We arrived to Bauru the night before Christmas Eve, pretty late, and ended up crashing at Kay’s cousin’s house before heading to Pirajuí the next day.
Brazilian family is pretty much the best thing ever. They are extremely friendly, generous, and love to please. The whole family just wanted to feed and entertain us the whole time! We had such a blast enjoying time with the family, even me with my almost-no-Portuguese-skills. 
Also, since it was my first time coming back as a celiac, the family had prepared ahead of time, all of them, and every single house we went to, someone had gone out of their way to buy or prepare gluten free food for me. It was really, so sweet.
In addition to the food, they knew I couldn’t drink beer, but that I like caipirinhas, so I started getting the nickname “Caipirinha Kaitsch” which is how they pronounce Katie. It sounds really funny and basically one of the cousins would yell, “Caipirinha Kaytsche!!” at 10am and by 11am, someone was putting a drink in my hand.
I couldn’t complain. 🙂
We had lots of family dinners, enjoying Christmas Eve and meeting tons new people that I hadn’t met or didn’t remember from my 2010 visit as Kay’s girlfriend. I also loved when I was handed random, cute babies to hold. 🙂
Brazilians are loud, talkative, and jovial. It’s always a good time! And hilarious even if you only understand half of what is being said.
Kay’s little second cousins were funny too. I’d last seen the girl in the polka dot dress when she was just a baby, but Kay has been to visit both her and her plaid shirt brother several times since then. He is the one who knows how to speak Portuguese and all, but for whatever reason, they thought I was hilarious and at the end of the trip, they were hugging me goodbye and giving Kay the cold shoulder. 😀
I think they just liked me because I couldn’t tell them off for making trouble. 😉
We got to celebrate Manu’s birthday and I was marveling at finally seeing the house I’d seen pictures of on Facebook for years and years.
I got to try brigadeiros!
Also, how much does Kay’s cousin below on the right look like him?? 🙂 
It was really cute to see him and Kay together again. They look like brothers more than Kay’s own brother does! 🙂
So many sweets!
Also, the weather made me just want to pack and move to Brazil and have my own patio and pool with hot weather. Ahhhh.
Pão de queijo from Kay’s aunt. 🙂
Below was the little playhouse that Kay’s uncle built his grandkids. He was so crafty, he showed us all the things he builds around the house and it was incredibly impressive. 
The family was also sweet enough to set us up to participate in a small exchange on Christmas eve. They thought of everything!
On Christmas itself, we headed to the farm where Kay’s mother was born and raised. It was an emotional experience, because I had always imagined Helo showing me the farm herself. Originally, we were planning to spend a Christmas holiday in Brazil together, and I’m really sad that that never happened.
The land where she grew up was beautiful, and Kay was also filled with emotions as we walked through her history without her.
Some of Kay’s other uncles were also interesting, funny guys, like Tio Oswaldo.
He likes fixing up old cars and had a VW on the property he was taking care of as well. He took us around for a little tour.
Tio Oswaldo also told us a story about an anaconda snake that was living in this lake. It’s illegal to kill anacondas (good Lord, why??) but the snake would go around and eat dogs and animals and things, so the farmers got together and something may have happened to the snake. I still didn’t want to swim in the lake anymore…. :O
Driving through Pirajuí on Christmas day, we headed to the first celebration of the day.
What is more perfect on Christmas Day than a churrasco get together??
When we weren’t gorging ourselves, there was always the pool.
And back at home, the family was so nice to even have gluten free pasta for me!
And jello! Which is kind of a Brazilian thing… we’ve had Brazilian jello waiting at home to be made for ages, but Kay is not a fan, so I haven’t made it yet.
More photos with the family. I could see where Kay’s mother got the photo taking from. Brazilians love family photos… and for once, Kay was happy to take them! 
Christmas night!
All the love!
Ahhh I love this little cousin baby… so cute! I wanted to take him home. 🙂 
It was such a big, happy family moment. Kay and I were both so happy to be there.
On Boxing Day we headed somewhere else for a family reunion from another side of the family with a party with like 150 people. It was nuts! They were even roasting whole pigs!
It was a little hard for me at the reunion without Kay, if he would leave to go to the bathroom, I didn’t know almost anyone there and the people I did know, I couldn’t communicate with, but I managed to get through the night without too much social awkwardness. Here’s a photo of “some” of us!
Soon it was time for us to leave, which meant leaving drinks.I had been nick-named “Caipirinha Kaytsche” by now, after all.
We decided to go wild and try the different flavors of caipiroskas as well, like kiwi and passionfruit. I still like normal caipirinhas the best!
We headed out to Rio de Janeiro more stuffed than ever before, and I left feeling like I had finally started to get to know Kay’s Brazilian family a little. It makes me look forward to all the moments I’ll see them in the future!
Everyone was very friendly and engaging and Kay is really looking forward to what the next twelve months will bring. Only two more weeks until he leaves!
We were a little tired, maybe Kay more so, but it was a lot of fun to meet and get some local tips on what to eat. We also enjoyed our first pisco sours of the trip.
The guy traveling around Peru was too tired to stay up and meet us when we arrived in Lima, but we managed to catch him in Cusco the day we got back from our five-day trek to Machu Picchu. We were also pretty tired then after having trekked for so many days, but we were starting to get used to go-go-going with little energy and a lot of things to see and do.
The shop was called 
The tiramisu was pretty good, moist, but the apple cake was even better because it was warm. Still, with only two pieces of cake and a coffee, I was not really satisfied. Kay just ordered the focaccia and coffee and together we paid €26. Venice is not cheap!
