Today is the 'dreaded' day; another year, another period of reflection and anticipation. I was just looking through Facebook, at the 'memories' section, where I could see posts from previous birthdays, and firstly, it's hard to believe that it's 2 years since I celebrated my 60th with a wonderful party in Gabiano, Italy. I know [...]
Category: Italy
Where did that holiday go?
It's been 3 weeks since we got back from our wonderful break, so what better time to go through the photos, and relive those precious days, wishing we were back there. In addition to our trip to Lake Como, we had some other great highlights, culminating with the transition into my next decade. In this [...]
A Lake Como Birthday
We've just returned from a wonderful  2 week Italian holiday, based at our home in Gabiano, and to make it extra special, the break spanned both of our birthdays - my milestone was to come later in the stay, but Melanie's birthday came during our first week. I wanted to do something memorable to mark [...]
Morning Mist
As I stood and watched the mists slowly rising this morning, I wondered what view was more beautiful that this - Hal Borland We are back at our Italian home, in Gabiano and enjoying some wonderful October weather. The surrounding hills however are shrouded in an almost constant mist, and whilst I was initially disappointed [...]
Home for the Holidays | Part 3, Out and About
Although we love being in Gabiano, it's also great to get out and explore the surrounding area, there are a number of really lovely towns within an hour of us, including Asti and Vercelli, both of which we've visited on previous trips. For this visit however as time was limited, we decided not to travel [...]
Home for the Holidays | Part 2, Discovering Gabiano
I've gotten into the habit in recent months when in a new place, of waking early, and heading out for a long walk to explore and take photos in the early morning light, and this trip was no exception. Although we have visited Gabiano several times previously, I'd never really walked around the area, especially [...]
Home for the Holidays
Being based in the Middle East, the major public holidays are centred around the Islamic festivals of Eid al Fitr, and Eid al Adha. The first of these, Eid al Fitr occurs at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and affords us a few days off, which this year we decided to take [...]
Doing things the Italian way
As we approach the end of our week in Gabiano, it seems appropriate to think about what we have experienced, and learnt. The great thing about staying in our own house, rather than a hotel is that we are really immersed into the local culture, and more importantly, we get to mix with the wonderful local [...]
