Days 23 & 24 - Three Cats on The Crazy Tree

Woke up Tuesday morning at Three Cats on The Lemon Tree.  Last night I started reading “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, which given our current residence was quite apt.  Just to give you a flavour of our host’s…shall we say “eccentric” personality, here are a couple of Lavinia-isms:

When showing us round the house after we arrived late last night – “So here we are….all together...AGAINST THE ENEMIES!! “ (Manic laughter)

When Nick asked for a vegetable peeler in the kitchen – “I only keep these two knives in my house.  I don’t have any more because I am afraid that someone will come in and kill me!” (More manic laughter)

Nick took it upon himself to count the drawings and paintings of owls in her small house – the total was 23.  Obviously this was not counting her bedroom as his quest for numerical accuracy has not reached that level just yet.

So, we spent the day at Massa Beach sunbathing and swimming in the sea.  Here’s a picture of Nick enjoying his ice cream. 

 

Before we left for the beach though, we were treated to a sex show in the garden by Lavinia’s two pet tortoises, an unusual accompaniment to breakfast.

After our day at the beach Nick cooked dinner (I know!!) – Tagliatelle with green pesto, courgettes, peppers, onions, cherry tomatoes and mozzarella.  Apparently he got the recipe from a TV programme involving an Italian woman who lives in Wales??  Anyway it was delicious so there’s no shirking from dinner duties from now on.

 Wednesday morning we took the train to La Spezia and then to Cinque Terra which is a set of five villages built into terraced cliff faces all part of a National Park.  The villages are inaccessible by road, and the scenery is really beautiful. 

We spent most of the day walking around here and then returned to Three Cats on The Lemon Tree to pick up our bags and take a taxi back the train station…

Quick side note:  While on our travels we have encountered a series of doppelgangers, the first of which was the chef at the hotel in Milan. He was quickly named “Lieutenant Dan Chef” (ref. Forrest Gump).  

The second was a posing Italian doing dangerous dives from the rocks in Cinque Terra – Made in Chelsea’s Ollie.

The third was the taxi driver – a dead ringer for everyone’s favourite Match of the Day presenter Des Lynam! 

Actually if you count Joanna Lumley Chicken then there have been four, but I’m not sure that poultry count.

So Italian Taxi Driver Des Lynam took us back to Massa station where we caught the train to Bagni di Lucca, and were met by Janine who is our new Workaway host.  She drove us back to her house high up in the hills and after a couple of glasses of wine we went to sleep, ready to start work in the morning.

Days 21 & 22 - Stupid Sampdoria

Four courses later, and I think the hotel may have regretted the ‘Breakfast Included’ offer they gave us (in case you’re wondering it starts with the traditional cereals and toast, followed by the cheese and meats course, then the fruit platter, and finishes off with coffee and cake). It should have been 5 courses as I saw some other guests with mini croissants, but by the time I got up to the table there were none to be found.

So feeling refreshed and reenergised after yesterday’s mission of a journey we headed into Duomo, at the centre of Milan. The plan had been to have a wander around and get some lunch, before we headed off to watch the Milan vs Sampdoria game in the evening. However after spying a shop with a sale on, Becki decided to trade in the value of her ticket for cash for new clothes instead.

To celebrate her new purchases, we stopped in the Gucci coffee shop for a drink (which is why she is looking so pleased with herself).

      So then it was on to the main business of the day. I left Becki to continue her exploration of the shops in the fashion district of Milan, while I headed over to the San Siro to pick up a ticket……well at least that was the plan. In the hassle I had forgotten that in order to buy a football ticket in Italy you need your passport.

Ten minutes walk/run back to the nearest station and then back towards Duomo on the tube, where I had arranged to meet Becki. I found her casually eating a sorbet, unaware of the mood that was about to come her way! Back to the stadium again this time with passport in tow, and finally 2 hours after I originally set out I had my prized ticket!

 

Becki stayed at the Hotel for some dinner, while I (for the third time that day) headed towards the San Siro. After all that, as some of you may know, Sampdoria had not read the script and picked up a 0-1 away win. I would like to be able to write about how underserved it was, and how we were robbed, but the fact that our best three chances all fell to Mario Yepes (a centre back) just about sums Milans performance up.

