A year ago today
Last year we spent November and part of December in the small coastal village of Positano on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Through November the village is winding down. The tourist season has ended and hotels and restaurants are closing up, taking a break until the next spring.
Eden Roc Hotel was our second home. The Casola family who own the hotel also own Villa Greta – our place, and extended the hospitality of the hotel to us. On hot days we could lie by the pool and evenings out often started or ended with a drink in the hotel bar looked after by the lovely Carlo.
Eden Roc hotel closed at the end of November so on the 30th it only seemed right for us and the dogs to wander the 500 metres along the road and say farewell to what had become our “mother ship”.
Everyone at the hotel seemed relaxed and the wine was flowing a little freer than usual. The family patriarch (who had been quite ill but seemed to be on the mend) was in the hotel and insisted on buying us a drink or two or three. It ended up being a big night.
Which explains the photo – taken about 3pm the next day – when all the Mowday girls were sound asleep on the bed, one of them nursing a sizeable hangover.
One year ago today
This gallery contains 4 photos.
July 12 2011 – we were staying in the lovely Villa Greta in Positano on the Amalfi Coast. It was a scorching hot day with the temperature hovering in the low 30′s (celsius) with hardly a breath of wind. The ideal day to wander down to the beach – in this case our local, Arienzo […]
Heading north for the winter
Tomorrow we leave Positano and start the drive north to the UK. As a friend pointed out this seems exactly the wrong direction to be heading as the northern hemisphere winter sets in, but it’s a drive to stay with friends for Christmas in what, for us, will be a new experience. A winter Christmas.
We will be sorry to leave Positano which has treated us very well but it is time to move on.
This means dragging our battered suitcases out of the cupboard they’ve sat in, forgotten, for 5 weeks and packing our lives into them for the journey north. Hopefully our lives haven’t grown in size too much so we can’t get them closed.
We then need to fit the suitcases into our trusty Renault, ensuring there is enough room left for the girls and for us.
Our next deadline is Calais for a vet check for the girls next Tuesday with a channel crossing on Wednesday so we have just under a week for the trip. Two nights are going to be spent in Rome at the lovely Hotel Barocco on Piazza Barberini to allow us to throw “those coins” into “that fountain” as an insurance policy for our return to Rome in the future. The next night we will be staying in or around Cinque Terre. Beyond that, we’ll be making things up as we go.
Ciao Positano, see you again soon.
Girls on patrol
Villa Greta has a resident family of cats that live a little further along the property. Four cats and a kitten to be precise. You get the impression that they usually spend quite a bit of time at the villa entertaining the guests and generally doing what cats do best.
Poppie spots a cat
With the arrival of our girls everything has changed.
The moment a cat comes down looking for some attention, or their dinner, Poppie goes onto full alert. After 5 weeks you think there would be some kind of truce but no, one cat sitting on the steps outside the gate is still more than enough to wind Poppie up. Daisy, as you would expect, is a little more circumspect about the whole thing.
Our Gecko
We have a gecko which lives behind one of the front door shutters. He’s about 4 inches long, hides during the day but comes out at night to find dinner – bugs and the like. This suits us as the fewer bugs around the house the lower the chance of anything terrifying Jean.
He clings to the wall overlooking the street and being a gecko (or should that be Gekko) we’ve named him Gordon after the character in the movie. (Movie buff humour I’m afraid).
Our movie maker strikes again
Following her cinematic triumph with the movie about our cottage in Tuscany, Jean has made a sequel and unusually for sequels it’s even better than the original.
A funny old Friday
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Friday is shopping day. The day we head into Positano with the single-minded purpose of refilling the cupboards for another week. Although the village is only a 10 minute walk, on Friday we take the car. The thought of walking home carrying a plethora of heavy shopping bags is not attractive, so we drive. The […]
Our Madonna – updated
This morning while sitting on our terrace having that first cappuccino, Jean spotted a little lady from the village cleaning our Madonna. Our lady got the full treatment – glass cleaned, flowers refreshed and steps swept.
Based on this Jean has put away her glass polish and stopped trying to figure out how to get our vaccum cleaner cord to reach 20 metres down the road.
Out and about in Positano
This gallery contains 9 photos.
Just a quick post of a few photos taken out and about in Positano recently. No real story, just bits and pieces.
Our Madonna
This gallery contains 4 photos.
We have a Madonna. Just down the road from the villa is a short set of steps leading up to a statue of Mary set into the cliff. She is behind glass to protect her from the elements and is lit at night. As people walk or drive past, they cross themselves. The Madonna always […]
The traditional Villa Greta greeting
Every time we arrive back at Villa Greta we are met by Daisy and Poppie. They are so pleased to see us and it doesn’t matter how many times we come and go we always get the same rapturous welcome. For those of you who don’t know them Daisy, being nearly 15 years old, is the slower one. Poppie is the one with her favourite toy in her mouth.
A day at Pompeii
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For our visitor’s final day in Italy, we visited Pompeii, one of the three towns destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. What sets Pompeii apart from other roman ruins is the fact that the eruption buried the town under 3 metres of ash thereby effectively freezing the town at a point […]
It’s officially home
You can always tell when the girls feel at home. They start barking at everyone walking past and go nuts when anyone visits. Based on this, as of last Wednesday Villa Greta became “our place”. For the next few weeks anyway.
Leaving for Positano
Inside stuff to pack
It has been a fantastic 6 months reveling in the Tuscan way of life but all good things must end. And our ending is just a new beginning as we swap Tuscany for Positano on the Amalfi Coast.
We were there in July when it was summer and it was almost tropically hot. In November it should be cooler but still as warm as a summer’s day back home.
Outside stuff to pack
We shall see, but first we have to get there and that means cramming everything we own into our Renault Megane Wagon and driving south for about 5 hours … 6 with stops for the girls.
Farewell Tuscany, hello Positano.
Note: For a larger version of the video click the “Share” button when the video is playing and select “Download Video”. A new window should open with a larger and better quality version of the movie.
Heading south – again
Our stay in Tuscany is coming to an end. We leave at the end of October but our original plans to head home have changed a bit.
We have decided to chase the warm(ish) weather south to Positano and have arranged to stay for 6 weeks at Villa Greta looking out over the ocean. After we spent two weeks there in July we always said it was somewhere we wanted to return.
So, at the end of the week, we pack up the Renault and head south until early December.
It sounds simple when you say it fast but after 6 months we are quite settled in our tiny cottage in Tuscany. We have a lot to take with us. Slightly more, we suspect, than our 3 suitcases can carry.
