We'd both been disturbed in the early hours of the morning by Lucca and Florence messing around - it sounded like they were playing with something, and when I got up I was very suspicious of the fact that they were both sitting staring at the wall at the top of the stairs behind the laundry basket and their litter tray. When they didn't even venture downstairs to be let outside, I became even more suspicious and they were starting to make me nervous - the conclusion I jumped to was that there must be an enormous spider behind there somewhere, so I hurried past the cats and whatever they could smell and hoped that someone else would investigate! When he got up, Stuart was brave enough to move the laundry basket and litter tray and when I heard an exclamation of surprise, I was intrigued, but kept my distance. It turned out that there was a mouse hiding in the corner! That certainly explained the cats' persistence! Immediately relieved (since mice are not on the short list of things I'm afraid of), I watched while Stuart cleared the area to allow the cats to finish dealing with the interloper - they had already maimed it during their playtime with it in the night, and Lucca duly hurried out of the house with it in his mouth to finish the deed off.
Drama over, it was nearing 7.20am so Stuart and I grabbed Reggie's lead and Reggie himself and headed out in the car to San Lorenzo. It was a damp morning and it felt a little like walking through the rainforest, but it wasn't cold and it was quite nice to be out and about so early. We did the 'reverse San Lorenzo' walk with Reggie and were back at the house by 8.05am.
After a quick bowl of cereal and loading our guests' bags into the car, we gave Reggie a bone to amuse himself with in his crate and set off for Pisa.
Helen and John hadn't been to Pisa before and had requested a trip in to see the Torre Pendente, so we came off the autostrade at Lucca and took the scenic road from Lucca into the centre of Pisa. It didn't take us too long to find somewhere to park, then we walked towards the Piazza dei Miracoli, which is where the main sights (tower, duomo, baptistry and museums) are clustered.
By the time we arrived, we were all feeling the need of something to pep us up, so we stopped at a café just before we hit central touristville and had coffees all round, with croissants for Helen and Sheila and arancini (fried balls of risotto rice with a meat filling) for Stuart and John.
Feeling revitalised, we headed to the piazza for a wander around and some obligatory holding-the-tower-up shots.
It was while Sheila and I were doing our best to photograph Helen holding the tower up that we were approached by a young Scottish woman who explained that she wanted to take a photograph of her travelling companion - a toy monkey - holding up the tower, but that she needed some assistance. Helen duly agreed to lend a hand, and the rest of us looked on in fits of giggles as poor Helen stood holding the monkey, having her hands positioned and repositioned, being asked to move to the left and right and up and down until the Scottish girl was finally happy with her photograph of monkey.
Bizarre photoshoots over, we ambled back to the car and slowly made our way to the airport. The airport is very close to the centre of Pisa, but after having lived in the sticks for almost a year, we'd forgotten what city driving is like and with all the stopping and starting at traffic lights and junctions and crossings, it took us a good half hour to get there.
Once there, we said fond farewells to our guests and wished them safe travels, waving them off into the terminal building, before set off back home. We've all had a lovely week, we've really enjoyed the company of Sheila, Helen and John, and we hope that they've had an enjoyable holiday too. We know it won't be too long before we see Sheila again, as she is due back in August with Kerys and Ben (Stuart's daughter and son), and we hope it won't be too long before we get to catch up with Helen and John again as well.
We arrived home just after 12.30pm and were greeted not just by two geese, two cats and a dog, but also by the less welcome addition of a colony of hundreds of ants. All over the kitchen floor. Yikes. We were incredulous that so much could happen so quickly - the kitchen floor had been spotless when we'd left the house four hours earlier (largely thanks to Sheila's fastidious cleaning and tidying), and now it was alive with little black dots. I spent five minutes jumping around trying to get rid of as many as I could under my feet, while Stuart tried to locate their entry point, then spent another 10 minutes vacuuming up the remainder. All while Reggie looked on with a very confused expression on his face.
After clearing up, we finally got around to sitting down for a lunch of leftovers (bean dip & cheese with bread) before steeling ourselves to hit the supermarkets. With the early check-out of our guests and trip into Pisa, we'd missed out on our usual early morning supermarket shopping slot, but thankfully both Lidl and Esselunga were fairly quiet this afternoon as well, so it was a relatively easy task and within an hour we were heading home again.
We both felt rather jaded by the time we got back home - after a week of entertaining, lots of drinking, lots of driving today, and an early start, we were definitely not in the right frame of mind to start doing any outdoor work, so instead we sat outside on the patio for a while enjoying the fresh air and the view. While the weather had dried up around lunchtime, it was still mainly cloudy and I kept a coat and scarf on, but when there were the odd breaks in the cloud it was gloriously warm and sunny - hopefully the sign of things to come tomorrow and for the rest of the week.
It will be an early dinner and an early night tonight after the excesses of the week just past, and tomorrow we will be prisoners in our own home: the road that runs past our house will be closed for most of the day for the Valdinievole rally. We aren't really sure quite what to expect, other than a lot of noise, petrol heads and fast cars, but we're looking forward to having a nose at things from the safety of the end of our driveway!
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