Monday was a new day, so time to forget about the football (until next weekend at least) and off to do some sightseeing.  We got up earlier than the day before, mainly so I could get my hands on some of those mini croissants, but unfortunately they were still none (could I have imagined them?)

We went to see Castello Sforzesco, which was good but a fair bit of it was being rebuilt, so we didn't really get the full effect. Becki wasn’t feeling too good, so she had a relax in the shade under a tree in Sempione Park while I went to explore the rest of the park, which is full of random sculptures and hidden little rivers and lakes.

When I got back to Becki, she told me she had been watching a group of dodgy street traders (you know the kind, selling fake designer handbags outside anywhere there’s likely to be tourists) who suddenly ran off and hid behind a bush while the police drove past. As the police car drove around, the traders just moved round to the other side of the same bush, just staying out of sight the entire time. Confused and unable to find them the police gave up and went to have a drink at the coffee bar instead.

That evening we headed on to our next destination, Massa in Tuscany. This was a 4 hour journey on a regional Italian train, which smelt strangely like hospitals. But for only 6 euros a piece I guess you can’t be too picky!

There was a bit of confusion in actually finding the place we were staying since Google maps said the place didn’t exist, and the taxi driver we asked looked just as blank. 

Eventually we did work it out, and arrived at ‘Three Cats of a Lemon Tree’ and were met by our host Lavinia, who for some odd reason had made up her mind that we were French. Becki went along with it for as long as she could find the vocabulary and turning round from getting the bags out the cab I was thoroughly confused about what country we were in!

Days 19 & 20 - Never Trust the Swiss

Friday was our last day in Luneau and Nick spent most of the day helping Iain with the roof.  He also had to shovel and roll the patio (using a sort of steamroller, except it was not powered by steam). 

I helped with cleaning, cooking etc and we had a feast of pates, cheeses, salad, bread etc for dinner.  We were really lucky to see an amazing sunset that evening and after we’d enjoyed that we got a reasonably early night as we needed to be up at really early the next morning.

Up at 4.30am and the mission of a journey to Milan begins.  Iain gave us a lift to Paray le Monial station so we could catch the train to Lyon.  Had a bit of a panic when we realised there was no machine to collect our pre-paid tickets from and no staff to assist us.  We got on the train and Nick explained the situation to the conductor and all was well.  The train to Lyon took 2 hours and went very quick for me as I was asleep all the way.   

The next leg of the journey was Lyon to Geneva, and once at Lyon we managed to collect our tickets from the machine.  Off we went to Geneva – another 2 hour journey, and again I slept all the way!   

We arrived at Geneva at 10.30am and went straight to the ticket office.  (The plan had been to buy the Geneva to Milan tickets at the station, as for some stupid reason it wouldn’t let us buy them online.) However what should have been £35 online turned out to be £135 from the ticket office so we told the woman no.  We went to Starbucks to mull things over and Nick decided that we should just get on the train without a ticket and blag the conductor with the classic tale, “We bought our tickets online but the machine at the station wouldn’t print them….we are just stupid English people….surely we don’t need to buy another ticket??”  I was dubious to say the least but as Nick was in charge of the purse strings I had no choice but to go along with his plan.  

On the train, the plan was put into action and as expected the conductor stopped short of saying, “I couldn’t give a s**t, buy another ticket” but not by much.

So we paid the lying Swiss (Nicks comment) their full price ticket and the journey continued.  A couple of hours in we had to get off the train and onto a bus as there was a problem with the track.  After half hour we were back on a train – an old fashioned style train with individual cabins for 6 people.  We were sat in one with three women, a Chinese girl who didn’t say a word, your stereotypical old Italian woman, and a crazy French woman who tried to stare us out all the way.

