Cafe Society

With the arrival of a week’s worth of sunshine and temperatures reaching 24 degrees, cafes have brought out their tables onto pavements, bars have dusted off their parasols and replanted their flower tubs, and fridges selling delicious ice cream have re-appeared in windows.  As well as this, the tourists have started to arrive and can be seen meandering through the narrow streets presumably taking the same pictures that I took when we arrived, or they may be more highbrow and are following the suggested tourist route, for the Perugino trail.  This is beginning to give us an idea of how it will be in the summer months.  Booking will soon be essential for our favourite eateries, I think.

Several Brits and some Scandinavians have also re-appeared to restore their homes, or to unwrap them, ready for the summer. Evenings are now busy, busy with families and couples and groups of friends, making the most of the warm weather and some intrepid souls have been seen wearing T-shirts.

At the house, the builders have laid the concrete floors on the top three floors and have finally covered up all the water, heating and electrical pipework that we have been tripping over for weeks. Today they finished by laying the kitchen and hallway floors and so we cannot get in to see what it really looks like until Saturday, to allow time for the cement to set properly.  Just as they finished laying the tiles on the little attic balcony in the morning the sky clouded over.  I suppose a week of fine weather was too big a bonus, and sure enough by evening we heard the first rumbles of thunder.

Today the heavy rain continued until evening and so the concrete may take a little longer to dry after all.  It’s a good job we took the opportunity to strip the old wallpaper on the  staircases and landings.  We have also bought a jumbo box of filler to fill in all the holes in the walls.  The next step might be giving the top rooms a coat of paint and then we will really feel like we are nearing the finish line.  It will be much easier if we can do the painting before the wooden and terracotta floors are laid and so we want to try and achieve a white-out by next week.  To be realistic quite how much real painting will be achieved is debatable.  It’s all the preparation and cleaning up afterwards that is such a drag. But I keep thinking of how much money we will save by doing it ourselves although the builders think we are ‘crazy English’ which is evidenced by the fact that the nearest DIY store is some 40 kms from here, which goes to show just how many Italians actually are willing to spray themselves with paint and break a nail sanding Polyfilla’d walls.

The Saturday market has several lovely plant stalls and so now we have a good selection of herbs, ready for meals and Mojitos. I have also just ordered 72 lavender plants, which were on special offer from Thomson and Morgan. So that’s the rest of the garden sorted.