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.