We have a couple of hours drive from Milan airport to the resort outside Bologna. Our driver understands zero English and my Italian is nothing!! One hour into the journey, the girls are all sleeping and so far I have learnt all the numbers and about fifty words for daily use from our driver Renzo.

Now comes the fun part over the next seven days as I mix up all my newly learnt words and make a fine mess of it. Past experience has shown that actually these mess ups make for some memorable moments.

Already, I mixed up “amore” and “amigo” leading Renzo to believe that the owner of the resort (an old business and personal friend of mine) is my “lover” 🙂 (I was trying to say “friend”) 🙂

An Italian with broken shoulders automatically loses his power of speech!! Those grave “Si Si Si” just does not carry as well without the wild gesticulations with their shoulders and hands… 🙂

Finally, for some cognac to kick this pesky sniffles and then some sleep…

Nikita grabbed some juice, as many pastries as she could and settled down in a sofa chair, kicked her feet up in the Emirates lounge and declared “I can get used to this as my second home”. I felt great pity for her future husband 🙂

For visiting purposes, I am not the Europe kind of guy – I am the South or Central America guy. I have never been much into castles, forts, architecture, famous paintings… or for that matter anything else that has to do with long dead people. I love the beaches, mountains, oceans, forests and anything to do with nature. Plus they let you drink your wine more freely there 🙂

But here we are, on our way to Italy – I being completely outvoted by three girls in the house. On the other hand, I hear there are some nice bottles of wine there with my name written on them 🙂