This is more like it.  Our hosts gave us a quick and dense set of directions for the house and descriptions of nearby attractions, and then they were off for a few days.  We explored the villa, talked and played – the latter occurred like this: Lanie and Africawit were constant companions, from their in-bed story telling In the morning to their seating (or for Lanie, napping) places at dinner; similar for

Nadia and Meredith, who spent much of their time looking after the villa’s resident canines, Joya and Silvio; the rest of the kids floated around reading, playing games, trying out the very cold swimming pool and even working out on the workout room.  Just about all the kids got into a spa day, using the tub and sauna in the master bedroom.  Jen and Wendy explored the woods; Chris and I played a game of bocce, which, in fact, does feel more authentic in Italy.  (This also may be because I won.)

                Chris and I also ventured into Figline, the nearest town with a decent supermarket.  In fact it has at least three supermarkets and we went to two of them.  The largest and newest, the COOP, was our actual destination because Silvia (our host, not to be confused with the larger of the villa’s dogs, Silvio) said it was the cheapest one around.  Sadly, despite what Silvia calls its “Communist” leanings, COOP observes the Sabbath.  We found another supermarket quickly and got most of what we wanted, but the only bread we could find was soft, sliced “Wonderbread”-style stuff.  Imagine, coming to Italy and eating that kind of bread.  So we found the third one and got some crusty bread, corn nuts, blood oranges and cookies. These were just the things to top off our provisions.

This was an exciting moment.  Wendy and Chris are staying in a little outbuilding, and the keys got locked in.  Chris managed to retrieve them using a set of grabbers and duct tape.

                Checking out was not too bad, except the first place would not accept MasterCard, and the Pavliks are running low on Euro.  At the second place, which does accept MasterCard, by the way, the lady in front of us at the checkout had a bit of a conundrum.  From what we could gather, she didn’t have quite enough money to pay for what the checkout lady had scanned (they have checkout ladies and scanners here, just like at home).  Slowly she started to alternately give items back to the teller and pull more loose change from her purse.  She gave back her two bottles of Coke, her eggs, one of her sausages, and some kind of soft cheese or sour cream (I was really paying attention).

Every time she handed something back, the checkout lady would look at me and Chris, the next people in lline, rather intently.  Did she want us to pay?  Was this some sort of Italian tradition?  On Tuscan Sundays everyone pays for the person before them?  Cultures are so difficult to figure out, and, moreover, anyone who knows me knows that I pride myself on my impeccable supermarket etiquette.  I was getting to feel uncomfortable.

Happily, the checkout lady was merely trying to mentally subtract returned items for the desperate lady’s total.  Apparently, the Italian scanners can’t scan backwards. 

                 In actuality, the lady wasn’t really that desperate.  It was all very cordial and calm, unlike, I suspect, how something similar might go down at home.  I watched and waited for the point where the lady would succumb and give back one of her several bottles and boxes of wine.  She did not touch any of them.   Eventually she managed to pull out enough Euros and Euro cents from her purse, and she handed back a package of cheese slices, so she could cover what she had left in her basket.

                A Tuscan supermarket story with a happy ending – what could be better?  We ate crusty bread, Romano cheese, prosciutto from a block that Jen carved up nicely, olive oil and garlic, sundried tomatoes, olives, pesto, balsamic vinegar, and probably some other stuff that seems to fit into our picture of a rustic Italian meal.  We liked it a lot.  

***

From Jen:

This place is pretty amazing, inside and out.  As I was wandering around on that first morning, I wondered where the kids were.  It turned out they were all in the GYM, of all places, working diligently on the various machines.  Apparently this is great fun for them.  (None of the adults have ventured into the gym at all.)  You’d have thought the Brooks kids, at least, would have had enough exercise for this lifetime.

Lanie nodded off before the pizza arrived, but luckily she came back to life once it was in front of her.

We have this hillside to ourselves, and eventually the kids availed themselves of some of its other diversions: a small pond where you could catch tadpoles, a little playground, a soccer field, a badminton set.  The pool, even though the weather is distinctly chilly.  The dogs, which the owners had tentatively asked us to feed in the evening for the next two days, thinking we were doing them a big favor, when in reality this was a major highlight for the kids.  And all of it set against a breathtaking background of Tuscan countryside.  We’re staying in the middle of the Chianti region, and there are grape vines and olive trees everywhere.

We spent most of the day around the villa, no one feeling like going anywhere.  For dinner we decided to head into the nearest village, Lucolena in Chianti, to a pizzeria that Silvia had highly recommended.  Chris managed to successfully convey to them over the phone that a group of 12 of us would be arriving.  The pizza and pasta were delicious, like everywhere else we’ve eaten here.  It’s amazing to me that you can stop into any random restaurant in any tiny town you come across and expect a wonderful meal.