Italian Christmas & Birthday - Lights at Night

This will be the last installment of my Christmas break to Italy then I really must get back to crafting, blogging and making tutorials.

One thing that we did like in Italy is the lack of full on commercialism that we are subjected to here in the UK. yes there were decoration, some of the most fantastic lights I have ever seen and some of the best window displays ever. However, we both felt it was still much more low key that at home and I have to say...I preferred it! I was not followed from shop to shop hearing Slade singing their Christmas song, or having to dodge obstacle courses in shops which have too many Christmas items that you can not actually see or move.

The picture above is a street painting using pastels. We passed this first thing in the morning as it was being started and saw it marked out lightly with white chalk. Unfortunately there were too many people around to take a photo. Much later in the evening on our way home from dinner we came across it again. In real life it was fantastic!! The detail was unbelievable and the realism of the beard made it look like he would suddenly jump up out of the pavement.

This was the massive Christmas tree situated in the Piazza Della Repubblica and the lights were amazing. On the ordinary trees they net of lights go from the top of the trunk and go upwards to the top. It gives the trees a surprisingly different shape, quite nice really.

These lovely candle display stands were in the Duomo. Sophie remembered these from the last time visited.

The carousel looked lovely all lit up.

This is one of the side streets which had many lovely little shops. the shops are very tightly packed in, being very narrow but going back along way. we would only get about 3 shops to every 6 or 7 in these little streets.

Each street had a different style of lights.There were many wonderful shop window displays but not all of them could be photographed very easily. One evening when we were out on one of our walks after dinner Sophie and I found this Christmas Tree.....

Lots of mini woolly jumpers decorating the tree in the window of United Colours of Bennetton. I can remember when some of their advertising got them into a lot of trouble but this one was just right. Hhhmmm! I wonder if this would work with lots of little felt jumpers?

We did end the visit by going to Galleria degli Uffizi which Sophie was very good at looking round and asked lots of questions.

We took loads of pictures between the three of us as we bought Sophie a digital camera (partly to stop her from using ours all the time) and give it to her on our first day so that she could use it during the week. We visited, walked, ate, slept and shopped ourselves silly and then it was time to pack to go home. A brilliant holiday celebrating a special birthday were by we went to a lovely restaurant right by the Ponte Vecchio, and a wonderful Christmas. We eventually flew home as our plane was late due to snow etc in Europe then we drove home, arrived at 1am, fell into bed then the day after we recovered and opened our presents. On 28th we went to my in-laws and had another Christmas. New Year seemed to arrive very quickly and we had my friend and her daughter over to stay as her husband was working into New Year's day because he is a policeman.

I could go on for longer but I will not. I shall post next time some of the lovely gifts for my 40th including our need to go back to the Ponte Vecchio!

I also have an Italian theme giveaway for the New Year but also a late celebration of passing 400 post before Christmas, but missed it!

Take care and continue to keep warm.

xx