New friends and good times

After a thoroughly enjoyable evening at Manero's restaurant in Vellano with Donatella, David and Sarah on Friday night, Saturday morning started out somewhat bleary eyed for us, but we soon kicked that into touch with a pot of coffee in the fresh morning air - which we shared with our latest set of guests, the New Zealanders Christine, Craig, Robyn and Roger.

It was no surprise to find that the four Kiwis are all really great, friendly people whose company we really enjoy - Chris and Craig are the parents of Nick, one of our HelpX helpers who stayed with us for a fortnight last November (along with Tess), so we already felt as if we were halfway to knowing them, and their friends Robyn and Roger are just as friendly and engaging.

After a leisurely coffee or two and lots of chatting, we decided to do something a little more productive with the day - our guests are only here for a limited time, after all, and had yet to see anything of our area - so the six of us headed, together with Reggie, into Pescia for a walk along the river. After a very pleasant stroll along the banks of the river, Stuart and I left our guests in town, pointing them in the direction of the weekly Saturday market in the main piazza, while we headed home to put our mind to more mundane tasks.

After a quick bite to eat, we headed back into town to do the weekly supermarket chore, then straight back home to unpack before heading up the road to our neighbour's house. Our neighbour, another Paolo, had chatted with Stuart a little while ago and apparently wanted to meet with us to show us around his property and to talk to us about helping him market his holiday rentals to English-speaking folk. Stuart told me we were due to meet at 2.30, so we duly drove up the road, parked the car and waited. And waited. After 25 minutes of waiting, we decided he probably wasn't going to show up, so returned home - at which point Stuart re-checked the message from Paolo and rather sheepishly told me that, actually, the arrangement might have been for next Saturday...!

After finding ourselves with some unexpected spare time in the afternoon, we decided to continue on the theme of crossing chores off our to-do list, and head into town to the laundrette. Despite having ordered a new washing machine two weeks ago, which had been promised for delivery within 5-9 working days, we haven't heard a thing from the company from which we ordered it. Riding high on the success of having restored our bathroom to full working order (after rebuilding the soil stack), which seemingly had fixed the odour problem in the apartment, and having our oven and hob fixed, the arrival of the new washing machine seemed one thing too many to hope for within the same week, so we'd allowed it to slip to the back of the list - which meant we had reached the weekend with another pile of washing and no means to clean it.

I stuffed an enormous Ikea bag full of clothes and towels and we headed into Pescia for our first experience of an Italian laundrette. After the morning's market, Piazza Mazzini was more or less the quietest we'd ever seen it, and we were able to park right outside the laundrette. After fathoming the instructions, we selected the machine with the largest drum - into which we were able to pile all of our washing (with room for more, if we'd had it) - put our coins in, set the machine going, and headed to Franco's bar just a couple of doors down for a drink to while away 40 minutes while we waited for our washing. We ordered a glass of wine each - and, as seems to be the way here, were brought our glasses of wine plus a plate (for which there was no charge) piled full of tiny squares of pizza, olives, slices of meat, pieces of bread and other items to soak up the alcohol. We decided that living without a washing machine might not be such a hardship after all!

Doing laundry has never been so enjoyable.

Once the time was up on our washing, we piled the Ikea bag full of damp clothes and headed off. We'd decided to take a print-out of our order to the shop (Trony) from which we'd ordered (online) our new washing machine to see if they could help us with chasing it up. Unfortunately, they looked at the paperwork and simply told us we'd have to email or call the number on the order as the online Trony is a separate entity from the physical shop. Well, at least we'd tried!

We therefore headed home to hang the washing out to dry before settling down for a relaxing evening. It wasn't long before our Kiwi friends returned from a trip around some of the villages in the valley, and of course we ended up chatting with them again, and then all sharing some drinks, this time on the guest patio downstairs. While we chatted, Reggie ran around cautiously sniffing our new friends and gradually seeming to relax. The influx of four new people seemed a little too much for him at first, and we were treated to a lengthy round of barking - but it wasn't long before he was relaxing around almost everyone, reserving a large dose of suspicion and fear for just one person: Roger. Roger happens to be a vet, which left us all wondering whether Reggie can tell that this is a person who might just stick needles in him and who'd recommend having him neutered!

As time marched on and darkness fell, our guests decided that they would like to go out for dinner and asked for our recommendations for a local restaurant. Before we knew it, they had invited us along to dinner with them, in return for Stuart doing the driving - it was a very generous offer indeed, and of course one we couldn't (and didn't) refuse!

