Empty Nest

The Priest’s House was very quiet yesterday. After we went down to the pastacceria in separate cars and had our morning treats, TR and Bec headed for Roma. We went back to the Priest’s House and spent some time cleaning the mansard and washing bed clothes. It now looks like no one was ever there. As we walked around in the little loft area, we again realized how low the ceilings were and how everything looked like a miniature doll house. Standing by the bathroom door, I seem very tall. Nevertheless, my sister and brother-in-law insisted they slept very well, despite having to walk hunched over and spending half the night smacking mosquitoes!

As you will recall, we sent one box home already, and we will have at least one more box to mail. Our goal is to have – by next Sunday when we leave Certaldo – one suitcase apiece. Our suitcases have shoulder straps so they can be used as backpacks and are easier to carry. We will also have Bill’s computer case and probably a bag to hold a couple of books and anything miscellaneous that we want to have with us. This will make moving from one little town to the next so much easier for Bill and me.

So, yesterday was also spent gathering up the things that we will mail back home. Some of the things we bought to use at the Priest’s House (the grill, an electric fan, waste basket, and broom and dust pan) we will just leave here for the next guests. We will abandon the two-liter electric water kettle, which we use to heat water for our French coffee press, in Paris. As we consider what to send and what to keep, we are aware that there will be things that we will neither send nor keep. Some of our clothes, for example, have become so worn because we have been wearing the same things over and over again. We might just toss them in the Seine before we leave Paris!

In the evening, we cooked some pork chops on the grill and drank some Chianti wine and thought back on the past week and just how much of the Tuscan area we were able to show our guests. They saw Certaldo, Certaldo Alto, Florence, Siena, Cortona, Montepulciano, Volterra, San Gimignano (Jimi-Town), and Monteriggioni, plus numerous other little towns that we passed through. During their stay, Bec and TR also were able to visit the Cinque Terre and Pisa on their own. Not surprisingly, we were able to find a gelateria in each of the towns were visited.