All about friends

Sunday was all about friends: preparing for a visit on Monday from our friends Virginia, Ben, Isabel and Erin; relaxing and enjoying delicious food with our friends Chris, Sue, Henry and Erik; and a nightcap with our new friends (I hope they won't mind us calling them that - we certainly became very fond of our guests Diane and Ernest, such good company and great guests) on their last night here.

First things first though: after breakfast we took Reggie for another run around along the cava track. Although we'd done the same walk yesterday, the difference was that today it was dry! Unfortunately it wasn't exactly dry underfoot, but Reggie enjoyed splashing through the puddles and thundering through the mud at top speed.

Walk done, it was time to whizz up a bean dip for later and then get to work on cleaning and tidying the house, putting fresh linen on the beds and attempting to make our house a little more presentable. By 2pm, we'd just about got on top of things so we sat down for a quick bit of bread and cheese to tide us over until later.

We then loaded Reggie, his bed, his bowls, the bean dip and some bottles of wine into the car before heading to Pescia. First stop was Esselunga to pick up some carrots for the dip, then it was round to Chris and Sue's for an afternoon of food, wine, laughter, and sunshine. Oh and barking.

Reggie gave everyone a bit of a bark when we first arrived (a bit on the rude side, seeing as it was their house and they live there), but soon settled down and even spent a while doing some clicker training with Henry. Chris and Sue's terrace is close to the edge of town, with beautiful views of the roofs and church towers of Pescia. It is also a wonderful spot for listening to the romantic sound of the ringing of the town's church bells calling people to church - if you like the sound of bells, that is. It turns out that Reggie is not a fan. Each time they struck up (it being a Sunday afternoon, this was not a one-off occurrence), Reggie struck up with his own volley of barking and wouldn't let up until they did. He also did a fair bit of snooping around the place and made himself very unpopular with the Phillips's neighbour, by barking at her as she stood on her own doorstep. That aside, he spent most of the afternoon being well behaved...

We started our afternoon with drinks and dips outside on the patio, retreated indoors for a brief interlude when some spots of rain started to fall, before later moving back outside and feasting on delicious honeyed chicken with potato salad and a heavenly tiramisu. Needless to say, both wine and conversation flowed freely and we had a lovely relaxing afternoon. Before we knew it, the light was starting to fade and, it being a school night, we stuck to our word and left the Phillipses to prepare for the week ahead while we headed back home to put the geese to bed in the near-dark.

After putting the geese away, we knocked on the door of the apartment - we'd seen Diane and Ernest on our way out earlier and we knew they wanted some advice on getting back to the airport in the morning, so we popped our heads in just to see how their day had been. Ever the gracious hosts (even though it should have been the other way around), they invited us in and offered us a glass of wine, and we spent another hour or so chatting with them before leaving them with a set of airport directions and promising to be up and about in time to see them off in the morning.

We finally took ourselves off to bed just before 11pm - not the early night we'd planned, but we'd had a busy but thoroughly enjoyable weekend.