So S' autumn vacation rolled in- why does this school have so many holidays!!! And the hubby had threatened us with No vacation plans since he was all of out of leave. To be fair we had holidayed quite a bit this year, but with all of S classmates travelling out this week (so no playdates) and the weather not being that great i was not too enthused with having S home for 10 days and not going anywhere.
But luckily the hubby managed to do some jugaad and we went to Italy for 5 days.
First was Pisa. The leaning tower really does lean! The square where the leaning tower is located is beautiful, green grass and contrasting white buildings- there was the leaning tower, a cathedral and a musuem. The cathedral is beautiful from inside- large stained glass windows, and a unuque marble gazebo in the middle with statues of lions being killed. The hubby went up the leaning tower- children below 8 were not allowed so i took the girls to the Mcdonalds located very conveniently outside the square and they had their staple lunch of chicken nuggest and fries while the hubby did the climb. We could then go for a lunch to a place where we didn't have to worry about kiddie food and after much research on the internet we found a restaurant which was walking distance which promised authentic Tuscan food, but it was terrible and i got food poisoning in the evening!
Other than the leaning tower and adjoining square there really isn't much to do in Pisa, so we drove to Florence, only an hour away and went to the Accademia where we saw the original statue of David. It's an amazing sculpture - huge and the attention to detail is awesome- we could see the veins popping on his neck , and the tense muscles on his arms. Well worth the long wait outside!
The next day we drove to Rimini- a beach town on the other side of Italy. It was through hilly mountains and the drive took much longer than we had expected (i think we're spoilt now by the extensive tunnel system in Switzerland) and we reached only in the late afternoon. Our hotel was right by the beach so we immediately headed out to the beach. It was too cold to go in the water (it was off season by 2 weeks) but it was sunny and we had fun building sand castles, playing the playground by the sea and walking along the shore collecting pebbles. We spent two more lazy days at Rimini- beach in the morning, a heavy Indian lunch at the restaurant we discovered near the hotel, long afternoon siestas, evening at the hotel pool/back at the beach and late night walks eating gelato. The gelato was just too yum, the hubby, S and I hogged on them. My favourite was the biscotti flavour. Creamy chocolate ice cream with bits of biscuits in it. Heaven!
After returning to Zurich, we were lucky to have good weather. 5 continuous days of sunshine. No getting up early in the morning, rush to school (ok A still had school but we woke up just in time for her not to be horrendously late), pick up, activity etc. Just relaxing at home, parks in the evening- we did 3 parks in 3 days- Artergut, Sonnenberg and Zurichhorn, swimming over the weekend, ice creams by the lake. We even squeezed in visiting a Durga Puja pandal , something we had not even done in Mumbai. The last two days of holidays were again action packed. One day we went to the Zoo with a friend and her son- A had full day school then and i took S alone and it was so much fun to be able to spend quality alone time with S (i'm thinking about taking S out from school some Mondays when A is in school to spend some alone time with her) before my friend landed up. Then S and my friend's son went beserk-climbing rocks, jumping from the top, going on the highest slides and running all over the place. S had so much fun playing that she agreed to stay back with my friend and her son while i went ot pick up A which was a first since she does not usually stay with anyone unless she's met them at least some 10 times, and this friend (actually a relative who has moved here) she's met only twice! After i picked up A and went back we saw more animals- we spent a long time at every cage, because the kids insisted on playing at any interesting thing around, and we got to see stuff which we hadn't noticed earlier. In the cat enclosure, the zoo keeper hid four mice during feeding time and we saw the cat hunting for the mice. The cat kept sniffing and walking around, and finally figured out it had to climb a high perch and look under a rock to find one mouse-was amazing! We also got to see a baby monkey riding on the back of its mom/dad and that was really cute. The kids were quite amused to see one of the goats sniffing the butt of another goat, but luckily the goats didn't do much else!
The last day we had a playdate with S friend who was back from her holiday, and after that we went over to my friend's place in the evening where S was fed aloo paratha which she claimed loudly was so much better than the one I made. I guess kids are too honest!!
