New Years Eve and New Years Day

One of the many many rooms in the palace

Alisha and I doing the waltz in the grand ballroom

The marble staircase in the palace, a bit big!

Hey,

ooh o i had to buy some throat lozenges today.....and my head feels like a brick. o well i'll survive.

On new years eve we went to the Royal Palace. Amazing. Mum you would have loved it!!! We got to go through and look in all the rooms. It is about 800 years old and massive! exquiste details! It had lots of ornaments, paintings and furniture inside which would be worth alot!! wouldnt mind living there myself.

After the palace we went to start the big new years feast and boy was it ever! we started eatting at 6.30 and didnt finish until 11.30. it was ten courses long and that is no exaggeration! i have never eatten so much in my life, i was in pain at the end! Alisha had to stop on the 2nd dish, Danae and I soldiered on. I was impressed with myself, i dont know how i did it!

starter 1 = Some kind of Italian spinachy stuff with olives

starter 2 = seafood pasta with shellfish

starter 3= seafood salad with octopus and calamari

starter 4= a vegetable and anchovie salad

plate 5 = baked cod stuff

plate 6= seabass fish

plate 7= Deep fried fish

plate 8= Eel

plate 9= Zucchini and Spiniachy stuff in a batter

plate 10 = fruit and chocolate.

And before all of this i ate a fish head. we also had lots of home made wine and more small desserts after. These Italians can eat! the food just kept on coming.

At new years Italians have a thing for fireworks and home made bombs. There are stalls and stalls of fireworks on sale and some that probably couldn't be sold in NZ! we were walking back from the palace and there were people everywhere lighting fireworks, some so powerfull ur insides shook and car alarms went off. and this was at 4pm! So we began to understand why we werent allowed out side at midnight for 2 hours because thats when it gets bad, it sounded like we were in baghdad! but it was awesome looking across and seeing fireworks for miles, people shooting guns in the air and mini bombs going off, it was just a rumbling sound for ages. nothing i've ever experienced before! Our friends lit a few fireworks, and roman candles, when it went off i got a bit of a fright and poor Alisha ended up with my champagne down her front hahaha. It was a very different new years from what we are used to but very enjoyable. They are much more family orientated here at new years with big feasts and exactly how you picture it, big family, noisy, very loud and animated and lots of laughing, singing,and dancing! It was a lot of fun, we ended up playing a few rounds of italian bingo...i had no luck though but Danae did!

Went to bed at 4am, woke up at 12pm. Woke up still full from last night. But theres no rest, we got up had a shower and got ready for another big traditional italian new year feast. 2.30 we started and 6.30 we finished. this time only five courses, and they called it lunch! Didnt really feel like having more but i got through it! we had pasta and more seafood, stuffed squid, beef, goat, and dessert. These people must have bottomless pits as stomachs! Thanks to them, we will be spending more on food for the rest of the trip because our stomachs are ten times bigger!

so right now im having a bit of a rest, and hoping that at no time soon will they be saying dinner is ready!!!hehe. the food is really really good though!

xoxox