Despite the searing temperatures we had a busy day lined up on Saturday and our guests Paddy and Catherine were leaving us after two weeks, promising to return at some point having had such a wonderful time. Once again, they were exemplary guests and we consider ourselves lucky to have met so many lovely people over these last 13 months.
So while they were busy packing downstairs, Helen, Reggie and I headed out for an early walk in the (slightly) cooler weather. Reggie is really finding this heat hard work and just barking at deer brings him out into a full-on pant so we planned an early walk instead of an early supermarket shop today and we were parking up in Sorana by 8.30am - what a morning it was, warming up but very pleasant and not a soul around.
We drove back down to the Forfora valley floor and stopped immediately at Sandrino's café - we'd noticed on the way up to Sorana that this café just a stone's throw from Sandrino's restaurant was open for business - it must surely be a seasonal thing as we've so often seen in closed, so we decided to stop for a quick coffee as it's a lovely quiet spot where we could leave the car in the shade and with all the doors and windows open.
A quick cappuccino each later, we hopped back into the car just as a group of a dozen or so riders on expensive-looking road bikes were turning up for refreshments of their own.
It wasn't long before we were back home and the house was already feeling cooler than the outside. It still wasn't yet 10am, so we hastily decided to head down to the veg terraces and do some weeding - which for Helen quickly turned into finishing off the second flight of tyre steps (a job she was convinced was no harder in the heat of the sun than the weeding despite it involving digging with a shovel!).
About an hour later, Paddy and Catherine called down to us having ventured into Reggie territory to to announce they were off so we came up to wish them a safe drive home and to thank them for being such great guests before waving them along the driveway.
After a little more work down in the veg garden we called time to stop for lunch. We almost resorted to eating lunch indoors such was the heat outside, EVEN under the umbrella.
After lunch and with our energy and enthusiasm thoroughly drained we procrastinated over what had to be done before our next guests arrived tomorrow lunchtime and eventually mustered up the motivation to face the supermarkets knowing that Saturday lunchtime is by far the quietest time to be in them around here as the Italians are all busy eating lunch.
True to form they were blissfully quiet, and we sped around both Lidl and Esselunga before heading back up to the house to unload and unpack.
*Quick change of writer (Stuart ran out of time)*
Next on our to-do list was to head out once again - this time we were heading in the direction of Montecatini. Our first stop was Obi. I (Helen) don't have a good relationship with Obi - almost the second we've walked through the door I think Stuart can see my face glaze over and I'm counting down the seconds until we can leave again. Today was different though. The bliss of stepping into an air-conditioned shop had us both wondering whether they would let us set up camp and sleep here overnight. Anyway, Stuart wanted to try and buy a compost bin to put down on the lower (veg) terraces - having spent some of Friday pulling out the peas and broad bean plants (not to mention all the weeding), he figured it would be a good idea to have a small compost bin down there rather than lugging things up to our main compost station or simply throwing it down the hill. We were sure we'd seen compost bins in Obi before, but on this occasion they eluded us. We ended up leaving having purchased nothing but a bottle of water and two cans of cold, cold Fanta from the vending machine in the lobby of the shop.
Next we drove to a small complex of shops on the outskirts of town to visit the pet shop 'Island of treasures'. To cut a long story short, we had been entrusted with the care of the Phillipses terrapin while they were away on holiday and just 4 short days after they left, said terrapin had shuffled off this mortal coil. We needed to get a replacement but had put it off for as long as possible so as not to have the same thing happen again (I don't think it was anything we had done/not done). However, with their 3-week holiday quickly coming to an end, we needed to take action and we knew we'd seen a sign in the window of the pet shop saying that they sold aquatic animals.
We pulled up to find the shop looking most dark and unpromising and were bracing ourselves for our second wasted journey of the afternoon, but on leaping out of the car to read the notice on the door, I reported back that it was merely shut for lunch and would be open again at 4pm - in half an hour. After killing a bit of time wandering around the enormous Superdrug-but-nicer style shop next door, we decided to get a drink somewhere. The enoteca on the same complex as the pet shop proved to be closed, so we got in the car and drove down the road. Every single bar or coffee shop we passed was closed. We thought we'd entered some sort of bizarre twilight zone where you couldn't get a drink or a sandwich anywhere ... because it was lunchtime. Anyway, by the time we'd given up looking, it was almost 4pm so we went back to the pet shop.
