A typical day

My Dad asked me, "tell me about a typical day." I thought about that. No day is typical yet. Every day is different. There are some consistencies now that we've moved into our house. We have coffee in the morning, Jim goes to work, I walk the dogs, I do various other things that I have a hard time accounting for, Jim comes home from work, we drink wine and eat dinner on the terrace, we go to bed. But that's pretty much what our days were like in Seattle, except that I was more gainfully employed and the weather wasn't reliable enough to eat outside every night. And that description misses the nuances of living in Italy where each day is different and something disturbing, funny, crazy, or heartwarming happens.

Take today for example. I drove Jim to work because I needed the car. I needed the car because after three days at the house I need to come off the hill. You see, my life right now is fairly limited, you might even say it's monastic. The simplicity and solitude is nice, and I enjoy my walks and my time studying Italian, but after three days I need to see and do something different, even if it is just getting groceries in Sarzana. Today, I actually had a few tasks, but before we leave to drive Jim to work, I receive a call from Arturo, the handyman. Amazingly, I manage to understand that he is coming to the house, although I'm not exactly sure why. He wants to come in the morning, but we agree on 3 pm. My first successful phone conversation in Italian.

After dropping Jim off at work, I drive to Lerici and park just outside the no-drive zone. I walk the dogs into town and after several altercations with other dogs, I decide to let the dogs loose on the breakwater, which I had done many times in the past. "Signora. Signora. Signora!" Damn, she's talking to me. I turned. "Lah, lah, lah, lah, cani! Lah, lah, lah, lah non permesso! Lah, lah, lah, lah ...." I don't understand much Italian yet, but I do understood that she doesn't think I should let the dogs off-leash on the breakwater. I put the dogs on leash and walk into town.

I visit our real estate agent in hopes that she can help me figure out the 14-page, 4-part contract that arrived in the mail from the electricity company. Fortunately, Alessia says she will take care of it. A good thing for me, because I had started to translate the forms using Google Translate, but when I got to the part that translated to "this form needs to be filled out by the Chamber of Commerce," I knew I needed help.

Back at the car, I wonder what those papers are under my rear windshield wiper. It can't be a ticket because I parked in this spot many times while living in Lerici. It is a ticket. After wandering around, I see a new sign that says as of today only residents can park here. Crap!

I need to get away and the dogs haven't had much exercise, so I drive to a spot on the Magra River that Bruno and Bella love. It's an estuary full of ducks and Bruno swims after one group until they take flight and then he swims after another. No one is around except a few guys fishing in the river, but a man suddenly appears and starts talking to me. I understand from him that there are lots of ducklings around. He's concerned about the dogs hurting them. I'm feeling a little beat up today, but this man is very nice and I understand his concern. I call in the dogs, and we head for home.

At 3 p.m., as promised, Arturo shows up. He's with another man, who turns out to be an electrician who our landlord has sent to look at the dishwasher, which caught fire last Sunday. Jim and I had been sitting on the terrace when we heard a strange popping noise from inside the house. When I walked into the kitchen, the dishwasher, which we have yet to use because we have only a few dishes, was spewing smoke and sparks. The electrician confirmed that the dishwasher was rotto, broken. The two men leave but not before Arturo hands me a tray of produce from his garden. It weighs about 10 pounds, and the vegetables and herbs are absolutely beautiful. I like Arturo. He's very patient with my limited Italian. If I don't understand him, he just gets closer to me and talks louder. He also loves Bruno. When he called me earlier in the day, he said "Come sta Bruno?" When he arrived, he got down on his knees and pulled Bruno's head into his chest and gently rubbed it.

Jim comes home. We drink a bottle of wine on the terrace and watch the sunset through the pine trees. We have pasta with a sauce of Arturo's fresh vegetables. The end of another typical day.

l'ultimo della strada

Jim and I have been living here for a little more than a week. And while we are eager for our household shipment to arrive, we are also enjoying the pace of life at the end of the road. We have a table and chairs, a bed, a pot and a pan, enough silverware to eat with, a referigerator, and a pantry full of Italian goodies. Really, what more do we need?

