As mentioned in our last post, Saturday started out damp and slightly cooler. And what a blissful change that made! Not that we want it to rain all the time (thank you very much), but after 5 parched weeks it was something of a novelty to hear the sound of the patter of rain and smell the freshness of the air.
We were visited late morning by the Phillips boys - Chris, Henry and Erik. They were on their way up to Sorana to finish preparing a house they look after for the arrival of some holiday makers, but had stopped in on their way to collect some printing we'd said we would do for them. Henry and Erik's printing was straightforward enough: a book list each for the next school year, but Chris's was a little more involved. Chris had bravely (or crazily) put himself up to the challenge of walking from Viareggio to Pescia on Sunday in a bid to raise some money for Breast Cancer Care and to raise awareness of Pescia Rugby Club. Google had calculated that it was a roughly 28-mile distance, and he'd decided to do it bang in the middle of summer, in extreme heat - the next day, in fact. We were slightly alarmed to find that the day before he set out, he hadn't done much preparation beyond asking us to print out some directions from Google Maps along with a couple of grainy Google maps (our laser printer is not top quality). Not only this, but he and Sue had invited us round for dinner that evening - and, given our usual pattern of socialising with them (prosecco, wine and a late night), this didn't seem like the optimum way to prepare! Anyway, more on that later.
We did our usual weekend supermarket shop at lunchtime on Saturday and found both Lidl and Esselunga pleasingly quiet. We are now right in high tourist season, and it is noticeable that the demographic of supermarket shoppers has changed. It's a good distraction from the mundane task of grocery shopping to play spot-the-tourist and guess-the-nationality. You can spot the tourists a mile off. I have to put my hands up here, and say that I'm sure we look equally touristy, shopping as we do in our shorts and flip flops, while the real Italians float around the shop gracefully in their long trousers/dresses, full make-up and posh hair dos, and while we are now pretty familiar with the supermarkets (I even know where to find the lemon juice now), I can't say that our grasp of the language is much better than that of the summer visitors. But anyway, back to the tourists. The biggest giveaway, of course, is if you get close enough to overhear some of their conversations, but generally, spotting a couple of teenagers looking bored to tears is a dead giveaway that they are being dragged around the supermarket by their hassled parents when all they really want to do is to get back to the pool and their iPods (while all the parents probably want to do is to sink a bottle or two of wine). Other signs of tourists are people in shorts with pasty-looking legs (and/or extreme sunburn) and people who are covered in mosquito bites. I think there is something in the theory that the longer you spend here the more immune you become to the mozzies, and while we are still battling them, we don't feel as badly affected as we were last year, and we rarely see an Italian with bites. The supermarket car parks are also now dotted with Dutch, German and French cars, and the number of English voices we hear has probably more than quadrupled.
Anyway, shopping done, we went back to the house to unpack, had a rare Saturday afternoon break to watch a bit of TV, before heading down to the vegetable beds to do some more tidying. We spent about 2 hours weeding, cutting, tying up rogue tomato plants and trying to stop the acacia from taking over.
Just before 7, we quickly showered and changed, gave Reggie a juicy bone to entertain himself, while making sure Lucca and Florence were safely in the 'cat zone' upstairs, and headed down into Pescia to the Phillips house.
We had a lovely evening with Chris and Sue - Henry and Erik were busy in town helping out at some sort of festa, so it was just the four of us and we sat on the patio enjoying the lovely evening air. It was a perfect temperature - warm, but (for a change) not too hot, with a lovely gentle breeze - and we sat and chatted, ate delicious food that Sue had prepared, listened to the church bells from the town, and of course had some Prosecco and some wine. Much of the conversation revolved around Chris's mammoth walk the next day, as we probed him about how much preparation he'd done, what vital supplies he would be taking with him and his plan of action. We were remarkably restrained in comparison with other occasions on which the four of us have socialised, even to the point of leaving at midnight - not because we'd had enough I hasten to point out, but because Chris had an early start in the morning and we had a dog to get home to.