We headed straight to the aquatic section at the back of the shop (after picking up a few more ham bones for Reggie, that is) and found a tank containing 4 lively looking terrapins. We managed to grab the attention of a sales assistant who was only too pleased to come and help us. Unfortunately, each of the terrapins in the tank appeared to be female - there wasn't much we could do about that though, and would just have to hope that Erik would be OK with Terry v2 actually being a Terri. The lady bagged Terri v2 up , we paid and then headed home with me holding the bag trying not to let Terri2 get too seasick along the way.
After thoroughly cleaning out the tank, Terri2 was introduced to her new home - and promptly went and hid under the nearest stone. We decided to leave her to get used to her new surroundings while we went down to the apartment to start our cleaning and turnaround process.
A good 2 hours of dusting, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, linen changing, appliance checking and floor mopping later, we collapsed on the terrace for a well earned glass of wine. By this time the sun had gone off the patio and the temperature had cooled to a much more pleasant 28C, so we sat and took in our surroundings for a while before it was time to wash up, cook dinner, water the plants and check on the geese.
For those interested in the Heath-Robinson-style cardboard shutters: we still haven't been able to get the bedroom below 27-28C. I'm sure they still do some good though - cutting out the sunlight can only be helpful on days like these.
SUN-day.
Yes, Sunday really lived up to its name and it was yet another scorcher. I was out of bed at 8am and dragging the lawn mower from its station under the canopy to the lawn. After a good 45 minutes or so mowing the lawn, I went indoors to fetch the strimmer to neaten up the edges of the lawns. I didn't get very far though, before the cord snapped and I needed to resort to asking Stuart for help. By this time he was just getting up and dressed, and not only did he fix the cord but he finished the strimming job while I did a bit of weeding and dead-heading of the plants in the guest area.
With our gardening duties the final task to tick off the list for getting the apartment ready for our next guests, we were free to sit down to a late breakfast and ponder what to do with the rest of the morning. We decided to go and check on the Phillipses chickens - but since it was nearing 11am by now, the weather had really started heating up, so instead of taking Reggie with us for a walk, we left him at the house and dashed into Pescia to check on the chickens before coming home again.
It wasn't long after lunch that we received a text message from our guests to say that they were about half an hour away, and true to their word, they were pulling up in the car park about 30 minutes later. We greeted them and showed them the apartment before leaving them to unpack and settle in. Meanwhile, on a hot, hot, Sunday what better to do than go and get an ice cream? We offered Reggie the opportunity, but he couldn't be swayed, he was just too hot to show the slightest enthusiasm in going for walkies even when we tried to tempt him with the promise of an ice cream. So once again we left him at home and headed into Pescia, where we each enjoyed a delicious ice cream at La Barachina before coming back home to rescue Reggie.
We had invited our guests up for a drink with us in the evening, so in preparation for that, we made a bowl of three-bean dip with some carrot sticks and cucumber sticks all fresh from the garden. While we were at it, we also made an enormous bowl of carrot and beetroot quinoa salad for our dinner and even some egg mayo sandwiches for Stuart's lunch tomorrow. Talk about getting ahead of the game!
Come 5pm, we decided to try Reggie with a walk one more time - he hadn't been for a walk since Saturday morning and despite being so hot he was also being quite barky so we felt he might need to expend some energy. It was a little less hot by now, and we decided we would head up the road to the cava footpath where it's shady and always a degree or two cooler. This time we eventually managed to get Reggie to put his harness on, but he refused point blank to get into the car. He did a half-hearted hop into the back of the boot but it just seemed too much effort for him to make the final leap into his crate. We didn't want to push it with him, so instead started wandering slowly up the drive. We made it a little way along the road towards Vellano with him - he seemed happy enough once we got going, but we didn't want to overdo it, so turned back quite soon. He really does seem to have mastered the art of ignoring cars on the road - even when we were passed by several loud rally cars on their way back from an event that must have been taking place earlier in the day, he was unfazed.
 |
| Cool as a cucumber. |
Our guests duly came up for a glass of wine at 6.30pm - which turned into a few glasses of wine and some quinoa salad. Once again, we seem to have landed some really lovely people as our guests and we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening finding out a bit about them and telling them our story. This is an aspect of hosting that we never imagined when we were planning our move here - I think we imagined that having people to stay in the apartment would be a bit strange, but that it was part of the plan and something we needed to do. What has really surprised us is that we both love having people to stay in the apartment. We really enjoy meeting and getting to know new people and it's also a nice feeling to know that there are people in the apartment, it's a little like having neighbours!
So that was a lovely way to round off a busy weekend, with another busy week ahead.
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