Viva italia

Heather and I have just returned from our holiday in Italy with my family. We are now both full of the anticlimax of post-holiday blues, and the realisation of impending work for heather and study for me.

It was Heather's first visit to Italy, and I am pretty sure it won't be her last. We filled 512mb of our brand new memory card with about 300 photographs which, as soon as I get hold of them will populate the blog. In the meantime, and as much for my own memory as anything else, this is a rough diary of the trip:

Saturday 29 July

Heather was flying early morning from Leeds, Dad and I were flying later on in the day, and the rest were to join us the following week. Despite a powercut at the Leeds Jet2 desk, we arrived with relative pre-terrorist alert ease. Poor Heather was waiting in a crowded Pisa airport from 12 to 8 when we landed, and she couldn't even go outside for a thunderous storm that ravaged the airspace. United, we bounced from car rental desk to desk until we found our pre-booked Renault, jumped aboard and promptly headed off in the wrong direction towards Florence. A 30 minute journey escalated into an hour and a half and around midnight we arrived at Casa Tiziana, our abode for the following 2 weeks. We had no food or water, it was hot, but we were there.

Sunday 30 August

Day breaks to reveal the rolling Tuscan hills and the shimmering blue of a swimming pool at the bottom of the garden. The first order of the day is to find a supermarket so we can stock up on some water and milk etc. After investigating the house and the garden we jump in the car and head for our local- Esselunga. But it's closed. This stumps us somewhat as we don't know where any other supermarkets are, or if they'll be open. We decide the best option is to sample some of the restaurants in Lucca. We find a place we've been to before, near the walls and I order some of the best gnocchi I've ever had. Gnocci with pesto, garlic and balsamic vinegar. It was great, a dish we would order several times over the course of our stay.

We returned to the house, and in the 33C heat Heather and I hit the pool. We discovered the lost art of climbing on a lilo and dodging drowning flies while front-crawling.



We thought we'd try the supermarkets in the evening seeing as the weren't open earlier, but again with no success. It turns out that the supermarkets in Lucca have an agreement between them that one will stay open on Sundays, and that one will alternate. Only in practice, they all forget who is to stay open and all shut. Instead we find ourselves walking the beautiful cobbled streets of Lucca in search of Leo's Trattoria. When we find it we're accosted by eccentric Amercian professors hunting for Mr Abercrombie, enthusiastic waiters and delicious ravioli.

Tomorrow we'll visit somewhere and start doing the whole sight-seeing thing.




That's all for now folks, I'll do some more days soon.