The Simple Pleasures

Milan is a city of style, fashion & money, but it's not la Dolce Vita. Outside the tourist friendly centre, it's a city set up almost entirely around industry and business, meaning in an Italian context, it's a bit of a munter...

Luckily however for the Milanese, and myself, the Alps are only half an hour away
and last Sunday we found ourselves among the mountains, lakeside and basking in 25C sunshine in Lecco (pictured above).

It was a day of simple pleasures with pizza & cold beer in the sunshine before a visit to the gelateria & a promenade stroll. The grey-haired sunworshippers were out in force too, occupying every possible public bench and casting suspicious eyes upon the groups of bikers that had converged upon the town. In fact the day's highlight for the geriatrics was the sight of a young girl chasing her motorcycle helmet down an embankment and ending up face first in the lake. Wrinkly smiles abounded...

The rest of the week was relatively standard, work, traffic, fucking up with Italian etc etc...But a couple of little culinary beauties were also offered up. Firstly was the discovery of a Californian Bakery (www.californiabakery.it) which promises, admittedly at a hefty price, some fine toasties & sweet nibbles. I would never normally fork out €7 for a BLT sandwich but the prospect of crispy bacon and normal bread was too tempting.

The second delight was a gift and as such sat much more comfortably with a Scottish budget. One of the benefits of being a fantastic teacher isn't only the linguistic progress of your students but also the presents that they give. This week I added home-made Italian salami to my list of appreciative gifts and learnt the words for "pig fat" in the process, potentially useful vocabulary? I think so!

However, despite anatomical references on facebook to a horse, the salami was devoured within 24 hours and I'm now left wondering if any of my students have a pizzeria...