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Wow, I had no idea that it’s been a week since I lasted posted! It must seem like I’ve been AWOL! I’ve done pretty much nothing except apartment/house hunt all day, every day. Well on Saturday it finally paid off. I went to look at an apartment in an old stone house in a town called Poppi. It’s in the countryside about 3 km from the town. It is a ground floor apartment and has 2 bedrooms, a bath, and an open living/dining/kitchen area that takes up one whole side of the apartment. There is a fireplace in a corner of the living room and a pellet burner in a corner of the kitchen area. The house is at the top of a hill that overlooks the pastures/farmland in the area. The view around the house is really pretty, and the landlord had no problem with the dogs. Poppi is about 40 Kim’s west/northwest of Florence so pretty close to where I wanted to be. Arezzo, which is the capital of the province I’ll be living in, is also only 40 km away, and has a high speed train to Rome that takes just 1 hour. There are also buses running all the time. Travel is so much easier over here, and not particularly expensive. The high speed train is nonstop and only €30. Slower trains are less. Buses take longer but start at €11!

The other reason I haven’t been posting is because I’ve been sick. Stress will kill you!! Stuffy head, runny nose, sore throat, no voice, coughing like crazy. Now that I have an address I can start applying for health insurance. Also I need to buy a car pretty quickly. I don’t think I’d do well walking with bags of groceries 3 kms from town and UP A STEEP HILL!

it’s been unbearably hot here, like everywhere. I’m so glad I bought that air conditioning unit when we were still in Bolnuevo. It’s been a lifesaver.

I’m looking forward to my next adventures of living in Italy and learning the language. For anyone who reads this blog, PLEASE let me know if I should stop writing now or continue on with what I’m doing, learning and seeing in Italy. Thanks!

Tomorrow is a national holiday here in Italy. I have no idea what the holiday is, just that everything will be closed.

I’ve had the motorhome for 2 months now and in that time I’ve had to replace the refrigerator, a belt, an alternator, and 2 tires and buy a 3 ton jack and lug wrench. When I got the van there was a tv/dvd player combo that came with it. I discovered almost immediately that the dvd player wasn’t working. Hoping that it was just dirty I bought a cleaning dvd. It was promptly eaten, never to be seen again. My solution was to buy a cheap dvd player that I could use with the tv. Sensible, right? Now, just past the 2 month mark the tv has died. I waited a couple of days but finally decided that it was my only source of visual entertainment so I drove to Arezzo today. I found a Euronics , people! I bought a cheap little tv that is working just fine. Now I hope that is the last replacement item I have to deal with for awhile. It’s been an expensive investment so far.

Speaking of expensive, since I haven’t gotten any responses yet from my rental inquires, I had to extend my campground stay. I also had to extend the rental car for another week. Ouch!! I’m trying to be patient and not get discouraged yet. One good piece of news is that I have an appointment to view a house next Monday. Unfortunately it’s a lot farther south than I was hoping for. It’s in Umbria, not Tuscany, and closer to Rome than Florence. Having said that, the house looks quite nice and there’s a garden for the dogs. It might turn out to be perfect.

It feels sort of like autumn is here in Italy already. Lots of trees are bare with more leaves falling all the time. It’s bizarre though with blistering temperatures during the day and cold enough at night to need a light blanket.

No more news from me for now. We’ll see what tomorrow brings 😊

This is a picture I shot of a farmers field just down the road from the campground. Pretty cute!

Boring, hot Sunday. It’s in the 90’s – 100 (38-40) during the day so you go to bed sweating then it drops to the upper 50’s-lower 60’s at night and you wake up freezing. Crazy weather!

Exactly every 2 kilometers there is a sign on all the roads I’ve been on that shows a warning for deer jumping out onto the road for the “next 2 km”. Every 2 kilometers! Is that insane? Why don’t they just say “for the next 20 kilometers”? Do they think people will forget??

My Dutch friends left early this morning. It was nice having some people to talk to. They said it would take them 2 days to get home to Holland, something like 1,500 kms. I looked up the distance from Mazarron to Bucine and it is about 1,800 kms. Wow, that’s a pretty long trip. None of the other campers here have shown any signs of friendliness at all, which is a bit surprising. Maybe it’s because I’m a single female and everyone else is either a couple or a family. Oh well. The sooner I find a place to live the better.

I’m going to try and go back to edit previous posts to see if I can include pictures of other places like I finally figured out to do here.

Last night the campground had a little craft fair and what they called “E Street Food”. I have no idea what that meant but it was actually pretty nice. There were only 5 or 6 vendors selling handcrafts but I didn’t buy anything. Shocking, right?! The food was good (unknown meat wrapped in a tortilla with tomatoes, onions and lettuce). It was nice to see many of the campers gathered around for a while.

Today was laundry day while hoping the phone would ring or I’d get an answer to one of the dozen inquires I sent out. Unfortunately nothing at all. My Dutch neighbors told me that they were pretty sure in Italy the first 2 or 3 weeks were for holidays so I probably wouldn’t hear anything for perhaps another week. I guess I’m going to have to extend the rental car and our campsite. Many of the pitches are already emptying. It’s possible in another week or so I may be the only motorhome on the site.

I also found out today that Sting, of The Police, owns a home and winery practically next door here. Of course it’s unlikely that he’s here at the moment but you never know.

Henry and Polly are doing fine although I’m getting a little concerned that I don’t have much more of her canned food left. I may need to find some sort of pet store or veterinarian next week in order to restock. I’ve still got enough of her medicine for a few weeks but at some point soon I’ll have to get her to a veterinarian so I can get more.

it’s getting dark here by about 8:30 now. I hadn’t realized how short the days were getting. Oh how I dread the coming cold weather! Sure hope we’re in a nice warm house before then. 🤞

I’ve had a busy few days since arriving in Bucine. On Tuesday I took a taxi to Arezzo (I won’t mention the small fortune it cost me!) to rent a car. Got a Fiat 500 Hybrid. Found a fabulous grocery store then lost my internet halfway back to the campsite and got hopelessly lost. After driving around these crazy back roads I was able to find my way back. What should have been a max. 30 minutes drive turned into an hour!

Wednesday I was able to reach an agency in Arezzo that locates rental properties, so back I went. This time I brought my portable Wi-Fi with me. If I haven’t mentioned it before, while I was still in Spain, I bought a portable Wi-Fi device called Solis. I pay a monthly fee and connects to whatever satellite is available so I never lose signal. It’s the best investment I made. I had only been using it in the motorhome but discovered it worked just as well in the rental, thank goodness. No more convoluted road trips for me (I hope)! Anyway, I signed up with the agency and they send me contact information on any apartments or houses that fit my criteria. So that’s what I’ve been doing this morning – following up leads on rentals. Unfortunately my timing is awful, in that August in Europe is the month of vacations. It is very difficult to reach anyone at tge moment.

Also, unfortunately, I’ve found out that the owner of this campsite has decided to shut it down. Everyone here now has to be off the site by August 31st. If I haven’t been able to find a rental by then I’ll have to change campsites again. What joy!

By the way, the name of the campsite, “La Chiocciola”, means “The Snail” in Italian. Weird, right?