I got up early to take a tai chi class on the front lawn. I'd never done tai chi before, but since they offered it for beginners, I thought I'd sign up. I was joined by three of the women in the printmaking studio, and we all did all kinds of stretches and exercises, and learned all kinds of neat things like how to walk silently on gravel like cats. It was such a great place to wake up with these movements!
Afterwards I went back and took a short nap, then joined AM and T in starting the day.
Ooh, I don't think I've posted pictures of our farmhouse yet!
Here's my room:
This ladder leads up to a loft, which we never really used, but I could imagine if we were here in cooler weather, this would be an awesome place to sleep!
AM and T shared the other room.
Here's the kitchen:
...complete with AM making coffee and me scrolling through my billions of photos so far!
It's got a fantastic marble sink, with a wooden drying rack/storage rack above it. This seems like such an intelligent way to do things: any water dripping off the dishes go right back into the sink, but they're not taking up counterspace in the meantime. (something I should think about for future NYC apts, especially someday when I have a say in their design!)
Check out this marble! I'm guessing it's local, maybe even from the property itself. The entrance to the Spannocchia estate is right across the street from a marble quarry. Randall (who you'll meet in a later post) mentioned that they quarry yellow marble, with questionable legality. I'll explain all this later.
The kitchen table is marble, too, but of a different variety.
...along with some of our breakfast preparation one morning. Mmmm! I loved all the fresh ingredients! The bread, honey, onions and eggs in this photo were all baked/harvested/collected here at Spannocchia!
Here's the fireplace on the opposite side of the kitchen...
...and here's our collective stack of travel books on the hearth! (really, with AM, T and me, would you expect anything less?) :)
The ceilings were all open to the rafters with clay ceiling tiles. Reminded me of Yin Yu Tang!
I don't have any pictures of the bathroom or the little dining nook right before it. The dining nook, like the loft, would be great in cooler weather, but with the three of us and such fantastic weather, we didn't use it at all.
The bathroom had the typical European bathtub, with a loose shower head. I still don't understand how those are supposed to be used without getting water all over the place! Fortunately, we had a shower curtain! :)
Anyway, this was our home for the week. Pretty cool!
We did a bit of cooking, and used up some of the fresh veggies we had in our basket. We made a fantastic farro salad for lunch, which we ate out on the terrace. Farro is a grain, an ancestor of our wheat today. Apparently the Romans ate it, and it is said that much of their strength came from eating farro. So I guess it's pretty nutritious. It was very tasty, and had a nutty flavor and consistency.
Also note the water glasses- this is something T taught AM and me: a slice of cucumber in a glass of water makes it taste more crisp and refreshing!
AM and I took a walk around the property- it was such a nice day for it, and there's so much there! So we started down the looong drive we drove up to get here to begin with. It was all wooded, and reminded me a lot of taking a walk down the camp road towards Pathfinder Lodge, only drier and dustier.
We got to a point where the drive continued down the hill to the right, but to the left there looked like there was some stuff worth seeing: a vineyard and a farmhouse to the right (ooh, look at the baby grapes!),
a fantastic view across the rolling hills to the left,
and more woods straight ahead. From here we could also get a great view back up to the main villa complex.
Ok, really that was zooming in. Here's what is looked like with the other farmhouse in the foreground - don't know what I did to get such a dark exposure in this shot! Oh well. :\
And here's another fig tree!
...yes, that is within the context of this story- the fig tree was along our walk at this point!
The stone walls you see in these pictures were kind of neat- sometimes they acted as retaining walls, so we had stuff growing up above our heads. How often do you get this perspective on wildflowers? :)
Further on down the path, we came along another farmhouse, and then, well after we had gotten into the wooded part again another.
We were starting to get a sense of how the land was settled around here, but didn't quite understand why, or if these farmhouses are/ever were/used to be/have always been part of Spannocchia. This was all explained to us later.
So we continued on, chatting all the way, and at some point we noticed a really low, as in maybe knee-high, electric fence. It seemed kind of strange- maybe this is the edge of the property or something?
So we kept walking.
Then, at some point, we started to hear this low-pitched grunting/snorting sound. We looked around to figure out where it was coming from... sounded like pigs! Then we saw them, not too far off in the distance! They were pigs, rooting around in the dirt under the trees! Were they wild? Were they domestic? We weren't really sure. Suddenly that little electric fence seemed REALLY small, and those pigs looked REALLY big! So we decided to turn around here, before they saw us! It kind of felt like we were on the island from "Lost", and we really didn't want to be chased by wild boars!
I think that was about the excitement for the day! We went back, hung out with T, who was feeling better at that point, played some cards- Hell and Wordthief - and just enjoyed the rest of the day!
Oh! And AM got a driving lesson in our cute little rental car! (I think I can say that, now that it has long since been returned in one piece, and we've paid for it and everything!) :)
Go AM!!!
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