I'm back.....

These last few weeks flew by - many late nights and early mornings at work - proposal is in and team did an awesome job.  Have to wait for the next stage, orals (what a terrible word) where we go in and present "something".  It's not like I've done this before so I'm just stumbling through each stage and learning a lot. Chasing the work is fun though.  Of course if we get it then a whole new set of challenges! Most likely I will move to the new client, leaving behind my old team......who I really love and the current client who I also really love.  Nature of the job I guess.  Nothing guaranteed of course but the Partner has basically said, "we get it, you go".  Right then.  I guess the exciting thing is that I'm really starting to get some good experience consulting.  Some folk seem to land at Cisco and never move, I think that's contracting, not consulting and my one ask when I joined ACN was that I get to go to other clients - seems to be going fine.

I also wanted to finish my Italy trip - Lake Como.  This place was so beautiful.  The Lake is magnificent with little towns dotted all around it.  You get to them via ferry.  Jo did an awesome job ferreting out some great walks for us (yet really was a walking holiday!).

View from my hotel balcony, sunnier shot further down

Day we arrived we went on a little hike - got caught in a HUGE downpour, totally fun though as we say the "worlds" smallest river.......

Jo organizing, she was the uber travel planner

I think this is the Bellagio,  just one of the sights as we scooted around the lake

Cool tree

While we walked up in the hills we also weaved through the villages.  This in such sharp contrast to Cinque Terre, everything very "put together" here.  

See at the end a little "alter".  They were everywhere

Look closely and you will see a little building up on the hill, in the center almost in the middle of the picture.  We hiked up to this church.  This was really fantastic.  The path zig zagged up the hill and I was very grateful for all the marathon training, quite a hike and we'd already been walking for 3 hrs

Church at the top of the climb

View from church - this place is like Queenstown on steroids.  Lake Como has a similiar feel to Queenstown but bigger in every way.  It also has that uniquely laid back Italian feel, even as there is a sense of bustle.  

Sunny version of the view from my balcony.  Now here's a really really tricky one.  If you can, pop the photo out and zoom in.  As you look at the photo start at the pointed peak in the center of the photo, go left and about half way down the snowy ridge line stop and drop down to just above the middle line of the mountain.....you'll see a building......that's the church we hiked to!

Random boat shot, very beautiful with all that wood

This the group that was at Lake Como,  Rose and Jo, Karen and Sarah and their two children, both of whom are very very cute