Today we had another meeting with Emanuele. He has used our homework list and has really worked out all kinds of options. We discussed electrical issues. He recommends dividing the house into 3 zones with 2 kilowatts of power to each zone. Not being an electrician Luther later told me that in the US a townhouse like ours had 60 Kilowatts coming in!!! In Italy it is 10 times less! I guess because power is so expensive.

We talked about air conditioning the living room. We discussed the dining room window and wall. He thinks after the winter we may decide to add some insulation to that wall. Also the window is problematic. It is pretty and a big picture window but doesn’t swing open so it will be hard to clean. He recommended sliding glass door style window. I’ll think about that.

We talked about adding track lighting in all the rooms because that will allow us to not tear up the walls too much. He talked about tiling the kitchen floor and for continuity tiling the pantry and the patio with the same tiles.

Anyway we met for about an hour and a half and our next thing will be to go with him to the lighting store, the kitchen store, and the tile store. He gave us the bad news about the timing of the construction. Because in August all of Italy pretty much closes down even if we start in July it will be well through September and into October before we’ll be able to move into the house. Not happy but nothing I can do about it.

After our meetings Luther and I decided to go out to lunch and drove up to Citta di Castello which is 18 kilometers north of Umbertide. We got there around 11:30AM and the place was really jumping. It is about double the size of our town and the centro storico is mostly walled. It has lots of little streets and some very interesting architecture.

We had brought a list of places recommended for lunch. The first one was on it’s weekly day off. The next looked pretty closed up, maybe for good. The last one was open. It was called…Trattoria Lea.

It was OK but not notable. While we were eating lunch I asked Luther when do you think it would stop seeming like we are on vacation and begin to believe we were living here. It is very hard since we’ve traveled in Italy so many times and now – Well, we live here! But it has not sunk in yet.

Here are some places we passed by on our stroll around the city.

Nice statue in a niche.

Tall tower.

Pretty street.