He just digs Lego so much and mainly builds spaceships, castles and robots these days (most of them have a clock) … at lightning speed.
Ritsu is off for another business trip tomorrow, so this was the last chance for a bit to goof around with mama in the bathtub and Julius enjoyed it as usual.
I am slowly digging up through some backed up data and came across this unfinished movie from our recent weekend trip to the Italian riviera:
Julius and Lucca thoroughly enjoyed the beach, no matter what’s the weather … and also running around in old town Finale.
(This is from the 4/12-14 weekend .. and I might push the entry to the correct date later on .. if I do not forget)
Another fun thing to do on a Sunday is going to Eataly, that fancy-schmancy Italian gourmet market / mall.
Though the parking lot was pretty full, it was not too crowded .. on the way Julius recognized the area and immediately asked to go see the crabs and lobsters they have on display in the fish section. He also very clearly asked for strawberry gelato.
For the first time we saw a market in front of the actual store which was also kinda neat and sold all kinds of ethnic food in addition to the usual Italian fare.
We behaved and ended up only buying some extra yummy duck meat based pasta sauce (and one based on rabbit, which we have yet to try) and we tried their wine bottle filling station. While we think that in general the place is totally overpriced, it is kinda fun … disnleyland-ish style food shopping in an indoor market atmosphere.
Today we embraced the sunny weather and thanks to the holiday weekend we stayed away from major attractions (as we had tried just yesterday and got caught in terrible traffic)
So we opted for a nice stroll to the city center.
Recently Julius has become obsessed with picking flowers (although I keep telling him that we should leave them, so that everyone can enjoy them) and when we found the first green patch, he was at it again.
At piazza castello he played with the fountains.
And then we walked along via garibaldi (which was pretty packed) and headed towards our favorite middle eastern eatery, which was totally packed .. but after a short wait we got our table and enjoyed our usual mezze and kebabs.
Afterwards we checked out the market stalls at porto pallazzo and Julius got a bit tired and needed a ride.
But overall he walked very well, threw no fits, but sternly refused to take a nap, which resulted in having a fairly cranky kid at the dinner table.
… than with a pretzel @ Paulaner ?
See, every 25th of April, the Italians celebrate that the Nazis finally left Italy back in 1945.
What struck us as odd then was that a huge street market for this weekend consisted to 60% of stands with German writing on it (even the Thai eatery had come all the way from Berlin) … there were lots of places selling German beer, Bavarian meat specialties, Austrian pastries and of course, one of Julius’ favorite: The pretzel
Silent re-occupation through food?
Glad we were there early-ish, the masses that pushed along between the stands got really out of control and semi-aggressive towards the time we left.
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This morning Julius was not his usual peachy self … he would not listen and twice I found him sulking like this (of course he would run away to find his next sulking corner as soon as Papa approached) … He was also not listening very well …
I wonder if the nightmare he had last night (and he does have those rarely) was still lingering in his head …
22C in the afternoon, perfect sunshine, time to go to the playground, look at ducks and chasing girls …
This post will probably soon followed with a complain post about later April still being friggin’ cold and the central heating already turned off.
With the main computer still being on the fritz and some general thoughts about changes to this blog, let’s say goodbye to:
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Over the years this was a nice friendly icon to make it easier to see how Julius looked a year ago … it was also all done manually … now that Julius is older and the differences not that apparent anymore & on the other hand I have no clue how many readers actually have been using it (plus, look over there —-> there is a CALENDAR! ), so, without further ado, I am dropping this feature.
We don’t eat eggs that often, unless I have just made a batch of salted eggs (hard-boiled eggs stored in the fridge for some nights in salt-water).
And Julius just loves them with a dab of kewpie mayonnaise.
Today we visited IKEA again and tried to get Julius to join the kid’s club there .. and again it was pretty much a disaster. First it was too crowded and we waited with our number for 10 – 15 minutes, noticing that the ‘it’s your turn’ number did not move at all. So we tried again after our shopping, since Julius looked quite interested .. he even had remembered (from our last attempt) that he had to remove his shoes.
But when it was finally his turn, he must have been already too tired again, reluctantly did he follow the kid’s club lady as she started to show him around … all seemed well, but then I had to run and switch spots with Ritsu at the register line .. from what she told me later, he made a big fuzz and when I saw him 5 minutes later, he was all in tears.
IKEA was once again a madhouse, but it was high time to stock up on meatballs, salmon and lingonberry jam.
(P.S. Still computer problems here, this is mainly a test how well I can blog on one of my old machines, this one here e.g. does not have photoshop, so I have to do all picture editing directly in iPhoto, which can be cumbersome .. so please do not expect any big collages or fancy photo frames anytime soon.)
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something new .. it is not internet issues … but the fact that my main computer is dying that keeps me from blogging …
I still have a few ideas up my sleeve, but I need the time to try them all out .. but in general I am kinda screwed right now .. so please excuse the lack of updates …
I have never posted one of those embedded clips (other than our own) here .. but since it is on their official website, with embedding link provided, I guess it is totally legal …
I have been a follower of ‘The Daily Show‘ religiously for many years now and it is actually the only ‘news’ show I watch .. but this segment about the Olympics, how many world leaders are already saying they will stay away (of course, not GWB), China’s one child policy … and .. well .. see for yourself ..
One of the funniest things I have seen on The Daily Show in a long time ! And of course I dig the represenation of stay-at-home-dads as sweat-pants-wearing, one-hand-always-in-pocket kind of characters. …
We have upgraded Julius to a booster seat and he seems to like it a lot and stays nicely strapped in …
Today when we went to pick up mama, he promptly fell asleep … I had always wondered how he would sleep in that thing … obviously, when sleep hits, there is just no way around it.