We stopped for more coffee in another square later on to soak up the sun and I ended up snacking on some of my gluten free snacks I’d brought along.
For dinner, we went to 
My pizza was fine and I did not get sick eating it, but even the ingredients on top seemed pretty mediocre.
I was most disappointed when I ordered tiramisu for dessert and it looked exactly like the tiramisu for breakfast. Obviously it’s the same frozen brand, but All’Ombra didn’t defrost it very well. I could even hear the microwave ding in the background, but there were still frozen chunks of ice in the cake.
For breakfast on Sunday, we went to a grocery (Thank God!) and bought some absolutely delicious meat and bufala mozzarella.
That with espresso from the moka pot supplied by the landlord (yes!!) we had an amazing breakfast supplemented by some gluten free cake we found in the grocery.
Ahhh cheese. So good!! So fresh!
Kay and I were both impressed how many gluten free items there were in the grocery. Many brands that we don’t know here in Switzerland.
We had the cake above for breakfast and the snack bars below as additional snacks around the city.
Kay wanted to buy the oreos below, which are actually German, but we ended up bringing them home because we didn’t have time to eat them in Venice.
After our visit to the Doge’s Palace on Sunday, I was so pooped and wanted a coffee, but then a glass of wine sounded great too. Why not?? Weekend trips always inspire indulgence.
In the afternoon we stopped back at SUSO for another cone. This time I got pistachio and yogurt with berries. Mmmm!
I was really in love with the GF cones!
We went to 
I ended up with penne and ragout, which I can probably make better at home myself, but it was hot and comforting since it had started to drizzle outside.
So there you have it. Food in Venice is similar to Rome. Expensive and crappy because they know they can charge that much for mediocre food and people will still come.
Venice is every bit romantic as you can imagine, but you also need to come knowing that it is an expensive, often extremely touristy and crowded city.
We stayed close to “the most beautiful bookstore in the world” as our landlord and the owner of said bookstore told us, and it was certainly a strange and novel experience wandering through the overly filled store with a staircase out back made out of books.
On the Saturday we had amazing weather with blue skies and I mostly wanted to soak in the canal sites, which were just breathtaking. 🙂
Considering it was another cloudy, rainy weekend in Zurich, we were beside ourselves.
A little tired, but very happy to be here!
At the end of October, it was pretty fresh around 15ºC (59ºF) and 9ºC (48ºF) at night, but we had our jackets and scarves and it was still warmer than it is in Zurich at the moment.
We headed over to San Marco to visit Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco during the time slot Kay had purchased online. Thank goodness for that, it was great to skip ahead the lines!
The square was already (or still?) a bit flooded with “acqua alta” as the Italians say. It was only 3-4 inches deep in some spots and the effect was actually beautiful, although astonishing.
Closer to the basilica, there were risers set up for people to walk on. Kay and I were still happy we both had on gortex waterproof shoes for the more shallow puddles.
After the basilica, we climbed the San Marco Campanile bell tower for this amazing view over the city.
After the tower we picked up our tickets for the Doge’s Palace that we planned on visiting the next day. Good thing too, because overnight a huge cruise ship unloaded and the ticket line for picking up tickets was packed the next day!
After San Marco, Kay agreed to humor me with an absurdly expensive gondola ride, because this was my romantic trip to Venice and we would probably only do it once.
I thought it was worth it! I mean, it’s not really worth the price, but at the same time, you just have to do it. There isn’t really another way for tourists to experience Venice from this vantage point and it’s absolutely not the same as walking over the footbridges. 
Plus our rower pointed out a lot of famous buildings from this new perspective, including the house Mozart stayed in during his time in Venice, city hall, and where George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin got married.
Back on land, we waited for sunset in San Marco and then headed for dinner.
Kay was pretty tired, but I begged him to stay out a bit longer so that I could take some long exposures of the canals by night.
The next morning, our flat was still stinky as ever (combination of cigarette smoke and canal stink), but we’d gotten a bit used to it by sleeping at night. It must have previously been a boat garage because the window in the back led directly to the canal, with boat access for the owner.
Below, you can see the window entrance on the left side under the laundry, which hung above the window in the photo above. It definitely looks like they bricked in two boat garages to make way for more living space.
Below was the front room of the flat with kitchen, wash machine, and fridge.
After breakfast at the flat, we headed over to San Marco again to visit the Doge’s Palace on a cloudy Sunday.
The weather had turned quite a bit from the day before, but that was fine because we’d planned to be inside for most of the day anyway.
After a long time in the palace though, stuck in some armory rooms at the end, I was pretty tired. Time to wake up with a 
For the rest of the day we sort of wandered around more before shopping for some street vendor art so that I could have a painting of Venice to match my painting of Paris. I like the idea of filling up our house with romantic city paintings. 🙂
On the vaporetto back to the airport, we took the long way around from the southern tip of the city where the street vendors were, so I had an hour to nap on Kay before our flight back.
It was one of those weekends that was actually nicer weather at home, but we spent the afternoon and next morning in the sauna and steam room relaxing and reading during the rest periods.
The next morning we saw a glimpse of nice weather before heading home, where it was cloudy and cold by the time we got back.
The hotel and wellness area were “alright”, but for 137CHF a night, they were 3/5. Not bad, but definitely not luxurious. The rooms are pretty basic, but the beds are comfortable. The sauna area was a little underwhelming, but it was fine for what it was.
The ride back was pretty cold. I should have put snow pants on or something, because 1.5h on the bike on the highway at 120km/h was COLD. I thought I would never be warm again when we got home, even with all that time in the sauna.
Kay made big hot chocolates for us with the rest of the Bailey’s chocolate liquor and we warmed up well after a nice, long, hot shower.