inside my sparkilicious world
Been so tired almost every other night. Though I may not be the most hardworking of the lot but I did my fair share of snowboarding the last 2 days when the weather got better. Here are some shots to remember the holiday by:
Where will we be going in 2014? I wonder..
Stopped over at Florence where we spent 2 days with the wedding crew before the weekend of more merry-making continues.
Florence is truly beautiful and never fail to take my breath away.
We spent the last two days in Palermo – the capital of Sicily. Here’s what we did during our short visit to this city which I thought the old co-existed along with bits of the new.
After settling into our hotel, we explored the city on foot and stopped by at the Teatro Massimo for some touristy shots.
Day two of our visit saw us checking out these attractions:
The Piazza Pretoria with its captivating fountains and gleaming white marbled statues.
Visited the Capuchin Catacombes of Palermo, they are namely burial catacombs where mummified bodies lined narrow passageways. Sounds kinda creepy? It really was but an eye-opening experience.
Photos are strictly prohibited so nothing to share on what I saw inside but I did put on a skull-inspired tee for this trip.
Also headed up to Monreale to visit the famed church where golden mosaic tiles adorned the interior of this abbey.
Last but not the least, we feasted on local delights such as the canoli – a Sicilian delight of puff pastry filled with Ricotta cheese. Sounds absolutely sinful but yummy too with every bite.
And with that, we left our friends and are now headed to Part Deux of our holiday where more merry-making with the Man’s friends continue.
Spent the last 2 days in the beautiful sea-side town of Taormina which is a small town situated along the east coast of Italy.
The drive from Catania to Taormina was rather treacherous. The tiny and winding roads definitely tested the Man’s driving skills while I just sat behind shutting my eyes and praying that we don’t do too much damage to our rented car.
But when we arrived into this bustling tourist town, we were greeted by this amazing view!
The town is pretty compact with a couple of key attractions that we covered within the next day.
One of the most celebrated ruins in Sicily is the Teatro Greco famed for its remarkable preservation and beautiful location.
One can only imagine how grand and magnificent this theatre must have been before it was ruined.
Next, we took a boat ride out to visit the famed blue caves.
I’ll let the rest of the pictures do the talking for it was simply breath-taking!
Looking at the clear blue waters made us almost wished we brought our diving gear so that we could check out what lies beneath those azure blue sea. But we didn’t of course.
And now we are on to our final leg of our Sicily trip for the next 2 days in Palermo. It does look pretty interesting and I can’t wait to share with you all. So stay tuned! 
Friends joined us day 2 of our holiday and we took a little side-trip to visit Mount Etna.
Still an active volcano, Mount Etna lies along the east coast of Sicily and is one of the most active volcanoes in the world.
Unfortunately when we took the cable car up there, it was too cloudy so we couldn’t really get a good shot of the mountain.
See what I mean?
Photos that we took near the crater were much better. 
After almost 20 hours of travelling, we finally arrived at Catania to start our first leg of the trip.
I thought I charged my camera but turned out I didn’t.. So am sharing with u guys some snapshots taken with the iPhone.
Close encounter.. Plane almost couldn’t land at Catania.. When it finally did, the passengers applauded loudly.. I hadn’t realised that it was that dangerous until the Man told me.
After checking in and freshening up, we went out to check out the town.
Loving the gorgeous blue skies! Weather is pretty good too!
Thank goodness for free wifi!! I’ll continue to update when I can, so stay tuned for our Italian adventures.
I should be all excited about an upcoming holiday to Italy: a wedding, my birthday celebration, catching up with some old friends. But with a new portfolio that I had just taken over, I couldn’t help but feel that the timing is a little wrong to be relaxing and chilling while the rest of the colleagues are hard at work helping to cover my duties.
A usually organised me would have by now planned out my holiday wardrobe for the 14-day break that we are taking. But this time round, the frazzled me has taken control and spun me out of control. With less than a week to our holiday, I tried to the best of my abilities to get into the holiday planning mood. But unfortunately, the naggy and sinking feeling of how to get through my pile of work has somewhat zapped me of my enthusiasm. I feel bad actually for the Man has keeping his cool and doing most of the planning. If I may add, he is seriously good at all this planning (ie: where to go, what to do, where to stay) while I am better with planning the food picks.
And on the last weekend before we go on our holiday, what do I do? I try to get into the mood by ‘beautifying’ my nails. Doing my nails somewhat puts me in a happy holiday mood and hopefully the rest will just fall into place.
Frivolous, I know.. but that’s just me. Hehe!
So, tell me. Do you have any pre-holiday rituals?
eat | travel | style & everything in between
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