We quickly decided that we would treat today as a holiday and go out and do some sightseeing in our valley - all in the name of research for our website, but equally as a day off from household chores.
I'd put a load of washing on when I got up - we realised last week (thanks to another handy tip from Sue) that electricity is less expensive between 7pm and 7am on weekdays, and at weekends - so I'd saved up a load of washing to get done at the cheaper weekend rate. We decided to wait for the washing machine to finish doing its thing so we could get the clothes out on the line to start drying before we went out, so while we waited, I turned my hand to a bit of weeding, while Stuart decided to get our bikes out to give them some TLC after their journey across Europe.
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| A happy boy and his bicycle. |
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| There's something so satisfying about pulling a weed out complete with its root. I wonder if dentists feel the same about pulling teeth... |
Once we'd got the laundry sorted we grabbed the camera and a local map and, feeling just like holiday-makers, headed out in the car.
For the first time since arriving here more than three weeks ago, we turned right out of the drive and headed uphill towards the village of Vellano.
We stayed in Vellano when we came over to Italy on our initial house hunting trip, so we knew it was a lovely little village with some spectacular views.
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| Vellano - this is the village we can see from the end of our drive. |
Vellano didn't disappoint. We parked up and took in the stunning views of the valley, before climbing our way up the steep cobbled streets into the centre of the village.
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| Beautiful Vellano. |
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| Vellano clock tower. |
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| The views from here are stunning. |
After a wander around Vellano and snapping some photographs for our website, we got back in the car to drive onto the next village. This time we headed back down the road, past our gate, and took the next turning off on the right from our house to take us onto the road that heads up through the middle of the valley.
Our valley is known as the Svizzera Pesciatina, or Pescia's Switzerland, and is famous for the 'dieci castelli', or ten castles - ten small villages that each has a castle (or remains thereof). Our closest village, Pietrabuona, is the first of the dieci castelli, with Vellano another one, and the next on our list was the pretty village of Sorana.
This was another village that we've visited before - in fact, we came very close to buying an unfinished newbuild house in Sorana, so again, we knew to expect pretty views and another lovely little quiet village. Sorana didn't disappoint either!
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| Pretty Sorana. |
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| More lovely views from Sorana. |
While we were wandering around Sorana we spotted a little tabby cat. We called it to see if it would come over to us. The little cat was as friendly as anything and rewarded our stroking with a very loud purr. Having been without our own cats for well over a month now, I think it made us both realise how much we miss their furry little faces.
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| (Mum, Dad, please don't show this picture to Lucca and Florence!) |
By the time we'd wandered the cobbled streets of Sorana (and had gone to check on the house that we almost bought - it's still there, still half-built), our tummies were starting to rumble as it was nearing 1pm.
Since we were 'on holiday', we decided not to attempt to do any more sightseeing on an empty stomach and instead to head back home for a relaxing lunch and some wine in the sunshine.
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| Now that's what I call a holiday. |
While we were eating lunch we decided to try to find out once and for all what some of our flying beasties are - as well as the enormous hornets our washing keeps being plagued by, we have some very large black buzzing creatures that seem to enjoy collecting pollen. On closer inspection they appeared to be very large black bees. After consulting with our book on the fauna of the area, we decided they might be violet carpenter bees:
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| A violet carpenter bee? |
While looking at what was around, we also spotted this magnificent fellow - the closest we could find to it in the book is a Norfolk Hawker dragonfly (Norfolk? Really??):
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| Norfolk hawker dragonfly? |
After checking up on the local wildlife, and having enjoyed a lovely relaxing morning and a lovely relaxing lunch, we somehow drifted back into household chores - we just can't seem to help ourselves!
I started by painstakingly reassembling all of our garden furniture that has been shipped from the UK, and then moved on to weeding the patio area next to the barbeque.
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| A couple of hours later - garden furniture. |
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| Look - NO WEEDS! |
Meanwhile, Stuart started assembling the storage unit we bought from Ikea yesterday.
Both his job and my jobs turned out to be pretty hard going in the end, and our lovely relaxing day ended up being not so relaxing after all.
However, we do have a lovely tidy cupboard/shelving unit and a much, much tidier living room to show for it (it will be even tidier when we eventually go back to get the cupboard doors...)
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| Tidy!!! |
We ended the day with a glass of wine sitting at our newly reassembled garden table - tired, but pleased with what we achieved and feeling all the better for having had at least a morning's worth of 'holiday'.
Back to work in earnest tomorrow. It's a bank holiday here in Italy, but I have office work to do, and Stuart has more painting to do in the apartment.
Roll on next weekend!
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