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To the outskirts of Tuscany!!!

Spoke to Metka (Leandro's friend, Lydia's cousin) from Slovenia the night before we left for Garfagnana. It was so great to hear from her and are looking forward to greeting her at Ljubljana train station next Friday night.

The train ride to Garfagnana was 2.5 hrs, but the scenery was absolutely stunning! It makes me just want to fly to the South Island of NZ to remind myself that we have this sort of nature not too far too, thankfully! Having a winter of -15C though, trudging through snow, I DON'T THINK SO!!!

Was picked up by Leandro's cousin Edi, and as usual I sat in the back without a seatbelt, still a weird concept for me! As you can see from the pix, the big house belongs to the the big family. Leandro's cousin Vanna and her husband Luigi living on the top floor; her sister Edi and her husband Lirio living on the bottom floor, then at the back of the house, Vanna and Luigi's son Lorenzo and his wife Serena livng on the top floor, and his cousin Sara and her husband Tiziano living on the bottom floor. You all got that!?! hehe They're in a town of about 1,000 people, and it seems to work for them, but they're together all the time. Definitely not for me, or Leandro! Their house (houses) are beautiful though, and there's actually 7 kitchens in total with 3 family cantinas with wood fired ovens. I told them they would make so much money from foreign tourists! They also don't even lock their doors in this town

First night we naturally had home made wood fired pizza, which was quite a different experience. My favourite was Cipolla e Tonno (Onions and Tuna) So nice!!! Leandro's second cousin Simone also visited for dinner with his wife Natasha and their 2 kids, Sofia and Giacopo. We had met up with Zia Vittoria and Zio Carlo earlier in the day, and the grave site of Leandro's grandparents. There's even an African family that now lives in this town! This town has everything, hehe! Sofia liked the presents for her Communion, thankfully.

Before the dinner though, we visted the town of Silico with only 100 inhabitants. It was really quite pretty and again had these huge sort of black bees flying around, lol! Check the pic! There's also pix of the town church opposite a condom vending machine!haha The contradictions of Italian life!!! And we also came across the Church where Leandro's great-uncle was the priest, DON Vittorio Castelli.

This trip has been really interesting as spending an extended time in a region really shows you what their lives are like. For example, in Italia, people get quite a lot of tumours as a result to the fallout from Chenobyl. Unfortunately most of Europe would still be dealing with this. And the conversion to the Euro has made it really quite hard for Italians to live as they once did, as basically everything doubled in price overnight. The Euro is a very strong currency, but most people can't afford goods they once did. We told them of the cost of things in Australia, and they were quite disheartened as we pay what they used to pay for things. Basically, goods doubled in price, but their wages didn't! Bloody governments!!!

Tonight for our final night in Firenze, we're off to the Opera to see one of the owners of the B&B we're staying at sing. Looking forward to it. Check the pix of the room we've stayed in for 1.5 wks, very nice, and only half an hour walk from the city centre:) Tomorrow we're off to stay with Leandro's uncle Cosimo in Varese, and hopefully we'll get to see a bit more of Switzerland too. Ok, signing off!

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