Its taken this long to do our first entry because getting internet here in the tiny town of Otranto has been one of our biggest challenges.
After exceptionally long preparations, way too many farewell lunches and dinners and severe heart palpitations whilst trying to get Italian visas and passports we finally left Australia last week on on the 21st. Four flights and 36h hours later we arrived in Otranto without luggage! As our appartment was in the historic centre we had to walk there, dog tired and pissed off, only to find the apartment nothing like the photos depicted! An hour later we bedded down in a crappy hotel with the worst mattresses we had ever slept on. Woke up on Friday morning to a gorgeous sunny day, opposite the beach but had to put on our smelly Melbourne clothes to face the day.
There have been many occasions where I have been very grateful to be fluent in Italian but possibly none as much as when trying to find our lost luggage. Once found we were told that it would take 3 days to get to us but I got it delivered within an afternoon! By Friday night we were clean but still had no apartment. Saturday was spent looking for an apartment and once organised we hit the beach.
Otranto is a medieval seaside town on the Adriatic coast in the south of Italy. It is a region I am completely unfamiliar with but it is stunning and one that we are enjoying discovering and learning about. The normal population is only 5000 people but it swells to 20,000 during summer. There is no public transport and every time we ask a local how to get somewhere they tell us we have to drive.....nothing is terribly far and the furtherest we have had to walk is 30 minutes to the tennis club!
The highlight to date has to be how wonderful a simple life can be....we get up at 8am and walk the boys to school at 8.55. After we drop them off we do our daily food shopping , a few jobs and then pick them up again at 12. We have a simple lunch of fresh bread with delicious cold meats, cheeses and salad and eat up on the terrace which overlooks the historic centre. We walk 5 minutes to the beach and spend the afternoon swimming, playing bat & ball (our 2Euro acquisition) and fishing with a 4Euro net! Dinners out have been fantastic with loads of fresh fish and SO CHEAP and dinners in have pretty good too! Our evenings end with a few rounds of cards, Briscola, or Clams & Tongues (Daniel learnt them whilst on his Music Tour in France).
The boys have just completed their first week at school and are doing very well. Their lessons have taken place at the market, the local shops and in the classroom. They are fluent at ordering their daily gelato, their daily lemon granita and their evening roast chestnuts and get lots of compliments from the locals. Daniel says SI, MOLTO BENE, and VA BENE in most situations wether it fits or not....I am very proud! Max is a little more cautious but has a fantastic accent and now that he is almost as tanned as the locals, he is fitting in very well.
I am, of course, in my element......I love chatting to the locals and many now know us. I have my favourite bar who now have my coffee down pat, the hairdresser who does a fab blow wave for 13E, the butcher at the market who is going to have roast rabbit ready for us next week, our chestnut vendor is bringing wine for Glenn to try tomorrow night and some of the locals who are teaching the boys to play SCOPA, an italian card game.
Tomorrow we head to Lecce, the capital of this region and apparently a magnificent Baroque city......more later.
After exceptionally long preparations, way too many farewell lunches and dinners and severe heart palpitations whilst trying to get Italian visas and passports we finally left Australia last week on on the 21st. Four flights and 36h hours later we arrived in Otranto without luggage! As our appartment was in the historic centre we had to walk there, dog tired and pissed off, only to find the apartment nothing like the photos depicted! An hour later we bedded down in a crappy hotel with the worst mattresses we had ever slept on. Woke up on Friday morning to a gorgeous sunny day, opposite the beach but had to put on our smelly Melbourne clothes to face the day.
There have been many occasions where I have been very grateful to be fluent in Italian but possibly none as much as when trying to find our lost luggage. Once found we were told that it would take 3 days to get to us but I got it delivered within an afternoon! By Friday night we were clean but still had no apartment. Saturday was spent looking for an apartment and once organised we hit the beach.
Otranto is a medieval seaside town on the Adriatic coast in the south of Italy. It is a region I am completely unfamiliar with but it is stunning and one that we are enjoying discovering and learning about. The normal population is only 5000 people but it swells to 20,000 during summer. There is no public transport and every time we ask a local how to get somewhere they tell us we have to drive.....nothing is terribly far and the furtherest we have had to walk is 30 minutes to the tennis club!
The highlight to date has to be how wonderful a simple life can be....we get up at 8am and walk the boys to school at 8.55. After we drop them off we do our daily food shopping , a few jobs and then pick them up again at 12. We have a simple lunch of fresh bread with delicious cold meats, cheeses and salad and eat up on the terrace which overlooks the historic centre. We walk 5 minutes to the beach and spend the afternoon swimming, playing bat & ball (our 2Euro acquisition) and fishing with a 4Euro net! Dinners out have been fantastic with loads of fresh fish and SO CHEAP and dinners in have pretty good too! Our evenings end with a few rounds of cards, Briscola, or Clams & Tongues (Daniel learnt them whilst on his Music Tour in France).
The boys have just completed their first week at school and are doing very well. Their lessons have taken place at the market, the local shops and in the classroom. They are fluent at ordering their daily gelato, their daily lemon granita and their evening roast chestnuts and get lots of compliments from the locals. Daniel says SI, MOLTO BENE, and VA BENE in most situations wether it fits or not....I am very proud! Max is a little more cautious but has a fantastic accent and now that he is almost as tanned as the locals, he is fitting in very well.
I am, of course, in my element......I love chatting to the locals and many now know us. I have my favourite bar who now have my coffee down pat, the hairdresser who does a fab blow wave for 13E, the butcher at the market who is going to have roast rabbit ready for us next week, our chestnut vendor is bringing wine for Glenn to try tomorrow night and some of the locals who are teaching the boys to play SCOPA, an italian card game.
Tomorrow we head to Lecce, the capital of this region and apparently a magnificent Baroque city......more later.
2 comments:
Good work Marie!
i'm impressed you remember how to do this!
... and it was a very interesting read too!
cheers
james
Scodella - I've just started from week one - very overdue - despite thinking of you all often.
So entertaining and so very you - I have such a strong visual of the life you are all living - bellisimo!xxx
Katexx
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