The month romps on despite any protests of ours. It's now only a few days until the Richardson family arrive to spend a couple of nights with us - it seems like a lifetime ago since we made those plans, way back when we were still in England.
Thursday was a fairly unremarkable day, hence the lack of blog post: Helen worked all day in the office while I made a dash up the valley to spend the day cutting grass while there was an unexpected break in the damp weather.
When I got home, we both headed into town to walk Reggie along the river, but this time along a stretch we've not tried before. We know that this part of the river is a regular walk for Donatella and Alex with their dog Ray, as it's a nice quiet stretch. Quiet was exactly how we found it - until the return leg when a woman approached with two dogs off the lead. One was clearly a big greyhound the other I couldn't tell you what it was, slightly smaller than Reggie, much skinnier, ginger and with pointy features. As this woman clearly wasn't going to put her dogs on the leash, we left Reggie off leash too. The greyhound came charging over to Reggie, and they chased each other briefly until the greyhound got a bit much for him - at which point the ginger dog came over all barks and the two of them hounded poor Reggie who ended up reversing into the river through the cover of reeds, barking at them both in the hopes they'd go away. It's the first time we've seen him put in his place - but even when we got control of the situation and walked our separate ways, Reggie couldn't help but take a look back with the fleeting thought of going back for some more.
After the excitement on the river, it was time to head home and start on dinner. We'd invited our guests, Diane and Ernest, up for dinner this evening to reciprocate the delicious meal they made for us last week. We didn't go in for anything complicated however: good old tomato bruschette and a roasted pepper and bean dip followed by garlic and thyme mushrooms in mascarpone with pasta and then some shop-bought torta della nonna for dessert. We enjoyed hearing about their discoveries over the last few days and made notes of many of the places they'd enjoyed - they are much better tourists than we have ever been, managing to stay out for entire days often into the evenings, and finding all sorts of things we've not seen. Indeed, they even found places of note in Montecatini Terme, a place we only ever mention when making a trip to the hardware store or pet shop - we really must try harder! We retired to bed after a very enjoyable evening at around half eleven, it was still a school night after all!
Friday saw a busy day, largely made up of shopping, which allowed me to tick a few things off my to-do list - so, despite not picking up any tools until almost five o'clock, the day felt like a huge success. After breakfast I headed into town to withdraw money from the bank in order to pay the geometra, bought a few items from the pharmacy, then headed over to Andrea's office to drop off his payment. Andrea wasn't in, but I gave the money to Alessia and asked her about yet another letter we've had from the Comune demanding we buy another €16 tax stamp for something or other. She kept the letter and told me that the Comune have already approved our plans (for the pergola, poly tunnel, solar panels, wooden shed and blocking up a door) and passed them on to the dreaded superintendent in Florence (I added the word 'dreaded' for effect). This seems like great news, but I can't help but feel that something is bound to crop up to knock us backwards again before this process is over - for now, though, we'll take the victory and stay optimistic.
From Andrea's office, I headed out to the agricultural supplier to buy some ground control fabric to make a start on covering the lower terraces. This is an idea that makes complete sense long-term, and I didn't want to attempt it after running all the irrigation pipe over the terraces, so it was a matter of now or never. I opted for now and bought 150m of the stuff, hoping this would go a long way towards covering the four terraces over which our vegetable beds are spread.
On an absolute roll, I headed over to Montecatini Terme - not to see any of the grand spa buildings or the beautiful park that Diane and Ernest had told us about, but to buy another pay-as-you go SIM card for Helen's mobile phone. It seems that we now have a reliable mobile signal at the house and since this provider (Lycamobile) only requires a top up every 12 months, it seemed like a good idea for us both to run a phone.
By the time I came back through town, the tyre garage was closed for lunch - sourcing some more used tyres to complete the steps in the terraces was the only thing I hadn't managed to tick off from today's list, but having done already more than I'd hoped for, I headed home for lunch happy with my progress.
We sat indoors today and ate a bowl of roasted pepper hummus before heading out to walk Reggie. Today, we took him down to San Lorenzo, figuring we'd give him a try there with Donatella's balance lead and continue to work on his car training. Neither were particularly successful today, Reggie having something of a relapse and lunging at 3 of the 4 cars that passed us, but nothing could faze us, it was Friday afternoon and we were staring the weekend in the face! After our walk, we made a quick trip back to Gaustapaglia, the irrigation specialist, just to see if I could get the connectors I needed for linking the water tanks together. I had assumed that I would need to order them on the internet and either pay for postage or else hope that our friend Chris, who is due to visit from the UK next month, would bring them over for me, but I thought it was worth a try here first, and bingo! I walked out of the shop with everything I needed.
When we got home, Helen went indoors on my orders to lie down for an hour as a migraine was threatening so begrudgingly she sloped off to bed while I finally picked up some tools and made a start rolling out the ground fabric and cutting around everything growing. The task would have been easier prior to planting anything, but that way around we'd have long missed our planting window so it felt like a happy compromise and I was happy that the plants we do have in were still young, making the job that much easier. As 6.30pm approached, I'd finished 50m of the fabric - one third of what I'd bought - and it was clear that we'd be need quite a bit more of the stuff to finish the job.
I headed indoors to change at that point as we were going out for dinner with Alex, Donatella, David, Diane and Ernest to a restaurant called Toti. Alex and Dontella had told us about this place before, and months ago we'd said we'd try it together. Tonight, back by popular demand, the restaurant was putting on a vegan night. Being a vegan, Alex in particular was keen to support the evening. We were also intrigued to see the Italian take on meatless food, and our guests, who are non-meat eaters, needed little persuading to hop in the car with us for dinner and lend their support to the evening.
This is not a place you would stumble across on passing in the car - there is a small sign at the side of the main Lucca road urging you to turn left, but nothing more. We followed the sign for a few hundred metres and came upon a beautiful old building that we all remarked upon when we saw it - it turned out to be Toti. The restaurant is in the wine cellar of an old vineyard: the story goes that it's an old family concern but the wine production ceased years ago, with the place falling into a state of disrepair. Its latest owners (still from the same family) have taken the place on and are running the restaurant as a means of getting by while they get the vineyard up and running again. Vines have been planted (which will take a few years to bear fruit), and for now they buy in grapes from nearby Montecarlo and blend their own wines. Indeed, we walked away with a 10-litre box of red, for the princely sum of €2 per litre!
The dining room was beautiful, with a huge brick barrelled ceiling, stone walls and old wine barrels decorating the place. The photo here doesn't do it justice, but rest assured, future guests of ours will either be directed or dragged down there as a must! The restaurant's €10 weekday lunches are apparently the best around.
After a very enjoyable evening - which saw us almost first in at 7.30pm and almost last out at midnight - we paid our very reasonable €20 per head (for 4 courses, water, wine and coffee) and left for home.
We were pretty weary by the time we got home - we haven't stayed up that late in a long time! Nevertheless, we let Reggie out for half an hour before finally retiring to bed, Helen's alarm was set for half six again, as it always is on a Saturday, and we had shopping to do in the morning.
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