Italy

Thought I'd do a quick post for those of you that assume we've disappeared off the face of the earth! :-)

We are back in Italy now, in Pederobba, renting the house we were in last time off a good friend. We've decided this is most likely the place or area we will move to permanently.

Italian is coming on well. We initally looked into attending school, but their term ends in a few weeks and does not restart until October so that;s no good. Viviana, a friend here, has been teaching us, plus we have started on a comprehensive computer based course. I'm actually really enjoying the challenge. Soon I'll have Italian and French to my name! (well, very bad but manageable French). I'm currently plugging away to the tune of about 2 hours per day. K will start later today so I've got a 3 day head start, though she is learning lots locally too, just through conversation.

Arriving back here was fun. We bought a cover for the car that we left here last year. They had several metres of snow and a LOT of rain. Seems the cover we bought for 40 Euros was a sun cover and NOT waterproof. Doh! Opened the doors to find a forest of mould inside...

That took a lot of cleaning, and it will take weeks to properly dry. Battery was dead too. Cue another 60 Euros :-(

Was rather chilly too. Still plenty of snow on the mountains...

.. though most of that has melted now and it is really warming up outside. Had several sunny days in a row now.

We've been up the mountain a few times this week to help Elizabetta manage her chestnut forest. Everyone here owns a chunk of the mountain - all passed on through families, and growing chestnuts is a local passion - they have a chestnut festival each September.

Elizabetta has recently had all the trees cut back so there are about 30 piles of small branches that need burning. So that's what we've been up to!

(The rake must be centuries old!)

Very hard work I'll add!

K went to investigate Italian lessons at another school and inadvertently ended up helping in an English class :-) - She's currently investigating what options are on offer for her to make money from this!

I got my PC flown over , and we bought a telly, so we are quite at home now. We also brought an amazing amount of stuff with us on our flight over. Easyjet don't have a weight restriction on hand baggage, only that you must be able to lift your bag into the overhead locker on your own. So I stuffed the bags full, including one of my remote control helicopters and all the associated guff. It went over 20Kg, just for one of the two bags. At security we got separated and they asked K to lift the bag over her head. She JUST managed - I was panicking! Got through OK in the end.

Still battling with the insanely complicated recyclying chedule.

(K and Guido tryign to understand teh recycling calendar - nothing is collected the same day twice!)

Anyhow, won't be much more activity on the blog for some time now until there is new news.

Cio!

Just a quick update. Been loving the quiet life in Pederroba. Had another BBQ in the mountains with the Bazzacos', plus had dinner in another mountain house with Pablo's friends - had a giant cheese fondeau!

As you might notice - Kirstin has had a drastic image change! - Blonde and short. Taking some getting used to!

Everyone has been fantastic here, we've met so many people and made new friends. Lovely place. Will definately be back! (who knows, maybe even to live!?!)

On Thursday this week we get the train to Milan, then fly to Cairo, Egypt. We've booked a 2 week Nile cruise that takes in all the main sites ending at the beach at Dahab. We may well stay at the beach for a further week and make our own way back to Cairo from where we....

...Fly to Cape Town, South Africa to pick up our 3 week overland tour of Africa! - we are going up into Namibia, then accross, though Namibia, Botswana, ending up at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Should be lots of game viewing and lots of adventure (I'm particularly looking forward to Quad biking in the Namibian desert and white water rafting the Zambezi river which is graded "5" apparently. Oh, and flying in a microlight :-)

Then... after that... we fly to Johannesburg where we meet Kirstin's Sister and Brother in Law who are looking after us in Pretoria for all of December, including Xmas.

..Then!.. we fly to Bangkok on Dec 27th - going to spend new year on a beach in Thailand then continue our adventure in Asia where we left off, going North into Thailand this time, up into Laos, then accross into Vietnam. We are hoping if our timing is right, to fly to Hong Kong in Jan to catch the Chinese New Year fireworks... we'll see...

After all that, who knows, almost certainly China and India...

Oh! - regarding flights - well, when I was booking the Cairo to Cape Town flights, which is broken into 3 stages - two long ones and one tiny one, I got the best rate of about £320 each and proceded to book... when I noticed, the 1st 2 legs of the journey were marked "1st Class". The 3rd leg (only an hour) - "Economy/Coach". Hmm, A mistake I assumed. I've since got the email confirmation and the 1st two legs of the journey are 100% marked 1st Class. We'll see. I just can't believe it, but that's what it said at booking, and that's what our e-ticket says, so we'll be going to 1st class check-in and finding out! :-)

Speak soon! (Lets' see how much wifi I get in Egypt! - more likely than Africa I guess! - Might be one HUGE update in a few weeks :-)

Ciao!

