Opera season commences

Sunday night started here....

In our favourite restaurant, which was all festive and cheerful while still being exceptionally tasteful.... check it out....

Man had Beciul Domnesc - feteasca neagra... superb (though I avoided) a wonderful romanian grape. In general romanian wine is vastly underestimated and underappreciated. People don't realise romania has been making wine far longer than france and has a really rich variety and an interesting classification system.


Then, on to the Opera, we've been waiting months to go and we couldn't make the first showing of this when it opened the opera season, but we finally made it....


We collect the programs and this one is a beauty..


I thought it would be nice to post some pics of the actual opera house interior

The chandelier...

The stalls....


The boxes..


Where we sat....


This is the frieze in the intermission recess


here, is the square, at night, with christmas lights, from the balcony at the front of the opera house.

Can you tell how much we love it?

Madame Butterfly was superb and the finale was magnificent. The walk home afterwards was chilly but really lovelly.

I realise it's wednesday and we went to the opera on sunday, however, i have been moving furniture and de-junking for 2 days..... no crafting either. Bit of knitting... finished my tam-o-shanter.... although... it's a disaster... hideously large for me and completely unsuitable.

I'm off to do something useful...

Christmas at Christmas : : Mos Nicolae

I took this picture last night as the sun set and brought the eve of christmas festivities.


Today was Mos Nicolae. This means that last night, before all the children went to bed, they cleaned their shoes and laid them on the doorstep so that Mos Nicolae (Old Man Nicolaus) would leave them sweets.



The tradition says that good girls and boys will have sweets in their shoes in the morning, whereas bad little girls and boys will have onions and turnips (winter veg) and birch rods in their shoes (the birch is to beat them)


These are our birch rods and mistletoe. The birch rods we use as part of our christmas decoration and the mistletoe hangs on our front door.

However, as time has progressed, so have birch rods, which are now thousands of varieties of decorated sticks (of various materials) and everyone gets one...and sweets.


We also went to see the nativity which was still being set up....


Much to our joy, the sheep are indeed real. Munching happily away on some hay, watching over Jesus and the gathering.

Of course, as you will have noticed (maybe) this also signifies the end of my 'no christmas til christmas' protest. We have also put up our decorations (most of)


I just love these hanging lights and modelling modestly in the foreground is Pickwick, my ring necked parrot. He will be moved the warmer room now as it is too cold for him there.


So here it is.... Advent and the christmas countdown.

Christmas is coming
The goose is getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you havn't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you havn't got a ha'penny then God Bless You

shh... quilt squares