The visitors begin ...
Having returned from Sicily late April, we managed to fit in a visit from our friend Liz who is living in Rome, followed by Angelina a work colleague from Sydney, with just enough time to change the bed linen again before heading to Venice airport to meet my parents.
Aperitivo
with lovely Liz
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Aperitivo
with Angelina
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And the
tour begins …..
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Tasting
at Real Collegio
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Oh Dio!!! Yes, you guessed it – it’s under the grill – in cinders!! And it’s only hour 1 of day 1!!
I did mention he’s a regular toast burner.
A
little torta for dolce!
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Meeting
the locals
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Thursday night mum joined me for a majolica ceramics painting class in Montelupo, everyone was most impressed with her ability with a brush as she secretly reminisced her old days of folk art.
Capraia
For our first weekend we joined a CAI (Club Alpino Italiano)
trip to the tiny Tuscan island of Capraia. Our CAI friends were very excited to
have 2 extra Australians on board. After a rather choppy 2 ½ hour crossing
we arrived at the port. Here we checked into our hotel (a family room – ha ha)
and set off for a 5 hour walk. I was not expecting mum or Al to join us but mum
is always ready for a challenge; she strapped on some walking shoes and off we trotted.
Al opted for an afternoon of relaxing in the sun.
Mum
resting her weary feet
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Marino
with his feet up
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Me
amongst the wild flowers on Capraia
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Our following week was filled with various trips to some of our favourite destinations. Pisa, the villas of Marlia, the town of Pietrasanta (a personal favourite of mine) and a tour of a Carrara marble quarry.
Playing
tourists in Pisa
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The
Italian garden at Villa Grabau
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The
Devils bridge – Borgo a Mozzano
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Marino and I have been wanting to do this tour since we’d admired the views of the marble mountains from our many walks in the Apuane Alps. Our marble tour began with being kitted out in a fluoro safety vest and plastic hard helmet, that’s Italian OH&S for you. We then all piled into the back of a jeep and were trucked up to the top of the mountain. I’d completely forgotten Al’s vertigo – this was not a pleasant journey for him. At the top we all piled out and walked amongst the many trucks ferrying massive blocks of marble up and down the mountain - it was a workday after all. We were only 100m or so from all the action. An amazing sight, which words fail to describe.
The view
from the marble mountain
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Cooking Class
Look
what I made!
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Back in Lucca, mum and I did a day’s cooking class at Hotel Carignano, where I’d previously done a class. This time we learnt pasta making and pasta sauces. I think we made 6 different types of pasta and accompanying sauces. We then sat down to a late lunch to sample each one. Although I hardly had room for it, the chocolate, pear and ricotta ravioli with the strawberry sauce was my favourite.
Sampling
the days work
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Mmm ….
Chocolate ravioli
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A health story
I am proud to say that Marino and I have remained pretty
healthy throughout our time in Italy with only the odd mild cold between us, so
no need to visit the doctor – phew! Unfortunately Mum picked up a nasty cough
somewhere between Australia and Lucca which turned into a chest infection, so off
to the doctors with her - there went my plan of staying clear of the Italian
medical system. We headed off on our bikes to our appointment, I am acting as
interpreter which given my knowledge of the body parts in Italian I thought I’d
be ok. Wrong! But we did manage to get the message across thanks to a few hearty
coughs from mum. The doctor then proceeds to inform me of the treatment he's
prescribing that I’ll need to administer. When the list ends after the 5th
type of medication I’m slightly worried. We head to the farmacia (pharmacy) and
basically cleared the shelves!! The pharmacist again explains what I need to
do. When I see the box hypodermic needles I’m really worried. Finally
after a demonstration by the local nurse on how to mix the drugs using the
first needle then mix a further drug before changing needles, it was then over to me to play nurse Betty for
the next 9 mornings injecting my mother in her buttocks! Thankfully, the injections did the trick and the infection cleared.
