Bomb shelters!

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Geo: 46.1445, 8.72654

Again, we had a quiet morning – after some school work, Steven went down the mountain to Porto Ronco to help Martina with her computer, and the kids and I walked around Ronco, taking photos and having "an explore", as Matthew terms it, before meeting Nonno and having an iceblock. Then, we had lunch with Zio Marcello – despite Steven's instructions that we were to not accept any lunch invitations, it was so much easier to say to Zia Gabriella “si, si grazia” than to think of all the Italian words to decline politely with a valid excuse!

My little girl is so good - she politely ate the sausage that Zia gave her at lunch, then asked "Daddy, I know that "corda" means tail in Italian - do I even want to know what animal's tail we just ate?" It was actually "cordagin", a rich sausage sometimes (but not this time) made with blood. These kids are eating things that they never would have dreamed of, only two months ago!

In the afternoon, we headed to Tenero, where Barbara (ex-wife of Steven's cousin Tino) lives with the children. We have always got on very well with Barbara, who speaks great English, and we really want the children to build a friendship with Taira and Matteo (same ages as G and T). It was a lovely afternoon with the kids playing very well – Tom played “ice hockey” on the pavement, and Georgia played with the big girls – they were very kind and when they realized she couldn't speak much Italian, they got their German-Italian dictionary to communicate with her (if only she spoke German!). The boys were playing pingpong downstairs, in “how you say, the room where you go when the bombs come” – Tom thought the 2 foot thick door was a little unusual. Apparently, all new houses in Switzerland (built in the last 50 years) have one!!! This is definitely a very different country to our own!

A quiet night at home, with Nonno and Nonna, before we head off to Miranda's wedding in Italy tomorrow morning.

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