Life in Tuscany isn’t all fine chianti and al dente pasta you know. The washing still needs to be done and Tuesday is as good a day as any other. A load of washing costs €3 for casual guests but is built into our weekly rent. Given the rate at which we go through clothes that’s about $NZ500 which can be spent on fine chianti and al dente pasta.
Washing drying beside our cottage on a sunny summer morning.
We are starting to plan for the arrival of summer visitors. Today we bought a small freezer which now holds pride of place in the kitchen (and the dining room and part of the lounge) so we can do ice cubes, gelato and actually store meat for more than a day or two. And get beer really cold in a hurry.
The barbecue is being specified at present. We are thinking charcoal as that seems to be the accepted norm. Around here gas seems to be for gattino – look it up. Also a slew of other home comforts are being put in place because it’s the beginning of the visitor season.
In the next month and a half we have visitors galore.
Villa Crognole outside Radda in Chanti.
First up we catch up with Jean’s friend Kate Maclean who worked with Jean at Clemenger. Kate and her partner are working in the UK. Kate’s family are coming over from New Zealand for a holiday which involves a week in a villa in Chianti. It has been arranged through our villa wizard Olga and is the same one we stayed at in 2006. A fantastic place. We are popping up for drinks and dinner in mid June.
Next up is a flying weekend visit by Gill from the UK. We are thinking pool life combined with excellent meals in Siena. And the odd bottle of New Zealand Chardonnay mixed in.
At the start of July the Mowday family packs the car and leaves Tuscany heading for Positano where we have rented an apartment off the lovely family who own and run Eden Roc Hotel. The really good news is we get full hotel privileges (pool, bar tab, meals on the terrace, Tony’s cappuccino for breakfast, etc) but stay off site so the dogs don’t disturb the hotel’s peace and quiet. We are there for two weeks and Jean’s sister Charmaine, brother-in-law Mike and their baby James arrive towards the end of the stay.
Jean, Josh, Andre, Gill and Jordan around the pool in 2010 while the dolphin watches on.
Back to Toscana with Charmaine, Mike and Jimmy for a week and then Gill, Josh and Jordan arrive from London with Andre following after his pilgrimage to the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. We are still looking for large, slightly disturbing, inflatable animals to go in the pool prior to their arrival.
We are also expecting a mate from work, Danny Malone, to put in an appearance at the end of July on his 2011 European trip to round things out. An excellent month at our place.
We then head south to Rome for a weekend at the end of July with Charmaine, Mike and James before aiming the Peugeot at Nice for a car swap in early August – and a week at the delightful Hotel Welcome in Villefranche sur mer. See an earlier post for rave reviews.
After that we are ready to welcome other kiwi visitors – you know who you are – through August and September as the summer crawls to an end and our thoughts turn to autumn.
Excitingly it looks like our old friend Isabel and Charlie will be visiting in late September/early October as well. I think I can call Isabel an “old” friend as we both have had very significant birthdays this year.
Let the fun commence.
Having explored as far afield as Radda in Chianti north of Siena and Buonconvento in the south, yesterday we strayed closer to home in Monteroni D’Arbia. This small hamlet is only 10 minutes from the cottage and is the centre of our small district.
We first visited on market day about 3 weeks ago when the main shopping area was filled with stalls selling everything from clothes to meat to household appliances. Every day of the week there is a market in another local town and, rather than them just being a tourist attraction, they are an important part of local life both economically and socially.
We attracted quite a bit of attention walking around, possibly because of our inherent elegance, but more likely because we had the girls with us. Daisy will, as you know gentle reader, take on any dog she sees be it Doberman or Chihuahua so our walk through the market involved a ballet of side steps and distractions as we spotted any oncoming dogs.
Without the market Monteroni D’Arbia is still a delightful place to walk and browse the local shops. It’s not a picture postcard Tuscan village but rather a good honest working town. We stopped for a drink in the cafe on the main road and Jean shopped for plants and containers for our front verandah over the summer. Once again our mix of bad Italian, sign language and the good nature of the locals triumphed and we returned home with everything we wanted – including takeout pizza and beer for dinner.
All up, a good day.
Daisy had her 14th birthday in January. This would make her about 85 in human years and like any elderly person she is slowing down. Things that were easy for her a year ago are now a challenge. A walk around the property in the evening wears her out, her back legs seem to have a mind of their own occasionally, and when she does the head to tail shake on the tiled floor often she ends up flat on her stomach with legs splayed.
Admirably she take all this in her stride and soldiers on.
She is still her cantankerous, independent, stubborn old self. She dutifully protects the cottage from any potential intruders including Mrs Patrizia and Fabiana when they deliver our fresh laundry or simply call in for a chat.
Daisy sleeping
Lately Daisy has struggled to jump up onto the bed at night and will grudgingly accept a helping hand up when it’s offered. If no help is forthcoming being Daisy she simply finds somewhere else to sleep – in this case on my neatly folded clothes on the shelf just inside the bedroom door.
I used to think it was noise cancelling headphones. But I was wrong. Headphones might be good for the luxury traveller taking short jaunts to foreign climes but for us long term, hard core, down to earth travellers the perfect companion is a Leatherman Blast.
My "must have" travel accessory.
I was given the aforementioned tool for my 50th birthday – thank you Charmaine, Mike and James – and it has proved invaluable. It can cut, screw, saw or slice pretty much anything. Whether it’s mundane tasks like tightening a screw on a wobbly pot handle or more exotic uses like an ice pick to de-ice a dodgy fridge, it’s ideal.
Recently it was put to use erecting some temporary wire fencing around our terrace to give Daisy and Poppie some indoor/outdoor flow without the chance of them doing a runner.
Mission accomplished thanks largely to the Blast.
One warning, if you bring something like this on holiday don’t pack it in your hand luggage. The 4 inch knife blade might be a bit tough to explain to those nice gentlemen from Homelands Security.
Poppie meets the new fence.
Sunset from our cottage
Another of those no reason posts really – other than this was the sunset last night from the verandah of our cottage.
In the last post about our home for the next six months I may have given the impression that it is small – and it is. But, at the end of the day, it’s what we were expecting.
Of course it only took a week for Jean to perform a “tardis” like transformation on the place. Two furniture shifts later and with a little interior decoration our place now feels like – our place.
There’s a list of stuff we’ll get over the next few weeks ranging from decent wine glasses (those of you who have rented a villa previously will remember the thimble sized wine glasses that inevitably are found in the cupboard) to more coat hangers and various kitchen tools and, as mentioned previously, that barbecue.
As predicted, the weather has warmed up – 26 degrees today – the front verandah has become the major living area in the mornings and afternoons. Maybe we need to get a bigger table out there – something else to add to the list.
La dolce far niente 