Sing Sing Sing

The past few days have been a flurry of competitions, rehearsals and evening concerts. The highlights have been listening to the European singing styles (so dramatic!), spending some time with Lara and meeting up with our previous au pair Maria! The poor girls and teachers are obviously tired with evening concerts often not starting until 9pm (assuming they start on time) meaning late finishes and early starts with little down time. The girls just scraped into the finals in 9th position out of 12. Yay! Well done for making it as there were no separation between all the various categories which made me wonder why have them at all in the first place?

The chaos that is an Italian organised rehearsal for the gala concert

The beautiful costumes from all around the world. The Taiwanese! I suppose they have an indigenous population?

The Hungarians

The Bulgarians who sang very strong and dark pieces

The finals and gala concert were held at the historic Teatro Verdi. I am glad to be able to report that the Filipinos won! The final concert of Opera arias and choruses performed by the contestants together would have been a lot more enjoyable if the theatre had been cooled by more than 2 lonely fans above the orchestra!!

Tomorrow we start our journey home and as I will be going straight to work...I will write some final thoughts now before this blog in most likelihood will be abandoned again for months before our next trip comes around. There were many blessings and opportunities to be grateful for this trip. First, simply the chance the girls have been given to perform at so many amazing venues. I do hope that they cherish these moments and realise the privilege. And as much as she drove me crazy at times, it was nice to spend some time with my mother and travel together while she is in relative good health. Despite her complaints, her joints held up well! The opportunity to enjoy Italy without crazy sightseeing cannot be undervalued. Wandering small streets at leisure, stopping for coffee and gelato and simply taking a nap when it got too hot was oh so nice! We were also blessed with good weather. Yes I know I complained about the heat but I only had to use my umbrella once the whole trip and that's not too bad at all! And with that, I end this chapter. Thank you Italy! Until next time!

Maria!

Picked up a second street urchin who was very happy to go shopping and eat gelato together

At the Disney Store

Getting ready for the gala concert at Teatro Verdi

Florence

Other than being absolutely drenched in sweat due to the heat, the transfer from Rome to Florence went smoothly today. Our base for our Florence stay was conveniently located and Lara's competition and performance venues as part of the Leonardo Da Vinci Choral Festival were all within an easy 10-15 walk.

The opening concert in typical Italian style was rather chaotic. The venue although gorgeous (14th century ex-convent) was too small even to fit all the performers let alone spectators. The performers were apparently called up to perform out of order which caused a lot of delay from shuffling of people in very packed spaces. The music though was wonderful made to sound even better I was sure with the great acoustics. Some choirs were just phenomenal. Some of the European choirs made me feel like I was watching Eurovision. It was simply awesome.

Spoiled by Oma

Let's take a picture in front of the Duomo

Another impressive church Basilica Santo Spirito

Lara was allowed to spend some time with us in between concerts and she made use of the opportunity to score herself treats, new clothes and money! We ended the day with an evening concert at Basilica di Santo Spirito. The string group played superbly, better than the other Australian contingent if I may say so myself...

Roma!

St Peter's Basilica, still as breath taking as the first time I saw it

The trains ran on time today! We took the cheaper option of a non-express train for a 4 hour journey to Rome. Our base in Rome was the relatively new Rome Glam Hotel, part of the same chain of Hotels to which the Venice Times Hotel also belonged to. Our room was spacious by European standards with a King bed and new modern fittings. Oma was delighted that the hotel was on one of the shopping streets in Rome and I believe I have worked my way back into her good books. She shopped without restrictions for a good hour (I may have partaken as well...) before we had to make our way to the Vatican.

Some shopping may have happened today...

You would think we would have been able to cope with the heat coming from Australia but we both struggled and so a taxi it was to St Peter's Cathedral. Unfortunately there was no escaping standing under the oppressive sun as we lined up to go through security to enter the Cathedral. The respite once in was greatly appreciated. It was a matter of waiting for the 5pm mass at the main altar where the girls would sing the liturgy. St Peter's even having seen it a few times remained impressive. The scale was mind boggling. Hearing the girls sing at such a an important Christian landmark was a privilege indeed.

Well done Lara!

Pymble Chorale. Well done girls! 

Today was the day that we finally succumbed...and had chinese food! At Mr Chow's! Despite my initial eye rolls, I had to admit it was nice to eat fried rice and Asian braised beef. I just hope my mother never reads my blog...

Off to Italy!

