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Italian bars and coffee

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the fact that a Bar in Italy is not like a Bar in the US. They are places to get your morning (or late morning, or afternoon) coffee and a cornetto for breakfast. Most have gelato in the summer. You can get a beer, wine or grappa as well. Or you can meet up with friends.

Each Italian town has at least one Bar in each neighborhood. Sometimes they are just a block or so apart. Each has it’s own clientele from nearby. But Italians cannot be far from a coffee so you can find Bars along the roads and autostrade too. Even gas stations have Bars. Then you are assured to never be far from a caffe.

In Umbertide just in a 5 or 6 block area I counted 10 Bars. In the Piazza in front of our house are two, Bar Mary and Caffe Centrale. It is very amusing that each of these has it’s own loyal clientele. Mostly the Americans who live around here go to the Caffe Centrale but there are some who have loyalty to Bar Mary. Caffe Centrale is a lot nicer than Bar Mary. Nicer tables and chairs, nicer inside, nicer outdoor covers over the tables. Bar Mary has cheap plastic tables and plastic chairs that stack that are so rickety they recommend you stack two together to sit in! They also have four big yellow square umbrellas to cover the outside tables. They are always crookedly set up and look a bit messy. Bar Mary attracts most of the Brits around here. Also all the old men who play the Italian card game called Briscola gather at the tables in front of Bar Mary and in the winter in the back room to play. It is rather odd that none of these old men ever buy anything to eat or drink while they are there. Also anyone else can sit outside without buying anything.

The owners of Bar Mary are Mary (duh) and Irene (pronounced Eh-ray-na), sisters probably in their late forties or so with very over processed and permed hair. Bright yellow it is. They are both very sweet though and very friendly to us. They know exactly what we want to order each time of day. Cappuccino sensa scuma in the morning, beers if it’s noon or late afternoon, red wine for when Luther smokes his cigar on the Piazza. Oh I probably don’t need to say Bar Mary is “our” bar. We chose it as our Bar when we were here in January and Jim our Realtor told us it was his “office”. He lives in the country so when doing business in town Bar Mary is his place. So it’s ours too now. He calls the two girls the Straw Dogs. It’s pretty descriptive.

Right now things are not right with the world in the Piazza Matteoti because the Bar Mary is closed! Yes CLOSED! for vacation. I am happy for the Straw Dogs because those ladies work very hard. They are open from 7AM to 1AM every single day of the year except their vacation week. They work the place alone except for a man whose relationship to them I have yet to figure out. He is handsome in the Italian way, shaved head, nice build but has a bad overbite. He “may” be married to Mary but I am not sure yet.

Last Sunday we were out for a beer in the afternoon. It was just before they were closed for the vacation week. (They went to the beach) Anyway. we went in to pay for the beers and Irene leaned across the counter to give me a double kiss! I guess I am accepted in the Bar Mary. My Bar.

Remember those boxes?

Well. We have had a couple of issues with these boxes. They sent a list of questions from customs. I had declared that I brought cat food with me and turns out that is a no-no. I think U Pak – We Ship should provide a list of dos and don’ts for shipping things to Europe. Once I googled it I found lists of things that you should not ship to include pet food. Link: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/customs/banned-restricted.htm

Customs first asked if it was meat based. Duh! Cats are carnivores. So I said yes and I explained it was prescription food because I was not sure I could get it here. Next they asked the weight of it which I provided. Time passes. Next we were told our shipment had been “selected” for a “detailed inspection” like it was a prize or something. Sigh. All I could think of was that all my careful packing was for naught.

After another week we got the word that it had been cleared for shipment. We are not sure whether the cat food got confiscated or not. When it gets here we will know. They say in 7-10 days we should hear about when it should arrive. I have re-iterated that they CANNOT come on market days (Wednesday or Saturday) and MUST give me 3 days notice so I can let the police know. Living right on the Piazza makes things a bit more difficult not to mention every one sees all of your business but oh well!

Today we bought a microwave and a 30 inch TV so we can at least watch streaming movies. We also may look into a satellite account. We need to see if it is portable to our other apartment.

Ciao till next time!

Saturday lunch and…

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Yesterday we got our car washed! OK mundane unless you live in another country. There are two ways to do it. You can wash it yourself (sponges, soap squirter provided) or you can have their cool machine do it.

We opted for the machine. It is like a car wash that moves up and down your car rather than your car being pulled through it. It takes up much less room. You park your car and put the money in and there is an arch with brushes, water squirting or air as the process moves forward. It was pretty interesting to watch.

Today is Saturday and we had lunch at Villa San Donino in Citta di Castllo. Actually out in the country. Beautiful venue. Tents and pretty table cloth covered tables and all the chairs covered with bows tied around them. Susan said they do a lot of weddings. It would be lovely for that. It is also a hotel with a big pool. Pictures of the main building which is a church in the back and the beautiful, cypress lined, very long driveway up to the church.

I was so pleased with my choices of food. I did not get too full but was not hungry. My first course was Tagliatella arugula (green) with vegetables from their garden. Here is a picture.

Luther got a mostly meat plate. It was huge.

