Month: July 2015

This last week in Lucca has been amazingly busy. My friends from school last week are a very active lot and kindly keep including me in all their activities. Hence I have dined out every night this week. Last night we (3 Aussies, one HK and one of our lovely teachers) wined and dined until nearly 2am with a lot of hilarity. You can’t beat a group of (mainly) Aussies to turn the conversation to toilets/ bidets and the like…Some great stories across the table. The night before it was a great fish restaurant outside the walls with my friend from HK and 2 American woman…great food and fun too.

I’m having a fairly relaxing week otherwise. I’m going out for lunch most days to revisit my favourite places. I try and ride a bit each day to get the most out of my lovely bike…I’m going to miss it very much. I wander around and feel nostalgic about leaving this great town. I’ve also started tidying and packing up. I’m meeting with Cristina, my landlady this morning to do a bit of planning for my exit as she has someone coming in on same day.

Tomorrow night one of the Austn women who is a professional chef at home and living here for 6 months with her family, has asked the group (including the 2 American woman) to dinner…I suspect that will be a heavy night for my last night. I think she is insane to take on this task but it will be fun.

So the time is rapidly coming when I start moving again, with lots of company and diversity of travel for the next couple of months before I come home. Not sure how I’ll cope without Italy in my life!!

The weekend went by…my last in Lucca. On Sunday I roused myself enough to ride around the wall. In deference to the heat I went around twice, stopped and had a read then did another lap so 3 in all but a bit lazily. I’m getting the most out of the bike as I leave it behind in but days now. Most of the time at home I’m either doing a bit of cleaning up / packing or writing up my Italian lessons so I can throw all paper away. I’ve also gone solo on the 2 beautiful bottles of wine from the Chianti trip back in April and have now polished them off.

I’ve also been fighting with the car hire people because there was $223 on my credit card from them, so I told them they had charged the wrong credit or (my greater concern) they had charged both Norjie and I. This went back and forward and they claimed not to know what I was talking about. I sent them emails and they sent back saying don’t know what you’re talking about. So today I sent them my credit card statement and said please explain this charge. So finally they get back to me…oh!! that’s a fine you got from the Lucca police. Here is the notice and we authorised your credit card!!! Fucking hell. So the notice says for driving in a restricted area within the walls..god knows but it was when I hired a car with Shamala and Alan. I remember having to go back inside the walls to pick something up before going to the doctor with Shamala….the buggers!! I’m furious on 2 counts…that they fined me in the first place and that the hire car company just blithely authorised my credit card. Anyway I’m taking deep breaths and letting another fucking stupid italian fine go into the depths where I put bad memories.

Today I went to a hairdresser recommended by an Australian friend from school and had my beach/ summer haircut. The Italians seem to be great hair cutters so I’m happy with it. I went and bought myself a purse to bring home and did some other random shopping about the place. Pottered at home as above and am soon going out to have a meal with my friend Anita from school.

Have been reading up on Trieste and I think that will be a really interesting port of call…looking forward to that.

So I’m not just whinging…hottest ever in Italy. AJ has just told me so. Low overnight around 28-ish, massive humidity, just generally exhausting weather. Last 2 days at school. After school for 2 days in a row I’ve suffered the laundromat in order to keep up. School is good but I think it is time to stop now and admit a large degree of failure (and a minor degree of success). Just ate at home last night and downed an excessive number of Spritz’ in our efforts to keep cool (or oblivious). Today Norjie has been off on a boat cruise to the Cinque Terre, she’s not back yet but when she returns we are going to “Olive Oil” for The Last Supper!! Unfortunately I kind of got us stuck with one of my class mates who wanted to go to this restaurant and I felt I had to ask her to join us…hopefully it will work out OK. She is a woman from Hong Kong who is currently studying in New York so she will have something in common with Norjie.

We are all going to school like zombies, no-one is sleeping much. Nothing more to report…not much by way of activity at this end, it’s hard to bloody well move!!

Norjie leaves first thing in the morning and then I have a week of cleaning up, packing and preparing to farewell another city I’ve grown to love.

Sunday was a back to the car day. The car is actually an extraordinary relief in this heat with its lovely aircon. Just so that it is recorded … the car hire place I’ve been using is Autonoleggio Giglio, Via Orzali 391… in case anyone wants to know in the future. They have been quite good to me.

