Welcome and Auguri to all my Lovely Followers around the World,
Only in Italy will the front page of a national newspaper show the Prime Minister and other political big wigs splashing around in or by the sea! You see, tomorrow is Ferragosta and If you are Italian you know exactly what that means. You down tools, pack your extended family into a car, get into a crazy queue of traffic stretching for hundreds of miles, eat your way through hampers of food and wine on the journey and if you are lucky arrive at the coast or mountains by night fall! If you are a foreign resident like us, you stock up with food and wine, batten down the hatches against the heat and stay at home. Meanwhile, the unfortunate tourists arriving in Pisa this week, will find themselves in an endless queue trying to pick up a hire car, then another one trying to get on the FiPiLi dual carriageway, the caffes and pit stops are closed, because it’s the annual holiday and the petrol stations are only geared up for self-service cash only pumps! When they finally arrive at their destination after endless stops in the overheated traffic queues, they find that local shops and restaurants are also closed! So they all fall into the swimming pools, cool off and compete over who gets bitten the most by the zanzari (mosquitos) as no-one thought to pack any insect repellent. By day three, the tourists will have discovered how best to deal with things. The towns and villages are like ghost towns, so they eventually find which supermarkets are open, that hot pizzas are only sold in the evenings, the few available restaurants, only open in the evening as it is too hot to eat outside for lunch, and that cities like Florence are cauldrons this time of year and are best avoided. Despite all these things they will leave after their week or two here, totally in love with Tuscany and wax lyrical to all their envious friends! Foto La Nazione.
However, Ferragosta is also a week of fantastic music and theatre, if you know where to go, like Follonica over on the Tuscan coast. For the Follonica Summer Festival go to their website
Locally, there will be firework displays and private parties to go to. Art galleries and museums are mostly open, some with limited hours due to the skeleton staffing. San Gimignano is a good place to go for these, if you can manage to park, or better to get a bus from Certaldo, Poggibonsi or Siena. Expect big crowds though! Foto La Nazione.
On the subject of our local town, Certaldo, a recent addition to the curious things to see is a statue opposite Jam Caffe near the station. Foto J Finnigan. Whilst the mediterranean diet is supposed to be the healthiest in the world, this may remind you of the dangers of overindulging in pasta and pastries! And on the subject of pasta, we met a lovely young English couple at Osteria La Gramola in Tavernelle website, who were wading through a tasting menu of nine pasta dishes! Now, this was their own fault as they had just finished a pasta making course that morning and had no choice but to try every one. They only had a small taste of each dish, but they were definitely struggling with the last few servings! If you are reading this; nice to meet you guys and we hope you organised a portavia!
Meanwhile, down in Roma the traditional pilgrimage to visit Pope Francis is at full throttle, this year seventy thousand fans filled the Vatican City on greet the masses days. The heat has been horrendous, so I hope there was a good supply of chilled water and holy wine. This man has a huge following, whether you are religious or not. It is no doubt his likeable personality and charisma combined.
Back at the ranch, or rather our lovely former monastery farmhouse home, our daughter and grandchildren arrived for an overnight stay as their house had been invaded by hornets and the spray used to rid them was toxic to say the least. “Come on over” we had said, “We have no hornets or wasps here!” Then the next morning my daughter found a puppy racing around our garden, obviously stuck inside the fence and unable to find its way out again. So my man opened the rarely used lower exit gate to let it out and promptly found a wasp’s nest inside it! The puppy raced back to its owners, parked just down the lane, whilst my man got himself stung three times! Hey ho! But we don’t care about that, life eeez good, life eeez now. And now it’s raining praise the gods, so no need to water for a few days!
And finally, to say brava to Manuela who has been drafted in from her house next door to La Dispensa in Fiano, to man the bar for two weeks whilst Rosella goes off for a hard-earned holiday on the south coast with her amore. As you can see in the foto and after several days of practice, she can now make perfect coffee even with her eyes closed! Bless her.
OK, over to you. Do drop me a line and/or visit my official author site at My site for your summer reading.
Have a great week.
Salute June x
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