Buona Pasqua!

Pretty Swiss Chocolate Easter Eggs!

The past few weeks, since Valentine's day really, Lugano has been prepping for Easter. Over the past year it's amazed me how the entire city really gets into the spirit of the holidays and decorates everything. It makes the city even prettier than it already is! This weekend Lugano held "Easter in the City" a festival in the center of the city with live music, children's activities and tons of vendors selling handmade and homemade goods. I was able to get some homemade strawberry jam, although not as good as my moms, it's still delicious! In Switzerland you never need a reason to enjoy chocolate, but it seems as if for Easter there was so much more of it. I've never seen as many chocolate bunnies and eggs in my life!

Hazelnut Milk Chocolate and Stracciatella Bunnies

So many Chocolate Bunnies and so many flavors

The flowers are also beautiful. Manor, a department store and grocery store, has a mini flower shop outside and it is so nice to finally see spring flowers for sale! After a long winter, I can't wait for the tulips and other spring flowers to pop up around the city!

Walking around, there were so many signs of Easter. In every grocery store they sell dyed hard boiled eggs, in such bright and vibrant colors. Eggs are apparently a forbidden food during lent (who knew?!) and because of that, in the olden days they were hard boiled to preserve them until lent was over. Also, since eggs symbolize life, they were given as gifts at Easter. Why we began to dye eggs isn't certain. However, the dying of eggs can be traced back to Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and Persia where they were dyed for spring festivals and to Medieval Europe where the decorated eggs were given as gifts.

Hard boiled eggs at the grocery store

Easter Sunday, Jeannie and her fiance, Patrick, invited me to his parent's house for Easter lunch. The food was amazing and I was able to enjoy a Swiss Easter lunch including, pumpkin Gnocchi, venison, artichoke, mushrooms and more! It was so good and so nice to have an Easter meal! For dessert, we had Colomba di Pasqua, a traditional Italian Easter cake. Colomba (which means "Dove") is similar to panettone, but does not include raisins and is usually topped with sugar and almonds.

Mini Colomba di Pasqua

Hopefully, now that Easter has passed and we're entering into April, we will see some beautiful spring weather. On my run this morning I started noticing that the flowers are beginning to bloom! Here's to hoping that Spring is here to stay! 

Spring in bloom