My entry was veal with black truffles and potatoes. SO good. Perfectly cooked and not too much. And YES those are all shaved summer black truffles.

Here is our favorite lunch wine choice from Tuscany. It was lovely and light. We all loved it.

Wine tasting and Montefalco lunch

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Thursday. Nice summer day. Getting warmer after weeks of cool weather.

Today we planned to visit a winery and to go to a restaurant in Montefalco. The restaurant is called L’Alchemiste. We had been there on our Umbria trip with the Gang o Six about 3 years ago. Susan and Gary had not been there yet so we invited them to come too.

We went to a winery that Luther picked out on the road to Montefalco. It was quite a ways off of the highway on a long dirt driveway. The name of it is Milziade Antano Fattoria Colleallodole. Quite a mouthful. They specialize in Sagrantino wines. These are big reds and an interesting fact is that this grape grows on only 250 acres in the entire world! And it is in only 3 towns in this area.

We tasted a white, a rose and 4 reds. They progressed from an extremely tannic young Sagrantino through to an aged and lovely DOCG wine. These were pretty expensive wines as Italian wines go. Here are some pictures of the winery (to include tomatoes and a demi-john outside and then inside with the wines.

We drove from there to Montefalco and walked up into the pretty hill town. It isn’t very big and centers around a pretty central piazza where they were ambitiously setting up bleachers and a stage for a big concert.

We ate outside and it was pleasant. The food is not your predictable Italian food. We had squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta on sliced pears to share among the four of us. Next most of us had a melted cheese with radicchio wrapped in crisp phyllo. When you cut it the cheese oozed out onto the plate. After that we all had pastas. Susan and I had the house lasagna. Oh my! It was exquisite. It was vegetarian. Mushrooms came through in the smooth bechamel and it had no pasta in it. Rather it had crepes on top. Here are pictures:

Looks like tonight they are putting on a play in Umbertide in the piazza. Should be interesting. Here is the stage in progress from our window (sorry about the screen).

Kitchen and sofa

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Wednesday. Not a lot to report. A beautiful day after thunderstorms last night. Today was market day and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people. I think many of the summer residents are here now and of course the market would be a big draw. I went out early to buy produce, which is beautiful and bountiful right now. Also two whole trout from the fish monger and some little tiny clams. We will have them tonight with linguini.

Monday we met with Emanuele and gave him the list of what we want and what we don’t want. Va bene. All is well. We cut about 1/4 from the costs.

Our sofa was delivered yesterday. I hid in the house while Luther went to deal with the delivery men. Why? Well because the sofa is BIG. And the stairway is narrow with an inconvenient U turn with a low ceiling. I wasn’t at all sure it would fit. And it was a very near thing Luther said. But in the end our sofa is there! And it looks great and is SO comfy.

Today we got confirmation that our wire of the deposit reached Pedini. Also Roberto from Pedini came and he and Emanuele proceeded to measure precisely for the kitchen.

All good. It means things have begun. Emanuele will begin work soon. I imagine he will start with the removal of all the stuff like the old kitchen, the attic debris, kitchen floor, etc.

Pietralunga outing

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Yesterday we went to a hilltown called Pietralunga. It is a quite remote area past Montone up into the hills. Pretty drive and a very pretty town.

There were little patches of carpet each with a chair next to it along the streets and walls. It seems the town encourages artists to come and bring their work with them to sell and exhibit. There were a number of artists here as well as many empty spots (you can see some of the art in the 3rd picture below). It is a good idea to promote their town and bring visitors. We had come to the town to view the Civiteli Ranierie artists’ works which we did. They were interesting if not terribly notable.

Here are some pictures of the town. The first two are the main piazza and church (dating from the 8th century) area.

At the top of the town was this tower and these arches also dating from the 8th century.

These next two pictures are interesting. All buildings in Italy have metal covers over the water, gas and electric meters. In Pietralunga many of them are painted by artists. You can see that these are little doors. Much prettier than the ugly gray covers we have on our house in Umbertide.

After our visit we headed out to find lunch which was more difficult that we thought it would be. We ended up at Trattoria di Botticelli. It was along the road between Montone and Pietralunga. It was quiet and they cooked us a nice lunch to include antipasti of meats and cheeses as well as deep fried squash blossoms and bruschetti. Afterwards we had pasta and the guys got yummy desserts and they brought refreshing after dinner drinks of either melon or banana. These had been kept in the freezer and were frozen and slushy and yummy. It was fun.

Here is a picture from my walk this morning of a pretty chicory flower. The picture below that is of a farmers cart full up with buckets of roma tomatoes destined to become sauce. I love tomato season!

Hall steps

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Here is a picture of the steps I mentioned in my post about the renovations. It is taken from the living room. You can see one step up from the living room. Then a flat area which is one step up from the hallway to the stairway down out of the apartment. From that flat area you go up one more step to an area just in front of a bathroom. Then one more step up to the hallway back to the bedrooms and kitchen.

Emanuele wanted to raise the step in front of the bathroom and also raise the area before the stairway out to all one level even with the hall to the bedrooms. This would mean you’d have 2 steps down into the living room and 2 steps down to the stairway. I see his point but it is an expense that we will probably have to forgo at this time.

