The blog drops off....but things are still happening!

Having a beautiful home for the time, and making all the essential changes to living in a home has had quite an effect. Non more so than on the blog. When travelling, the blog became an easy way to record and relive the key moments of the day, whilst remaining quiet and hushed to allow the children to get off to sleep. However, home life has changed that. We now have the dishwasher to load and unload, the fire to keep going, the bath to run etc. and the quiet time that was once really needed is not quite the same now. Therefore, the blog has taken a little back seat as other distractions have taken over. It shall return in full glory I'm quite sure once back on the road in January!

In the meantime, things still have been happening. Jasper and Maya have continued with school at times, much work has gone into prepping Christmas here; I think that will require a separate post. In addition to all the normal stuff, we now have a hire car and are able to trounce about in that. We have clocked up nearly 700km already in our little Corsa! Granny has arrived from Axminster via her marathon train journey to spend a week with us.

She is in a beautiful hotel in the old town of Monopoli, which is a town that has a wonderful heritage to it. It has caused much excitement here having a 'known' person in the ranks. Therefore there has been a full on session of 'show and tell' and I have a feeling it could last for most of the week. 

There has been daily walking, lots of card games, with Jasper and Maya learning and playing well a family card game called Racing Demon (essentially a game of patience where you can build on other peoples' decks of cards). There have been trips to Alberobello again to the markets, Ostuni to see the white city on the hill, the Roman ruins outside Monopoli visited twice, more painting done, lots of clumsy Italian spoken, a bit of cycling done, a bit of running done (Monopoli half marathon completed), and much digesting of what is a truly beautiful part of the country. 

True to our word though, the blog will continue to fall silent over the Christmas period as we wind up to get our return journey going again in the new year.

Ed