Empty Rooms--Mostly

As promised, here are some photos.  I will send more after the furniture arrives on Monday. We are sooo busy that getting any blog posts done is a little tricky.  Luckily, our internet access at the apartment is considerably better than it is in Partigliano.  Our little internet key works great here.

The kitchen-thankfully the seller left the bar stools.  We have made good use of them.



This is taken from the corner of the living room. You can see the front door and behind the french door is the kitchen.




This is taken from near the kitchen looking into the living area. Our dining area will be the foreground area.



This is the storeroom. Dom is going to make a little workshop in here.

This is the main bedroom although the guest room is the same size.

This is the half bath. The toilet tank needs replacing, just one of the many repairs we are undertaking.

This is the full bath.  It looks dim at the back but that is because there are only a few lights left in the place.

The view from the terrace of the piazza and the hills and mountains beyond.

This is the view from the bedrooms, taken through the screen. You can see the bell tower of the church in the old town.

Dom fixing one of the roll shutters.  The place is in good shape but we are finding a number of deferred maintenance issues. Nothing serious but there is plenty to keep us busy until the furniture arrives on Monday.

It's ours! It's ours!

Everything went swimmingly last night, except for the fact that it all took an incredibly long time. 

 

We met with our agent, Marcella, and the seller at the apartment at 5 pm.  The seller showed us how things worked, where things were and we were able to see that everything was as promised.  The place was very clean which pleased me no end.

 

At 6 pm we went to the Notaio's office.  It was the same one we used last year when we sold our house.  The notaio acts like a cross between an escrow office and an attorney.  It is his job to see that all the i's are dotted and t's crossed.  Everyone involved in the transaction sits down together and the contract is read and amended right then and there.  We had the geometra (another role specific to Italy--it is his job to see that all the technical and legal data is the same as is registered at the land use office), our real estate agent, the seller, our interpreter Dom and I plus the notaio.  We started about 7 pm and finished at 9 pm.  At the end we were all just sitting around chatting (mostly the notaio and the seller (an architect) about architecture and land use in Lucca) and most of us were quite antsy to get going.

 

After we left the notaio's office it was too late to go back to the apartment so we headed off for dinner.  We went to La Terrazza, one of our favorites, and ran into two sets of people we know.  It was a good, enjoyable dinner but we finally made it home just after 11 pm.

 

This morning we were up early and over here for a quick stop.  Then we went to Marcella's office and she helped us transfer the utility bills to our name.  Hopefully it will all work as promised.

 

After that we returned to the apartment where we made a list of things we needed and went off to the home improvement store.  We bought lights and some plumbing supplies (one of the toilets is not working quite right) and came back to the apartment for lunch.  I found some spots that needed to be wiped out (under sinks and on some shelves) and took down the horrible trellis with fake ivy on the patio.  We have to get do some more pigeon proofing of the patio tomorrow among a myriad other things.

 

In a short while, Mary and Orlando are coming by to be our first guests.  They are loaning us a ladder so tomorrow will be a light installation day.  After that we still need more lights and there are a few other repairs to undertake.  The exciting event will be Monday when the movers come.

 

Tomorrow I will post some pictures.  I do not have the cable to download from the camera with me today.  Our internet connection works a lot better here in Capannori.

 

Buona Pasqua!

Yesterday we joined a group of ex-pats for a traditional Easter lunch at a restaurant just south of Lucca.  Dom and I did this for the first time last year at a different restaurant.  We learned that one really has to pace oneself because the food just keeps on coming.  Here is the menu (as best I can remember it):

All the water (fizzy and still) and wine (red and white) one can drink!

All the bread one can eat

Slices of prosciutto and salami

Three types of Crostini - liver spread, mushrooms and tomatoes

Seafood cream in a scallop shell

Fish mousse

Puff pastry packets with fish

White beans with prawns

Bowls of mussels, clams and calamari

Risotto with calamari

Tordelli alla Lucchesi (meat filled ravioli with meat and tomato sauce)

Grilled beefsteak with arugula

Breaded and fried lamb with deep fried vegetables

Deep fried prawns and calamari and french fries

Columba (a fluffy type of cake with candied fruit) covered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream (served with sweet or dry Asti Spumante)

All that for Euros 40 per person.  I must say I still don't feel much like eating.