The other day Pablo asked if we'd like to go along to a friend's farm and drink some of the "new" wine from the end of summer harvest. Sounded grand so off we trotted, well, I cycled and Kirstin went on the back of Pablo's scooter...

(Yep, she's off "C.H.I.P.S" - or maybe Cartman)

When we got to the farm, the truth behind the invitation became clear.... a LOT of grapes to be picked. We were handed a tub each and a pair of cutters and off we went! :-)

...For the impatient, I made a video montage!!...(Click on the image below to load the movie)

...it's actually quite theraputic. We picked for about an hour I guess, untill we had a tractor load full.

(Lovely Prosecco grapes, sprinkled with a touch of sugar)

After that it was a fun (downhill) cycle back to Gorgio's house where they put the grapes into a machine that basically smashes them up and separates the stems. Note: When people tell you about being careful not to bruise your wine by pouring it roughly, I'd take that with a pinch of salt! - Apart from the machine, I can't say I put the bunches of grapes into the tubs with much tenderness ;-)

(Chomp, chomp)

That machine then pumps the juice into a giant "bucket" in a garage room..

Next step was to put some of the juice into a beaker and then drop a weight into it with a scale that gives you a reading. This tells you how much alcohol the prosecco will eventually have - in this case we got a reading of 16 which equated to about 10.5% proof. Not too shabby, though they always hope for more!

(Eagerly looking up on the chart what the alcohol level well be)

Gorgio makes the best wine in teh village apparently, though he's had less luck with his carrots...

... still, you can't be great at everything!

We had a taste of the juice, and well, it tasted like Prosecco without any alcohol or fizz. Nice enough though.

Once the whole procedure was completed, the Italian tradition of eating and drinking could commence!

... lots of home made wine, prosecco and sopresso meat. Gorgio also grows a mean French Cab Sov amongst others.

It was during the feasting I noticed an incredible collection of home made Grappa in the "wine room". With great enthusiasm, Gorgio started uncorking one made with Basil leaved. Delicious! I think he could tell I liked it, as he then poured me one made with things that look very similar to asparagus. Even nicer!

He opened every bottle! - about 10 different ones as far as I can remember - some with liquorice root, some with , well, some unidentifiable red berries - I think from holly. There was one I tried that was 50% proof! I nearly fell over. By this stage I couldn't tell the difference between any of them - I was getting just a little knobbled.

Gorgio even opened a 30 year old bottle for me to try. A great guy who clearly loves his work ;-)

Thanks to Gorgio and all his friends and family. We had a fantastic day - a real treat.

On our day of departure from our lovely B&B in Sicily our host was reasonably horrified to find we'd not actually done anything or seen any sights, and we had a lot of time to kill - our ferry sailed from Palermo at midnight and Palermo was only about 3 hours away... so... we went to see the gorge near by at Alcantara....

... and pretty it was, with fascinating rock formations. The water is glacial - you can rent waders and wander up the gorge a little bit, we opted out of that and just had a good wander about and sat by the river.

Afterwards we, again on our hosts' recommendation, drove to Piazza Armerina, which was about half way on our route straight across Sicily. The drive was fun - we'd heard that the roads would be bad as the mafia tend to siphon off the funds. They were indeed bad! In fact someone told us that one stretch of motorway in South Italy has taken 10 years to complete, and it cost so much they could have built a bridge to South Africa with the same money!....

Anyhow - back to Piazza Armerina - very underwhelming when you arrive at the town. We think the signage is deliberately bad to "encourage" you to spend money in the town itself. It's hillarious - one minute you are following brown signs to "Mosaics", the next minute the signs are yellow and marked "Roman Castel", then they are white and marked "Castel Mosaics", then they disappear altogether - sending you round and round the town in circles.

We found it eventually - the site is a few K's out of town - it's a very old Roman Villa, dating back to around 300AD and it is amazingly well preserved - mainly because the town moved to where Piazza Armerina is now located, leaving the villa behind and abandoned.

The whole reason for the special interest are the mosaics on the floors, and wow! you are not disappointed!

(As you approach the site)

(You are not disappointed by the 1st mosaics you see)

(When you look closely the level of complexity and detail is amazing, the small size of the tiles and the colour shading)

The above picture is a zoom-in of ....