Meeting with the Geometra

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So on Wednesday evening we met with our Geometra, Emanuele with Susan in tow to translate if necessary.

Emanuele had a line item list of costs for the things we want done. To be short, it was a lot more than we want to spend. So we took it home to decide what we want to do and what we do not “need” to do.

We went over to the house and looked at each item. All the kitchen, pantry and patio stuff are important to us so we will do those. Also having the floors cleaned and refinished and all the walls painted. Lighting is also important but we had already whittled that down from the “everything you could EVER possibly want” to what we “actually” wanted. The initial estimate was €10,000. We got it down to under €4,000.

The things we cut out of the budget were mostly in the attic areas – there are two of these. The areas are very large, great for storage. The estimate included painting the spaces and tiling the floor which we pretty much nixed. We are OK with them cleaning out all the old stuff left up there. I am thinking we can just take a couple of cheap carpets up there to cover the crumbled concrete floors and still use it for a lot of storage. We will still have them put vent windows in to release the heat up there and replace the small windows that are in each attic. We also discovered we could see down into the kitchen from up there so that needs to be fixed!!

Other stuff that we nixed were sealing and waxing the vaulted ceilings and the living/dining room beams. I am OK with them as they are. Also changing the steps in the hall. Emanuele said it would be good to make them more level. Hard to describe. I need to take some pictures. Anyway, in the end you would walk from the hallway onto level area with 2 steps down to the living room and 2 steps down to the foyer. Rather than one down now from the hall to the platform and then one down to the LR and foyer. Just not worth the expense.

Long story short, we eliminated about a quarter of the costs so that will work in the long run.

Sofa and Spello

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We woke to a rainy Tuesday. Reminded me of our January trip but warmer. We decided to go visit Divani & Divani which is the Natuzzi store down between Assisi and Perugia. I was not expecting to buy anything, but when we arrived we realized it was their July sale, one of two sanctioned by the Italian state. No one is allowed to have a sale other than in January or July in Italy. Many of their sofas were on sale for 50% off. I really loved some of the sofas and even though we really can’t use it until our house is done it was such a savings we decided to go ahead and buy one. I toyed with the idea of leather as we had in Alexandria but remembered the damage the cats claws caused to it. In the end we went for a nice big beige fiber (cotton and linen) one. The covers all can be removed so I assume they can be cleaned. Here is a picture:

It will be delivered next week.

I am pretty excited about it. It is my first nesting thing and I feel very good that I have done at least one thing towards the furnishing of the house!

After that we had planned to go visit Spello which is a pretty hill town we have never been to and to a winery Luther wanted to try called Sportoletti between Assisi and Spello. We had a nice tasting and purchased a mixed case of 3 of their wines.

Next we drove the short distance to Spello. The densely inhabited town, built of stone, is medieval, and is enclosed by medieval walls on Roman foundations, including three Roman gates (Porta Consolare, Porta di Venere and the “Arch of Augustus”) and traces of three more, remains of an amphitheater, as well several medieval gates. Spello boasts about two dozen small churches, most of them medieval. The town is famous for the Infiorate which includes a whole night of work to create over sixty flower carpets that adorn the streets for the Corpus Domini feast. Here is a website with some pictures from the Infiorate in 2014. It is important to note that these are all made from wild flower petals that are gathered in the hills. It is incredible. I plan to go next year!

Here are some pictures I took today:

We went to Enoteca Properzio in the center of town. It is a wine store and restaurant. It was a hoot. It was a lot of show but fun. We didn’t know what to expect so just went with the flow. The father, Roberto, son, Luca, and daughter Irene were all present. They had the show down pat. They poured wine by the glass and we had bruschetta to start with a Grechetto white Umbrian varietal. Excellent. The bruschette were, two with olive oil from two local producers to compare and contrast, and one with lovely fresh tomatoes from their garden. Next we had a Sangeovese also an Umbrian varietal red. We had it with the two pasta courses, one with the black summer truffles shaved liberally over and the other with tomato sauce. Last we had a very expensive, jammy red, also Sangeovese but 2011 vintage. Excellent wine and paired with two cheeses and balsamic vinegar. Everything was good but I could have made any of it. It was notable for it’s fresh local ingredients that blended very well with the wines and were appropriate for the summertime. Pictures!

A really weird “small world” thing happened in the restaurant. The person we met a number of weeks ago at the wine bar across the river from us in Umbertide, Geoff was at the table next to us! How strange is that? Like we know a lot of people here (not) and one of the few should be in the same restaurant that is about 30 miles from where we both live.

Saturday outing

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It was a slow day so we decided to go to Todi about 45 minutes south of us to visit a winery. Sadly it was not open even though we were there during designated open hours. That’s Italy for you!

So we decided to go to Todi for lunch at Ristorante Umbria. Todi is a beautiful example of an Umbrian hill town. You can see it for miles around. There is traffic in it but we always park in a lot outside the walls and walk UP. And it is always up. Here are a couple of pictures.