Well it finally happened. We got a CAR!! Gary gave us a ride up to Citta di Castello and we picked up our shiny, very white, VW Golf. It is pretty basic but should be a good car for us here. Plenty of room for four people and luggage, or toting stuff. It gets about 60 miles per gallon which will be great and it is a diesel engine so fuel is “cheaper”. Since we arrived here last June the price of diesel has fallen from 1.48 Euro per liter to 1.32 now (about $5.00 a gallon). To top that off the Euro has fallen from 1.49 to about 1.18 now. Anyway, we are very happy with the Golf.

It would have been good of them to mention that new cars here come with ZERO gas! We noticed on the Superstrada and quickly got of with the range on the odometer at zero. We lucked out and found a station but not without some angst on our part! Apparently this is normal but we didn’t know.

We immediately went to the grocery store to buy big heavy things we couldn’t buy without a car. We got a couple of cases of wine and 4 bags of pellet for the stuffa.

When we got back we made an appointment with Marco who owns some buildings just across the river. He has a bunch of underground garages and we are looking into renting one. It will be for the Porsche eventually but right now we can use it for the Golf.

Other than that exciting news I mentioned in my last post that it was Epiphany. Sure enough, they had a gigantic rally of the Vespa club in the piazza. There were hundreds!

The Christmas tree was sawed up into little piece on the 7th, the day after Epiphany. They sawed off all the limbs, then chopped up the trunk. Much faster coming down that going up. They also took up all the red carpets and removed all the lights in the streets. So it is now bleak January. It is really quite warm right now. I was out on the patio and it was like spring. We hope we have some good cold snaps because it is needed to kill off the bugs that infected the grapes and olives last year.

Here is a final photo of my Bolognese sauce cooking on our stove in my Mom’s big ole cast iron pan. Just nice.