For me, this house is a fun departure from our home in Kirkland. From Pacific Northwest woodframe home to Italian country stone farmhouse. There are many contrasts, but the biggest is the size. This house is probably one-third to one-half the size of our Kirkland home. The walls are two feet thick and all of the windows are covered by beautiful wrought-iron grates. Unlike our Kirkland home, which is nestled into a vale, this house sits on the crest of a hill. From this perch, the farmhouse is bright and cooled by a constant breeze. The owner has left much of the artwork and some of the furniture that was in the house, which used to be rented out as a vacation home. Some of the paintings are 400 years old and are dark and foreboding. Beautifully hand-painted ceramics and old maps cover many of the walls. We had the owner leave the two amoires because there are no closets in this house. It will be interesting to see how our Scandinavian-style furniture and Pacific Northwest art and photos fits in with the decor here.


For Jim, this is a wonderful place to come to in the evening after work. It's worth the 30-minute commute to have the solitude and vistas. Half of Jim's commute is just getting up and down the hill that we live on. The other half is a mix of country road, city street, and highway. The most amazing thing is that there is only one stop between here and Jim's work. The European system of roundabouts is impressive. No more sitting at red lights with the engine idling.

This weekend will be our first at the house. Last weekend we drove to Florence to look at a motorcycle and do a little reconnaissance. It boggles our minds: it's a 1-1/2 hour drive to Florence. And because it's so close, we felt little pressure to see the sites. In fact, we only visited one site (the Baptistery), and then spent the rest of our time walking around, getting our bearings, and, of course, eating.

Next week our household shipment arrives. There are a number of things that we are eager to have, but mostly we just want to get unpacked and finished with this transition so that we can get on with living in Italy.

Leaving Lerici

Tuesday morning I load our few belongings into our car and drive from Lerici to our new home near Falcinello. It's fortunate that we don't have much to move, because Jim is at sea and because Lerici has a no-drive zone for visitors in the summer and we are parked just outside that zone, about 200 yards up the road. I want to ignore this restriction, but the cameras at the beginning of the zone prevent me from tempting a ticket. Everyone has told us that if you try to sneak into the zone, you should expect a ticket in the mail in 3 to 6 months.

It takes me over two hours to ferry our baggage up to our recently purchased 2002 VW station wagon, "Dora." The last load includes Bella and Boomer, who squeeze into the remaining space.

Lerici was the perfect place to spend our first six weeks in Italy. Jim commuted to work by bus; I walked everywhere. The village was beautiful, the people were generally friendly despite being overrun by tourists, and our landlords were wonderful. But the location had its challenges. The dogs couldn't leave the apartment without being on leashes, particularly after Boomer was caught with the owner's prized turtle in his mouth in our bedroom! Walking the dogs was acrobatic at times, trying to maneuver the two of them away from people, dogs, food and tidying up after them. (You can't really appreciate how much dogs poop until you have to pick up every one of these gifts!) Also, it was clear that we weren't going to get used to the noise. The buses, the two-stroke engines, the loud TVs were too much for our spoiled suburban-American ears.

Driving the road to our new home was like doing yoga. I feel my body relax and my mind empty. The road up here has me laughing; although not everyone would find it funny. It's so narrow in places that it's challenging for one car to get through. The switchbacks are so tight and the road forks in so many places that frequently the main road disappears until the last second. Fortunately, there is little traffic. It takes me 12 minutes to drive the length of Via Prulla. When I can drive no farther, I park the car and let the dogs out. We are home.


