November Reads

Yay! Tomorrow is the 1st of December, I really love this month and it has nothing to do with the fact that it is also my birthday at the end of this month.

I got through 4 books in November, which was my goal and as you can see one of them was quite thick.

City of Heavenly Fire is by Cassandra Clare, it is the 6th book in the series The Mortal Instruments. It finishes off the story of Clary, Jace and the world of Shadowhunters. The first book was made into a film but it did not do so well at the box-office so it doesn`t look like anymore films will be made. It is Young Adult fiction but I enjoyed them all!

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke, I got this book at the book swap I go to once a month on Fridays. It found it quite amusing at times but am glad I did not buy this book. As you can tell for the title it tells the story of one year living and working in Paris.

Playing with the Grownups by Sophie Dahl was really a good book and I enjoyed it a lot. A coming of age book about Kitty and her mother Marina.

Finally The Winter War by Philip Teir, this book is set in Helsinki, Finland. I like books set in different countries, more the better in fact. I found this review in The Telegraph about the book. Just be aware it tells you the ending! (spolier alert)

I have my next bunch of books for December, I also joined the library in Horgen so hopefully will cut down on the number of books I buy. But I do so love to buy books though!

Good reading everyone! Any good tips for books to read are always welcome!

Photo of the Week - Peace

So this working week is finished and good riddance to it! This was taken at the Rote Fabrik, it seems a good one to put up considering all the terrible stuff that has been happening in the world.

Plans for the weekend entail a trip for the day to Stuttgart with Alessio and then on Sunday at the cinema to see the final installment of The Hunger Games. While Alessio will go and see The Good Dinosaur with a friend of mine!

Wishing everyone a great Friday!

The Harem, Istanbul

The Harem is situated in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The Topkapi Palace was one of the residences of the Ottoman sultans for almost 400 years (1465-1865). The world harem in Arabic means "forbidden". To visit the Harem you have to pay an extra entrance fee, but it was certainly worth it.

The Harem had 400 rooms and in it lived the wives, slaves and concubines of the Sultan, also the children and servants and the only men allowed were black eunuchs. Once the women were in here they were not allowed out, there were up to 800 women imprisoned here.

As you can imagine you cannot visit all the rooms but some of the rooms you can see are the Sultan`s bedroom, the apartments of the Queen Mother and the courtyard of the Eunuchs. The place is full of amazing tiles, mosaics, fantastic furniture and doorways.

The Topkapi Palace is one of the big tourist sites in Istanbul and you really need at least half a day to take it all in.

Bits of Madrid

My sister and I usually try to have a long weekend away each year, this year we went to Madrid. I had already visited this city but about 17 years ago, so I was quite happy to go again.

We visited all the major sites, the Royal Palace, Prado Museum, Buen Retiro Park, Plaza Major, Temple of Debod, Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Market San Miquel and a few more sites.

We also took a cable car ride to Casa de Campo park, it gives you great views of the city and the river Manzanares and some bridges too. We had a great idea of once we got to the park we could walk back to the city. This was clearly not going to happen as it looked a lot farer to walk back than we thought, so we took the cable car back. In all honestly not really sure if it is worth a trip, the views are great but not breathtaking!

I think I am safe in saying that our visit to the San Miquel Market was a hit, it was full of great food and drinks. I did a post on that so if you want to see what is on offer, have a look!

We had a great long weekend and as usual it was great to see my sister. We plan to visit Ljubljana in Slovenia for our next trip but that is not for quite a while.

Photo of the Week - Graffiti Artist

This is from last Saturday, Alessio was very interested in watching this artist busy at work. The guy even asked him if he wanted to do some drawing, Alessio politely declined!

Rote Fabrik

Saturday afternoon saw Alessio and myself at the Rote Fabrik (Red Factory) I parked the car a bit away and walked there by the lake. There is a new walkway over the lake from the area where the Restaurant Seerose is situated. It means you can walk from there all the way to Zurich by the lake, it will be a nice walk to do.

In the meanwhile we wondered around the Rote Fabrik, Alessio played at the playground and we looked at all the street art. There is a restaurant called Ziegel oh LAC, we had a look inside and it looks alright, but we didn`t eat anything.

Colour Gourds

Like possibly many other people, I have been watching the news since I woke up this morning and heard about what had happened in Paris over night. My thoughts go out to the families and friends of the people that have lost there lives in these deadly attacks.

Photo of the Week - Sherlock Holmes

Back in September while my parents were visiting we did a day trip to Reichenbach waterfalls, Meiringen and the Aare Gorge. The town of Meiringen is famous for Sherlock Holmes, as are the waterfalls. There is a museum about him and these statue is situated near to the museum. We did not visit the museum so cannot say if it is worth a visit. I can say that the town of Meiringen was very nice and we enjoyed walking around.

Weekend Happenings!

This weekend was quite a busy one including the Friday which I think was the busiest day of them all!

Saturday started off with another early football match for Alessio at 7.45am, the night before we were invited for dinner so therefore I was feeling a bit more tired than usual. The match was not a great success for his team and yet again I will not put up the score as it was worse than two weeks ago!

In the afternoon Alessio had a birthday party and I took advantage of the free time to pop into Zurich and get some Christmas presents for my family. As usual there was the flea market which will eventually go indoors when it gets really cold!

Sunday I went to see the new James Bond film Spectre, which is really very good! Beforehand I meandered around some parts of Zurich which I hardly ever see! The super weather we are having is just amazing considering it is November, so it was lovely to enjoy these areas of Zurich!

Hope you all had a great weekend! And a good start to the week!