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Still one of his favorite veggies …
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I keep writing as if we were still there, but our trip to the Italian Riviera was actually only for 2 nights.
The basic idea was to meet up with Chris, Cris, Lucca and Eric to have some fun time at the beach .. too bad the weather was not playing along .. well .. I still think we kinda got lucky with no rain on Sunday.
The place is very nice and must be super busy in summer .. but not so much in April.
Besides good food we enjoyed seeing Julius and Lucca getting along very well
Enjoy the incoherent collection of pictures .. I still have lots of video to share .. this will happen later.
Saturday
Lunch: Da Guiseppe
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We had to walk around quite a bit to find a restaurant we would eventually like and that would seat 7 people (4 adults and 3 kids) .. in the end we settled with “Da Giuseppe” and enjoyed some great food.
Fresh grilled sea bass, a pasta with mussels and artichokes … maybe we got screwed by the freebie sounding limoncello offer (and then getting charged for it) . but overall .. very nice place .. Julius was very much infatuated with little Eric.
Dinner: Gnabbri Tratoria
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Cheaper, but still good looking food and a very nice atmospehere .. very easy on the kids, Lucca found a girl to flirt with while Julius was stuck with some wood-sword toting asshole boy .. why do people buy those stupid toy weapons?
The place came recommend, it is very much down to earth food .. the special of they day sounded great (some tiny fish .. fried) … but turned out to be fried fish balls .. the raw tuna tartar and the tuna steak arrived with the same bits of salad and potatoes. The black ink pasta was very nice ..
After dinner: boy’s night out: Bei Uschi (or “Bei Usci”, or “Bej Ushi” .. which ever sign or receipt you trust)
Me and Chris set out to get some big boys alone time after dinner drinks .. and it seems that this time of year most of Finale Ligure is still closed, so we ended up at this German sounding place, enjoyed some nice Hefe-weizen, seeing local people eat Leber-Käse .. and as a high light, our chef from lunch came in with his family to have a beer and a ham sandwich.
It was a lot of fun seeing the locals (mainly under US drinking age) popping in an out, having their beer or the occasional meat dish .. Chris asked if the main waiter lady was in fact “Uschi” (she was not, Uschi has left the place a long time ago) …
Sunday
Drinks and snacks at Elios Cafe:
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The Italian riviera / beach thing is still something for me to figure out .. I recall from our trip to Bordighera last year that most beach front is taken over by commercial ‘we give you beach chairs for 15€’ places … but since it is not season yet, the beach is still free and with drinks you get nice snacks … Ritsu was trying the ‘Crodino’ .. which is kinda like orange with tonic water, but no acohol .. but seems to be popular around there .. we had seen that before in Cinque Terre …
Lunch: Le petit.
One of the many, MANY places along the beach that offers pizza and other stuff .. we chose it based on being semi crowded and semi in price … food was nice indeed, very kid friendly .. while I was in pizza mood .. i thought is was time for the ‘fritto misto’ .. the mixed seafood .. fried .. and it was pretty good .. definitely not good for my cholesterol … but yummy
Dinner: I was willing and able to drive up the hill to Final Borgo, the ancient village close to Finale Ligure
Part 1 : Ai Torchi …
What a fancy place (this has to be the fanciest place in Finale)… built into a 5th century olice oil refinery … according to reviews very good seafood .. BUT ..
We just felt that 3 adults with 2 toddlers (Cris and Eric were sitting out this one) were not in the right place … a place that charges 30€ for a main dish … 12€ for a single portion of dessert ..
I cannot say anything about the food .. because we left .. and the staff dealt very well with our impromptu excuse .. maybe they were happy to see us leave …
The place is very beautiful and looks like they really have great food .. we will try again in 18 years when Julius will drive us .. .. so
Part 2: Locanda di ‘Lo
The chef of this place has seen us before .. because we were playing around the church the restaurant is adjacent to .. and he was playing with the kids .. and he was happy to see us coming back for dinner …
Compared to what we have seen before … very family friendly, much cheaper (I had paid 13€ for the fried seafood mix for lunch .. now it was 8.50€) .. we felt way more comfortable .. but of course, at those prices, most of the seafood comes from the freezer … but .. the meat that the kids had was really great .. actually, overall it was very very nice ..
I would not call it an ‘haute cuisine’ place .. the waiter had a tough time keeping up and the wine glasses we asked for were the same as our water glasses .. but as a place you can bring your kids and have some great food, it totally rocked …
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Just a very quick greeting from our weekend trip to the Italian Riviera.
Finally the sun has come out a bit, not really enough to enjoy the sea yet, but running around the beach is lots of fun.
The trick is to not get caught by the crashing waves … or one tries to keep them back by pure will-power:
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This weekend we headed south to meet up with Chris, Cris, Lucca and 6 months old Eric ..
While the weather was not yet beach worthy, the kids had a great time (especially playing around those coin eating distraction machines) .. but goo that they can still have fun without anyone putting money in there ..
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In my ongoing tales of rediscovered pre-blog travel logue footage .. let me take you along the ride of my 2001 USA cross country trip .. again .. all was chronicled while traveling .. and it was a fantastic trip (well .. until we hit Chicago .. then it got a bit stuffy)
Beware, some of the links have not been fixed yet .. and some have been taken over by evil porn cooperations .. so .. be aware .
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