Of course it is a wonderful week. We spend loads of time at the pool... The kids swim like fish. We love to catch up with these wonderful friends. We are held up a little with our plans however. The problem is that Millie comes down with the virus on day two, quickly followed by both Kristin and Clare. For them the virus hits hard and there is fever, aches and fatigue for quite a few days.
Still we manage to create some fab memories together.
Making piles of pizzas at home.
On Sunday the village celebrates 70 years of liberation. Hamish and Clare go and check out the speaches in the local piazza and folllow the band as it marches through town. It's a pretty sobering event.
We go to Certaldo and check out this old brick city together.
We drive to the coast and visit Tirrenia, investigating the private beach set up so prevalent in these parts, tasting local cakes and leaving behind credit cards causing mayhem as we try to find it once we had gone further south to Castiglioncello to check out another beach area. Lots of rain this day.
We check out another local agriturismo at the foot of the valley. This month sees a lot of them putting on meals and setting up lovely evening atmospheres in thier own back yard. Picture strings of lights, balmy evening, fireflies everywhere on the walk down the hill, families and friends chatting and laughing, children running and laughing late into the evening, wine and food from this very place. It is beautiful. Then the laughs afterwards when we realize that the kind local didn't stop to offer us a lift up the steep hill. Tony and I clambered into the poor mans car and couldn't work out why Hamish didn't do likewise. It wasn't til later that we realised that this kind chap had come to give Hamish his camera bag that he had left behind at the event. He didn't speak a word of English and must have been stumped when we were all of a sudden sitting in his back seat. Gratsia, gratsia we said all the way up the hill.
We drive to San Gimignano one evening and enjoy this lovely town as evening comes upon it. The gelato is great.
We take the kids into the town for pizza one evening at about 9:30pm. The village is coming to life and they love playing with a group of local kids. They have a blast.
We create a little of our own mystery as we hear that our own Agriturismo Ginestruzze was host to the German Army when it was in town. We are imagining all sorts of things about the owners.
We find out a little more about the war history of the area and how nearby villages were destroyed by German troups for no reason. I read that tens of thousand civilian and partisan tuscans were killed by Germans. We don't hear much about this. Also we find about how New Zealanders liberated San Casciano in val di Pesa late in July 1944. I am left wondering if my great uncle was with them but went on to face his death a few short days after.
The tragedy of this week is that we manage to loose all our photos of the time. We will have to wait until Norway when we get to grab some from Hamish to capture some of what the week was like for us. It is probably obvious from the photos on previous posts that this is pretty gutting. There have been tears.