And finally i leave you with a photo of what the girls have been upto with their dad who they go to for their craft time of the day. This is a conference of herbivore and carnivore dinosaurs, built from pieces sourced from Migros (the grocery shop gives small packets of dinosaur pieces for every 10 CHF spent and we had a big collection of these which they kept pestering me to make with them!)
But luckily the hubby managed to do some jugaad and we went to Italy for 5 days.
First was Pisa. The leaning tower really does lean! The square where the leaning tower is located is beautiful, green grass and contrasting white buildings- there was the leaning tower, a cathedral and a musuem. The cathedral is beautiful from inside- large stained glass windows, and a unuque marble gazebo in the middle with statues of lions being killed. The hubby went up the leaning tower- children below 8 were not allowed so i took the girls to the Mcdonalds located very conveniently outside the square and they had their staple lunch of chicken nuggest and fries while the hubby did the climb. We could then go for a lunch to a place where we didn't have to worry about kiddie food and after much research on the internet we found a restaurant which was walking distance which promised authentic Tuscan food, but it was terrible and i got food poisoning in the evening!
Other than the leaning tower and adjoining square there really isn't much to do in Pisa, so we drove to Florence, only an hour away and went to the Accademia where we saw the original statue of David. It's an amazing sculpture - huge and the attention to detail is awesome- we could see the veins popping on his neck , and the tense muscles on his arms. Well worth the long wait outside!
The next day we drove to Rimini- a beach town on the other side of Italy. It was through hilly mountains and the drive took much longer than we had expected (i think we're spoilt now by the extensive tunnel system in Switzerland) and we reached only in the late afternoon. Our hotel was right by the beach so we immediately headed out to the beach. It was too cold to go in the water (it was off season by 2 weeks) but it was sunny and we had fun building sand castles, playing the playground by the sea and walking along the shore collecting pebbles. We spent two more lazy days at Rimini- beach in the morning, a heavy Indian lunch at the restaurant we discovered near the hotel, long afternoon siestas, evening at the hotel pool/back at the beach and late night walks eating gelato. The gelato was just too yum, the hubby, S and I hogged on them. My favourite was the biscotti flavour. Creamy chocolate ice cream with bits of biscuits in it. Heaven!
After returning to Zurich, we were lucky to have good weather. 5 continuous days of sunshine. No getting up early in the morning, rush to school (ok A still had school but we woke up just in time for her not to be horrendously late), pick up, activity etc. Just relaxing at home, parks in the evening- we did 3 parks in 3 days- Artergut, Sonnenberg and Zurichhorn, swimming over the weekend, ice creams by the lake. We even squeezed in visiting a Durga Puja pandal , something we had not even done in Mumbai. The last two days of holidays were again action packed. One day we went to the Zoo with a friend and her son- A had full day school then and i took S alone and it was so much fun to be able to spend quality alone time with S (i'm thinking about taking S out from school some Mondays when A is in school to spend some alone time with her) before my friend landed up. Then S and my friend's son went beserk-climbing rocks, jumping from the top, going on the highest slides and running all over the place. S had so much fun playing that she agreed to stay back with my friend and her son while i went ot pick up A which was a first since she does not usually stay with anyone unless she's met them at least some 10 times, and this friend (actually a relative who has moved here) she's met only twice! After i picked up A and went back we saw more animals- we spent a long time at every cage, because the kids insisted on playing at any interesting thing around, and we got to see stuff which we hadn't noticed earlier. In the cat enclosure, the zoo keeper hid four mice during feeding time and we saw the cat hunting for the mice. The cat kept sniffing and walking around, and finally figured out it had to climb a high perch and look under a rock to find one mouse-was amazing! We also got to see a baby monkey riding on the back of its mom/dad and that was really cute. The kids were quite amused to see one of the goats sniffing the butt of another goat, but luckily the goats didn't do much else!
The last day we had a playdate with S friend who was back from her holiday, and after that we went over to my friend's place in the evening where S was fed aloo paratha which she claimed loudly was so much better than the one I made. I guess kids are too honest!!