(Yep! - an arse - I'm so childish)

(These Romans invented bikini's long before we thought possible)

(When you start looking at the main square perimeter you start to get a grasp of the scale of the works - this path runs in the other direction too, and all the way round the whole main building)

(A Roman latrine - crafty sods!)

The pics are only a brief glimpse as what is to be seen there - there are more mosaics than you can shake a stick at. Must have taken an age to do - they got African specialists to come over and do them apparently.

Really amazing - so glad we went.

Catching the ferry was a laugh. We got there quite early so we had a quick rip-off dinner at the port then checked in for our sailing.

We picked the duff boat.

(That's the nice one, with casino, pool, hot tub etc etc - I think it was called the Supremo or something like that)

Our was...

(Great - a cargo boat - called.... the "Corragio" which I guess means cargo)

They had a large "sleeper" room with reclining chairs so we bagged a row of seats each as there were not many passengers on our crud boat, and after a few fortifying glasses of wine, bedded down for the night....

.....only to wake up at 4am to a guy snoring at volume levels that had to be experienced to be believed. Even worse, as he breathed out, someone else snored, to fill int he gaps, so to speak. I got up, Kirstin got up, loads of people got up.

Kirstin considered going over and hitting him with a rolled up magazine but figured he'd only roll over and start again - she knows the drill after putting up with me for years.

We moved into the lounge and used the sofas. I managed to put my head in a sweat top to blank out the lights.

It worked until about 7am when a nutty Italian walked around with music playing on his phone through the speaker. He did this for the while 20 odd hours of the crossing. Even more oddly, the same song, over and over. Weird.

When we arrived we caned it up to Sarzana to hook up with Stephano and Debborah who we'd met through friends in Pederroba - they cooked us a great local dinner on their fire - that's something that the Italians seem to like to do - they make their fire places so that they are big enough to BBQ on. Great idea.

After that we did a little sight seeing with them the next day and now we are back in Pederroba, chilling and planning our next leg of the journey... Africa!

6 Hours of driving later.... we hit Reggio Di Calabria and queued up for the ferry to Sicily. We had no idea what we were doing, which ferry to catch, or anything really. How hard could it be? it's only a 2 minute ferry. We just followed TomTom's instructions and it did the job perfectly.

We grabbed a ticket (29 Euros) and sat in the queue. A queue that never moved..... Didn't take long for everyone to start honking their horns. Bear in mind the sun is scorching, fire-fighting planes are flying over us and skimming the sea, refilling from the sea to put out mountain fires... it was that hot. That, and I'd been driving since 7am. I had to stop at 10.30 and have a 15 minute kip in a service station. I knew I had to stop - I'd started day-dreaming of warm comfy beds, duvets, fluffy pillows. It's amazing how 15 mins of shut eye (not sleeping mind you, just shut eye) can totally revive you. Coffee didn't work, but 15 mins with my feet on the door, eyes closed, and I was 100% ok. Amazing really. Never tried it before.

The queue didn't move for an hour and a half. The Italians amuse me. We are all stuck and they beep their horns, get out of their cars, wave their arms, have small meetings to discuss what could possibly be holding them up. All drama.

Then we started moving. It seems there were two queues. One, our one, where we'd bought tickets on the day, and another that we assumed had prebooked. They were getting priority, and there was a police car and a police man there controlling everything. Each time we inched forwards it was a mad race to see who could accelerate as hard as possible to move into the fastest lane of the three. We were winning! :-)

At one stage a lorry driver cut me up (well, I cut him up , and he won the fight.. almost) and I had two choices. Sit in a siding, stuck, OR - if I could zoom around the police car, which no one else was doing. I chose the latter. Bingo! miles ahead of the lorry! At which stage the copper blew his whistle and put his hand up to me to stop :-( - "what?" I gesticulated - and pointed at my ticket looking confused..., "not go round car!!" , "ahhh - so sorry - English", "ok, go on". YAY! zoomed off and just got ahead of the lorry. Looking back, we got the last spot hahaha.

The thing we've noticed about Italian driving (and much the same as they are on foot - i.e. queuing, or the lack of) - is that it's a clear case of "if there is a short cut, an opportunity to get ahead, a chance, anything, TAKE IT!". If you don't you can guarantee there will be 5 cars behind you honking their horns. None of this, "after you sir" malarky - you see an opportunity - you go, and you go fast. The funny thing is, no one seems to make much of a deal of it - it's like they all share the understanding - "if you don't, I will", and "if you do, fair play, respect, and Oh, I'm right behind you so MOVE IT BUDDY!"

