Category Archives: Italy

A year ago today

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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.

A year ago today – triumph and tragedy

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It began as a day like all others as the sun climbed over the Crete hills to the east – except that we were up early enough to enjoy the sunrise and completely confuse our girls when we gave them each a pat on the head and departed for Siena. We were cutting it fine and the mood in the car was sombre. There was none of the usual banter as we headed along the SR2 into Siena.

Thankfully we didn’t get stuck behind any of the local autobuses on the way and as we drove through the Porta Tufi and into the old city to park we had 10 minutes left for the walk to the Campo.

It was Rugby World Cup final day. Half a world away two teams were about to go head to head to determine who were world champions – our might All Blacks or the unpredictable and dynamic French.

We arrived at the bar in time to find a seat amongst the small but growing number of New Zealand fans and the far more numerous French fans. We ordered our usual RWC colazione (breakfast) – cappuccino and tea, followed by white wine and birra. The discipline required to start drinking at 8am was something we had mastered over the preceding 6 weeks as we had watched the pool games, the quarter finals and the semi finals. In fact we were well known in the bar and our order arrived at the table the same time we did.

The game was engrossing. What everyone expected to be an easy All Black victory became an arm wrestle with the French doing what they do best – being unpredictable and playing ten times better than they did in the early rounds of the tournament – and with 15 minutes to go the score was 8-7 to the All Blacks. The remained of the match was agonising with neither team able to get in the killing blow.

The tension in that little bar in Siena was palpable. The Kiwis had gone quiet while the French supporters were vocal as the underdogs refused to roll over.

Victory for the All Blacks, when it came, was more relief than triumph.

After congratulations all round we left the bar and stepped out into the sunlight of the Campo. We headed to our usual bar – Al Mangia – to celebrate with a glass or two of Prosecco.

At Al Mangia the talk was not of rugby but of motorcycling. Motorcycle ace and local hero Marco Simoncelli had died after falling off his bike in the Malaysian MotoGP earlier that morning and the bar patrons were noticeably affected. Simoncelli was just 24 years old.

It was, it turned out, a day of triumph overshadowed by tragedy.

In defence of photo albums

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An early casualty of the digital photo revolution was the traditional photo album. During our stay in the UK and Italy last year I took 4,626 photos. Of that vast number exactly none have been printed out.

They are all stored on my iMac, and on two back up drives that sit humming away next to it. If we want to show people the photos we gather around  the television and run a slide show with commentary provided by Jean and I as our guest’s eyes slowly glaze over.

We have lost the tactile fun that is a photo album – and we were reminded of this when my brother and his wife visited last weekend. They had just returned from a trip to Texas and the East Coast of the USA. Upon returning, brother Geoff had taken the memory card from his camera to the local photo printing place and returned with 6×4 glossies. All of which are now in photo albums.

Going through them was a pleasure. All of us huddled around the albums as they were passed around. Fingers pointing at certain shots and describing the situation that went before or after. Turning pages to connect one shot with another. We spent an hour going through them and didn’t realise where the time went.

So here’s the thing. If you’ve got all your photographs sitting on hard drives or CDs of DVDs, go non-digital and print off an album or two. I intend to.

The book of the blog

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I started writing this post as an endorsement of a fantastic service for turning your blog posts into a book – Feedfabrik.com. But I’ve just learnt that, due to problems between the partners, they have stopped taking orders, their website is offline, and it is unlikely to return anytime soon.

I first used Feedfabrik last year to produce a simple black and white book of the first 100 toscanakiwi posts which we had delivered to our cottage in Tuscany. We carefully carried it around Europe on our travels and it’s sitting, slightly battered and beaten up, in the bookcase next to me.

A month ago I ordered two volumes of blog posts (about 200 posts in all) hard bound on high quality paper and in full colour because they produce the pictures that go with blog posts as well as the writing. The books arrived last week and they look absolutely stunning.

It is a real shame that others won’t be able to make use of this excellent service in the foreseeable future.

