I pancakes, le discoteche e anche un po' di cultura

Firstly, a moan about the weather.  Apparently Britain has stolen my sunshine while I have had to put up with storms.  Fine, the weather forecast for the next week is sun, sun, sun but I have lost valuable beach time and this is not acceptable.  I am in danger of losing my outrageous tan lines and my surplus of vitamin D.

Sun I may be lacking but fabulous friends I am not.  The gorgeous Lucy McIndoe flew all the way from England via Brussells to spend a weekend in sunny Ortona.  Not only was it lovely speaking English, we had a beautiful weekend cooking, sunbathing and showing Italians how to swim without touching the sea floor.  Bliss.  As poor Lucy doesn't speak Italian, I had the role of chief translator when out and about with friends.  At first I really impressed her with my mad Italian skills, but then I kept forgetting to change languages when talking to her, which is really helpful.  I continued to impress her by taking her to an overpriced club called Lago, or Lake, called so because it is in the middle of nowhere down a seriously dodgy track next to a lake.  In theory this is really cool.  An open air club surrounded by trees and cicadas, molto misterioso.  However our fun was seriously thwarted by the worst DJs ever to grace this earth.  We had paid 10 euros for the pleasure of their company and all they could give us was a beat, and not even a particularly good one.  There was little variation and nothing going on over the top.  Unfortunately Italian club music still isn't growing on me.  We made up for it with traditional Italian blueberry pancakes next day.

I discovered that nightclubs are called discoteche here, not nightclubs, as nightclub means strip club in Italian.  I only made that mistake once and luckily didn't take Lucy to see something she probably would rather not.  I was so sad to see her go, it was lovely to see someone from my French life as we all miss it so much.

A week later I blagged a week off work and took a 7 hour train to Tuscany!  This time it was for a week's holiday with the family minus Matt, our family friends Vicky, Paul and Georgia and two friends of Ben and Georgia's, Angus and Paisley.  We were a houseful and what a house it was.  Super Mum had found a villa in the Tuscan hills with both a pool and a tennis court.  Swoon.  Not only could I inflict my bikini body on my nearest and dearest, I could also humiliate them with my amazing tennis ability.  Unfortunately for me, I gave that ability to my brothers at birth, very kind of me I know.  I wasn't quite as bad as I thought I would be, but I wasn't far off.  Well at least it was entertaining for onlookers.  To entertain the wine lovers of the group (everyone except the not so littluns) we visited Le Miccine, a producer in the Chianti hills and a client of Paul who imports wines.  Le Miccine is ran by an inspiring Canadian Paula Pipini Cook who showed us round her beautiful vineyard and let us taste vast quantities of her beautiful wine.  Cue very happy bigguns.  I then took the not so littluns to Florence to spend a day getting some culture like.  My family don't really do museums and art in a big way, so visiting a museum was quite an achievement for us kids.  Fine, most people don't go to Florence for the modern art but we never have been very normal anyway.  The Nove Cento museum was surprisingly good and not too big so perfect for us.  I also introduced them to my favourite gelaterie.  I have my priorities straight.

In Florence we picked up cousin Billy and his two friends who were interrailing and in need of a place to crash.  We had a great evening with them being educated on all things film.  They all went to the Brit school so are very creative.  Billy is a film-maker, and although I'm admittedly biased I think he's rather good.  Here's one he filmed at our house back home, I now blame him for any sleep problems.
The Cat Sitter (SHORT HORROR FILM) 
Back to less creepy things, a picture of the outrageous sunsets.  We were not blessed with good weather on the holiday, in fact I had to borrow Ben's clothes as I was so cold all the time, but it did make for some beautiful evenings.  No filter, no kidding.

It was tough leaving my family again, I'm feeling quite ready to go home now.  I love it here and in many ways I don't want to leave, but home is home.

To finish I thought I would tell you a bit more about where I live, seeing as British people have no idea where or what Abruzzo is and the locals keep looking at me in a very odd way asking me why I'm here.  My favourite was a man asking me if I was lost.  Ortona may be small, but boring it is not.  It was the scene of a fierce battle in WWII where many Canadians lost their lives.  Accordingly, there is a war cemetery close by and a museum in town.  I should probably go there at some point.  Also, there's a castle!  

  If castles aren't cool, I don't know what is.

The region of Abruzzo is famous for its Arrosticini, basically meat on sticks.  They're lush.f  In my previous post, I mentioned how strong the local dialect is.  I wasn't exaggerating.  I've been learning a bit but it's tough, particularly when I'm learning a weird combination of ortonese and crecchiese as I live in Ortona but most of my friends are from Crecchio, around 10min drive away.  Yes the dialects are distinct and different.  Here is an example of ortonese for you to attempt to decipher.

Translation in the next post.  Ciao!