Sardegna
Sardegna (Sardinia) has been high on our list of places to visit
whilst in Italy so it made perfect sense to book a trip while my parents
were here. Pisa airport being just down the road, and good old Ryanair have cheap
direct flights to this island.
We set off on a Saturday afternoon after a morning tour of
the Lucca antique market. The antique market occurs only once a month, and our
tiny town is filled with an assortment of furniture, antiquities and general
bric a brac. The town is almost unrecognisable as the piazzas and narrow
streets are spilling with all kinds of ‘stuff’.
Mum
and Al enjoying the Antique Market
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The unrecognisable
city of Lucca
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So much
stuff, that we somehow managed to lose Allan, who was not particularly happy when he
finally found his way home. Sorry Al, it was a misunderstanding!!!
Finally we arrived in Sardegna and made the 2 hour drive north
to our apartment in the cute and colourful town of Santu Lussurgiu.
It didn’t take long to
work out that there was some kind of horsey thing going on in this town. There
were these amazing 3 dimensional horse paintings on the walls of various
buildings. After a quick chat to the local barista the story takes shape. The
‘Sa Carrela e Nanti’, is a horse race held every February during Carnival. The race is run
through the town, in and around the steep roads, with the riders masked and riding in
pairs. There’s another part to the story about a chicken – but that kind of got
lost in translation.
One morning on our way to the bar for our morning coffee we noted that the local church appeared very busy and there are women piling out of the church all with handfuls of beautiful roses. Of course we have to go in and see what’s going on. And glad we did - we were each given a long stemmed rose - all of which appear to be home grown - and there are buckets full of them at the foot of the Madonna and child. Yes, it’s Saint Rita’s day.
The
blessed!
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We’d never heard of Saint Rita or
that she even had a saint's day! A quick google and we now know that Rita was an Italian
Augustinian num, widow and saint. Rita is known to be the patroness for abused
wives and mourning women. Not sure what that means about all the women of Santu
Lussurgiu in the church that morning, but the story of the rose is told that
near the end of her life, Rita was bedridden at the convent. A cousin visited
her and asked her if she desired anything from her old home. Rita responded by
asking for a rose from the garden. It was January and her cousin did not expect
to find anything due to the weather. However, when her relative went to the
house, a single blooming rose was found in the garden and her cousin brought
the rose back to Rita. I do love a story of a saint and accompanying miracle. The other
miracle is that when we got back to Lucca I realized that the print of the
saint we have hanging in the entry hall is none other than Rita!!
The men, just
being Italian …..
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We spent our week exploring the province of Oristano and
discovering the Nuraghi of Sardegna. The Nuraghi are ancient stone buildings
developed during the Nuragic Age (between 1900 to 730 BC). There is no consensus
on what the functions of these structures are, conical towers of stone on the
outside and shaped like a beehive on the inside - we were fascinated by them.
Mum and
Marino
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discovering
the Nuraghi
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The Santu Lussurgiu locals were extremely friendly and chatty, by the end of
our week we were on first name basis with Matteo the butcher, Rita from the local
supermarket, and of course the barista at the local bar had our coffee order
almost ready before we sat down! The weather was unseasonably cold for May, and
everyone we met apologized for it!!
On our last morning before heading back to Cagliari for our
return flight, we were invited to inspect the house of an English woman we’d
met at the bar earlier in the week. She had just settled on her property, a 3
storey terrace with 2 balconies and a kooky indoor pizza oven all for just €20,000. She was
about to begin her renovations, which were desperately needed. It got us
all thinking about finding a little property of our own in Sardegna!
With only 4 more days in Lucca before Mum and Al departed
for their trip to Venice and onwards, we just managed to squeeze in another
trip to Pittarello, the fabulous shoe supermarket.
Pittarello
– the shoe supermarket
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3 days later, their train pulled out of the station at 2.30pm and by 5.00pm that same day we were greeting our next guests. Hello Billie and Ken!
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