So we set out to do a bit of Garfagna driving and made for the furthest point….Castelnuovo. A town up the river. It was an OK town but there are definitely towns more beautiful. We wandered around there for a while and then went back to the car to drive to the Fort …’Fortezza di Mont’Alfonso’. Up and up and up this windy road we went, and then up some more. There was a town we had seen way, way on top of the mountain and when we reached that town we concluded we had gone too far….a bit dumb I have to say and when we turned around and went back down the vertical road we saw that we had driven straight past the fort in totally unobservant style. Still it was a very scenic drive if a little daunting to ensure the Panda kept going, in first gear, on the steepest parts of the road.

We found the fort and walked around its walls…the best part was the views, it was otherwise uninspiring!! Then onwards and downwards to Barga. I love this town every time I go, it is a really stunning little medieval, walled town. We found a place to sit in the shade and have lunch, then I insisted Norjie walk up to the Duomo!! I on the other hand had been there twice before, so I insisted that I remain in the restaurant sipping wine and having a wee pannacotta…I’ve got my priorities right and I’m bossy enough to ensure Norjie got her priorities right too!!!

After Barga it was back to the Panda and off again, making our way back to Lucca, with a brief stop at the Devil’s Bridge at Borgo a Mozzano for a photo op. We dropped the car off after the biggest difficulty of the day which was working out how to fill it up in a self service thingo!! I put in 50 Eu and then couldn’t retrieve any change which made it an expensive fill-up!!

We got back to Lucca and the apartment at around 6pm. Just time to cool off, have a shower and go the “The World’s Best Restaurant” , Ristorante Giglio for dinner…my shout to farewell Norjie. We had a MASSIVE bistecca to share because Norjie wanted to try the Tuscan specialty…I can’t believe I got through it…took a while!! It was a lovely night and a late night.

So then there is the Monday morning need to face school. Each week we are missing some of the friends from previous week but today there was a ‘new’ woman who is from Adelaide and who I knew from ages ago when she was at Italian school before she went off to Sicily, Carmel. She is lovely although I think far too good to be in my class.

After school I had to meet up with this other Australian woman I had met ages ago through one of the teachers. She is a delight and we sat over a 3 hour lunch nattering like mad. She hasn’t come to school yet but will do so, probably after I leave.

Just in case you are wondering at how badly I am neglecting Norjie, she went off to Pisa for the day today and had a lovely time. Dinner at home tonight!! She leaves Thursday morning then I have one more week before I head down to Rome and then on to Matera.

Norjie has hired a car for the weekend so we’re mobile again and went off for a day in the Chianti once again (for me). It was beautiful, it is beautiful and I guess every time I go back it will indeed be beautiful. Having said that, todays experience was totally different to the day spent with H,A & R. To start with Norjie is not really into wines so it wasn’t a day of being off the beaten track searching out wineries and good wines. Instead it was a day of exploring the little towns of the Chianti area.

First, I have to once again pay homage to my dear friend of the GPS. I love her for many reasons, again confirming that there definitely is a worse Italian accent than mine but secondly she unfailingly gets me there!! For this I love her and am in Hammy and Ariane’s debt. I remember being reluctant to take her, now they will have to prise her off me in Sicily.

We set off and went first to Castellina in Chianti. A lovely Chianti town but very busy and very much geared to the tourist trade…i.e. full of restaurants, enotecas and a bustling market. We walked through a wonderful passageway under the old cellars which was fabulous. A highlight for me was lighting upon a dress I liked in the market…and that fitted!! I bought 2 for 20 Eu each and they will certainly help me through the long hot summer.

From there we went to (back to for me) the lovely town of Volpaia. Last time we were there Hammy and I tasted wines while Rose and Ariane walked through the town. There was also the added excitement of me needing to get to a loo, so I missed the town. This time no such drama. First we went to lunch in order to secure a table. We went to the restaurant on the other side of the piazza to where we sat last time at that little bar. We sat out on the terrace under the vines with a splendid view and a yummy light lunch and, of course, a glass (or two ) of wine. Gorgeous. We then wandered through the town and what a lovely town it is…ancient and quiet, away from the hoards and totally beautiful. The Harley Club arrived to shatter the tranquility but they had soon parked their bikes and settled down to enjoy their lunch at the bar opposite.

