Ok, this is a catch-up blog post since I'm a few days behind.
Monday we left Orvieto for the second leg of our Italian stay in northern Tuscany. I drove and Maggi was the GPS, We had an almost uneventful drive up the A1 and across the A11 autostradas, including paying the tolls using a credit card at unattended kiosks. The almost part was when the manual GPS said go right and the driver went straight. This small bump happened north of Firenze (Florence) as we tried to get from the A1 to the A11. There was one exit, it wasn't marked like we're used to and I was in the wrong lane. Fortunately we successfully got off the A1 at the next exit, pulled in to what Maggi translated was a shoe store, reassessed our position, decided to forego Prada and Gucci purchases and retraced our steps back to the confusing interchange, which in my opinion was still just as confusing.
By then we needed a rest stop and lunch so went in to one of the Autogrilles on the Autostrada to see what was available. After eating the Umbrian Tipico bread (tasteless, saltless and sugarless I am pretty sure) my ham and swiss on foccacia and her veggie sandwich tasted devine, even eaten in the car. We got off the A11 at Lucca east, wound our way along the outside of the city walls and followed the pretty detailed directions our proprietor Mark had provide by email. Good thing too as we are situated up a very narrow, windy one lane, in my opinion, road. If we had met anyone coming down the mountain as we were driving up we both would have probably wet our pants.
Arriving at Il Mulinetto, The Mill, was really like arriving at a picturesque chalet in the woods. The house is partially hidden behind a beautiful cedar tree. The driveway runs along a small creek originating somewhere up the mountains that arrives after cascading over 5 small waterfalls, all located directly behind the house. We are treated to the continual sound of the falling water as it moves along it's journey, makes sleeping nice. I digress... In it's past life, many years ago, Il Mulinetto was a working Olive mill, located amid the olive trees, with a water wheel, run by said water, operating the press. It was in ruins when Mark and his wife Molly bought it in 2000 and required a complete renovation from what was pretty much just a shell. The reno took 4-5 years and if the guest book is any indication, they began renting it out in 2006. Most of the old mill works are in a local museum now since Mark was unable to use any of it either as a mill or incorporate in the house for health reasons.
It was cold and overcast Monday and Mark had a wonderful wood fire going downstairs in the Vermont Castings fireplace insert. It even has a blower to send all that warm air into the room. The floors are terracotta tile and chilly underfoot and although there is a central heating system fueled by hot waster, we later realized it was set on the night or sleep program and not heating our room radiators so bedrooms and poor cold us, the bathrooms, weren't warm. Of course that was only really obvious to us that evening, after Mark had left. It's down right cold when you use a fully tiled bathroom when it's 40° outside and probably 50° in the house. But, we are nothing if not inventive in taking care of ourselves. That fire was banked in the evening and back blazing as soon as I came downstairs the next morning. But I'm ahead of myself.
That afternoon we made our first trip down the hill. This is a continual death defying drive/ride for both of us, both down AND back up. Blind curves abound, the road is pretty much one lane, and although I have managed to meet and inch by a couple of cars over the last few days, it's still scary, but we're here and we're making the best of it. It took us until yesterday to realize that we could save lives (ours of utmost concern) by honking before each switch back. Only after that did we realize there was constant honking in that bucolic bliss- duh!!! So we have become the honking Americani, we honk at every curve, whether we can see around it or not, whether we are going down or coming up. Better over honk than be sorry. Just think of us as the Honking Queens, and put that to ABBA music.
That night, after a dinner of wonderful ham and assiago cheese omelets (yea, we finally got to eat some eggs) we locked up every window, closed all the shutters, added blankets, wore multiple layers of clothing and went to bed in the cold. Didn't take me long the next day, after the fire was again raring, to start flipping switches on everything until I discovered how to manipulate that thermostat. Now who ever is up first(Maggi) flips it to manual to warm up the bathrooms at a minimum. I really appreciate a warm bathroom.
Tuesday we made it down the hill unscathed (before becoming the Honking Queens) and then on to the local market a few villages over. The market is called Simply. We learned how to weigh and price our produce, look up meats to figure out what they were and that there's no Greek yoghurt in this burg! Also, we discoveted that the pane brutto, (ugly bread) is the best bread we've had in Italy so it's on our buy list every time we're there.
