Little family selfie on the way back home.
Tag: travel
Casa Buitoni
We went on a team building retreat at Casa Buitoni last week. It was brilliant. Not only did we get a lot of good work done, but we also gelled as a team. We defined a mission statement, core values, a project roadmap and also worked out decision-making processes, org charts, team agreements and best practices. We also ate a cubic buttload of food.
More pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/casa_buitoni_sep_2013/
Casa Buitoni is located up in the hills of Tuscany along with the fields of tomatoes, wheat, vegetables, herbs, and olives. It serves as the symbol of Buitoni’s symbol of quality, commitment, and tradition. It was the house of Giulia’s grandson, Giuseppe, and it now serves as a company product development center. This is the place where products are created and sampled.
Soooo much food
As part of the team building we’re doing at casa Buitoni, we cooked our own dinner tonight. We made 2 types of pasta and some pizza. This was above and beyond the other courses we had. This continues the sinister plot to try and kill us all with massive quantities of good food.
Who the fuck steals deodorant?
I’m in Italy for a work strategic retreat. When I packed my suitcase on Sunday night, I packed some toiletteries, my phone charger and my camera charger in the front of my suitcase. I didn’t really give it much thought and checked my bag in at Geneva. I took lots of pictures the first day and tried to recharge my camera, but couldn’t find my charger. OK, thought I, I must’ve left it at home. Later that night, when I went to brush my teeth, I realised that my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and cologne had also gone awol. Now I could believe forgetting one item, but not the whole kit. A bent baggage handler must’ve scooped out my front pocket at the airport. Yay.
In brighter news though, the Italians are trying to kill me with mountains of delicious food.
How auto-correct can make your life interesting…
Current Mood:
Amused
My quest to find “something nice”
When I travel for work, sans Katy, I always try and bring her something nice back. The conversation I had by text with her today went something like this:
Katy: Got me anything nice?
Me: Does a kilo of iberico ham count?
Katy: Nope
Me: ok, I’ll keep an eye out, but the only thing I’m seeing so far is shoe shops and fashion for stick insects :(
— later —
Me: Hahaa! Success. Not only have I found somethink I think you’ll like, according to the female contingent here I have done very well. They seem rather surprised!
— EDIT —
I’m back home, and she’s seen it (and loved it), so I can say that I bought her a designer hand bag from Desigual:
I need a salad, STAT!
I now understand why, when a member of the Spanish Mafia comes back from a sojourn to the motherland, they eat salad for a week on their return to the UK.
Tonight’s dinner was a 7 course affair with enough booze to kill a horse. I had jamon and white asparagus, grilled prawns, octopus, croquetas, hake fillet with red peppers and a steak that was as big ad my face, then pudding. At one point the people around me were begging for a digestif to help them with the steak so the guys
out a liter of homemade Spanish grappa (which our group of alcoholics managed to polish off). That doesn’t even take into account the 1.5 liter bottles of red wine, nor the half dozen bottles of champagne.
Dinner started at 9pm and ended sometime after 1am. Excuse me while I go digest now…
Dear Bilbao
You’re a lovely city, the weather is wonderful but please, enough already! All it seems I’ve been doing for the last 36 hours is eat and drink!!!!! You’ve been very good to not kill me with my allergies but that doesn’t mean you need to try with volume!
Bobble @EMBL-Heidelberg
The Bobble that lives in my bag has travelled quite a bit. This is a picture from his latest jaunt, the winter 2011 EMBL council meeting in Heidelberg, Germany.
The lovely lady giving him a hand up is Catherine, the central pillar of the Staff Association without whom everything collapses into chaos and disrepair :)
Current Mood: Amused
What bean did in his summer vacation
I’m a very bad blogger :(
My mom came for a 10-day visit a couple of weeks ago and I’m just coming ’round to blogging about it now. Her flight came in on time and Katy picked her up from Heathrow. We spent the first day around the house, but the next few days were quite busy indeed.
We went to see visit Audley End (finally, after 3 years of living in Saffron Walden) but bean was feeling under the weather so we only saw the garden, stable yard and part of the service yard. We ditched the house tour because Bean was running a bit of a fever. Turns out he had tonsilitis, but you could’ve fooled us by his still-high energy levels… The horses there were huuuuge, but very friendly.
We went to Lakeside, where my mom spoiled Bean rotten with new coats and a scarf and hat from Next. He also got a big green tractor like pop has (bonus for him that it makes noise!). We also stopped at Ikea, where Bean had meatballs and my mom treated us to a few goodies of our own.
We went on a mad framing rampage. We’ve had stuff that has been needing framing lying around for years. We got some frames from Ikea and we also took most of the stuff to be custom-framed at a local shop in Shire Hill. Hopefully those will come back soon. We had about a dozen pieces to be mounted and framed and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.
We took my mom and Bean to Wimpole Hall, where we were so enthused by the farm that we bought a membership to the National Trust on the spot because we figured we’d be going there so often in the future (it’ll probably be a rotation between the farm and Scottsdales). Katy and Bean have been there again since, and Bean’s already gotten to chase some piglets and turn on a milking machine. It’s a really nice place to spend an autumn day and we got a really perfect day for it.
The gardens were beautiful (not something you’ll hear me say often) and I know that Mel will be proud that Bean scrumped his first apple (even if it was with the consent of one of the gardeners).
Mel, Pam and Stu came over for a day and we all went for lunch at Scottsdales.
Katy and I had a chance to have some alone time because my mom threw us out of the house twice. The first day, we went into Cambridge to shop a bit for things for Bean, Gaby and Antoine. We spent waaay too much money on children’s books and we had a really nice lunch at a french Bistro called Cote, on Bridge Street: herb chicken, steak frite, moules, calamari and wine :)
We’d planned on going to the Spanish mafia’s pub quiz that night, but I inadvertently poisoned Katy with some raw onions during the day and she didn’t feel up to going. I did get dispensation to go on my own though, and my contributions (Zara Philips and Chutzpah) were well received, even if we didn’t win. I got accosted by the rather elderly and inebriated sister of the pub landlord, a fellow expat, who spent a rather long amount of time telling me that life was great and the world was small. David won’t let me forget that moment. Bastard.
The second day, we went shopping for Bean’s bicycle. We’d been saying for months before my mom came that Nana would be buying Bean a bike, so we got him a little scooter and a proper bike with training wheels. He’s already gotten the scooter and will get his bike for his birthday. We also discovered that I can safely eat at Subway :)
My mom said that she ate very well, which makes me happy. I’d made gumbo one night, fajitas on another and we also discovered an italian take-away restaurant in Saffron Walden that can cater to my allergies! Shocking, I know!! My mom also had fish&chips, and had a few bites for my dad (who was, btw, seriously missing my mom)
All in all, I hope that my mom had a good trip. I know I enjoyed seeing Audley End and Wimpole. I think they’d be nice alternatives to our sunday plans.
Pictures online: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/mom_trip_sep_2011
Current Mood:
Happy