xoxo

Job lunches

Italy might not have as many working benefits in comparison to Sweden. But few actually does exist!

One of them is that most Italian companies pay for your every day lunch.

When working for Givenchy they gave me daily "lunch ticket" that I could use either at one of the nearby restaurants, in the employee restaurant or when buying food at the supermarket. As my salary wasn't that high at the time I saved lots of money using the tickets for all the food shopping I did and then I brought with me lunch boxes with home made food every day.

Instead where I am working now we have the lunches paid at one of three choices of restaurants in the area. A Mojito bar opposite the street serving nice sandwiches, salads and other quick dishes. Or we have kind of a self service restaurant employee restaurant just below the office where we got lots of eat. Or my favorite choise, is a family owned restaurant where an old couple is cooking homemade Italian food. I just love it. In there I have tried special Italian dishes I had never heard of before. They have a good range of daily choices including pasta, meat and fish dishes.

I eat lots every day for lunch and 9 times of 10 the food is perfect.

xoxo

Warming up dinner at Wu Taiyo

 

The "casa di Babbo Natale" was beautiful and fascinating but I manage to get very cold standing there looking at it. On the way back, around 10 pm we were starving and needed something warm so I took my two friends to Wu Taiyo next to my house for a warming Chinese dinner. Having dinner after 10 pm in the evening is something I really don't like but I was so hungry and so cold so the hot dinner was just delicious!

xoxo

La Casa di Babbo Natale in Melegnano

Santa Clause's house! This is one of the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

It is a private house outside Milan where a private person has set up this amazing light/lamp Christmas show. Yesterday Stefano took me and Anna to see it, People are coming from all around north Italy to see this house and I can understand why.

It must be millions of small light bulbs that keep changing colors. First I was like a happy child running around singing Christmas songs taking pictures and then I was paralyzed and was watching it for long. Absolutely amazing!

xoxo

Evening tea at California Bakery

 

 

It is very very cold in Milan in these days. We are around zero degrees, slightly below in the mornings and slightly above during the days. But I can promise you that it is really cold.

As both Matteo and I was freezing to death when coming out form the pizzeria we decided to go for a hot herbal tea at the nearby California Bakery. In there time just rushed away and 23.30 we realised that it was absolutely time to get home....

xoxo

Original Pizza with Matteo

The pizza at Pizzeria Original Pizza in Piazza Santo Stefano is one of the best in town. After 10 hours of work Matteo brought me there yesterday night for a delicious pizza dinner.

xoxo

Dancing with a swollen throat muscle

Today I went to the gym with a swollen neck muscle. I asked one of the personal trainers (don't know how much they really know though) if he thought I would work out and he said I should listen to my body and do what I could do and avoid the exercises causing pain so I did.

In the total body class I manage to do everything except the normal sit ups. I know, it sound weird that I could do all the heavy exercises but not the most simple one but that was the case.

Before the dance class the dance teacher had a look at my kind of swollen muscle on the front on my thought/neck and said I should dance with a scarf on my neck and then stretch it carefully afterwards so I did.

Yesterday evening I felt better than during the day but today its worse again. Guess I will pop by the pharmacy after work.

However, now the dancing is finished for this year and it won't start agian until the 7th January. Sob. I love Mondays just for the dancing so I will miss it so much.

xoxo