When I went this morning to buy fresh, literally hot from the oven, baguettes and croissants the young lady behind the counter stopped to speak with me for a few minutes. She was sad that I am leaving today and said “arrivederci “ because it doesn’t mean goodbye, but “I will see you again”. She has been so sweet and helpful that I really will miss her.
We arrived at La Chiocciola without incident, thank God. I have a little compound I’ve been setting up for the dogs since Bolnuevo. It consists of garden stakes attached to garden fencing with zip ties and its pretty big. Anyway, giving how vertically challenged I am and my lack of upper body strength, I really struggle to pound those stakes in with predictable results. Unless I have close in trees that I can use as stabilizers I’m not able to get the stakes very far into the ground so I end up with falling stakes, sagging fencing, the wind blowing everything down – you get the picture. After arriving at our pitch I dragged all this stuff out of storage and started trying to get everything set up. Apparently, after watching me for at least 10 minutes, a very large (and I don’t mean fat) Dutch gentleman came over and took over, saying that it looked like I could use some help. Understatement!!!. In 10 minutes the whole thing was set up and secure and I was falling all over myself thanking him. He, his wife and their two sons are staying in a static caravan directly opposite my pitch. Such nice people!
Tomorrow I’m going to see about arranging for a rental car. I’m anxious to get started looking at properties to rent. This area is so beautiful. Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to get a taxi to Arezzo because that seems to be the nearest place to rent cars.
The Dutch couple, Chris and Renee, came back over this evening to check on me. Chris is 52 and Renee is 53. They have a daughter, 18, and two sons, 17 and 19. Their daughter has been in Greece on holiday but thankfully not near the wildfires and she is now back in the Netherlands. They are obviously a very active family. Tomorrow they’re doing some sort of river hike. More power to them!
Izzy’s Art 