Happy New Year from Sicily

Phase 2 of my Christmas holidays: I leave for Italy, exactly speaking for Sicily.

The day after Christmas, as foreseen, I went for some shoe shopping. I needed new black boots as my current ones are somehow out at the moment. This way I could give my grandmother (who is too old for walking around looking for presents) also the feeling of not only giving money, but that it's actually used for something. If another pair of shoes are something necessary is actually something men and women could discuss about now for ages.

Anyway, these new boots had to fit now also in my suitcase because I wouldn't come back home before travelling back to Oslo in the beginning of the new year. However, I successfully managed to fit everything in.

So the next morning, on Tuesday 28th of December, my mother and her husband drove me to the airport. And there I was again: at Cologna-Bonn airport where I just had arrived few days ago.

Now I was on my way down to Sicily.

Actually, Marco and I planned to spend New Year at some other place, somewhere in a big city maybe. But it was difficult to find a place that was accessible and connected with flights from Catania or Palermo and to Bologna (for Marco) and from Cologne-Bonn or Dusseldorf and to Oslo. London turned out to meet these prerequisites, but a trip to the British capital would have turned out to be far too expensive at that time.

So in the end it became Sicily.

I had my (direct) flight to Catania. I even arrived together WITH my luggage :-) Upon arrival I took the shuttle bus which brought me in 2,5 hours southwards to the coast town of Agrigento, home town of Marco.

I was so happy to see him again when he picked me up at the bus terminal there. We hadn't seen each other since mid October when I was in Bologna.

We spent the next days visiting some friends and just hanging and joking around, getting filled by his mum cooking or with great pizza out in some restaurant with friends. 

The last day of the year was dedicated to the preparations of the dinner which was held at Marco's parent's place. In the evening his relatives came over and the whole evening was characterised by a looooooot of good food and a lot of card cames - quite a traditional thing to do with the whole bunch of family and friends during the festive days.

At midnight the new year is (mostly) traditionally celebrated still with the family. Only after clinking glasses and exchanging best new year wishes the younger generations buzz off, meeting up with friends either for playing or to some discotheque or something else.

Marco and I wanted to go to some concert hold in town, but until we made our way out of his house it was already so late that the concert was already over. We joined some friends in the city centre for a while. By about 3 a.m. however, we decided to go back home. Tomorrow we will be flying back north to Bologna.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you!