Our first tomato crop!

Our first time as tomato growers was fruitful! :-)

The four different plants have been producing tomatoes of all sizes and color!
I realized that one of the plants was called a "yellow currant tomato" - producing berry-sized, yellow fruits... I picked about a pound and we made an excellent pasta with some fresh basil, also home grown on our balcony. Very tasty!!!

Nymphenburger castle before sunset...

Close to our house is one of the castles with a large park, which used to belong to the former king Ludwig of Bavaria. It is a great place to jog, walk and sometimes just to take some pictures of all the ducks and geese... Carlo loves the place for his running regimen. ;-)

Biergarten on a Saturday afternoon

A couple of weeks ago, we met up with Katia & Nils (Katia is Carlo's russian teacher) to have a few beers in the obligatory beer garden. It was soooo crowded, but we found a table without problems. It was the right moment for a "currywurst" and a "weissbier". :-) We ended up in the mexican bar area, with sand and lawnchairs...

Nils and Katia

Fun with the local cows....

Few more shots from a dinner in Catania, Sicily

O.k. I am still trying to catch up with posting some of the pictures from our great visit to Sicily... We had a great dinner with Carlo's cousin, also named"Carlo" and his wife Colleen, before she returned to the U.S.. Both were visiting from Philadelphia. We also met up with Gigi and his girlfriend Raquele. She took us to typical sicilian cuisine type of place. The antipasti were enough to satisfy an army!!!

Need I say more???
Still smiling, but getting full fast!!! The heat was oppressive...


Not the place we ate at, but I looked at this cool sign all during the dinner!

Carlo and Colleen Prestileo

Carlo and Ines in front of the duomo, Catania

It was scorching hot that evening and this bride and her groom were on a fotoshoot, trailed by two photographers. I truly felt sorry for her in her huge dress... It must have been at least 40C or close to 97 degrees..

The statue with the little elephant on top-Catania's mascot. :)

Mounted police to keep the tourists in line...haha!

Coldplay concert - 29th of August

AWESOME!!! We had purchased tickets for Coldplay waaay back before Christmas and FINALLY we were able to go!! :-) The open air concert turned out to be artistic, bright, colorful and with the perfect clear sky, cool air and even the moon sheepishly gazing down at all the thousands of people. It couldn't have been better. From giant yellow balloons "dancing" over the crowd, millions of paper butterflies shot out of confetti canons, and free CD's being handed out at the end of the concert it really was an unforgettable show!!!!

The best of the night was a tribute played to Michael Jackson:"Billy Jean". We just found out that it would have been his birthday yesterday...

The guy next to us took this youtube video of them playing the song on one of the two small stages in the crowd. We were quite far from the main stage, but they played on this little stage right behind us, which put us right next to them. (If you listen closely you can hear me scream in the crowd!...:-)

Coldplay in Munich playing "Billy Jean"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKZX68x85XQ

Other Youtube videos:

Lovers in Japan: (Paper butterflies coming down!!!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27E835TZrXM

Strawberry Swing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhBtTutAzns

Last night in Sicily, dinner with friends

Our last evening in Sicily, we spent with some of Carlo's closest friends at a local restaurant. It was fitted with the name "Tischi Toschi", which is somewhat peculiar...but as it turns out this is what the people from Messina are called that go off to the north of Italy only to return with a "northern Italian" accent. :-)

The restaurant served typical Sicilian cuisine with a slight twist. (Pasta with eggplants, pasta with "Bottarga" (dried fish eggs), Backala, different dishes with meat and wild fennel, wonderful desserts and great olives and bread...



O.k. - believe it or not these pictures were taken BEFORE dinner! :-) The camera was doing some funky things as we had set it on self-timer. It kept taking one picture after another without stopping!!!

A few mor tries...

Tato, Natasha, Antonio V., Renato, Mimmo, Ines Carlo

A shot in the foot! Literally! Haha!

A few more... finally Mimmo is sent on the way to see what's wrong...

Thanks to photographer extraordinaire-Mimmo-we were able to stop the constant flashing!
Now, we were actually able to go inside and start our dinner!

DINNER:




Good friends, sicilian red wine, pasta, fish and dessert....can life get any better?

Some fun closeups of dinner...The food was waaay too good to even attempt posing for a picture!

The lovely Natasha.

Mimmo meditating....

The crema catalan was without words. For once, Marcello was speechless! :-)

Trying some of the dessert... serious business...for sure!



Antonio's frozen berry desert was also too good to pass up...

Renato saw it all pretty mellow...


Oh lala!!!

Tato & Natasha in "Tischi Toschi" heaven...


Yes, really, just married!


Good Bye!!!

P.S. the pages of the book, which the restaurant displayed outside their door, showed the area where we had all spent the day on the boat... We will be back!