Days 25 & 26 - We are Lumberjacks and we're OK

We are spending the next couple of weeks at a workaway in a little Italian village called Crasciana. 

Tucked away high in the hills between Lucca and Florence, we are living with a family of 5 (although only 3, Janine, and two of the kids Sam and Holly are here right now) helping them to turn a restaurant / discotheque that was built in the 60s but has been abandoned for the last 20 years into a family home.

After a tour of the house and garden, we got to work on our first job. Apparently it gets pretty cold here in the winter, and the only way to keep warm is by burning logs. For a building this size, that means a lot of logs.

Some of the previous workawayers had chopped down some branches and trees and stacked them in piles outside, but with rain forecast for the next they need to be moved inside and upstairs, ready to chainsaw them up into nice stove sized pieces later in the week. 

 

Obviously the "wood" inuendos came fast and furious (no pun intended). Anyway here stands the fruits of our labour.

The family also have two dogs, Buckles and Archie. Archie in particular has lots of funny quirks, one of which is if you shine a light on the floor and make a shiloutte with your finger she will attack it!

This obviously amuses us for hours on end, and apparently she loves it too. We just recorded this video, and now she is sitting expectantly next to us waiting to start playing the light game again.

The next day we set about making a set of shelves for the study. There were some big planks that once sanded down would do for the actual shelf, and someone (that may have been me) had the bright idea that we could slice up one of the beams that had been removed from the old roof to give the shelves a rustic look.

I say bright idea, because the beams are too big to use any of the powertools to cut through so that means sawing each bracket out of a beam about as wide as my chest by hand! 

We started off both doing the sawing but after a while Becki moved on to sanding duties. At the end of our 5 hours, all the shelf pieces were ready and the first 3 brackets done (only 9 more to go!).

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.