We spent a good portion of the day unpacking all of the items purchased yesterday and building IKEA furniture. (In Italy it’s pronounced ee-KAY-ah)

Biaggio came by with Massimilliano to help remove the lock on the bedroom door to the terrace. It didn’t take him long and there was some gentle ribbing as he told Biaggio to stick to being a mechanic and just call him whenever projects need to be done. Paul took his down number for the future. 

As the men left the house, we saw Ana who was getting her daily exercise of strolling up and down the street. She was pleased to step inside the house to see the progress we were making. We offered her an espresso as we have no snacks, but she said she doesn’t eat much at this stage and already had her milk and coffee for the day. She is truly adorable: my guess is she’s in her 80s, she’s maybe 4’10” and today was wearing a dress, sensible black shoes and black sweater in 80 degree heat. She proudly told us about her two children and I believe a granddaughter who studied in Valencia, Spain. She was sad that we would be returning to the US but happy that the home is being lived in again. 

Our neighbor two doors down is from the US and we haven’t met them yet, but we met their niece at the go-kart race last night. While that neighbor won’t return to Pico until September, we saw air conditioning being installed yesterday so we know that it’s possible to drill right into the stone walls. 

Last night Frederica, the niece of the previous owner of this home, spoke fondly of the house, saying it has a very positive energy. It was very hard for her family to decide to sell, but when they met Paul it made the decision a lot easier for them. 

Paul spent the late morning in the garden cutting branches off all the trees to create more room to move around under them and to give the fig tree more room to grow.  He also cleared the brush around the backup water system. 

Around 5pm Pepino wanted to show us the inside of a massive house in Pico (over 2000 square feet.) It was owned by the Pompei family, his aunt lived there for 70 years, he’s inherited it, and now he’s trying to sell it. If you are interested in a true fixer-upper, let us know! It’s in a tremendous state of disrepair, with pigeons occupying the top floor, with the original flooring, wallpaper and painted ceilings from hundreds of years ago still intact. There were piles of antiques, room after room of decades of debris and historic paperwork, personal photographs of Mussolini, and more, as the aunt only occupied one floor. The multi-story cantina/garage is larger than our home in Belmont. 

 

We did a quick trip to Orizzante (like a mini Target / Home Depot) to pick up a bunch of miscellaneous items such as more clothes pins, a bottle opener, more cleaning supplies, etc. On the way to Orizzante I saw my first chingale (wild boar.) We were speeding along the winding road and unable to safely pull over, so no pics. 😦

For dinner we went to the town of Fondi to eat at La Canadese (translates to The Canadians.) We started with fagioli con guanciale e pane tostata (cannellini beans with pieces of boars cheek and toasts.) Paul had a mix of roasted meats (pork, sausage, steak), D asked for the waiters choice so he received buffalo mozzerella and meat sauce pizza and my pizza had a fiori di latte cheese with truffle cream and mushrooms. 

Shortly after 10pm we returned to Pico and all of the bars in the town square were closed. We can’t figure out their hours since yesterday they were open well past midnight.

There are four spots directly in front of our house and yet we typically don’t park there. The street is very narrow and with the construction happening two doors down it’s even more narrow, so we usually park 15 feet away from the house in front of a tree just to be safe. Tonight that spot was taken as well so we ended up parking a half block away. Not a big deal at all, but to give you perspective our current rental car is a Renault which is the size of an American Corolla and it barely fits down the streets. It was too small for us to bring the wardrobe back to Pico from IKEA yesterday but barely fits down the streets here. When Paul returns to Italy in a few weeks, he should definitely rent something smaller. I took a video of the drive through town to our house, but videos aren’t uploading for some reason so I’ll have to take a series of still pictures in the future.

We ended the night with limoncello from Sorrento.