This trip seemed to have crept up on me but I was nonetheless excited that the time had come to revisit Italy NOT during the winter! My mother and I will be travelling around Italy for just over 2 weeks supporting Lara who is part of PLC's chorale and chamber strings groups touring Italy.

Finally! Green green Italy below us

Our 6am flight to Dubai was full but we were blessed with having a friendly and polite young man sitting in our row. The nearly 14 hour trip other being long was thankfully uneventful and I was able to complete 4 movies as well as snooze intermittently. I was worried about regretting not taking up Emirates offer to upgrade our Dubai to Milan leg from economy to business. Fortunately that flight was half empty and we were able to sprawl making it quite a pleasant flight. The $795 that I saved by NOT upgrading to business can now be channeled to my leather goods funds instead.

The only frustration on our travel day turned out to be immigration at Milan Malpensa. The line for non-European passport holders was horrendously long. We looked up in horror at the reason for this. There was only a total of 3 officers processing for immigration. After about 40 minutes, the 2 officers who were processing EU citizens were able to help out. Over an hour later, we finally cleared immigration and collected our bags.

Our transfer to Varenna was organised by the hotel and he was waiting patiently outside for us. We were delighted to see a nice big clean van to transport us the Lake Como region. The journey took 90 minutes and it was a struggle to stay awake. The driver was very friendly and we relieved as the ride cost 30 Euros less than any other transfer that we were able to get quotes for ourselves! 130 euros was a reasonable amount for such a long private transfer.

Our hotel was a small but quaint. Despite arriving at 1130pm, there was someone waiting for us and check in was quick. Our room was basic but clean. Despite the thunderstorm, we crashed from exhaustion.

Our big van for just the 2 of us!

Our room

With windows facing the town's Piazza

Father Daughter Dinner

Presenting...the Blues Brothers!

Theme for the evening was Hollywood

Happy Birthday Lara

Lara chose Frozen as the theme for her party. How hard can it be right?!?

Step 1: Make the cake

Correction. Decorate the cake. Thank you Costco for making big beautiful cakes already iced beautifully in white. With a little googling, I managed to find an easy recipe to make blue candy which was broken to look ice shards. Couple that with Disney Infinity figurines that double up as presents. We have ourselves a cake!

We need sugar. Lots of it

Blue food colouring to magically turn the candy into "ice"

Luckily mother-in-law has all gadgets to do with baking! Checking the temperature of the boiling candy

In goes the colouring

The mixture is poured out onto sheets to cool and harden

Starting to looking like ice

My lovely assistant...

Blue ice!

Thank you Costco for the piping the Birthday message....

The candy on the cake to make it look an ice cavern

Elsa

Step 2: Prepare the snacks

Once again Mr Google helped out with decorating the food we needed. Bottles of water were transformed into melted snow. Marshmallows and pretzels combined to make a "Build a snowman" kit. Home made popcorn in frozen blue popcorn buckets.

Healthy drinks

Do you want to build a snowman?

Popcorn boxes

Step 3: Gather the people

Step 4: Enjoy sing-a-long frozen at the movies as a group!

The family are ready

The princess is ready

Lara A and Lara B

Let's have cake!

Thankfully after a big morning and afternoon, Uncle Brian and Aunty Asha came to rescue and provided dinner. Beef pho! Yeah!

Preparing the noodles

The broth

Voila!

Musical Moments

Its that time of the year...concert time! We've had ballet, band, strings, choir, piano, plays...multiple that by three and that's a busy concert schedule! I shall not bore you with details of all but here are a few highlights. Or least highlights where I had obtained some sort of footage!

Lara playing the double bass as the fairy godmother, her character in the class play

Jonah just missed out graduation from Level 1 this year, but did complete Book 1 and thus was able to play in his first recital outside of his teacher's studio. For a moment, I thought he would decline to play as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. But play he did! Phew!

A very proud Jonah with his certificate

Lara and Elliot completed Levels 3 and 6 respectively and had the privilege of performing at the graduation recital at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I am so proud of all three children and looking forward to hopefully having all three play at the same concert next year!

The $300,000 plus Steinway concert grand at the East Recital Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Oh what a beautiful instrument! It made my children sound so good...

Suzuki Piano Graduation

Another year, another piano graduation concert. Congratulations to Lara who performed at the Opera House's Utzon room for the first time this year after graduating Book 1 and Book 2! Elliot also did well playing Chopin after graduating Book 5. It was a beautiful day for a concert for a family day out.

The sun is shining. The concert is over!

Tried to get a photo of all 3 children with no success

He decided later that he did want his photo taken

Having drinks as a family after the concert

The chips and wedges didn't last long