Bardolino

A little charming town on lake Garda :) I might have fallen in love :)

Getting there is easy from the airport: you have to part with about 4 euros and after an hour on the bus you spot your hotel from the window and request a stop :) Mind you there might be some tense moments on the bus since you drive past parks like Gardaland and Movieland and god knows what else you had absolutely no idea existed and neither did your travel planner (read Mr. Special). Yeap on the hottest day so far you are sweating in a bus filled with people and forced to watch others climbing up stairs with their inflatables to go down the water slide -.- you get my frustration right? It gets worse for me :(

Bardolino is a small town and the lake is only about five minutes from our hotel. Perfect!!!! just need to find my bikini and spend the next hours in the lake. Problem... For some reason I can't find my bikini tops - I only have the bottoms -.- I felt like crying :( (PS! I still can't find them so I must've dropped them on the floor while changing in the airport toilet and rushing out since there was only two cubicles there and a HUGE queue :( FUUUUUUDGE!!!!)

This could've been me :(

The promenade in Bardolino

It was around 1 o'clock and we hadn't eaten anything yet. Mind you with this heat I didn't really want anything anyway but one's got to eat and I opted for a salad and it was perf!!! I was a bit surprised that it was laid out on the plate rather than mixed together in a bowl but who am I to judge. The ingredients were perfect and perfectly light :)

FOOOD

While sitting in our ristorante we spotted the ice-cream ristorante

And since they had fans spraying water mist on to people we decided it's the place to be and ordered a bounty flavoured ice-cream spaghetti. Mr. Special didn't realise it was all ice cream and not real spaghetti at first :D What could be better than sipping some cocktails and eating ice cream spaghetti while watching a couple of guys try and securely tie up their boat to the mooring station. I guess that's what they were doing... :S 3 people on the shore tried helping them but it just didn't happen :D

Streets of Bardolino

Cocktail time again :)

Who can resist and not order a tiramisu while in Italy?

To our surprise the town was still very much alive late at night (around 9ish). Most of the shops (tabacs and clothes stores) were still open, restaurants invited you to come and dine there were just as much people on the streets as during the day and even the little train was still running :) Yay only 1 or 2 euros a ticket we thought we might as well take a little trip :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Playlist

This month is a struggle again :( Basically I don't really listen to these songs at home but when they're on the radio I like them :D I'm still majorly crushing on my playlist that I made two months ago. ooooh a major music fail this month too. I basically forced Mr. Special to buy Now That's What I call Music 91. because the last one was a hit and we listened to it everytime when we were in the car and he'd failed to download it and put it on the cd.... There's literally only 2-3 songs we like though :( what a waste of money :D

I think I love every version of the Chaka Khan's song so this is no exception :)

Little mix - Black Magic

Fifth Harmony - Worth it 

would be way better if didn't repeat the same lyrics 500 times :/

Lean on

Back to the 90s :D

I loved this when I was a kid :)

Maarja - Sa ju tead

I am not proud of this :D 

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

It's getting hot in here!

So I got a week of from work and we decided to go to Italy (again!) and this time Milan and the expo were our final destinations. Now as many of you have some kind of a rainy expectation of the British summer then I must tell that it is TRUE- it's been cold and cloudy and rainy and blergh... so much so that Mr. Special wanted to take all his hoodie collection with him to Italy... even after I recited the weather forecast: 35C sunny, 37C sunny, 40C sunny etc. You just can't imagine that there is a warm place anywhere in this earth when every day the view out of the window is blurred by rainfall...

So guess who was extremely happy when stepping out of the plane in the 10AM HEAT (what is morning coolness?) without a suitcase full of hoodies? Oh he put up a fight at home but as always...

And yes this is mostly a weather report :D How delightfully English of me :) 

Monday: around 40 degrees, sunny (the day we were at lake Garda)

Tuesday: over 42 degrees, sunny (the day we decided to walk around Milan)

Wednesday: around 40 degrees, sunny (the Expo day)

Thursday: around 40 degrees, sunny (the day for Cinque terre)

Friday: around 40 degrees, sunny (the day that was spent in Verona)

Now I finally understand the all-inclusive lounging around the pool holidays. I've always thought that I'd be bored but in that heat (25C is my comfort level) we struggled to get out of the hotel and make worthwhile of our holiday... next time seeing that heat being forecasted you will find me by the pool working on my suntan ;)

Ps! I didn't even get nicely tanned because I was too afraid to get burnt so put on sunscreen all the time :( although the last days I wasn't very careful anymore... Where is my nice tan to show????????????? Unfair!

Ttyl ;)
Jazzz...

Llanerchaeron and Powis castle

So a long long time ago we thought we'd visit Powis castle and long before that Llanerchaeron.

I wish I could show you lots of pics but for some reason I've been so lazy at taking pics :( So I've searched and searched through my computer and decided to show you basically all of the photos I've taken :D

So first the hidden gem near Aberaeron: Llanerchaeron! And when I say hidden I really mean it since there is no sign at the last turn so Mr. Special literally made a snap decision this is it!!!! and nearly missed the turning downhill. My heart stopped thinking the next time I open my eyes we're in a bush next to the road... but no luckily he can drive and after a couple of minutes worrying we turned way too early (we were between fields :S) we finally noticed the fancy fence and soon after signs for the entrance and parking (which was surprisingly busy).

It's like an 18th-century Welsh gentry estate with an amazing garden and huge pond :) Now this is the kind of house I maybe want in my dreams :D a bit more realistic than the castles I usually dream of ;) For kids there is a spot the pig game in every room and I must say from the second room onwards I was hooked! The first thing my eyes searched for was the pig hidden somewhere.

The outside was even better I think with like a woodland park surrounding the huge pond and next to it a walled garden with beautiful flowers, mini-ponds and obviously their own vegetable patches.  But the best thing about the garden was the kitty!!! Oh he was so lovely! So nice and cuddly! I think I spent hours there just petting the cat. Then when we made our exit we had to go through the farm part of the estate and saw turkeys running around and pigs :)

Turns out I don't have any pics at all :( but google it :D

Anyway a couple of days later the three of us went to Powis castle about an hour and a half drive from Aber. My friend was spending her last days in Aber before moving back to Estonia :'( And since she's never really been out of Aber during the four years she lived here we decided to go somewhere further than just Ynyslas (where we've been a couple of weeks ago).

The thing that won my heart with Powis castle was the garden again! I just wasn't expecting that! It was huge and nicely maintained, just wow. The castle was amazing too obviously! They had volunteers in every room and the first one who greeted us really got into character and treated us like guests attending the dinner party. That whole volunteer aspect of the castle really helped us know more about its history and little details that we normally would not even had thought about. So more volunteers in these huge castles! Btw one funny detail: the volunteer said there was a lion carpet on the floor whereas it was clearly a tiger :D Yes we debated about quite a while (not with the volunteer obvs) while just admiring the carpet and deciding we'd never want a huge head (be it tiger or lion) on our floors...

The castle and the forecourt

There were two or three peacocks just running around.

One of them was admiring its reflection from the mirroring signs :D

A view downhill from the castle

The garden part which is like on terraces downhill from the castle.

The second terrace/level had a little rose house :)

View to the castle from the furthest point of the estate

There were winding labyrinth style paths in that "shrubbery" on the right side of the hill :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...