Without Laurel to referee on driving & directions Jim and I had to come up with a method of reading
& listening to the GPS without getting into a fight. We have finally agreed upon a way. He listens to the directions and I look
at the screen and give him hand signals on which way to go. So far so good!
Finding the house in Camaiore was
confusing. Umberto, the homeowner
emailed us and said to meet at Montemagno at 4.30pm. Montemagno did not register on the GPS but the house address
from the website did - so no worries, off we went. 5 hours after leaving Rome we are on top of a (precarious)
hill at a three-way junction. One
of the signs is the street we are after but we can’t find the house, there are only three on the street. We decide we better ring Umberto
because it is now 4.15pm and he maybe at Montemagno waiting for us, wherever that is.
His English is good enough for us to
understand each other. He says
where are you? Now that’s a good
question. We retrace our steps
down the hill. As you know we are
not scared of driving mountain roads but this road is more like a single man-made
path up a windy steep hill.
We eventually meet up with him at 4.45pm at
a café, as it turns out down the road from the house we are meant to be staying
in. He tells us the address on the
website is incorrect, that is why he says to meet at Montemagno (further along
the main road). The street/road/track
the house is on does meet up with the junction where we were at initially but it
is up and over the hill on the other side.
The road the house is on is also a man-made
road, a little wider than a single lane.
It starts off bitumen, then changes to concrete with moss growing out of
the concrete – gives you an idea of how slippery the road is and densely overgrown the area
is.
Aside from the road to get here the location
is amazing. The house sits on the
side of the hill surrounded by olive trees and grapevines. It reminds me of the Kiewa Valley. We are enjoying the quiet and solitude
of the house. There have been two
amazing thunderstorms since we arrived, one the first night, which Jim slept
through and yesterday afternoon.
It has rained a little this afternoon. It is autumn after all, cool and slightly wet.
Umberto lives in this house in the winter
and in a flat in Massarosa (a town at the bottom of the hill) for the
summer. He also has a bungalow
(more like a garden shed) further up the track from here. He has a rabbit and dog that live
between this house and the bungalow.
Bunny & puppy are regular visitors. Bunny comes and goes but enjoys us feeding him/her lettuce
and pear. Puppy, who is really an
old girl, loves our company as we do hers. She stays for most of the day and night except when she
hears Umberto’s car climbing up the (makeshift) road, then she races back to
the bungalow. Last night Jim was
looking up Italian phrases for puppy but she didn’t bat an eyelid. Lost in translation!
PS. The Internet is very slow here so no chance of posting any photos, Skyping or downloading photos to Flickr. It is good that the Internet is operating now so I can post this, it comes and goes.
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