I've spent the last two days marveling at the 1900-built, recently renovated farmhouse and the surrounding views. The house sits on a hillcrest. To the south is our nearest neighbor who has a lovely villa with swimming pool and friendly old German shephard. To the east, houses with red tile roofs are sprinkled throughout the forested hills. To the north is a beautiful grove of pines with an inviting trail that has yet to be explored. To the west, expansive views of the sea and the town of Sarzana below. The property has eight olive trees, which is enough to harvest and press for our own supply. It also has fig, pear, apple, and cherry trees. The parking area has a 3-foot-high hedge of rosemary that Boomer must be peeing on because he smells like the herb, and dill and oregano are sprouting up everywhere. There are signs of owl and wild boar, which is a delicacy in this area, and yesterday I saw a raptor fly low over the house.

Our friend, Jim Pollock, used to have a saying about his magnificent home overlooking Lake Washington: "Is this a little slice of heaven or what?" In fact, he said it so much that a friend turned it into an acronym so that it was quicker to say: ITALSOHOW. That's how I'm feeling now and as I write am realizing that the acronym almost spells "Italy." Maybe I can work a "Y" into Jim's saying! "Is this a little yard of heaven or what?" Bella and Bruno think so!

La Spezia and the Maritime Festival

La Spezia, the town that Jim works in, is a ship-building, shipping, and naval town. The town and surrounding area have been a naval stronghold for millennia. Because of its military value, the Allied Forces leveled La Spezia, making it the third most bombed city in Italy during WWII. In the early 1800s, Napolean built up the naval fortifications in this area after he created the short-lived Ligurian Republic. Before that, the Genoese and Pisans built castles and fortifications along this coast to stake their claims. And before that it was the Greek and Roman navies fighting it out for the land along the sea.

The town of La Spezia isn't particularly attractive by tourist standards, perhaps because it has very little old city, but it's a pleasant town with a thriving Tuesday market, broad tree-lined avenues, and wide sidewalks covered by large porticos.

La Spezia's Maritime Festival was nearly two weeks ago. As part of the festival, we toured the Italian navy's tall ship: Amerigo Vespucci. Built in 1930 as a school ship, the Vespucci is 330-feet-long with a steel hull and three masts. It's 30 km of rigging is all in traditional hemp rope, except for the docking lines which are synthetic to meet port standards. With 26 traditional canvas sails and a full gale, it can reach 12 knots per hour. This is a beautiful ship tied up at the dock. Just imagine what it would look like under full sail!

The festival had other ships of interest, from the world's largest mobile crane to dozens of ancient ship replicas that teams from all over Italy brought to La Spezia to compete against one another.

Many tourists come to La Spezia but only to catch the train or boat to the Cinque Terre. Because there are so few tourists and because of its military-industrial flavor, it feels like the real Italy.

An outing to Portovenere

Since Jim and I are senza macchina (without car), we are trying to do local excursions on public transportation. So last weekend, we took a 20-minute ferry ride from Lerici across the Golfo dei Poeti to Portovenere. This was our second trip to Portovenere, named in honor of Venus, and I'm ready to go again.

Portovenere epitomizes the Ligurian seaside village with its pastel buildings narrowly stacked and pressed against the rocky hillside. It also epitomizes much of Europe with its layers of archaeology. The crowning feature of the village is the church of San Pietro, which was built in 1277 on top of Paleo-Christian and pagan ruins. It's not hard to imagine that over the centuries people would want to have some monument on this rocky outcrop that strategically overlooks the Mediterranean and marks the entrance into Portovenere's safe cove. As religious beliefs changed and battles were waged, temples were destroyed or dismantled and new ones were built in their place.

Since the dogs were with us, we decided to take a smaller ferry boat to Isola di Palmaria, so that we could walk them off leash on this less populated island. Unfortunately, nesting sea birds and terrain that was marked by shrub-obscured cliffs kept the dogs on the leash much of the time, but we were able to let them off-leash for a bit...a rarity these days. The walk around the island took 3 hours, including lots of stops to check out WWII gun bunkers, paleolithic cave dwellings, and stunning views of the sea.