 Finally we arrived in Milan at 18.05 and took the Metro to Duomo, then a tram to Via Lorrenteggio, the road the hotel was on.  Unfortunately we got off far too early (as this road was possibly the longest in the world) and had to walk the last mile. To cap off the 15.5 hour journey, while on the walk to the hotel, the handle of the suitcase broke.  This meant that Nick had to carry it instead of me wheeling it along.  At 8.00 we arrived at the hotel, and no your eyes are not deceiving you, our room really did have 2 double beds!

We went down to the bar for a beer and some dinner.  Nick ordered a pizza and me trying to be healthy after all the bread, cheese, pate etc of the last week, ordered a Chicken Ceasar Salad.  The waitress came back from the kitchen and informed me that there was no chicken left and that instead I could have pork.  I thought “Pork Caesar Salad?” but went with it anyway.  

Our food arrived and Nick’s pizza was delicious.  The same could not be said for my salad which was not remotely Caesar given the fact that there was no dressing in sight, and it actually just consisted of leaves, carrots and extremely greasy fried pork. 

A disappointing end to a tiring day.

Days 17 & 18 - Storms, Storms and Even More Storms

Today was all about assessing the damage and clearing up after the storm. It was only really once we got a proper look at some of the wreckage that we could see how strong the winds had been. They had ripped down huge trees over 6ft in circumference (Becki is saying I should say 2ft in diameter as this is easier for people to picture – but it’s my turn to write the blog and I think you’ll be able to do the maths anyway)

The drive was blocked by one of these trees, so cutting it up and getting it cleared was the first order of business. To get an idea of just how much stuff there was to clear, we created three dumper loads of logs like this, not to mention the huge sections of trunk that were just too big to lift so were dragged away by the Pajero.

In the mean time Becki was also on tree clean up duty, cutting up the smaller branches into different sized piles ready for burning on the fire pit. And as a bonus she got to drive them round in the Pajero.

That evening things were a little cooler than it had been for the last couple of weeks so we decided to go out for a bike ride to explore the French countryside. I thought we were having quite a casual relaxing ride around what was a relatively flat area of the country, but Becki seemed to be finding it really hard work and complaining a hell of lot. It was only when we stopped the reason became clear, the front brake pads had been fixed on too tight, meaning she had effectively been pedalling with the brakes half on the entire time!

Back in the village we stopped for a drink at the bar, where they brought us free chorizo and we discovered beer is cheaper than lemonade!

Over the last few days one of my other tasks has been to carry tiles up the scaffolding on the hunting lodge building where Ian is repairing the roof. The ridge is almost all the way along now, so by tomorrow the work on the roof should be finished for a while.

There’s a great view from the top of the scaffolding, especially of the storms when they come in from the hills over the horizon. And at about 6pm that exactly what happened, once we heard those first rolls of thunder coming our way we got down pretty quick, the tallest metal structure for miles around isn’t exactly where you want to be standing when the lightening gets close!

The weather round these parts doesn’t do things by halves, round 1 of this new storm was a hail special. No wind this time, but hail stones almost the size of golf balls started to rain down all around, even the cats were smart enough to stay out of the way of these monsters. This went on for over an hour, leaving the garden looking like it was covered in snow.

 A short period of calm, it was just starting to get dark when the whole sky was lit up by bright flashes.  Entire sheets of lightening continuously flowed through the clouds, at times the flashes were almost painful to look at, like that moment when you momentarily look too close to the sun. Because there was no rain, I went to stand right out in the field where you were entirely surrounded by this lightening unlike anything I’d seen before and continuous (sometimes deafening) thunder, and in between these great sheets, were occasional horizontal forks that fractured across the sky. 

A little later on when we were all sitting inside, lightning struck very close by to the house. The gap between the flash and the loudest crack of thunder of the night was less than a second, for a few seconds all the power went down.

Round 3 of the storm arrived about 10pm and took the form of torrential rain, and when we went down to our bedroom we found that a paddling pool had been newly installed! With water coming in through rear wall, the boys headed outside to dig a channel to direct the building water away from the house, while the girls formed a synchronised sweeping team to push the water out of the house and down into the channel.

Eventually the rain calmed, and we came back inside, although the thunder and lightning carried on throughout the night.