Savognin

For the second time this year I spent some time in the snow and the moutains. Together with our neighbours Antonia and I went to Savognin, a little village in the Grisons alps. It had been a while since we were on skis, but it all worked out fine.

I only took my camera to the slope only once, it's not super comfortable on the chairlifts and I was a bit scared to fall with it and either break the camera or my back (both didn't happen fortunately). We had a stunning week in the snow and I enjoyed skiing so much. I don't know if the skis I rented were particularly good but I felt amazing speeding down the snow again and again.

Feldis

It's already been a while but I started my year with a slightly longer yoga weekend in Feldis. This time I already left the grey city of Zürich on Thursday because the retreat started on Thursday evening with one of my favourite ways of doing yoga - a joint session between Katharina and Pascal Gamboni, a local singer who accompanies the yoga with his guitar and voice.

I shared my room with Eveline and thanks to her we had the luxury of our own bath and a stunning view over the snow and the mountains.

On Friday we started with an early medidation session and then 2 more hours of yoga. Then we had time to relax or to go outside and enjoy the snow and the blue sky. Of course we chose the second option, it was too beautiful outside to even consider staying in.

We took the chairlift up to Mutta and there we took the round trail which gave us so many amazing views to capture. We also walked down along the toboggan trail back to Feldis and I wished we'd have brought our sledges.

On Saturday the weather had changed and it was snowing quite heavily. We took it slowly in the morning but then I really needed to be outside, so I took a sledge and took the chairlift up the mountains all by myself. It was pretty adventurous, especially because I could barely find the trail in the fog but I felt so good to be outside.

My books 2018

I read a lot these last 12 months - 91 books, which is considerably more than in the years before. Last year I read 60 books, in 2016 I read 69 books, in 2015 I read 73 books, in 2014 I read 69 book.

I set my reading goal to 52 books again but I reached that number already in the middle of the year. I am not sure why I read so much. I knit less, I had two weeks of extra holidays, I was on sick leave for two weeks in June, maybe those are all factors that helped.  I never had a baisse all year, I basically kept reading all year long and when I started a good book I often finished it within a day or two.

There were quite a lot of rereads this year, because I was spending too much money for new books and also because I like reading good books a second time.

My favourites of 2018 were:

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The Winston Brothers Series by Penny Reid
Every Note Played by Lisa Genova
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Whisper Me This by Kerry Anne King
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Allie and Bea by Katherine Ryan Hyde
All We Ever Wanted by Emily Griffin
Burry Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

I loved diving into different lives, travelling along with interesting people and falling in love with handsome strangers ;-)

Beautiful fall

Life's been very busy the last few weeks. Ever since school started I had a lot of parent teacher meetings and I'm in the middle of the teacher evaluation we have every four years, which means a few visits in the class room and quite a lot of nerve racking while preparing the perfect lesson that will also work ;-)

So I was very happy to get an extra free day today. All our students were off to have a look at a profession, most went with either their mother or their father, but there were also other possibilites to spend this Zukunftstag (future day). This gave us a whole day of freedom.

I decided to go for a walk through the woods before heading to school (there is always enough stuff to be done even without students) It was such a great way to spend a bit of time, the colours were amazing and the sun was out. There were quite a few other walkers, mostly older people with dogs. I wished I could do that more often...

Massa Lubrense - Sorrento Coast

After the two nights in Naples we took the ferry to Sorrento. We only spent 45 minutes on the water and sadly there wasn't any space outdoors but it was still fun to see Naples disappear behind us.

In Sorrento we took the local bus, got off it too early so we had to walk along the coast with our suitcases for about 30 minutes (we could have waited for the next bus, but that didn't seem interesting enough. Still we were very happy to see our hotel for the next few days, it was quite hot and also the location was amazing.

From our room we could enjoy the sea and the view to Capri all day long and in the evenings we watched these stunning sunsets. We also went swimming in the pool and just relaxed. I tried to hike but I guess it's not an Italian concept, people in their cars were looking rather puzzled when they tried not to run me down while I was walking along the road.

On our last day at the coast we booked a boat trip to the Amalfi Coast. The guy at reception told us to go for the more expensive but also more exclusive prestige tour and he was so right. We spent the day on this small yacht with five Canadians, one guy from Belgium and one from Spain together with two Italian captains/tour guide and it was the best day of the whole trip.

 In the beginning I was a bit scared that I'd get seasick because the sea was quite rough and we also got really wet, but it was ok. We had a break in Amalfi and another one a bit later in Positano. Both of these places are very cute, steeply built into the rocks but also very touristy and busy. It was nice to visit but frankly the best part was to hop back on our small, private boat and drive off again.

We also had the chance to go swimming twice and the sea was so refreshing and just before we got back we had a final break for a home made limoncello. Yannick didn't actually realize that the limoncello is actually an aperitivo but he had fun drinking it anways. These four days next to the sea felt like the best way to spend a few days and I am super glad we went to the lovely Delfino hotel.

Naples

Quite spontaneously I decided that I didn't want to spend my sick leave on the sofa (I had to have an operation before the fall holidays and luckily everything went well and I feel fine) Instead I checked out airports that are within a two hour radius, in a place I'd never been before and with an affordable flight. I stumbled upon Naples and it didn't take long to make up my mind and book two flights.

We splurged on front row seats which gave us speedy boarding (I felt so weird boarding first) and quite a bit of leg room. After less than two hours we touched down in Italy (fortunately we didn't actually fly to Nepal which is what Yannick was expecting - I have no idea what they teach those kids in Geography ;-)

We were picked up by our B&B hostess at the airport and learnt right away that traffic rules are for tourists. In Naples nobody follows them, nobody don't wear seat belts, traffic lights are mostly ignored, you just have to dive into the middle of the cars to cross the street and it's totally common for four people to be on the same tiny vespa, everybody without helmets.

I found getting around quite tiring but also very interesting. The contrast between the run down houses, the badly kept up streets, the garbage and on the other hand all these amazing super old buildings was stunning.

It was also much warmer than I expected, it felt like another bit of summer with high temperatures up to 30 degrees. We took it slowly and had lots of down time in your B&B room and quite a few coffees and ice creams in between.

We stayed for two nights in Naples, then we left for four nights the Sorrento Coast and came back afterwards for one more day in Naples because our flight back left super early the next day. I am so glad that I felt confident enough to go away, it was so worth it.