Our trip to Italy

We've just come back from a lovely week spent in Italy, staying with friends near Urbino. When Paul & I arrived on the Friday, we were already tired after having woken up at 6am to catch our flight, and just a little stunned by the intense 30 degree heat. By the time we went out for our Chinese meal in Urbino in the evening, following our stroll through Fermignano, eating sorbet and buying buttons, we were famished and slightly delirious...well, at least I was.

At some point, which I think was after the Chinese style potato gnocchi (which were flat and "like cat's tongue" according to Na), but before the Chinese fruit (which reminded me disturbingly of dyed testicles) I started laughing so hard I cried, tears and all. This always seems to happen when I go out to dinner with Na. Anyway, when we got back to the town where Na and Mr M live, there was live music going on near their house. Despite this and the heat, I slept deeply and soundly and was very happy to be there. Below are more photos and ramblings on our holiday.

Urbino, courgette cake and firejumping on midsummer's eve

Visiting Na at this time of year inevitably means eating a lot of courgettes. So we were sitting around the kitchen table and Na suddenly wonders out loud whether it would be possible to make a cake out of courgettes. When I tell her I'd just been thinking the same thing, she decided she had to try it. Using her recipe for carrot cake, she went ahead and made a courgette cake. It was full of sultanas, sesame seeds, linseeds and muscovado sugar and it was absolutely delicious!! Not having much taste itself, courgettes are ideal "flavour carriers" as Mr M put it.

We also spent the morning exploring Urbino, and the evening at a big country house that used to be a church where there was a party and bonfire for the feast of San Giovanni. We spent the last hour or so of daylight exploring a country lane near the house before going on to the party. At the party there was a lot of food, a lovely old couple that Na accidentally gave prune juice to after they'd asked for red wine, live music (Mr M's folk band played), folk dancing and fire jumping. I wasn't brave enough to try it, but Na, Mr M and Paul all had a go at jumping over the bonfire, and the kids were at it all night!! I also bought a worm hippopotamus (picture below) made by Sophia (aged 10?), we saw fireflies and went home with the smell of wood smoke in our clothes. What better way could you spend a midsummer's evening?

Bologna, Morandi and a most fantastic choral concert

On Sunday, Paul and I caught the coach with Na, Mr M and the choir that Na sings with, to go to Bologna. We spent the afternoon in Bologna city before going out to Villa Smeralda on the outskirts of Bologna for the choral concert. While in Bologna, we also visited the Morandi museum. Above are just a few photos from the day.

The highlight of the day for me was listening to the choir Na sings with. I had this image of choirs singing churchy hymns and all traditional music. But Na's choir sang contemporary, interesting, unusual songs from all over the world including Sweden and Africa (the African song accompanied by Mr M on bongos), the whole experience gave me goosebumps. I loved every minute of it. Plus, she looked great in that dress, even if it did suffocate her in the heat. They all looked fantastic.

farmers for a morning (sort of)

On Monday morning, we went to pick apricots for jam making and walnuts for liquer making. It was a hot sunny morning spent in the stunning countryside feeling connected with earth, nature and my own sweat.

I, with my citified ways, was completely ignorant of the fact that walnuts, before they turn brown with their hardened shell, are green and look like fruit. I guess perhaps they are fruit. To make liquer with, they need to be picked before they fall off the tree and turn brown. One of things that came out of spending a week in the Italian countryside was me wondering how things are grown. Like, for example, do you know how lentils grow? I didn't. They come from pods, like peas, but they are smaller and there aren't as many lentils in a pod as there are peas. There's so much I take for granted and am ignorant of, with shopping for my supermarket food. Like the concept of seasonal fruit and vegetables for example. Na and Mr M have an allotment and also know a bunch of organic farmers so they are practically self-sufficient and eat mainly locally grown, organic produce in season. It made buying bananas and potatoes feel very strange, things Paul and I do all the time in London! And that's not even getting into the whole question of how ethical the banana business is.

Plus the whole week we were there, we didn't watch any TV (Na and Mr M don't have a TV, nor a fridge) and hardly spent any time on the computer. Being there made me realise how much space city life occupies, space that was suddenly freed when we were not being bombarded by announcements, adverts and other noise and loudness. For a week, my head felt clear. And it's left me with a desire to find a way to rediscover and keep some of that clarity now that I'm back in London again.

Anyway, this is a photo of me and my friend mr apricot who was clearly delighted at being found. It was a happy moment for me too. I'm not even too sad to report that he's now part of a jar of homemade jam. It's how he would have wanted it to be.

We also stopped by a lovely church (pictures above) on the way home.

For some truly luscious photos and a bit more on jam and liquer making, go here.

Fiorenzuola, Gradara & Miro

On Tuesday we drove to Fiorenzuola di Focara to go to the unspoilt beach there. We had fun trying to make our own sun shelter out of pieces of wood on the beach and a gorgeous Indian bedspread of Na's. Luckily it was a cloudy day because the wind kept blowing our shelter down. We swam a bit, drew a bit, collected bits of driftwood and snacked a bit. I also had fun playing with Paul's sticky uppy hair which had gotten that way because of the salt water!

Later we went to the nearby town of Gradara, which features in Dante's Divine Comedy. We lunched on potato gnocchi with olive sauce, artichokes and beans with oil. Then we went to see the Miro exhibition which was on in the town. It was a little disappointing, it was based around prints he did for books of poetry and felt like the pages were simply taken out of the books and framed. But some of the images were really beautiful.

In the evening when we went home, we had dinner in Na & Mr M's garden and Na made her aniseed seed biscuits. They are possibly the best biscuits I've ever tasted.

san leo

On Wednesday, we went to San Leo, a lovely drive through the gorgeous countryside about an hour and a half away from Urbino. Apart from having three churches in such a small place, it also has a gallery and a museum of sacred art. These are just a few of the photos I took, which really didn't do the place justice.

In the evening when we got back to Na & Mr M's place, I borrowed Na's bicycle and Paul gave me a bike lesson. It's going to take more than a few lessons to get me riding I think, balance has never come naturally to me. But I did get a few interesting coloured bruises on my butt cheeks and knees (no one warned me about the intimacy I'd have to have with the saddle) and I did have fun trying. I also amused the townspeople, many of whom were children and old ladies cycling by breezily while quietly chuckling away at my plight.