while you're ahead…

Games.  Essential part of the holiday in my books.  And I’m not talking electronic ones either!!

When the boys were little it was bags of Lego and little cars, buckets and spades and balls of any kind, in recent year we shifted to card games.

And a frisbee.  Always a frisbee.  Easy to pack to, nice and flat.

Card games are the way to go.  I used to spend entire days playing cards with my sister in those long drawn on Italian summers (we had three months off school, which sounds great in principle… but you haven’t experienced it you don’t know what boredom truly is).  Also the boys are not interested in learning ‘proper’ games, which his a shame…

This is what we play:

Uno is our favourite.

We play a variant called ‘Chicco rules’ which Mr M inexplicably hates but the rest of us think it makes the game more fun.  It’s great to take to restaurants whilst we wait too.

This year I’ve had to buy a new set of cards because it was impossible to play with the old ones anymore.

Monopoly Deal, or ‘Monops’ as we affectionally call it.

If you, like me, hate the never-ending/argument-causing board game… this is for you.  It’s quick, the games last about 15 minutes, yes luck plays a bigger part, but you still need to be making the right decisions to win.

In the interest of honesty I probably won twice in five years.  No 3? wins 80% of the time, he’s 11.  Very annoying.

(Give me Connect Four and I’ll show you who’s boss!)

When boredom level reaches its zenith we also play silly games with these old Italian cards.  I know there are good games out there with these but I’ve never learnt any of them.  We played one that require zero brain power that my grandma taught me when I was about five years old.

A new kid on the block is Perudo

We’re still not sure of how to play properly, so the rules booklet will be coming with us.  It looks promising.

We also have a portable Scrabble, or ‘Scrabs’  (Does your family do that? alter the name of everything and creates some weird unintelligible private language?)

Normally the boys aren’t interested so it becomes a husband v wife affair… which always goes to pot if a few aperitifs are involved… Mr M becomes smutty and juvenile and I can only think in Italian.  Bad mix.

What else should we play? What are your family favourites?

 

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