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Buondì.
Pasqua weekend was exhausting, albeit short. We drove to the coast in time for lunch on Saturday and – Easter blessing from above – Bug slept the whole way there! No noise but the hum of the engine and the whir of the fan from the broken air-conditioning.
Lunch was with the in-laws, the first time they’d eaten on their terrace this year, apparently. The weather was sunny, quite breezy, but still pleasant to be outside.
In the afternoon I took Bug for a walk to look at the sea, while Stefi helped her mum clean the flat, in preparation for the arrival, on ‘Pasquetta’ (Easter Monday), of relatives from Sweden.
Sunday was the big ‘Pasqua’ (Easter) lunch, of course, this time up in the hills, at a restaurant located at the end of a windy, perilous, narrow country road.
But once again we timed the car journey well, and so avoided forty-five minutes of angry howls of protest. Two out of two!
Lunch itself was one of these Italian holiday specials, a ‘meet and eat’ marathon. There were thirty-four of us in our party and we ploughed through various ‘crostini’, three different ‘primi’, two ‘secondi’ – veal sprinkled with ‘formaggio di fossa‘, which is a local-ish speciality, then a ‘grigliata mista’ – plus several ‘contorni’ (soggy roast potatoes, soggier boilded greens), and ‘piadina’ – another local speciality, which no one touched, being stuffed to the gills already.
N.b. If you’re unfamiliar with any of those food words, rather than heading to your dictionary, why not just copy/paste them into Google? That way you’ll get pictures, recipes, and so on, too. That’s what I do, anyway.
Dessert I didn’t bother with (couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to) but Stefi tucked into a large bowl of ‘mascarpone’. There were various Easter-looking cakes, but no hot cross buns (see the next N.b.)
Then coffee and liqueurs, so ‘limoncello’, ‘grappa’, and ‘nocino’, neither of which I would dream of passing up if offered. Tom (voice of EasyItalianNews.com) and I tried the limoncello and the grappa, as Stefi had promised to drive home. I’m not a big fan of walnuts, so passed on the ‘nocino’.
Of course it was all too much, took way too long, and cost €40 per person, so rather too rich for my holiday budget. On the other hand, there were plenty of lady relatives willing to entertain Bug for a bit. He didn’t seem to mind being cooed over and passed around like a parcel.
By about four p.m. we had to leave, so as to drive back to Bologna and prepare for the arrival of said Swedish relatives, who would be overnighting at our place on their way from Bologna airport to Rimini. And yay! Once again Bug slept the whole way up the autostrada. As did I.
N.b. Re. hot cross buns, olive branches, the end of Lent (which I was trying to explain to officially-a-Catholic Tom, who’d not heard of it before), yes, I KNOW Easter is supposed to be a religious holiday, so Christians, please don’t write in to tell me.
But, as I keep insisting, Italy is not a very religious place any more. I heard some bells at one point, and Tom got a chocolate egg, but besides that, it might as well have been Christmas or New Year: Italians get dressed up, jump in shiny cars, and go eat too much with extended family. The food doesn’t change much from one ‘festa’ to another, either.
Talking of which, after the marathon lunch, the Swedes arrived, and so I shook myself and prepared dinner, which was ‘tortellini in brodo’, more ‘piadina’, ‘mortadella’ (known to Americans as ‘Bologna’, apparently), salad, cheeses, wine, cake, and more coffee. Followed by chat, whisky, and eventual collapse into bed.
Boy, it was a relief to wake up on Monday with nothing more to celebrate than our online lessons shop’s Spring Sale (details below)!
The only snag being that Bug’s petting zoo was still closed. I suppose the keepers were sleeping off their own ‘Pasqua’s. So we went to the park, there to bark excitedly at ducks, geese, pigeons, chickens, and swans, and stare at other families with small animals to distract.
Holiday over, it’s back to the usual routine. Stefi’s at our Italian school, which is busy because of the holiday period, Tom’s back at college yawning through lectures and eating subsidised lunches, Bug’s, well… I wouldn’t know – he’s someone else’s problem from 08.30 to 16.30 each working day – and I’m on the computer, as usual…
Which reminds me, don’t forget the sale, will you? Details below.
A presto!
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2024 Spring Sale: Save 20% on One-to-One Language Lessons
Don’t forget the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com 2024 Spring Sale, when ends at midnight on Sunday April 7th.
Students of Italian, Spanish, French and German can save 20% on one-to-one language lessons via Skype or Zoom with a native speaker teacher of the language they’re learning.
With coupon code 2024-Spring-Sale-20%-Off , everything at our online store, NativeSpeakerTeachers.com, can be had a fifth cheaper than the advertised prices!
You could, for example, buy ten one-to-one language lessons, and so practice speaking or get help with grammar, while paying for only eight!
Browse lesson options and prices, not forgetting to mentally reduce the prices you see there by 20%, then to actually use coupon code 2024-Spring-Sale-20%-Off to save £££ on your order!
How to do that, exactly?
First make your selection from the one-to-one online lesson options and add them to your shopping cart with the ‘Add to cart’ button.
Then go to the actual shopping cart and copy/paste coupon code 2024-Spring-Sale-20%-Off into the box, where it says ‘Coupon code’, to reduce the cart total by 20%.
Press the ‘Apply coupon’ button, then SCROLL DOWN to verify that the CART TOTAL has been reduced by 20% (BEFORE proceeding with your payment…)
The coupon code is good until midnight on Sunday April 7th 2024. You can use it as often as you wish, with no minimum or maximum spend, but it can’t be used together with any other coupon code you may already have.
Questions? Why not take a look at our FAQ?
Then stock up on online lesson credits – at an unbeatable price!
One-to-one lessons via Skype or Zoom
Don’t forget coupon code 2024-Spring-Sale-20%-Off
Use it here: NativeSpeakerTeachers.com
N.b. The next sale won’t be until July, so a long way off!
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P.S.
And of course, don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news from EasyItalianNews.com.
The ‘easy news’ bulletins – published each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday – contain simplified articles with an online audio recording.
They’re free to access on the website, with no registration required. But subscribe (also free), and they’ll email you each bulletin as soon as it is published, so a helpful thrice-weekly reminder to work on your Italian reading and listening skills!
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