Help! We're being Poisoned!

For the past two months Milano has been more than 3x the level of pollution that the European Union has set as the high-risk mark for health.  It really does effect people! Working in the health sector I’ve seen more respiratory and skin problems as well as complaints of headaches and general unwellness.  In order to detox ourselves a bit we decided to escape the city last weekend and hike above it all! We chose the Brembana Valley where they have a bunch of wonderful mountains called the Orbie.

Faithful EtaBeta took us most of the way up the mountain and where she stopped we took a chair lift. From the chairlift we hiked through the often untrodden snow towards the peaks! Oh, it was beautiful and clean :) The sunshine was like kisses on our faces! But we found we couldn’t handle all that fresh air… we found ourselves quickly huffing and puffing and coughing away as we made our way through the snow. Ok, ok, we realize it was because we’re out of shape ;)

Once at the top we plunked down in the snow and read together, took pics, enjoyed the view and, of course, made snow angels! 

On our way down the mountain we took a quick stroll through the little mountain village. So adorable! We were envious of the quite and calm life we saw around us. We livened things up with a bit of a snow fight ;) 

So, for one afternoon we might have been huffing and puffing around, but our headaches vanished! Until we went through 2 hours of traffic to get back into Milano…. 

This is a demonstration of one of Z and my favorite "utterly informative" traffic signs. We've been sitting in traffic for hours, finally we come upon this notice: "Patches of Traffic for the next bit of distance". Oh? Great! We wouldn't have noticed otherwise :) Sometimes you just have to laugh outloud in the middle of it all - I did!