When we got up on Sunday, it was already warm. Still slightly cooler than of late, but without any of the wet stuff, it was warmer than Saturday, and even by 10am we were both shuddering at the mere thought of walking further than along the road, never mind the 28 miles Chris was in for. Nevertheless, Chris did indeed stick to his word, and was walking by 11am on Sunday morning. Sue had dropped him off in Viareggio and she posted periodic updates on his progress throughout the day via Facebook. After 5 hours he was on the outskirts of Lucca, and a gruelling 11 hours after setting out, he was completing his 36-mile walk (yes, 8 miles longer than planned!) in 30+ degree heat. Brilliant or crazy, or a bit of both, he'd certainly achieved what he'd set out to do (which was this) and definitely earned our respect for one!
Our own Sunday was a lot more relaxed than Chris's. After a slow-paced start to the day our first task was our third supermarket trip of the weekend. We have recently (largely thanks to the suggestion and tips from Sue, although we had considered something vaguely similar) started to offer a 'welcome pack upgrade' for our apartment guests - basically a week's grocery shopping to save them the bother of spending their precious holiday time traipsing round a supermarket. We were excited that our next set of guests had booked the package (or rather, their parents had), so for the first time we went supermarket shopping to fill our trolley with goodies for someone else:
By the time we got home it was definitely time for lunch, and for a change, we decided on a lunch of tomato bruschette with mozzarella. It made for a delicious summery lunch, which of course we ate on the patio.
After lunch, it was all about the grocery package. First, we spent a couple of hours in the office, working out recipes that could be cooked with the ingredients in the package and putting together a mini-recipe book to leave with the package, and once that was done, we headed to the apartment to set about working out how best to present the package, putting the rice, pasta and other dried ingredients into jars, wrapping the cheeses and trying to work out how to cram it all into the fridge! We just hoped our guests would be hungry!
That took us until gone 6pm, at which point we retreated to our house, had a relaxing drink on the patio before tackling washing up, dinner and pickled cucumbers. We'd started the process of pickling cucumbers (slicing them up along with some onions, salting them and leaving them under a heavy weight) earlier in the morning, so Stuart finished off the process, resulting in three jars of sweet pickled cucumber! Delia (whose recipe it was) recommends leaving them for a month before eating, so we will wait and see how they turn out! We only used two cucumbers, so we're looking around for other recipes to try.
So that was the end to a very pleasant weekend.
Yesterday was back to work for me, and Stuart spent the afternoon cleaning and tidying in the apartment, ready for the arrival of our guests in the evening. His morning was a little more varied though - he had gone into town to try and sort out our registration for refuse tax, and ended up buying a new pair of safety boots and meeting up with Angelo, the Albanian builder who he met in Lidl a while ago and who we've asked to quote for repairing the end of our driveway. Stuart and Angelo ended up visiting a geometra (one of Angelo's, not ours) to ask about the process for repairing the drive. Our geometra, Andrea, had told Stuart that we need to go to the comune to ask for permission, but it actually turns out that it's Andrea who needs to apply for permission on our behalf. They also discussed the best way to repair it - the most cost effective way would be to use block work, but replacing like for like (concrete) is likely to be easier to get permission for... so that saga rumbles on and until we can get the comune to give us the necessary permission, we will continue to tackle the entrance to our drive like some sort of cross-country rally drive.
After our day's work, we decided to call in at the Phillips house on our way into town to collect our guests from the station, so we spent a lovely hour there, catching up with the highlights of The Big Walk, before heading to the station to collect Charlie and Becky, our guests from the UK. After bringing them back to the house, we offered them a drink and the opportunity to meet Reggie (or rather the chance for Reggie to get to know that they are friends, not foes), so the four of us sat on the patio with a glass of wine and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours chatting and finding out about each other - yet again, we seem to have landed ourselves a great set of guests.
The rest of the week looks set to be filled with work for both of us. I am battling conference papers day in, day out at the moment, and Stuart has a week of jobs around the valley lined up. At least we have some more manageable temperatures for the next few days - it had dropped to a positively chilly 26C in our bedroom last night, and our daytime temperatures look set to hover between 31C and 33C over the next few days - not exactly cardigan weather but, believe it or not, it feels quite cool in comparison with the weather we've had of late. So now it's just a case of roll on the weekend for us both!
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