It was a lively group of about twenty and Sandy, the organizer, had al ittle raffle prepared with the prize being one of the large, hollow chocolate ggs that are traditional Easter gifts here.  Often they come with some sort of "prize" in the center. You can even have personalized ones made up.  She held the drawing just before dessert and the winner was the gentleman sitting next to me.  Claudio asked if he should open it up and share it and Sandy said sure.  My pocket knife helped free the ribbon and string around the wrapping. The masses of orange paper was peeled back to show a decorated cardboard egg. He opened it up and found eight small cans of cat food!

At first everyone thought it was a joke Sandy was playing but it turned out she was trying to "regift" something she had been given.  Thinking it was a giant chocolate egg a friend gave her, having the Easter lunch  raffle seemed a good way to pass it along to someone else.  Instead, the joke was sort of on Sandy.  I think everyone except her thought it was incredibly funny. The friend obviously knew she and Ray have five cats so it was really a rather thoughtful gift.  If just proves that passing along an unopened gift might not be a good idea.

After eating all afternoon (from 1 to nearly 6 pm) Dom and I waddled our way back to Partigliano and sat around the rest of the evening.  This morning we got up early and went to a marcia podistica at S. Pietro in Campo north of Barga.  The weather cooperated and we had a healthy 5 kilometer jaunt under partly sunny skies.

Tomorrow we have a few errands to run and in the afternoon we inspect the apartment and then meet at 6 pm to sign the final contract.  We really hope everything goes smoothly.   

 

The Bathroom Remodel



Medecine cabinets will have pedestal sinks below and eventually a cabinet around the base of the pedestal sinks. The window is new and still needs to be trimmed.



The shower area--hard to take good photos here because the tile is so glossy.

The toilet room is to the right of the shower and behind is the walk-in closet.

This shows the bedroom with the new carpet that was installed the Friday before we left. The same carpet is in the walk-in closet.

Dom says I need to post pictures just to prove to everyone that we were actually doing something all winter.  We certainly used the bathroom remodel often enough as an excuse to not do other things.  The few weeks before we left we were working REALLY hard on the project.  One day my mother called to chat and then announced she was planning to visit the next day.  My reaction was "No! You can't come! I have too much work to do!!" I immediately felt badly at being so abrupt and apologized. However, it really was true. There just was no time for guests.  A day or two before we left we did have my parents over to see the progress and we went out to dinner.  By that time Dom and I had stopped working, cleaned up and were getting ready to leave.  It was a much more relaxed and fun visit with them than it would have been ten days earlier.

People keep asking if the bathroom is finished.  No, but the really big, messy parts are done.  When we get back we still have a few weeks work and then it truly will be complete.  These pictures don't actually show things as far along as they are.  I just forgot to take pictures right before we left.  The toilet is actually installed in the toilet room and Dom set up one of the pedestal sinks for my parents visit.  When we get it all done I promise to (eventually) post pictures again.

 

Waiting

The days continue to be beautiful--cool mornings, warm afternoons and just a hint of a nip in the breeze.  Even though we try to stay busy, our days are mostly spent waiting.  Waiting to get possession of the apartment.  We have visited a number of stores to get an idea of what is out there.  There are things we need for the new place (especially lights which are something Italians take with them) and so we are doing our research. 

 

Today we bagged research and have been quite lazy.  There will not be much time to relax after next Tuesday so now is the time to truly vacation.  After a late breakfast we drove to Capannori where on Fridays there is a weekly market in the piazza in front of our new place.  We wandered the stalls looking at things. I bought a new blouse. Then we went to the bar in "our" building and had cappucinos.

 

Afterwards we did a meandering drive.  To give it purpose we went searching for the restaurant where we are having Easter lunch--one of those eight or nine course extravaganzas over four hours.  We were there once before several years ago so we had an idea where it was.  After finding it and plugging it into the GPS as a favorite we meandered back to Partigliano. 

 

Lunch and reading on the patio has been the order of the day ever since. 

