Junefinnigan's Weblog

Welcome and Benvenuti to all my lovely Friends and Followers

As you know, I always like to bring you fun stories and nice things about our lovely little bit of the Chianti Hills, also snippits of what I have read in the local and sometimes national news.   So I will get the not so nice news out-of-the-way very quickly.

Autumn valley below our house. Foto J Finnigan

Tuesday, our bit of heaven was hit by a 3.9 earthquake.  There was a massive bang under the house and things started to rock, so being prepared for anything I got outside grabbing my disaster bag on the way.  We deliberately park our car away from the house, so I got inside and waited.  Now it probably only lasted a couple of minutes, but seemed an awful lot longer.  But we were very lucky, no damage at all, so the house has proved pretty resilient.  Not so lucky were the inhabitants in the Perugia area in Umbria, who suffered a much worse earthquake a couple of days later.  Then Wednesday, along came the hurricane winds and heavy iced rain.  This went on for more than three hours taking out trees and causing flooding & landslides.  My route to Fiano was blocked by a landslide on Thursday morning so I turned around and headed for Certaldo for my morning coffee.  Since then, the weather has been glorious, sunshine and cool fresh air.  Hard to believe it really happened!

The vineyard outside our front gate. Foto J Finnigan

So back to the nicer things in life.  The countryside is looking and smelling absolutely gorgeous, what with all the rain and now the warm sunshine.  Yesterday we managed to sit outside and enjoy an aperitivo before lunch, bathed in sunshine.  The valley below us has shed much of its leaves, however, and beautiful bare Silver Birch trees glow white against the remaining autumnal colour.  The vineyard below our front gate, now harvested, is glowing with striped colours, representing the different grape varieties to be found in each vineyard.  One can never get tired of Autumn in Chianti.

Little Wine Windows in Florence. La Repubblica

Now we can reach Fiano again, and over coffee I read a really interesting article about Little Wine Windows, or rather I Finestrini del Vino.  Everything sounds so much better in Italian, don’t you think?  Now these little windows are what remains of the way the Florentines sold their personal wine production direct to the public over the last few centuries.  Imagine, you tap the little window, pay your centesimo di lira and out comes a hand with a glass or jug of wine!  I just love this idea and these little windows are all over Florence.  Now there is a new society, which is dedicated to preserving them and for your further interest you must visit their website which can be read in Italian, English or German!  Go to http://www.buchettedelvino.org  It’s a truly fascinating story.

Radiohead rocks in Tuscany. La Repubblica

And what about the music scene, you ask?  Well, our latest touring band is ‘Radiohead’.  You know that alternative rock band at the height of their fame during the early 90’s.  An adventurous band, which incorporated electronic elements into their music, one of their classic songs being ‘Climbing Up The Walls.’

Italian shoes and leather look. I love this. Foto La Reppublica magazine

What else?  Oh yes, I must show you this picture.  It’s an advertisement for shoes, but I just love the whole outfit!  Despite the fact that I buy leather shoes and boots, I can’t quite bring myself to wrap myself in leather.  So a leather look outfit like this suits me fine.  Even my black biker jacket is faux!

But enough of that, time to get this blog off to you and to join my gorgeous man for an aperitivo.  Life eeeez good, life eeeez now.

Salute June x

Ps do visit my author site at http://www.amazon.com/author/junefinnigan

‘My Father, The Assassin’. Book one in the series.

‘The Bolivian Connection’ Book two in the series.