Day 57 - Lamezia Terme

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1

Today Rachele and I visited the town of Pizzo, which is her preferred place for me to buy an apartment.  It is a very pretty town with the best beaches I've seen so far.  Real beaches with sand, not pebbles.  It is perched on a cliff top but there is a small section down by the waterfront.  The cliff tops are perfect for sitting on and looking at the view.

We wandered around the historic centre, visiting a church and a castle before having a restorative gelati.  Apparently Pizzo is the home of the tartufo so we had to have one of those.

While we were looking down to the old part of town on the waterfront, I jokingly said I would like to buy an apartment in the little blue house.  It turns out that there is an apartment there for sale (the top 2 floors)!  However, the price is twice my budget.  Pizzo is something of a tourist town so the prices are set on the assumption you will be renting it out to visitors in the summer season.

In the afternoon it rained so we retreated to Rachele's house for a lunch and a nap.

After lunch we had a visitor and then we went out to pay a condolence visit to an aunt of Rachele's.  Her husband had died a few days ago.  I expected to just sit silently in a corner but it seems the aunt's whole family was there.  She had 4 (or 5?) children and hence many grandchildren.  The grandchildren (about 10-ish in age) were fascinated by the Australian cousin.  They used Google Translate to work out how to ask me questions in English and I answered in my best Italian.  The wanted to know what I liked and disliked and whether it was true we put pineapple on pizzas among many other things.  After about an hour Rachele rescued me and we left.

On the way home we ran into Rachele's little brother Ottavio (not hard since he lives downstairs on the 1st floor and his business is on the ground floor).  He took us out to his country property, which is about 10 minutes out of town.  There he has 2 horses, 5 cats, a rooster and some chickens.  He goes there twice a day.  In the morning, he lets the horses out of their stalls and into their paddock.  At night, he puts them away and feeds them and the cats.  He is also renovating the house on the property as well as having some olive trees and other plants he cultivates (my Italian wasn't up to understanding everything).  He spends most of his weekends there as well as visiting twice a day.  His wife is not amused, understandably.

Finally, we went home for good only to take delivery of a large bag of fresh broad beans and peas which we spent a lot of time shelling.  We also had turned down the opportunity of having a pizza dinner with the aunt and her family.  However, there was soon a knock on the door and we got some extra pizza delivered to us.  Definitely village life.  Lovely to be part of a community but I'm not sure I would want to spend my whole life living here.