 

At 6 pm there is a Good Friday service in the village church. Tomorrow we plan a longer excursion off to Calci in the Provincia di Pisa.

 

Sending photos via email did not work well.  I have not forgotten about posting some pictures of our bathroom remodel.  It will happen...

Lunch at Marina di Pisa

Since I now know how to post to the blog via email, I am now trying to see if I can include pictures.

Yesterday we ended up driving to Marina di Pisa.  It all started as a jaunt to retrieve Dom's fleece jacket from the barber's. After we did that we decided to see how easy it was to go to the Pisa Airport via Pontedera, a town south of Capannori (our new location) and east of Pisa.  It was another beautiful day so driving through the spring countryside was interesting in itself.  There are a hundred shades of green in the grass, leaves and flowers.  Along the roadsides red poppies and purple iris are mixed into the grassy verge.  The breeze is still fresh so it is never too hot and without the heat haze of summer the views are spectacular.  Everything looks new and fresh.

Once we reached the Pisa Airport we actually parked briefly and did some research using the built-in Tom Tom GPS in the car.  Using toll roads (the Autostrada) it is about 35 minutes from the airport to Capannori and avoiding toll roads it is about 45 minutes.  Neither route suggested was the one we had just taken.  Now we know. :-)

After that we decided to drive to the beach, buy some sandwiches and find a spot to picnic on the shore.  Most of the beach areas along the coast in this area are leased to concessionaires who then charge a useage fee to the public.  Of course, for the use fee one has the convenience of changing rooms, restrooms, a bar and/or restaurant, lounge chairs and beach umbrellas.  After stopping at a bar for food and water, we drove along until we came to a spot that really was free to access.  There was no sand but we did find smooth white rocks (marble) which I think was much neater and cleaner.  There were a few other people on the shore a few of them sunbathing.  We actually stayed rather bundled up because in spite of the sunshine the breeze off the water was chill. 

Here are some pictures of our picnic spot:

Price of Diesel in Italy

Today we went off and did research for some purchases for the new apartment.  We stopped at a Home Depot like DIY store called Leroy Merlin.  It is located in a mall near Prato which is close to Florence.  After we checked out Leroy Merlin we also checked out the rest of the mall including the huge Media World (think Best Buy). 

Then it was off to IKEA for lunch and a look around.  We know we need some bedroom furniture so we looked at dressers and wardrobes.  However, one cannot go to IKEA without looking at everything and we did get a few ideas for other items. On our way home we stopped at the Conte of Florence outlet store but it was all golf clothese.  Both of us have found nice things there before but it did not take us long today to decide there was nothing we wanted.

We needed to fill up the car today.  Our little Renault Clio has about a 12 gallon tank and takes diesel fuel.  Dom paid Euros 66 to fill it up and it was darn near empty.  So that meant we are paying approximately $8 a gallon for fuel.  We are lucky to have a diesel car as gasoline is even more expensive.  It makes $4 per gallon gasoline seem pretty reasonable.  We are even luckier to probably get about 40 miles to the gallon although we have not calculated the exact figure yet for this car.  Given the price of fuel here and the better mileage we are actually paying about the same here as we do in the U.S. on a per mile basis. 

The weather has been great the past few days and when we got home at about 5 pm it was warm enough to open the doors and windows and try to get some heat into the house.  It is still very cold at night so the combination of that and the house we are staying in having been empty most of the winter means it is tough to keep it warm.  Still the heat works and it does not take long to warm it up when it is turned on.

I think I have figured out how to email posts to the blog.  If you are reading this it worked.  Given our current lack of an on demand internet connection being able to do that is a real help.  It would certainly make it easier to do daily posts.  Unfortunately I don't think pictures are in the cards for a while. 

An Interesting Trip to Italy

As is usual, the past few days have flown by. We left Seattle on Wednesday and are now settled into our temporary accommodations in Partigliano.


