Friuli Weekend

Back in Friuli for Easter, and a few reminders of the good old days.
A lovely Easter lunch at Luca's house with his family, gave me a chance to learn some Friulano - thanks to Ale, Luca's sister for translating into Italian for me! Friulano is a language, not a dialect, and bears more similarity to French than Italian from the words that I heard.
After lunch - at around 4 - we went to the station to pick up the surprise guest for the weekend, Percy had flown in from Costa Rica to see us all for Easter. In the end there were not many of us, but it was anyway fabulous to see him, looking relaxed and tanned in comparison to the rest of us who have enjoyed the European winter.
Easter Sunday was absolutely freezing, with scattered snow and hail, so it must have been surprising to Massi when we told him that we would meet him in the gelateria near Luca' s house. When he arrived, we were drinking hot chocolates with rum - for purely medicinal purposes!
With a brief stop for wine and ham in San Daniele - where the ham is so fresh it seems unrecognisable from the packaged stuff in my local Esselunga - we went off to Celante, Massi's family house in the countryside. Long-term readers will remember that we have been there once before, after VinItaly last year.
On a freezing night, we played Jenga and sat around the fireplace catching up.
The fireplace - called a Fogolar - was the centre point of every Friulano household. It is an open-sided fireplace - in the case of the Celante house, circular, which the family used to sit around to cook, eat and stay warm. Its a convivial spot, with benches surrounding the flames, meaning that all the occupants can warm their hands/feet/both as they eat and chat. Friuli used to be a very poor region - now is one of the richest in Italy - but in old times the families would have snuggled close to the flames eating their daily staple food of polenta.
Easter Monday and after a very slow start, Massimiliano and Barbara arrived and took up their spots with the rest of us near to the fire. And there we stayed until it was time to get back on the road, Luca and Massi to Udine and Percy and I to Trieste.

At the hairdressers

I have been to the hairdressers finally, to have a trim.
This is the first visit to the hairdressers in Italy for me - I have been going either in Hong Kong when I go back, or in London if I am there on business. But I could not put it off any longer, so I asked around for tips from the gals at work.
Saturday morning saw me along the Lungarno (the street that runs along the river bank) at Ciro's hair salon.
I walked in and Ciro, in his black turtleneck looked me up and down with disdain.
"And who sent you?" he asked
"Alessia" I replied, forgetting the surname of my colleague in my discomfort at his withering glances, at me in general, not just the hair.
He smiled for a second.
"Ah, Alessia Antinori?" (The Antinoris, of wine fame, are Florentine royalty).
"Errr, no" I replied, giving him instead the name of my colleague and telling him the name of the company I work for. It clearly did not leave him inspired.
At this he whisked me into the middle of the salon, and started pawing disparagingly at my locks, which were unwashed for 2 days so that I could maximise the return on my hairdresser expenditure.
"LOOK!" he shrieked in Italian.
At which all of the women in the place turned slowly in my direction, to do as he suggested.
"These Americans, their hair is SO CLEAN!" he yelled. The other clients nodded knowingly at each other. "They get up every morning and think to themselves, I have to get in a hot shower immediately and wash my hair. Terrible!"
All the ladies seemed in agreement with this too.
I cleared my throat and said
"Errrrm, but I am English, not American. And actually for 2 days...."
"ENOUGH: we can't wash your hair, its too clean. We will just wet it. Go." And that was that discussion over with.
Some time later I left the salon with my new haircut (essentially the same, but a little shorter) and went to have a glass of wine to recover!

Busy days in Florence

It has been all quiet on the blog of late. No pictures and no posts.
Apologies, but life has been pretty hectic.
I am over the honeymoon period at work and now have a things to do list that stretches from here to my house in Marche. As yet, I also do not have the internet at home, and when I am at work, clearly, I need to work! So no chance to write on the blog.
I should also say that with the amount of time I am spending behind the desk / in front of a computer screen these days, I have not got a massive desire to find a screen to perch behind somewhere else to update the blog.
But a few people have requested that I get going again on the writing, and also, I miss having an outlet for my scribbles about life here, so expect a few updates in the days to come.