We lunched at what must have been the local working man's pizzeria as we were the only women, again, and of course thought we were out of place. Questioning Mark later, he indicated that many local establishments serve pranza di lavoro, or worker's lunch. It's a limited menu for a fixed price so most workers take advantage, oh, and that women dining out by themselves or in pairs was not unusual. Sure....
Not wanting to drive up that hill in the dark, and because dinner usually involves wine...and that hill would definitely get the better of us then, so far we have eaten our evening meal here. I'm pretty sure Tuesday's was uneventful because I can't even remember what we had.
Yesterday we hit Lucca, the walled city. Yes they're all walled cities if they're old enough - think Roman conquests, medieval fortresses, Knights Templar, warring factions, Dracula - oops, wrong country. Anyway, I could go on, but you get the picture. Most of these places have been here a really, really long time and all had to have defenses. We spent most of our time driving in circles ( I was driving and not happy!), trying to find the parking area Mark had indicated for us as free, retracing our path on some of the same roads 2-3 times I'm pretty sure, and of course, never located it. When we finally gave up and pulled into pay parking we spent more time trying to figure out how long we could park for an euro, etc. The whole experience was comical in retrospect, but after driving in circles for an hour, that emotion completely eluded us at the time. The city is doing spring cleaning/upkeep and there are scaffolding and covers on many buildings. Guess old walled cities take big time upkeep. We wandered around, visited some of the churches, bought some post cards, I went to Sephora and purchased nail polish (yeah, I know- Sephora, in Lucca, whodathought?) we climbed up to the top of the wall and walked part way and realized...oh no!...parking time was running out. By the time we made it back outside the walls and across to the parking, of course seeing what appeared to be the parking police working the area, we said screw it..let's go back home. Lunch was sandwiches on the front porch, sitting in the sun, dozing and this is where it gets interesting, at least for me.
Maggi went upstairs to try to nap after almost falling out of the chair so I decided to paint my nails. That completed, I went outside to sit in the same lounge chair I had been dozing in previously, to let them dry. As I was carefully adjusting the back of chair, it broke. Now, these are the green, kinda hard, plastic chairs and my experience says weather kills them pretty quickly, but then again, maybe I killed it. Anyway, the bottom gave out, arm broke and I ended up with my butt almost on the ground, body in a v position, legs in the air and remember....wet nails. I didn't have any remover and was not going to mess them up so I just sat there for a good 20-30 minutes, feeling pretty stupid. I just knew Maggi would come down, see me, get her camera, take picture and next thing you know it would be on Facebook. That whole image finally motivated me to make the chair fall over sideways and I literally crawled out of it but..I saved my nails, not a mar on that polish. After that the only salvation was to have wine. We originally had planned to go down the hill for dinner but that drinking and driving up the hill thing came up so we went down the hill to Simply instead. We would cook, what a novel idea. We would buy fish and use the inside grill. Il Mulinetto was equipped with everything, right?
We were looking for that overfished delicacy, sea bass. As we perused the fish offerings we decided salted cod was definitely out, smoked salmon was not grillable, and since neither of us could ask the fish guy would he fillet the sea bass...nor were either of us going to do it... sea bass was out too. Instead we opted for already butchered and packaged pork chops, pretty butter lettuce, tomatoes, fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella and lemon torte. A feast that evening for sure. Up the hill we went.
Let me set the stage….......Table is set, pork chops are marinated, garlic is roasting, bread is cut waiting on that garlic, caprese salad is ready, wine has done all necessary breathing and is in our glasses of course and now it's time to start the grill. The inside grill is gas with the burner covered in lava rock and as we got ready to start it, we remembered that Mark said you had to hold the starter down until it heated up and would stay lit. How hard could that be? I can light the grill at home, even without the electric clicker. So I proceeded to light the grill burner, holding down the knob for a couple minutes, all the while listening to that stupid clicker. I heard the burner light so knew we had flame.. I could feel heat beginning to come off the grill so I let the knob go, and voila, the flame goes out. I did it again, 5 minutes this time..same result. Third times a charm, right? Not! Now I'm getting peeved. I'm holding down the knob and thinking nasty thoughts about the grill...it's been 20 minutes or more since I started this charade and my fingers are getting tired. Maggi comes in and offers to hold it for awhile and gives it a try, still no dice. We can
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