Arrivederci Italy!

 

We left Italy last Tuesday and made our two-day drive back to Paris to return our rental. We then left Paris on Thursday to travel back to the States. I have been struggling to write this post partly because I am suffering from jetlag and don’t have the mind power to string thoughtful sentences together, but also because I don’t want to accept that our trip is over.

We wrapped up our adventure due to a number of reasons. When it came time to plan the next leg of our trip for the month of July, we were really stumped about where to go… a place where we wouldn’t be met with hoards of tourists and ridiculous summer prices for rentals. When we thought ahead to having the same issues to contend with for August, we realized that while it would be fun to extend out trip, our funds reserved for the trip would probably be depleted or possibly even overextended by the summer’s end and we would have to return anyway. So we decided to wrap it up and get back to reality sooner rather than later.

We flew into Dulles on Thursday and plan to settle in VA for the near future to be near Fritz’s family. For me, this is a new sort of adventure since I have never lived south of NYC or truly outside of a major metropolitan city. Currently staying with family, our plan is to scope out locations in VA to determine where we want to settle, buy a car or possibly two (we haven’t owned a car in 11 years), and find jobs.

I do plan to write an Italy wrap up post and possibly a trip wrap-up post, but not sure when my brain will be fully functional and ready to dictate the writing.

I haven’t decided on whether I will continue the blog documenting my adventures in VA, but I am planning to unlink my blog from Linkedin and Facebook, so if that’s how you get word of a new post, this will no longer work. Instead, you can go here https://annadement.wordpress.com/and sign up to get notified whenever I publish a new post or you can just visit the site when you like.

Feel free to email me if you just fell off your chair from my news and want to chat.

Here are some more delicious dishes we enjoyed that I haven’t yet shared with you folks.

July 12, 2016 by AnnaD

Mosquitos, beetles, scorpions, oh my

The title only summarizes only a few of the bugs we have come across and ultimately killed. Ants, bees, gnats, grasshoppers, and moths are some of the others. We live in a 15^th century house without screens and nooks and crannies in every room so we get exposed to many more of the outside elements than the average person. It feels like every flying critter has found a way into our home. While it had rained for a few days before we arrived and spot showered during our first week here, but not since then . So now that it’s been dry and hot for the last three weeks the mosquitos have reared their ugly heads and stingers.

Since we don’t have central air and rely on a sole fan, the screen-less windows need to be open during the day to get some fresh air into the house. Fritz has become very strategic in keeping the sun from heating up the rooms while getting a cross breeze. But once the sun goes down and the lights get turned on, the doors and windows must close (why oh why don’t Europeans use screens?). In the process, we often trap some mosquitos into the house who then find their way to me. This last week the mosquitos were especially bad and I have the welts to prove them. Not only does the itching drive me crazy and keep me awake at night, but the mental work it takes to not scratch them makes me break out in sweat in an already warm house. Even when one isn’t around, I still can’t help but flinch and check every 5 seconds to make sure there isn’t one on one of my ankles.

As for the ants…they seem to have made a nice home for themselves in the kitchen around the sink. Each morning we have to wash the dish rack of both live and dead ants only to find it infested again within hours. Fritz has sprayed the heck of the kitchen, but there’s always more coming. At one point, I thought I was on the set of Antz (the movie) trapped on a green screen with hundreds of ants marching towards me.

Luckily with the help of various allergy pills and the constant application of domeboro, tea tree oil, and toothpaste the itching has been kept to a minimum. Negroni’s have also been proven to help.

 

I want to end this post on a more pleasant note and leave you with some pics of flowers blooming around the house.

July 4, 2016July 14, 2016 by AnnaD

Day Trips to Florence

This week and last week we took day trips to Florence. It’s fairly easy to take the train from Borgo and be in Florence in less than 45 minutes, but with the heat and the added convenience of not having to check the time all day, we opted to drive in instead. We’re only about 25 kilometers north of Florence so it’s a quick 30 minute trip from our door to the parking lot on some very narrow roads where the distance from the side of the car to the houses is not even the length of an arm. Yeah, it’s really close.

Temps have been around 90 degrees the last two weeks so Florence was extra steamy from being closer to sea level, the onslaught of tourists, and just heat radiating from pavements and buildings. Everywhere we turned we were greeted with lines of tourists waiting to get into churches, museums, or monuments. We chose to go to the Boboli gardens, intentions were good but it wasn’t well executed. The Boboli is an open-air museum, not the pizza you create at home, that was completed in the 1500’s and in addition to taking up

The Boboli is an open-air museum, not the pizza you create at home, that was completed in the 1500’s and in addition to taking up some massive real estate in the center of Florence, it boasts a huge collection of sculptures, features many fountains and a has a huge variety of trees. Within seconds of entering the grounds, we realized it required walking up pathways in the exposed hot sun.

Parched, perspiring profusely and possibly nearing heat stroke, we kept ascending thinking we would soon be in the vicinity of a café that would provide us with cool, refreshing water. But with each pathway, we were left disappointed. We did finally find a vending machine, but by then I was completed drenched, so over the entire experience, and ion a desperate search for shade. Fritz soldiered on while I descended and hunted down a cool stone bench to sit on and gulp down  the rest of, by now, my lukewarm beverage. Afterwards, reading up on the Boboli and all the things I missed, I came upon this very funny yet sad statement on one of the websites, “(Boboli) offers peaceful shelter from the warm Florentine sun in summer”, good luck finding the handful of spots that offer relief since there really aren’t that many. I look forward to visiting this place in the future, but preferably in the spring or fall  this very beautiful place in the fall or winter.

