Relaxing Day

11/11/2009

Today we woke up to the sun shining over the beautiful Tuscan countryside. This was the first time we had seen the sun since we left Florence and the clear view from Villa Gaia was incredible. It was son nice to feel the sun again. Since we had been going nonstop from the time we arrive, we had today to relax. We very much appreciated this break, in addition to that Francesco told us that it is very important in Italy to take time and relax.

We didn’t set the alarm last night so that we could sleep in. Then we took our time getting ready in the morning. We ate breakfast around 10:30 and since we did not have anything set on the agenda for the morning, I brought my computer along with me to the restaurant so I could get caught up with things on the Internet.

After breakfast, Mom and I took the two beagles, Gina and Uggo, for a walk. This was quite an experience because they are both very strong willed beagles that only wanted to follow their noses and smell everything. I have no idea how Francesco walks them both at the same time. They were everywhere, tugging very hard at their leashes, wanting to go into the woods and then down in the ravines. It was quite the task. We have known since we arrived that it is very important not to let those two out of the house without a leash on. Anna told us later on that one time Gina got loose and was gone for five days. When she came back to the house, she had broken ribs, a hole in her lung, and required a blood transfusion from the big dog, Sara. Sara also walked around with us, but since she is old and stays on the property she just mosied along side us without a leash.

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing. Mom read her book in the sun and I hung out. Anna prepared an unbelievable spaghetti lunch for us, which we ate around 1:20. It was done with a mascarpone light cream sauce and then had zucchini in it. We had the custard cake that we finished making last night for dessert. I have to say that we did a fantastic job with the custard cake and it was so easy! This was the first lunch we have eaten at Villa Gaia.

The plan for the afternoon was to go with Francesco and Anna to Grosseto and drop Anna off at the train station so that she could start her holiday to Israel. She was taking the train to Rome, spending the night in Rome with a friend, and then taking an early morning flight from Rome to Israel with a bunch of her friends. She will be gone for about 10 days and this is the first holiday away from Italy that she has gone on in about two years. Francesco is pretty excited about being separated from his mother for a while. They do spend quite a bit of time together on a regular basis between running Villa Gaia and then they live in adjoining apartments in Seggiano.

While Francesco dropped Anna off, Mom and I looked around the town center of Grosseto. We needed to buy another bag so that we could bring all of our souvenirs back to the states and still stay under the bag weight restriction limit. I did some research online and mom’s airline allows her two free bags, while mine only allows me one and if I want to bring a second one it will cost me 50 USD. To ship a 10 kilo box (which is not very heavy at all) back to the states, it would cost us 100 euro. We have some flexibility with how we want to go about packing everything up, in addition to being allowed two carry ons, and I am sure that we will figure out the best way. We ended up finding a good quality American Tourister duffle bag on wheels, which will replace a ratty brown bag that is normally used for a shoe bag. It should do the trick.

While Francesco was out, he also mailed a package for us to a friend of mine in Italy. Inter-Italian mail is relatively cheap and always gets to the destination then next day, which is not bad at all. We drove back to Villa Gaia, which was about an hour from Grosseto, and spent the rest of the afternoon and beginning of the evening relaxing some more. It was a very restful, nice day.

Francesco’s friend, Roman, stopped by the Villa yesterday to stay for a few days. Roman is French and has been traveling with his two dogs, a Dalmatian and little terrier mutt, in a conversion van for the past six months. A couple of years ago, Roman came to Villa Gaia on holiday and liked it so much that he wanted to stay for a while. So Francesco put him to work and they became good friends. Roman is very into Tibetan culture and Buddhism, which works out perfectly with the Buddhist temple so close to Villa Gaia. He is very interesting. He is on his way back to his home in France because his van (which he bought six months ago) is starting to make funny noises, and he wants to go to another Buddhist temple in Venezuela so he needs to drop the dogs off. He says that he loves coming to Tuscany because all of the people here are so nice, some of the nicest he has ever come across, and Mom and I definitely agreed with him.

At 8, Mom, Roman, and I met Francesco at the restaurant and all got in the car to go into Seggiano for a pizza dinner. WE wanted to have a pizza dinner so mom could try the Italian pizza Seggiano is the closest town to Villa Gaia. It is where Francesco and Anna live on a regular basis. There is only one pizza place and that is where we had dinner. The first thing I noticed when we sat down was the peculiar looking bread on the table. It was extremely lumpy and covered with corn meal. Turns out it was friend bread and it was unbelievably delicious. I could have eaten an entire loaf of it.

For dinner, mom and I split a pizza and salad, which was a perfect amount especially with me ravenously consuming the fantastic fried bread. The pizza that was brought to the table was not the pizza that we ordered, but that was ok. We ate it anyways and it was good. Mom and I wanted to have red wine with our dinner and since the owner of the restaurant was a friend of Francesco’s, he wanted us to try a wine that his family had made. The wine was so good and smooth and had apparently won many awards. We had three bottles of it and definitely could have had more, but Francesco said that he needed to drive home, Roman keeps everything within limits (as good Buddhists do), and Mom and I didn’t want them to think that we drink like fish, so we cut it off there. We asked the owner if his family wine is sold in the US and he said it was, so we wrote down the name of the bottle.

It was a very enjoyable day, followed by a great night full of good food, good drink, and good people.