I Am Back...

... and I am jet-lagged! I don't know what went wrong this time around, usually I overcome jetlag pretty quickly (especially when I fly from Europe to the US) but yesterday I was a zombie and I could barely stand on my feet. We came back on Sunday, after a nine-hour flight that left from Malpensa (Milan international airport) at 10.45 in the morning (meaning that we had to get up pretty early). My daughter didn't sleep at all during the flight and I still don't know how we got throught it (I only remember that after watching an entire movie, a comedy with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler that was better than expected, I looked at the flight information and saw that we had more than 6 hours left. How we spent those remaining 6 hours is a mystery to me). At least the flight left on time and we actually landed in NYC half a hour earlier than scheduled.

The vacation was very relaxing and it was great to spend time with my parents but we had bad luck with the weather. I think we had the two most rainy weeks ever recorded in Milan in the month of June. We only had two days of really nice weather and as you can imagine I didn't have enough clothes for that. I lived in two pair of pants and my marled lace-up hoodie for the entire first week (the worst of the two), and that should say enough about the whole packing dilemma.
But besides the obvious fact that I wasn't prepared and didn't take enough sweaters (oh shrunken fisherman sweater how much I missed you, why didn't I buy you and take you with me), I can still tell what worked well and what not in my suitcase, and would have worked even in better weather conditions. The dresses worked, that was a good plan (I used three out of four dresses). The pants worked well too (I used all of them) but I didn't use any of the shorts/skirts besides the playa one (note to self: never bring shorts again for a city trip). The tops (especially tees and tanks) were over-abundant, what was I thinking. I was horrified to see how many tops I had to put back in the suitcase when I started packing for our return flight.
The shoes were a DISASTER. They were too many and they didn't work at all with the clothes that I had packed. Not to mention that I made the dilettante mistake to bring two new pairs, that were obviously uncomfortable and were only worn for a few hours.
The good news is that even if I thought that the suitcase was at maximum capacity and nothing else or almost could fit, I could squeeze in it four new dresses (and three of them were maxi), a cover-up, three new tops, three long-sleeve shirts that I found in my old closet and were deemed worth of a new life, three new pair of shoes (including a pair of platforms) and 5 tubes of body treatment (not because it was particularly less expensive to buy them in Italy but because this particular brand isn't sold in the US). That's quite the shopping spree, you may think, but after all I only go once a year, my parents offered almost everything and most of the things that I bought (besides a pair of shoes and a little thing by Vuitton that I bought myself for my birthday next month) were quite inexpensive.

You will probably see all of them soon, but I will start with a top that I wore already this morning. My daughter started camp yesterday and that's quite a change because I have to get dressed in the morning. The top will remind you of a much photographied Prada embroided top but it is actually a knockoff by Mango (the skirt is my playa and the shoes, that I am holding in my hand but I wore right after taking the pics, are old Corso Como):

I am still trying to get back in the swing of things but my mother in law is here (she is staying with us until August and will provide free and unlimited babysitting, yay!) and that helps a lot (especially with my daughter). One of the first things that I did yesterday morning, after taking my daughter to camp (which, by the way, is organized by her nursery school, so very convenient even if kind of strange: she is actually in what was her class this past school year and there are six of her old classmates in class with her) is going to JCrew for a return, so don't worry: the vacation didn't cure me, I am still an addict.