Thursday 17th April

We woke up to a delightful sunny day and knew today was a good day to fulfill our promise to Charlie and take her back to the snow. Thanks to Christin, we now knew that there was snow within only an hour’s drive away, at a small ski village called Abetone, this is known mainly by the locals and kept a bit of a secret from us tourists. In what seemed like quite a short trip we came upon an appealing little village that reminded us of something you would see on a Swiss postcard. There was still a fair amount of pure white, icing cake style snow all around and we couldn’t get Charlie out of the car quick enough. So this time with our woolen gloves, covered in plastic gloves( sneakily grabbed from the fruit section at il supermercato)we ventured out into the virgin snow and started a snow ball fight. This was super fun for a while until the cold little particles of snow started to creep down into our coats and come in contact with our skin, to Charlie this was worse than any ice block shoved down your top when your home in the tropics. Suggesting that Charlie should build her first snowman… woops it was a snow lady, seemed like a good change of activity. But, alas this didn’t last too long. It was all a bit, like too much hard work for both Leon and Charlie, so Mummy was left to complete the snow lady, while Leon went in search of coffee and chocolate and Charlie made snow angels. Before long I had a crying daughter on my hands…. from now being completely soaked through from rolling in the snow and a husband that couldn’t be found to unlock the car, so I could put on the heater and defrost Charlotte!

Finally Leon returned after enjoying a nice hot coffee in a cozy warm bar (none for mummy, as they don’t do takeaway very often here in Italy) and unlocked the car for us, then tried to calm Charlotte down by reassuring her she wasn’t going to die of frostbite, yet again. While our little bambina stripped of all her clothing and wrapped herself in our jackets and put Leon’s gloves on her apparently frost bitten toes (He He), we went on a picturesque drive with the heating on full blast and enjoyed checking out the rest of Abetone. Leon had bought chocolate, so after a while…. happily munching away on her sweetie and feeling nice and cozy, Charlie was back to her chirpy self.

On our way home in the afternoon we stopped at Lucca and enjoyed another walk on the walls and indulged in a coffee, sitting down in Piazza Napoleon. We needed some supplies for dinner, so a trip to the il supermercato was next on our agenda. Eleanor had showed us a good one in Lucca when we were driving her around, so we thought we would give this one a go.

Charlotte enjoys shopping at the supermarkets here, as in the fruit section you pick up your fruit or veggies with the plastic gloves provided, then place them in a bag, weigh them and put your own price sticker on the bag. Charlotte gets to work out what the Italian name is for the fruit and veggies then selects it on the computer above the scales and gets to attach the price sticker and barcode, just like she was a deli girl. What cracks Leon and I up is the check out staff sit down…. don’t pack your groceries for you and you are charged for the amount of plastic bags used. If you are not quick enough getting the groceries in the bags the next person’s items come flying down at you also! The shopping seems to take us about two hours to buy food for just the three of us and for only a few days supplies. Maybe it’s because they have the most amazing delicatessen sections with a grand variety of delectable mouth watering items and every kind of pasta, fresh or dried that you can imagine. But trying to find healthy brekky cereals and low fat yogurt is near to impossible. The wine and spirit sections are substantial and super cheap, but it takes us forever to find a cut of meat that isn’t pork or sausage and doesn’t cost a small fortune.

Even in our local little butcher in Ponte we had a lengthy, but hilarious time trying to get a cut of lamb to roast. Of course the very friendly and charming butcher’s couldn’t speak any English so Leon proceeded to explain what we wanted with what seemed to Charlotte and me…. a game of charades. First he started with trying to explain he wanted lamb not pork so he put his hands on his head in the shape of sheep’s horns, but hilariously the butcher’s thought he wanted goat, we knew this as both Charlotte and I amazingly knew the word for goat in Italian. Leon then started to make baa baa noises, this proceeded into making the butcher’s even more confused and Charlotte and I trying to contain our giggles. Charlotte then magically produced a picture of a lamb on her mobile phone ……the butcher’s took a look and told us they didn’t have Agnello; (lamb). Leon then thought he would try for some rabbit and started hopping on the spot, looking more like a kangaroo than a rabbit. Luckily before I pee’d myself, another customer came in and could see we were having a bit of trouble. Thankfully she could speak a little bit of English and explained to the butcher what were after…… but after all of Leon’s efforts we just took what the butcher suggested was a good cut of meat to roast. He very nicely seasoned it for us and wrapped it up beautifully and 15 euro’s ($26.00) later, we took our very small roast home and discovered after cooking it……it was pork after all!