Our thanks to the team at Feedfabrik.com. We love your work and hope that you’ll be back soon.

This is a post I’ve been dreading

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Yesterday we lost our wee girl Daisy. After fifteen years and seven months her big heart finally gave out and she slipped peacefully away. We will miss her terribly but we will always remember the stubborn and determined, but intensely loyal and devoted little girl she was.

Our lovely vet Laura has, for the last year or so, referred to her as our medical miracle – which she was.

We will think of her simply as our Daisy, our little girl.

Daisy  1997 – 2012.

Daisy asleep in the cottage on our clothes – Tuscany, June 2011

One year ago today

Gallery

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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 … Continue reading →

A taste of Italy

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Every time Jean and I feel homesick for Italy we make the pilgrimage to MariLuca Ristoro. It is owned and run by a friend, Guiseppie, and stepping through the door feels like stepping back to Italy. It’s all warmth and friendliness and excellent Italian food, all in the heart of Wellington.

Bellisssimo.

Note: photos are courtesy of MariLuca Ristoro

Family advice

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This gallery contains 27 photos.

My nephew’s girlfriend and her sister are planning a trip to Tuscany in September. We have been asked for some advice on where to stay and what to do in and around Tuscany. It sounds as if the girls are … Continue reading →

Farewell Renault, hello Fiat

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On Saturday we returned our trusty Renault Megane Estate. Its 6 month lease was over and we couldn’t extend the term any further. It has been a fantastic car – reliable, spacious, comfortable, fast, economical, everything you could want. We returned it almost intact to the Renault Depot at Heathrow, just a couple of scrapes on one side resulting from trying to squeeze into a narrow driveway in Firenze.

We will miss its luggage capacity, its start/stop button (just like an Aston Martin) and the way its side mirrors folded in when parked. We won’t miss its cable gear shift which meant that second and fourth seemed to be in the same place, or the cacophony of beeping that greeted any parking manoeuvre thanks to the front and rear parking sensors.

So what car would you get as a replacement for a capacious, comfortable estate car? A Fiat 500 of course.

The irony that all through Italy we drove French cars and now in the UK we drive the quintessential Italian car is not lost on Jean and I. The irony that we have an estate cars worth of luggage and the 500 is about the size of a roller-skate is also not lost on us.

But it’s a Fiat and a really good one at that. It handles like a go-cart, it looks cute and it just makes you, well, smile.

It’s ours for the next two weeks or until Mr Avis wants it back again.

Note: The photo of our Fiat 500 was taken at Woburn Estate just before sunset. I quite like this shot.

And now we turn 200

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This is our 200th toscanakiwi post. When we started the blog it was to keep friends and family informed about our little adventure in Italy. But reading back over some of the last 200 entries I now realise it is also a collection of memories for Jean and I. It might be old age or just the passing of time but little things get forgotten and one adventure gets confused with another in our minds – but the blog is always there with the real story.

In September 2011, post number 100 was sent from our cottage in Tuscany. At that stage around 4,800 visitors had read the blog since it’s launch. As of today that figure has increased to 11,541.

A huge thank you to all our lovely readers. Your feedback is always welcome and knowing that our adventures are providing a little interest and entertainment is all that we can ask for.

Ciao

Graeme and Jean

Cenobio del Dogi in Camogli

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On the way north we stayed at Cenobio Del Dogi, the same hotel on the Portofino Coast as we did heading south in April. Our conclusion after a second visit was much the same as after our first visit.  This is a grand hotel in the spirit of the 1950s or 1960s and it’s easy to imagine Sophia Loren or Marcello Mastroianni sweeping down the main staircase on their way to drinks and dinner. The owners have resisted the temptation to modernise the hotel and have maintained (at considerable cost I suspect) that wonderful historic feel of a classic grand hotel.

We had drinks and dinner in the bar, surrounded by persian rugs and big easy relaxed armchairs. We had breakfast in the formal dining room with hand painted friezes on the walls and full length windows that showcased the view along the coast. We left wanting to return and spend longer than a night – a week would be a good start.