I like it. It's a good laugh. Survival of the fittest. If your are a timid driver don't come here, you'll fill your pants.

Sooo. we finally got on the boat....

Another hour South in Sicily and we found our B&B we'd been recommended by someone on the Thorntree travel forum. What a find! - we were greeted by the owner who showed us round, told us to pick any apartment as it was empty, and he'd charge us "dorm" rates. He would rather we were happy and have an apartment - no point being in an empty dorm. We have a GREAT place, above the pool and overlooking the mountains. Breakfast is included, as is pretty much everything, all for 60 Euros a night. Plus I found Wi-Fi :-)

Very happy here.

They don't do any food so we drove into the local village to grab beers wine and pizza - at which stage the heavens opened! - not rain, but hail. Not normal hail. Hail stones were hitting the ground and splitting into three pieces, each piece the size of a gold ball!! I'm not kidding. I instantly realised that if one hit us on the head we'd be in serious trouble - i.e. dead. We ran under cover and cowered.

It made the papers the next day. They've never seen hail like it (neither have we). 6cm diameter hail stones! I'm not sure they've even seen hail before down here.

I watched a couple slam into the car with massive bangs. Sure enough. We have a few dents..... Here is one of a few...

The storm carried on that night...

And the next day.....

Great fun to watch - I got the shots using the video mode on my camera. I missed the real biggies - 3 or 4 forks hitting the mountain right in front of us.

The weather has mainly settled now and we went up to Mount Etna (Eric - your travel site doesn't know about Mount Etna in Italy! ). We's read lots of excited reports of laval flows, eruptions etc, but we were not so lucky. A thick cloud base was over the peak so most of our time was spent in near zero visibility. We paid the full 50 Euros each for the cable car up, then a 4x4 truck up further, then a walk with a guide.

- As a side note - I got to use the Italian word I 1st learnt - Nebbia!! - there are a million road signs "In Casa Di Nebbia - 50Km/h" - i.e. in case of fog, slow down. - I was so chuffed - "Nebbia! Nebbia! " I exclaimed to the guide!, "yes, fog" he said. YAY! - p..s. I've got my Italian numbers down to a tee now - I always count my money in Italian, and more often than not, the people in the shops then reply in English to check they have got their English right too. I have lost count of how many times I've heard, "you practice your Italian, I practice my English, ok?". I like that attitude. A lot. Besides which, Nebbia! - what a word. "Doctor, I've got a sore Nebbia", or "can you see my nebbia through these trousers?" Truly great word.

We saw craters steaming, and some great views, but not a whole lot of volcanic activity. Fun, but dissapointing to be honest. No probs - we have volcanoes to see in South America - Mark Hiley, a good friend, was there recently, and told me of his experience jumping over lava flows! Still, this was fun, albeit very expensive.

(I'd done my homework and we went with jeans, trainers and jackets. Many had not - it was bloody freezing up there - don't forget it's a skit resort too!)

(At last! a steaming crater!)

(A burried building from a few years ago)

(all I want to be is a Space Man, Space Man!)

We are back at the apartment now. We finally managed to grab some groceries. In mainland Italy the shops close from around 12.30 to 3pm, sometimes 3.30pm. Here, however, they close at 12, and open at 5pm. It's mighty tricky! Our local pizza place sells ice cream in large polystyrene boxes. You choose your flavours and they fill it up, and chuck in some cones and other bits.

It's funny, at home we treat ice cream like a kids thing. Here it's like buying wine. And so it should be!- Stracciatella!!! maybe spelt wrong - but my favourite, followed by Kinder Egg ice cream.

We had a chat this evening and agreed that we are seeing places for the sake of ticking boxes, and it's costing us an arm and a leg, so we are cutting short our Sicily trip. We had planned to go to Sardinia and then Corsica, but to be honest, they would be "beach" resorts, and we can do that better in places like Thailand, for a LOT less money, so we tonight booked a car ferry back to the North of Italy for the 19th. SO many sites quoted us anywhere from 400 Euros to 1000 Euros for the 20 hour car ferry. I went to the Italian site direct. 200 Euros. Sailing from Palermo so will check that out in a couple of days...

Got lots of food and booze in-house, a good pool, great views, time for some r&r (like we haven't had any yet lol)