Apartment
Today is Thursday, one week after Thanksgiving. I am cautiously optimistic that we will move on Saturday. The heat has been fixed and the floors are being finished. The kitchen has been finished by Pedini. We have shelves installed in the pantry! I have been able to do a little organizing of the kitchen.

IKEA trip
We took a trip to Florence to visit the IKEA there and see how it compared to the one we visited in Ancona. MUCH busier. We went on Monday. I would hate to see it on Saturday! I had a big long list of stuff we need for the house, mostly for the kitchen and bath. We also bought bedside tables for our room and a bookshelf that will serve as an end table beside the sofa. It will have storage as well. We left home at 9AM and arrived around 10:40AM. After we shopped it took half an hour to check out! But that meant it was about 1PM and time for lunch.

We drove to Chianti and had a nice lunch in the wine area. Nice folks in the empty restaurant. They gave us a piece of chocolate cake that was awesome.

Returning the Renault
We had taken to calling her Sirena after the voice on the GPS. We hated to see her go. The lease agreement had been extended twice to the limit of the possible term. We had an appointment to drop her off in Rome near the airport at 2PM on Wednesday. We drove to Perugia first to rent another car. I drove Sirena down with Luther following in what we now call the Clown Car, a Lancia Ypsilon. He had a heck of a time keeping up! I kept a close watch on him all the way there as Sirena was guiding me back to her home. It was pretty stressful as I hadn’t really driven much in the 5 months since we had come here. But it worked out OK. So-long Sirena.

We drove over to nearby Fiumicino for lunch. We found a staid old restaurant with waiters who may have been there since 1929 when they opened. The food was good though. We kept it to a pasta for me and risotto for Luther. Both with local, delicious seafood.

We drove the clown car to it’s limits on the way home and arrived around 5PM after stopping at the Coop for some supplies.

That should do it for the catch up. I hope I can have some pictures of our new home AFTER we move in in my next post. Cross your fingers for us!