From there we went to Panzano. Another lovely quiet, ancient little town to wander through. The main trauma here was the exceedingly steep streets. No problem on the feet but I had to park the little gutless Fiat Panda on a very steep hill. I had had awful trouble in the car park in Castellina because it wouldn’t get up the vertical slope out of the car park…I had to reverse back and make the 3 cars behind me reverse so I could get a run up and even then only just got the little gutless wonder out of there. Not a car to be buying any time soon…all I could think was thank god for my solid training in the hand break start and the manual transmission all those years ago!!! Anyway the long and the short of this exhaustive tale is that we got up the hill in Panzano with (according to me) considerable skill and tenacity.

Last stop was Greve. The heart of the Chianti, or so they say. A lovely town. We had read about this thing there where you put money on a card and slot it into these wine tasting machines for a tasting. I wanted to do it because it sounded like a lot of fun. So we put 10 Euros onto this card which we shared and had our tastes. It failed a little because I was driving and couldn’t taste as much as I would have and could have, and Nora is definitely not into wine and she curled up her toes and refused to have more. So…there were no refunds. But fortunately we’d been chatting to some Aussies in this enoteca and despite the fact that he was a Collingwood supporter my ‘waste not want not’ instinct overcame my ‘hate every Collingwood supporter’ instinct and I gave the remaining tastes to him.

Then we returned to Lucca and to top a good day I found a car park immediately….dinner at home tonight and tomorrow a lesser excursion into the Garfagna.
Ciao all XXXX

Really just a very quick update. Off to school on Thursday to struggle through more passato prossimo / passato imperfect / reflexive verbs / modalis and god knows what else ….brain scramble!! Home to try to write it up. Then Norjie arrived back and I had 5 minutes to say hello before I headed back to school for my hour with Ele. But what was nice was that I had arranged to meet Norjie at a bar after my hour for a Spritz and a catch- up. That was really nice. After our Spritz we walked around town a bit to book some restaurants for Norjies last days here in Lucca. She came back with lots of ideas for what she wanted to do in this last week which was terrific. As a result we have booked a car for the weekend and are going to ‘do’ the Chianti area again as well as Barga and the Garfagna around Lucca. After that flurry of organisation we went out for a meal which was very pleasant indeed.

Today, off to school again. It being Friday it was a day of goodbyes to friends made during the week as each Friday is. I then met Norjie for lunch at one of my favourite places (San Giorgio) where I always get my Al Papa di Pomodoro (this yummy tomato soup). It was a nice lunch, then we came back to the apartment to stay out of the sun for the hottest part of the day. I had lots to do…plane ticket to Trieste, train tickets back to Rome from Trieste, looking at accommodation options for Bordeaux, replying to emails of long ago…etc etc.

Now we’re ready to head of for the evening meal. We have booked at Buca di San Antonio (Pots and Pans Restaurant) for one of the final nice restaurants. Off to chianti tomorrow…I hope I’m not pushing my luck by continuing to hire cars…every-time I get a car back I heave a sigh of relief. I do still get a bit anxious despite the increase in confidence!!

More later

S

Another sweaty day of school. The class is settling in now and the nice thing today was that a “my age” woman from Melbourne joined the class. We bonded immediately and I think I have a new BFF. It was lovely actually, we are about the same level. She was in the more advanced class they were trying to persuade me to go into but she hated it and came down a peg to our class. So, it was a fairly pleasant lesson.

But… the same frenetic pace as I get out of class, peddle home, have lunch, write up my notes then basically turn around and peddle back to school for my hour with Ele. Even that was a wee bit better with me talking more (and Ele trying to make out she understands what the hell I’m saying). Anyway maybe these private lessons will help who knows. Having a buddy to have a drink with after class is a bonus!! On the way home I did a bit of super-marketing then back to pour myself a glass of wine.

Tomorrow I have to take myself off to Bologna for my dental “igiene”. A long way to go to see the dentist but what else is there to do but stay faithful?? So, no school at all tomorrow…oh dear I may even miss it!!

It is going to be a very long, hot trip I can tell you. It is even hotter today and tomorrow…sorry guys I know that sounds like boasting but god it’s hot!!

Let you know how it all goes.