Back in Portovenere the village was packed with tourists off of two cruise ships. We walked a little ways out of town and found a quite bar where we had sandwiches and beer. We spent the rest of our time watching people and practicing il dolce far niente...the sweetness of doing nothing.

A country home

You don't have to go too far from Lerici to get more elbow room, but if Jim was going to have a longer commute, we wanted to find someplace special. As soon as we cast the house-hunting net a little wider, we found that special place near Falcinello, a hill town outside the city of Sarzana. Like all of the hill towns in this area (and there are many), Falcinello is stunningly beautiful from a distance and quaint up close.

The drive to the house was mesmerizing. We turned off the main road onto a small side road that leads to Falcinello. Then, we turned off the side road onto what I would call "a lane" and started climbing. Fifteen minutes and 13 switchbacks later, we came to the end of the road. The owner, who was in the car with us, was slightly nauseous from the windy road, which might explain why she is renting the house. At one of the tightest switchbacks, the real estate agent had to back up half way through the switchback to make the turn. Of course, many would find this drive unthinkable on a daily basis, but Jim and I were fascinated. Just driving to and from the house would be an adventure!

At the end of the road, the house sits on the crest of a hill with distant views of the Mediterranean and expansive views of the countryside. It has pine trees on one side and olive trees on the other. We saw signs of owl and wild boar. The property was so peaceful compared to the bustle of Lerici.

And then there was the house: a turn-of-the-century stone farmhouse that has been lovingly restored by the granddaughter of the former owner. The house is just the right size (2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, living area, dining room, large kitchen, sitting room, garage, and cantina, which is a small room in the basement that seems like it should store wine). Outside there is a wide terrace that is shaded by the house from the afternoon sun. Jim and I didn't debate the house for long.

Everything about it felt right and although it was a bit remote, it was full of the Italian character that we hoped we would find. Will the reality of Casa Falcinello live up to our dreams? We'll find out after we move in July 1.

House hunting

The merits of living in town are clear: access to public transportation, restaurants, shopping, and social activities. All of these mean more opportunity for immersion in our new country; more opportunity to learn Italian. So we initially focused our search around Lerici, which is a charming seaside community where we have rented a temporary apartment. We looked at numerous places on the Internet before we came here and in person after we arrived.

Here was the list of requirements I gave to the real estate agents: Minimum 80 square meters (800 square feet); preferred 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom; garden for the dogs; view of sea or countryside; high-speed Internet capable; mostly unfurnished; and full of Italian character. I'm sure the last requirement made the agents smile.

A number of factors made it difficult to find a long-term rental in Lerici. First of all, it's summer, and locals are renting their places as vacation rentals, not as long-term rentals. Second, most properties are apartments, so it's hard to find privacy and peace. Also, properties here are typically fully furnished, which is a problem since most of our household is scheduled to arrive in Italy July 13.

Even overlooking these obstacles, there's Bella and Boomer (aka Bruno). They've adapted quite well to apartment living, probably better than Jim and I. They love to hang out on the balcony and watch whatever is going on in the street. When the neighborhood dogs start howling, Bella and Boomer join in. Bella sniffs her way through town looking for dropped bits of ice cream cone or bread, and Boomer doesn't miss an opportunity to mark a strategic building corner, garbage can, or car tire. We walk with Bella and Boomer in town two or three times a day. This is not a relaxing stroll since we're constantly on alert for approaching dogs and possible altercations. (Most dogs are not neutered or spayed.) We're pulling Boomer away from things he shouldn't pee on, like store vendors' goods that are displayed in the street, and pulling Bella away from everything that has a scent, which to Bella's nose is everything. Despite the constraints of living in Lerici, the dogs are in great spirits. However, it's exhausting for Jim and me to manage them so tightly.

A few of the places in Lerici had small gardens where the dogs could have a bit of green space, but we never found anything that we could afford and that met all of our requirements, including the requirement for "Italian character," so we decided to expand our search.