We're back in Lucca now after having a wonderful English Christmas with my sister and her family and my auntie, cousin and his family, I think that is right, it all gets complicated. There were seventeen for Christmas lunch, we had it in a marquee in my cousin's backyard, fortunately it was heated. The spread of food he and his wife put on was amazing and we had all the trimmings with Christmas tree, lights, drinks, Christmas music and we all even received a present! The night was even finished with fireworks, something we are not allowed to do in Australia! It was a brilliant way to finish off a great day. Boxing Day saw us back there again to eat the leftovers for dinner after we had been for a walk in Bradgate Park, a wonderful piece of English countryside and everyone was out there with their families, a lot included the dog, it was great to see. While my sister and her family were heading north to Edinburgh for new year, Julie and I stayed around Leicester visiting another aunt and having dinner in some of the great English pubs in the area, we also did some walking in other parks and again they were full of families with or without Rover, but all enjoying getting out, fantastic. We also treated ourselves to a movie, Sherlock Holmes, most enjoyable. We were making the most of being in an English speaking country, we even stocked up on magazines to read over winter! Eventually we had to leave and head back to Italy to sit out winter, so we packed ourselves into the Ryanair plane, along with LOTS of other people, there is no seat allocation on Ryanair, they don't even have enough overhead locker space to cover the number of seats, crazy stuff, nothing like we are used to in Australia and I don't think Australians would put up with it either. Now back in Lucca we are having rain and cool days with very cold nights, not too bad, yet. Back in England they were have a very mild winter, or so they tell us, we had quite a bit of rain and day temps up in the double figures some days, but the nights were cold. We were very pleased to have a hire car, the first time I had driven in nine months!