La Bella Toscana

While Marike and Rosie were still here, I received an email from my friend Bart, whom I hadn't seen for ages. It turned out that he had fallen ill and he and his girlfriend had to cancel their intended trip to Morocco. Instead: Italy.

They emailed on Sunday to inform me that they were arriving on Tuesday. Well, isn't that a surprise? A pleasant surprise, of course! For Tineke, it was her first time in Italy and she was excited about the prospect of spending two weeks in Tuscany. But, obviously, they started in Milano. So I did a bit of a tour with them (the weather wasn't so great, so it became a small tour. Also because Bart wasn't up for walking for long times, anyway). Of course the Cimitero Monumentale was part of the tour, and I spent quite some time with Tineke in the Pinacoteca di Brera, trying to repeat all the things Fedor had told me on a previous visit...




Of course, we also ate well... But I guess that is a given!

They stayed until Thursday morning, when they were going to continue their journey to Toscana (well actually, at our advice, they were going to go to Liguria first). And coincendentally, so were we! We caught the 8 AM train to Castagneto-Carducci (just south of Livorno), where friends of us are staying for the Summer. It's a fairly long train journey, and I enjoyed having the time to read the final Harry Potter (seriously: who'd have expected?). With Stefano and Elke, we had a great time. Our first beach sample was on the first day, but unfortunately we were not allowed to swim because of the size of the waves.

After a visit to Bolgheri, we had dinner at home.
The following day, we drove all the way to Follonica, to see Beach Nr. 2 ! This was a nice beach in a secluded area, but unfortunately the weather turned really nasty, really quickly and we got huddled up with a lot of people under the cover of a small cafe...

After it seemed dry, we decided to go back to the car and try another the beach. The horribly black clouds followed us up the coast though, but we managed to have a swim at the next beach before all hell broke loose (again).

(and yes, you can indeed see the lightning in the photo: how cool is that?)
After we got drenched there, we made another runner for it to the next beach, close to Castagneto-Carducci. This was pleasant, although the wind was strong and the menacing clouds didn't make us feel much better! But at least we got out dry from that beach.
At night, we were supposed to go to a local wine festival under the stars in the streets of Castaneto-Carducci, but when we got to this charming village, it turned out that it had been cancelled due to the bad weather. But in fact, the weather was completely fine during the night, so that was unfortunate. On Saturday, we returned to the first beach we went to to relax and get some more sun (ouch, sunburn: not cool), before taking the train to Pisa, from where we went back to Milano. All in all, it was a relaxing little piccolo holiday. A good preparation for our Real Holiday to start next week!
Today, despite the fact that we were both really exhausted, we had to go to a BBQ with a student of Fedor's. A lunch-BBQ that is, which meant getting up kinda early again, but at least we got home at about 17.00, so we have some time to relax...
Tomorrow: back to work for a few more days, before visiting friends in the mountains and then: on holiday for real!!!

Which reminds me: We will be in Groningen on September 5, if you want to meet up, let me know. And we will be in Utrecht (in a sofar unspecified bar) during the Afternoon of Sunday September 9. I would like to see those people who live in the Randstad, but we really won't be able to plan it all in. So this way: we'll come to Utrecht and we'd like to see YOU. Let me know....
Ciao,
OJ