Midsummer Dream

You know those weekends where you feel like you’re in a dream and at the end of it you just feel like you’ve forgotten you work five days a week and have no idea how you’re going to survive on Monday? Yeah….I definitely had one of those.

Midsummer snacks!

Flower power!

It started off with Midsummer celebrations. Midsummer is a traditional Swedish holiday, almost as big as Christmas celebrated in the beginning of the summer with traditional food, dancing and flowers. I know what you’re thinking, “It’s not the middle of summer, its only the beginning!” but the Swedish are weird and no-one knows why it’s called that (well no-one I know anyway). So Anna, Dannie and I got into it full swing and made flower wreaths for our hair, got the chef Bruce to make traditional food and got everyone to go out on a drunken disorderly missions as that is what these holidays are ACTUALLY about.

Sys

So we started off at the Purple Bar in a Piazza in Genoa, they make really awesome cocktails and the place is humming with activity. Next we hit the Shot Bar. The boys got absinthe, which they couldn’t handle and the girls of course got marshmellow shots. They, give you a marshmellow on a skewer  then light some alcohol on a flat surface, over which you braai your marshy, dip it in the shot, consume then down the shot. It.Is.Delicious. We headed to Piazza Ferarri – slightly stumbling at this stage and hailed a cab. We were off to the beach front for the raucous part of the evening and Bruce got us nicely started yelling cazzo and vaffanculo out the window to passers-by. We headed to a new bar Sys and after a bit of haggling, Tom got us nice and sorted with VIP treatment: a table and a 1.5 litre bottle of Grey Goose and mixers that came in a sparkly haze to our dry mouths. After that was an epic blur of dancing and drinking and dancing and drinking until….uh oh, too much!! Made it home just in time though…

The next day was an early start and a four hour drive to Firenze for apartment hunting for Tom and Dannie for the end of the season. Sitting in a hot car with no air conditioning and no music is definitely one way NOT to cure a hangover. After the quickest tour around Firenze we were off to the countryside to stay at the Captain and his wife’s house for the night. Braaing ribs, watching hundreds of fireflies down in the valley and star gazing made the trip all worth-while. The next day was a late lie-in and a scrumptious breaky.

Firenze

My room in Firenze

But…its not over! We packed a picnic and headed for Pisa beach. It was packed to the max and you actually have to pay a euro each for a patch of sand, such a cheek! But once we hit the water, got some ice-creams and had quite a heated bat and ball match we forgot about all our cares and eased into the summer haze.

 But…its still not over! We made it back just in time for the England-Italy game, which normally I wouldn’t care about but Rubes and Al had money riding on it and I always love to see them squirm - mainly because they are always slagging off SA's sporting abilities. So when Italy won, I couldn’t help but laugh alone with the rest of the Italian fans. Don’t worry Rubes got his on back by ripping off his shirt and yelling: “We work on boats bitches”, (like it has something to do with anything) at the top of his lungs while standing on the bow. And with that a fireworks display erupted and we were mesmerized.  I swear I am not making this up. But come Monday morning it really did feel like a dream.  Sigh…back to toilet scrubbing I go. Until next time folks!