Instead of the usual dull, uneventful trip from there to here, our journey was a mix of highs and lows. We started with a few lows. When we checked our bags at SeaTac they said they were over weight. This was strange as we have a travel scale and weighed them before we left home. As we switched bags on and off Dom saw that the scale was not going to zero. It read 5 lbs. He pointed that out to the woman and got that straightened out--our bags were just under the 50 lb. limit. Then, when we got to our gate they were making about half the passengers get new boarding passes at the desk. This involved waiting in a long line with a considerable number of our fellow passengers. We were initially told they needed to check our passports but they never even looked at them so no idea what was really going on.

When we got onboard and to our seats we found people already in them--parents who wanted to sit by their daughter and grandchild in the next two center seats. So, we traded with them for a their window seats. That seemed pretty good to us but I asked the flight attendant who was overseeing all this to tell Michelle (the flight purser and a friend of our neighbor and fellow flight attendant ) we had changed seats. The flight attendant came back right away and asked for our boarding passes. When she came back again she asked us to follow her and we were reseated in row 4--Business Elite! It was a great experience and we really appreciate our neighbor’s effort on our behalf. Michelle and all the rest of the staff were really nice to us. One of the things I noticed about the front of the plane was how much quieter it is. Darn near everyone there seriously tried to sleep after dinner--very peaceful. Of course now we are spoiled for steerage class but it was fun while it lasted.

We had a very short connection in Amsterdam and although we made the plane to Nice, France our luggage did not. Dealing with delayed baggage with jet lag was not fun. Initially we were told that it was possible our bags would be on the afternoon flight. So we went and picked up our Renault lease car, drove it to the airport parking garage and slept in it for a few hours. At four thirty we went back to the baggage people and found out it would be the next morning before all our bags would catch up with us. This was a bit of a pain (although of course it could have been worse as they might never have shown up at all) as we had a reservation for the night in Sanremo, Italy, about an hour drive away. We decided to go stay in Sanremo and return to Nice the next morning.

This worked out pretty well as we arrived at our hotel in time to have a nice walk through the town and an early dinner. On Friday morning we checked out of our hotel and headed back to Nice. Because the flight with the last bag would not arrive until about 11:15 we stopped at Hanbury Botanical Gardens right on the French/Italian boarder. The gardens are huge and very interesting. I will write a more detailed post about them later and for now will just say we had a nice walk, a perfect cappuccino in the sunshine and I ran down the battery in the camera.

Once in Nice we picked up the bags and made it out of the parking garage within the 20 minute free window. Then we were on our way to Partigliano.

We arrived there at about 6 pm. Erina and Bruno were pleased to see us and we quickly settled into their rental house. At about 7:30 we decided to go out for a bite to eat before heading to bed early. Unfortunately, being rather rummy, we walked out of the house without either of the two house keys and one of them left in the lock on the inside. The latter means no other key will work in the lock. Erina and Bruno were not pleased but after some scrambling around she got her brother Antonio to bring his ladder. He climbed up on the roof and then went through the skylight up there and came through to open the door. At the same time her son-in-law Vito was showing her how, when the door is not double locked, it is possible to use a stiff piece of plastic (he used a hunk of a black flower pot) to get it open. In the end I think she was rather more displeased by Vito’s demonstration than by our locking ourselves out.
Yesterday we had a rather leisurely day. With nothing in the house to eat we went off to the supermarket and stopped on the way for cappuccino and pastry. The store, as is normal here, was an absolute zoo on Saturday morning but I managed to wend my way through it and come home with most of what we need for the next few days. After lunch we took short naps and then went to Mary and Orlando’s to pick up some things we left there last fall. We had a nice visit with them, made plans for this morning and came back to the house for a quick dinner.
This morning I went on the annual Marcia delle Ville (Walk of the Villas) in Marlia with Mary Caselli and Dom went to their house and watched the Formula 1 race with Orlando. Mary and I walked 10 km while the guys feasted on eggs and bacon. Mary and I arrived back there in time to watch the end of the race and for some further visiting. It was after noon before we arrived back here at the house.

Later today we plan to go into Lucca for a little walk. It is the monthly antique fair yesterday and today so there should be lots of people out and about.

Tomorrow we will start our search for lights (Italians usually take all of them with them when they move) and other things we will need for the new apartment.



Posting photos is difficult with the internet connection we have right now so those might come separately or not at all for a while.