We headed initially for our closest restaurant, Da Nerone in Pietrabuona, but found it fully booked, so we swung Plan B into action and headed instead to Sorana to Da Carla. Da Carla was the busiest we have ever seen it, but they managed to find room for the six of us, and we had another thoroughly enjoyable meal with great company. To top the evening off, we managed to "find" (purely by chance) three red deer standing on the verge at the side of the road on the way home - a local wildlife spotting opportunity for our Kiwi friends!

After our second night out in a row, Sunday morning was another bleary-eyed affair for the pair of us, but we had to be up at a reasonable time as we (and, more to the point, Reggie) had a date to keep. Once we were up, we decided to head out for a coffee to try to wake ourselves up a bit, so after we'd loaded Reggie into the back of the car, we trundled down as far as Da Nerone in Pietrabuona, where we had a much needed cappuccino and a breakfast pastry each. The morning air was fresh, but we started to warm up as we sat in the sunshine outside the café.

Coffee cups drained, we continued on down the hill into Pescia, parked up in the car park next to Lidl and as we parked we spotted our "date" - our Italian dog-walking friend Carlo and his dog Riegel. Reggie seemed pleased to see Riegel and the five of us set off along the river.

As we'd discovered last weekend, walking with Carlo and Riegel has multiple benefits - Reggie gets more exercise than usual because he runs around playing with Riegel, while Stuart and I get an Italian lesson from Carlo. Carlo does speak English, having spent a while working in Bangladesh when he was younger, but he only uses it to communicate with us as a last resort - preferring instead to speak in Italian and help us to learn. Two particular words we learned today were riccio - hedgehog (and also the word for curly) and istrice - porcupine.

As we walked along and chatted (I should point out that Stuart and I only understand a small proportion of what Carlo says, but it seems to be enough to carry us along), we soon reached the small footbridge that Reggie refuses to walk over because of the metal grid under foot. Even with his friend Riegel on the other side, he ran back and forth with no intention of putting a single paw on the bridge. In the end, Stuart scooped him up (all 26+kg of him) and carried him over the bridge, after which he carried on happily as if  nothing had happened.

Thanks to Reggie's refusal to cross the foot bridge, we'd never walked along this stretch of the river before, and found it to be beautiful, with some really lovely views. We walked, and we walked, until eventually I suggested that maybe we should turn back - by this point the day had really turned up the heat and I for one was starting to flag, never mind our 70-year-old friend and the two panting dogs. At least the dogs could run in and out of the river to keep cool!

Reggie and Reigel.

On the return leg of the journey we ran into another dog-walker, Luca, and his dog Giotto, who we'd also met last week, and they walked with us for a while until they reached the point at which they turned off the path to head home.

By the time we finally reached our cars back at Lidl again, we had been walking for 3 hours - easily Reggie's longest walk! We said our goodbyes to Carlo and Riegel and got into the car exhausted - 3 hours of concentrating on listening and trying to understand another language takes it out of you, as does a long, slow walk in rising temperatures!

Reggie was well and truly pooped after his long morning of excitement!

It was time for lunch when we got home, so we made some sandwiches and refuelled ourselves. Stuart and I both felt exhausted and almost went for the option of having a Sunday afternoon siesta - but instead we made the decision to carry on with Reggie's anti-climb fencing in the garden. This was a job that needed doing, and it wasn't too physically (or mentally) demanding, so it seemed just about achievable to our tired brains & bodies! Somehow, in the process of doing the fencing we both perked up considerably (maybe it was the fuel of our lunch working its way into our system) and before long we were motoring along - at least we were until we ran out of materials!

Fortunately the running out of materials coincided with the time at which we were planning to call it a day anyway - we were due at the Phillips's at 5.15pm, so we headed indoors to get ready.

The reason for the visit to the Phillips's was that our guests had expressed a desire to watch the New Zealand v Argentina rugby world cup match. Knowing that the whole Phillips family, and Chris in particular, are big rugby fans, we'd asked Chris whether he knew of anywhere locally that our guests would be able to go to watch the rugby - and as is typical of our lovely friends, they had simply invited the whole lot of us around to watch the match with them at their house.

So come 5pm, we and our guests headed into Pescia in convoy and descended on the Phillips household. Not being the world's biggest fan of ball-based team sports, I wasn't all that bothered about watching the game - so Sue joined me and the pair of us sat on their terrace enjoying a chat and a glass of wine while the rest of the crew (4 New Zealanders and 4 British ex-pats) watched the match.

Everyone had a great time - it was so kind of Chris and Sue to open up their house to four strangers, but they all seemed to get on very well and come 8pm we had to drag ourselves and our Kiwi friends away - after all it was a school night for the boys, and we had yet to feed ourselves!

On getting back to the house, we said goodnight to our guests and retired to our respective abodes to cook dinner. I don't know about them, but for us it was time for a much needed early night in preparation for the week ahead. It had been a wonderful weekend with new friendships and lots of good times.