 

After lunch, we headed to the Uffizi. We had reserved tickets for 2:30 hoping we wouldn’t have to stand in line for too long. We stood in one line for a while, only to be told we had to go across the streets to pick up our tickets. At the ticket office, we stood in line waiting our turn to retrieve our tickets and then crossed back and stood in line waiting to be let in for the 2:30 reservation all while roasting in the Florentine sun. Once were inside, we were greeted with swarms of people, huge groups and lots of selfie sticks. Once we got to the top floor where most of the collection is kept, some of the rooms were so steamy that I within seconds of entering I could feel the sweat accumulating, anticipating the plop of a drop streaming down my back.

Needless to say, I missed quite a bit but was grateful to see as much as I did. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that the 2nd floor but especially the 1st floor had vast collections that not many people were interested in (the Botticelli’s were on the 3rd floor) making for a more pleasant experience, plus the lower floor was also cooler.

And now some more ranting……summer travel is an oxymoron in my book. Who thinks traveling and vacationing in the summer is a good idea? Between the heat, the crowds, and the sweat it can turn  a somewhat enjoyable summer day into one hot mess.
I don’t know about you but sweating profusely and then going to eat lunch or visiting a museum or even shopping are not things I want to be doing when a cool shower is what should be the next activity.

This week when we went to Florence, we had absolutely no plans to sightsee. Instead, we were going to walk around, get some lunch, and maybe do some shopping. While the shopping part didn’t pan out, we did have an amazing lunch – and I found a new carb favorite, panzanella (see below), which is a bread salad made with tomatoes, basil and onions (but can really be anything you want), dressed with olive oil and a little vinegar…. and caught some shots of the Duomo along with the hundred of other tourists. It was still a hot day, but nice to not be pressured to sightsee.

 

July 3, 2016July 4, 2016 by AnnaD

Italian Coastal Visits

Last week we drove to the eastern coast of Italy, to the Emilia-Romagna region. It is about 110 kilometers from Borgo and takes about two and half hours on local roads, or you could drive it in under two hours on the highway, but you would have to drive out of the way and go north to Bologna before making your way south to Ravenna for a total of a one-way trip of 170 kilometers. Once there you can drive to some of the Marina towns like Marina Romea, Marini di Ravenna or Punta Marina. We had initially thought of going to Rimini, but that also presented a long triangular drive, so we chose to go to Ravenna instead.

It was an exceptionally steamy day, so Fritz was especially looking forward to dipping his toes and possibly his whole body into the Adriatic sea. As we got into town and passed street after street eyeing the beach access paths we were stumped to see restaurants lined up for what seemed like an eternity, as barriers between the street and the beach. It was around 1pm by this time so we decided to get some lunch and see if we could figure out what others or some of the locals were doing to get to the beach.

We dined on some pretty awesome seafood. We got a primi of spaghetti with seafood, the griglia misto which is a mixed grill of seafood, some grilled vegetables and when I saw the table next to us get the grilled octopus, I also had to have it as well We were seated outside under a huge tent which opened up to the beach. One step from our seats the beach started which was lined with what seemed like an endless sea of beach chairs, beyond that you couldn’t really see the sea or tell if there was an actual beach where people laid out or if it was rocky and not meant for lounging.

Except for one lone person lying in a beach chair, all the others were empty. After a very perspiring lunch of grilled seafood and a bottle of Rose, we were ready to get back into the car, crank the a/c and see if there was another way to get to the beach besides walking through a restaurant. We drove for a while longer but never did figure out how to access the beach.

 

This week we went to LIvorno on the western coast of Italy. It looks out to the Ligurian sea and if you could manage the swim across, which is greater than the distance from Ravenna to Livorno, you’d end up in Cannes. But I don’t recommend it. After doing some research on the city, I was looking forward to some shopping and Fritz was looking forward to a dip in the sea on a very hot day.

After we walked up or down what seemed like every street in Livorno, I was sure the internet had lied once again. Except for a few international retailers, there was no shopping to be had in Livorno. After our fruitless efforts, we settled down to another seafood lunch. Here too we dined on a mixed grill of seafood and an extremely tasty rice dish with a tomato base with steamed seafood.

Little did we know that would be the highlight of our day. Once we emerged from the old dimly lit restaurant into the bright hot afternoon sun at about 2pm, we were greeted with a very deserted city with even fewer shopping choices since siesta was in full swing and almost any shop that had bothered to open that day was closed. Even the tourists from the large cruise ship in port had retreated for their afternoon naps. So we decided to retrieve our car and begin the hunt for beach access roads.

In Livorno too we were left mystified that were no clear markings anywhere to indicate that you could access the beach at this spot, or whether you had to pay to access the beach, or whether you had to be a resident to park in the lot. Fritz was determined to see the beach, so we parked and he headed towards it only to return five minutes later disappointed that it wasn’t what he expected and he was ready to head home. We’ll have to work on getting him to a beach soon or he might just bust.

July 2, 2016July 2, 2016 by AnnaD