Oh yes, oh yes, I’m still here. :-)

Well, I haven’t been writing for some days because as you know from my last post, I went to Italy. After coming back in the last Friday, we spent a lot of time sorting things up at home and I was particularly busy at work.

The week in Italy was great. I had opportunity to see some friends, but many of them I wasn’t able to contact. The hotel were we staid was wonderful, thanks to a friend that was able to get me some very low fares and everything went smooth and fine.

On the Thursday we went to my former home to load the car. We have folded the back seats and I was surprised by how much stuff entered in that thing. That car has a massive storage space and is certainly heavy duty. Even fully loaded it responds well and is still pleasant to drive.

We went back to the hotel on the Thursday evening just to eat something at the local McDonalds, take a shower and jump in the bed to sleep. At 4:30 AM on the Friday we were awake preparing to depart.

We went down to the check out at 5:00 AM, but the credit card POS in the hotel was having some technical glitches and it took some time until I was able to pay and leave. We left the hotel 30 minutes later.

The road in Italy was OK, but it was starting to rain and snow. Visibility was medium but the traffic was low, so it was possible to keep speeds above 70mph easily. At 8:00 AM we were already under the Mont Blanc, crossing the tunnel.

On the French side it was a very sunny but cold day. In the Mont Blanc itself we got temperatures as low as -16°C, but as it was not snowing, it was possible to keep the same pace as in Italy. I have then set the cruise control to 80mph and forgot it. For the next two and a half hours I just didn’t touched any pedal in the car, not changing the speed even for a second. Very few cars in the road and almost no overtake, except for a few Lorries.

We made two rather long stops, one at 10:00 AM for breakfast and another one at 1:00 PM for lunch. We had then a third stop for refuelling and a last stop in late afternoon for physiological reasons.

We arrived at the port in Calais at 5:00 PM (less than 11 hours and 30 minutes after our departure from Milan) and P&O Ferries gently changed our tickets from the 8:40 PM boat to the 7:00 PM one.

The boat trip went OK and not like our other trip in the way to Italy, as it was dinner time we were able to eat proper food. We made dinner on the boat then.

After leaving the boat I got the road to home. I did a slightly longer road to avoid the centre of London and the piece under extension work on the M25 London radial. We got home before 10:00 PM local time, though.

As it was too late to make noise, we unloaded only our bag, my Xbox and my wines from the car and I drove the car to the closed parking. We went to sleep and in the next morning we started unloading the car very early.

We passed then the rest of the weekend working on unpacking all our stuff, assembling some pieces of furniture that I had to buy to accommodate all the stuff we brought from Italy and trying to make our apartment liveable again, getting rid of all that mess… :-D

Now we have already arranged everything and it is our home again, but most important of all, we have all our personal belongings with us. I was missing it.

Changing subjects, today we went to a very modern and alternative restaurant near home. They serve some very creative food and as I was willing to try something new, we decided that that was a good shot.

I ordered a soup of orange with potatoes as starter and then a tangerine cooked duck with Chinese noodles and vegetables. Both dishes were exquisite and very different of everything I have ever tried. The duck had even pieces of tangerine in the sauce and combined with the vegetables and the duck itself, it gave the dish a very special flavour. Very tasty. All accompanied by a very strong and aromatic ale.

Well, I will finish this post here as it is being very hard to keep my eyes open and my brain is closing down its doors and shutting down the lights in a clear signal that it is time to go to bed. From now on probably the most part of my writing will not make sense (or will make less sense than the usual, if you prefer :-)), so, see you next time.

Cheers.