It's been rather wet here today… again! And also foggy. No beautiful days for over a week. Yesterday evening I got soaked through to my undies and today I have a bad sore throat. I had plenty of hot broth and tea with honey during the day, and right now I feel a bit better. I have no fever, just an headache, so I hope to feel better soon.

Alas, I couldn’t go out for dinner with Zeno and our friends tonight. I am waiting for hubby ‘cos I am very curious about the menu. The restaurant they have chosen is supposed to have good seafood.

Christmas decorations and lights are already all over the city centre. Crazy! It seems like it starts earlier and earlier every year. The lights will be switched on the 14th of November. That day there will be a farmers’ market with local products, a children’s fun fair and a spectacular fireworks finale. Looking forward to it!

Bonfire Night has been nice, but the fireworks display we saw yesterday wasn’t has spectacular as the one of the previous year. Zeno tried to capture a few fireworks on camera, but we weren’t in a nice position, plus we were too close and couldn’t zoom out more.

Hope everyone will have a lovely weekend! Keep smiling…

Guy Fawkes Night is tomorrow, can’t wait for the fireworks! Fingers crossed for a dry weather! This is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Here's a bit of history. In November 1605, the infamous Gunpowder Plot took place in which some Catholics plotted to blow up the English Parliament and King James l, on the day set for the King to open Parliament. The men were angry because the King had treated them badly and they didn't like it. The story is remembered each 5th of November when guys (made with straw, newspaper and old cloths) are burned in a celebration known as Bonfire Night.

Days seem so short now that the sun sets around 4:30 in the afternoon. At least at 7:30 PM, when the fireworks kick off, it will be dark enough to enjoy a good show.

All the rain that we have had in last seven days has taken away most of the leaves that were on the trees. So no more nice-looking, autumn-colored trees around here. We missed our chance to take nice autumn photos. Everything is getting ready for winter.

Today two little birds, all wet by the rain, arrived and stayed on our windowsill for a few minutes. We didn’t rush to our camera (strange, isn’t it?), but just enjoyed the presence of these two little creatures until they decided it was time to go.

Yesterday night we didn’t feel like going to sleep, so we watched Passengers, starring Anne Hathaway and Patrick Wilson. We liked it very much even though it was an unusual story. Don’t know why the critic was so harsh with it.

In yesterday’s entry we told you about the new shop with handmade chocolates that opened not far from our home… well, we couldn’t resist! So we got home with some samples.

Unwrap me…

…eat me…

…love me!!

We’ve been deserting our blog lately ‘cos of a problem that has been finally fixed, so here we are at the beginning of November, hoping to be more constant with our posting.

This weekend it has been raining all the time so, except for some unavoidable errands, we decided to devote it to total relax. Since Blockbuster was running a special offer, we rented five DVDs. We watched two of them on Saturday: Monsters vs Aliens and What just happened. The former was hilarious as expected with a bunch of funny and well designed characters. The latter was supposed to be “the funniest comedy in ages” with a “brilliant Robert De Niro”, but we found it pretty boring.

On Sunday we watched Hotel for Dogs, a very funny movie with loads of canine stars. We also watched Coraline, a strange but intriguing story. This movie was made with the stop-motion technique and we really enjoyed the bonus features of the DVD about the making of the film. It’s amazing how many artists worked to create models, scenes, and puppets, and also how much work to create 24 frames per second, and each frame was taken twice (two different positions of the camera to obtain a 3D effect).

The fifth movie is Passengers and we’re probably going to watch it tomorrow. It’s supposed to be an intriguing and thrilling story. Let’s hope so!

The previous weekend we’ve been going out a lot. We actually started on Thursday night when we went to the inauguration day of a new chocolate place that has opened just around the corner from our condo. They serve different types of coffee and delicious handmade chocolates. Needless to say that we went back on Saturday morning for breakfast!

On Friday night we’ve been to a Lebanese restaurant with some friends. One of our friends was born in Lebanon so we followed his lead and tried all the dishes he recommended. We enjoyed almost everything, especially the starters (we all shared 15 different ones).

On Saturday night our neighbors invited us to go with them to a special dinner (a mushroom night) at the Scot-Italian association in Greenock. There were different dishes with mushrooms, but also other things. We met a lot of people and we really had a good time. We came back home pretty late, but luckily we could sleep one hour more, since that weekend we switched from the summer time to winter time. Our friends in the USA have switched this weekend instead, lucky them for one more week of light!

On Sunday we took some time to recover from the previous hectic days.

What else… oh, yes! One of our French friends told us a funny thing happened to him a few days ago. One of his neighbors knocked on his door and he opened it to check what it was about. The neighbor asked a question in a very strong Glaswegian accent, so our friend asked him to repeat the question a bit slower. The guy looked at him quite puzzled and exclaimed “Never mind!” and just left. Our friend still doesn’t know what his neighbor was asking about. Isn’t that a bit upsetting and quite hilarious?

Tonight we’ve seen a shiny full moon in the sky. It didn’t last very long because it has been covered pretty soon by some clouds, but we enjoy what we can. Did you also have the chance to see it? You can see a capture of our lump of cheddar on Flickr.

Better say goodbye now, we don’t want to give you an overdose after such a long abstinence, LOL! Have a happy November!