The Unexpected Haircut...

Clari likes to play Hairdressers a lot, and we've played it many times with various brushes, flowers and hairclips and she once informed me that she wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up (although I've got a feeling Giorgio wouldn't be too happy with that decision). However when we play it mainly revolves around her insisting on being the customer so I brush her hair. When we swap, my turn doesn't usually last very long, and then she's back on the little blue plastic chair telling me that her hair needs to be 'as soft as a pillow'.

We were playing this game when Matt was round, only it was just the two of us as he was in my room doing some work. It came to be her turn again and I switched to sit in the little chair. She started off brushing my hair and twiddling with it and whatnot. Then she told me to close my eyes and cover them with my hands. I did so, but as you've seen before, it's always a dangerous thing to do. I peeked through my fingers and saw her leaning over to her little table. She turned and saw me peeking.

"Close your eyes!" she cried. I closed them again.

I was thinking.. what was at her little desk that she was going to use? She had some headbands over there and some clips maybe. I imagined her using some felt tips to give me some crazy rainbow highlights...

She came back behind me and fiddled with my hair for a little bit. Then it went very quiet and (still with my eyes covered), I heard the quiet sound of scissors cutting through hair. A feeling of horror swept over me and I leapt up and turned around to face a surprised Clari.

"HOW DARE YOU!?" I snatched the piece of hair from her hand and she started to cry. But I didn't care, this time was different. She was not allowed to do things like that.

I went downstairs to find Giorgio. I wanted her to get a proper telling off, something I've not yet seen happen. She doesn't get punished often (to be fair, I've not seen her properly punished at all yet). He came upstairs and we found Clari hiding in her bed. At first he misheard me and he thought I had said Clari had cut some of her own hair. Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

Three quarters of an hour later, we left her room. She wouldn't apologise to me so Giorgio said she couldn't continue playing until she'd come up to me and said a proper apology. She did, eventually, about another half an hour later.

Thank god I have long hair and she'd only cut a bit from the back. I dread to think how it could have ended.

Milano

I realise I haven't posted anything for a while.. literally not since Matt left and I probably should write at least a little something about when he was here! Hehe.

So yeah, well we went to Milan a couple of times, and somehow the jammy dodger brought a whole week of sunshine with him when he came. Literally, we had rain the week before he came and then the sun disappeared as soon as he left, but it was between 20 and 25 degrees whilst he was here. Not too shabby I guess!

In a way it was perfect, the weather was good and hot and even though Dominga had to got to Rome and then Milan to work for most of the week, Giorgio was pretty decent about how much I had to work.

The first time we went to Milan was the Sunday - it was a whole free day for me and the weather was boiling. We caught the train from Stradella to Voghera, then Voghera up to Milano Centrale (which was a nightmare, but no one came to check our tickets and we were joined by an Italian-speaking woman from Moldova who was going the same way as us and insisting on making conversation with me, in Italian, nearly the whole way).

We caught the metro to the Duomo.

Pretty big..

Being a Sunday, Milan was packed. There were so many people; tourists, businessmen, bloody persistant street sellers. We milled around, with a basic plan of finding some lunch (pizzeria, of course, getting a gelato and seeing a few sights. The general concensus was, if in doubt, we can just chill and eat. Eating is a wonderful way of passing the time, especially when you're in Italy and they sell sweets, massive pizzas and massive gelati....

We went into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which is possibly the most expensive collection of shops I've ever seen, bar the Tretyakov Drive in Moscow (I mean, they had red carpets laid over the snow from the carpark to the shop entrances so the customers didn't get their feet wet. Come on now).



(For some reason there were some tourists jumping on the floor where that woman is taking a picture so conveniently in the photo)


We wandered the streets, scouting out the prices of the pizzas on the street-side restaurant cafes. It's crazy how much more you'll pay for a pizza if you want to buy one in Milan compared to in Stradella. I mean, in Stradella the pizzeria charges something like €4-6 for a margherita, whilst in Milan they were pushing on the €8-10 mark. But you know, when in Rome and all that...



Falling victim to an awkward eating photo..


The Castello Sforzesco was at the end of a long flag-lined street, with a huge fountain in front of the entrance. It was full of marching bands who played throughout the day, marching up and down in different coloured uniforms.



Behind the castle was a ginormous grassy park; Parco Sempione, which was filled with people. We managed to find an empty patch of grass and chilled in the sun.

Cheeky selfie (on Mumma Way's request)

San Siro stadium was too far out for us to visit in the time we had, as it required a fair few metro stops and then a bit of a walk. (Bearing in mind we had no map until a few hours in when I found a tourist information centre and asked - in rather poor Italian I have to admit - where I could find one).

We caught the trains back at the end of the day, to be greeted with a severeal course meal when we got home as the Casanova's had friends round for dinner.