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June 4th 2009

Published: June 4th 2009

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Penscott

Visitors

Alma's place was crawling with lizards, but their skittery buggers and I didn't get many decent shots.

Trieste to Italy

So we are off to Aunty Alma’s place in Ivrea (near Aosta and kind of between Milan and Torino), we are going to spend 4 lovely days, chilling out and doing nothing. So we got on the train in Trieste 14:30 and started our journey, we did the following transfers: Trieste to Veneto Menstre to Milan to Ivrea and finally arrived at Alma’s about 20:30. We walked from the train station up the hill, to which Scott kept saying to me, “ it is all training”, grrr… I think walking up at hill in 28 degrees whilst carrying 30+ kilos is not training but torture. We were greeted at Alma’s as per normal with one of those warm hugs, I love Aunty Alma’s hugs!! So we took our bags to our room and then were given some fantastic news that cousin Marita, Lindsay and her boyfriend Gary were coming the next morning. So we went to bed and slept in the next day which was well deserved. So around 1pm Larry picked up Marita, Lindsay and Gary and we all sat down had a chat and then ate some yummy home made cooking. We popped over to

You're my butterfly

Actually this is Pen's photo, I was pretty impressed, it was taken in Alma's garden.

Larry & Anna’s place to use the internet quickly and then the rest of the night was sitting out on Alma’s balcony playing guitars, reading and chatting about the family. On Wednesday it was all hands on deck. Scott & Larry were removing trees from Alma’s place and I mowed the lawn with her new fantastic mower. Scott got the weed wacker out and trimmed everything to perfection. I did think that Larry & Scott were having too much fun removing trees because I bought them over a beer to quench their thirst as they went rolling down a hill on top of each other giggling like little boys. Who would have ever thought ripping trees out of the ground ( by hand ) could be fun!!! It must be the crazy Fagan in them! That night we had another great home cooked meal and Larry, Gary, Scott & Lindsay played poker.

Next day we caught up on our emails etc and then walked down town to get a gelato as it was a beautiful day. When we got back, Larry let us borrow his little beast of the car and Gary, Lindsay, Scott and I went to the

Me butterfly for sure

This is my butterfly, shame I couldn't get the bee in focus!

lake for swim. We used our underwater camera for the first time and it worked fantastically. Oh yeah, and the Hells Angels were in town for some function/gathering and they were all swimming down the lake with us also. Scott drove us back to the house (briefly on the wrong side of the road!) and we got changed and Lindsey, Gary, me and Scott walked back down to the town for pizza at one of Alma’s favourite restaurants. We bought Gelatto after dinner, I had coconut which was fantastic, and Scott had apple, refreshing so it seems. Then we got Alma an ice-cream cake and sung happy birthday to her and went on to play Gim Rummy until 2:30am. Great night!!!

Next morning we had to post some stuff and then get ready to leave to Switzerland. Larry Lindsey and Garry drove us to the train station ( we missed one train and just made the next ), we thankded Larry for driving us, said our goodbyes and then jumped on the train to Milan. When we got to Milan we had to buy tickets at the customer service desk for Locarno which is where Victoria ( Scott’s Cousin

Gary and Lindsey

My cousin Marita's youngest daughter, and her boyfriend Garry...his band is Humanzi so check em out!

) lives. Whilst we were waiting for over 30 minutes in the line (and missing our train!!), a riot basically broke out as there was 3 service people who then went down to 1 person with 30 people waiting to be serviced. The Italians were yelling, screaming and waving their arms in the air. The police were there also, I must admit I was pretty angery also because we missed our connecting train to Locarno Scott’s cousin Victoria had to wait longer to come get us…doh! We finally got to Locarno, a little bit later then planned….next up…Switzerland.

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