James & Vilija

What is language?, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Enough said really… Co-Creation is what (I think) we should all be aiming for.

Well after a long time we have put some of the best photos from our wedding up on flickr for all to see. There are some brilliant shots of everyone and they really show how much fun everyone including us had!

At the moment there are 120 photos, so you can either browse through them by clicking here or see a slide show by clicking here.

If by chance you have any good photos from the day we would love to see them. Drop us a line and we can work something out.

Feel free to download a copy for yourselves by clicking the “All Sizes” button above the photo. You can then use that to print or if you want to you can print directly from the internet by following these instructions.

Well, the lady birds are getting closer and people are arriving in fact we are flat out.  We iced our cake today and I swear I will forever appreciate the work involved in getting a fruit cake looking as pretty as they do.  I awarded myself a D, marks for effort the only thing holding back an F.

We are getting closer and closer to the end of our time here in Italia.  Vilija finished work on Monday last week and I on friday.  Its a strange feeling, though I am very thankful to have the time to hang out with people as they arrive.

For those in Australia wanting to have a drink with us, if you are near a glass to champagne at 6:45pm on Friday,  fill it up and have a BIG swigg for us!  By then the carefully managed stage show will be in full swing (shortly later I plan on joining it swaying )

We are off to the Maldives and Sri Lanka for 2.5 weeks afterwards, then back to Italia to say ciao ciao and then back in Oz towards the start of June.  We will try our hardest to get some photos up this weekend.

In the mean time, here is our jaunt to Monaco lastWednesday.

See you soon.

Living here in Italia has shown us that Italians are amazingly generous and friendly… once they know you. Like in any other country, when you wear the camera, bum bag and hat that screams TOURIST you are fair game.

Even given our best efforts when we go touristy we travel expecting to be ripped off and are suprised when we aren’t. As such we have complied a rough guide for people comming to see the beautiful people and sites of italia. Read the rest of this entry »

Two weekends ago now, James and I went to Florence, the second time for me, but first for him. We again stayed at Hotel Cestelli and had a great time there (Say hi to Asumi and Alessio for us!). By the end of the wedding I think they’ll have met most of our family and friends!!!

We came to Florence for a few reasons, the main being that James hadn’t been, the other… to continue the never-ending hunt for wedding shoes. To cut a long story short I found the shoes That left us with plenty of time to visit a number of museums, and to take some nice long walks. Read the rest of this entry »

A very quick post to tell you about some very random things that have happened recently:
1. It snowed in the outskirts of Genova last week - yes in March - Spring!!!! Ahhh, global warming!!

2. Last night, close to midnight, we’d just come home from the cinema, and all of a sudden we heard these huge explosions! We looked outside and were treated to the most spectacular fireworks display on the Port that we’ve seen in years. We have no explanation as to why we were treated to this display, its not a national or local holiday, so ??? But here are a few pics.

We’re off to Florence this weekend so that should be GREAT

We’ve been pretty busy over the last few weekends trying to get more sightseeing in before our time is up. Two weekends ago we finally made it up north to Brescia where a friend of ours (also from Melbourne) is living. Marco (who we spent New Years with) moved to Brescia about 3 weeks before I came to Italy so it was high time we visited. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the next tip in our “Don’t be an Eel with Energy” challenge.

Leading on from the last post regarding your personal environmental footprint I have recently come across a few articles that try to establish the total cost of everyday objects.

The first is a quick analysis of the “true cost” of imported bottled water performed by a Sustainability Engineer and MBA Pablo Päster. The analysis calculates the total amount of water used and green house gases emitted to import bottle to the United States. Whilst the numbers won’t be the same for other geographical areas they do go to show you how much impact little things can make. From the article

The total amount of water used to produce and deliver one bottle of imported water is 6.74kg (5kg + 20g + 1kg + 720g)! And the amount of GHGs released amount to 250g (93g + 4.3g + 153g), or 0.25kg, or 0.00025 tons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Life has been busy recently so it has been a while since we have updated the blog with what we have been up to.

Starting with the weekend before last we had a dinner with about 8 of us in the name of learning to cook “Italino”. A few weeks before this we had been talking with Chiara and Ottavio about a Risotto that we had made. The recipe we followed was a little strange, for example you added the cheese at the beginning. It turned out the Chiara had seen the same recipe and agreed that it was unusual. As such she kindly offered to teach us how to make a “TRUE” Italian risotto and hence the purpose of the evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the next tip in our “Don’t be an Eel with Energy” challenge.

The interesting thing that I have observed recently is the HUGE increase in media exposure environmental issuse have received. The new awareness of human activity is brillant but it does not actually change anything. Actions do make a difference, even the smallest change multiplied by 3 billion becomes huge.

One thing to understand is actually how many resources each and everyone of us uses. Our environmental footprint so to speak. There are many different ways to estimate your footprint. Amongst the easiest are the following websites. Read the rest of this entry »