The new girl had arrived in Villa Fontelunga on Sunday and Tiia was about to leave on the following Sunday so on Monday all four of us decided to meet. We finally went to Monte San Savino for an ice cream (zabaglione and pistachio for Noora and pannacotta and berry-yoghurt for Siru) and afterwards we headed to Foiano for a drink. It was a pleasure to meet Emmi; after Tiia would leave we would still have someone else besides each other to meet with.

On Thursday we would have had a dinner for six, but Mauro told he could handle it with one of the ladies and we could go to Arezzo Wave, a music festival, with Marta and Valerio, Mauro’s nephew. Before we went, we got Mauro some wines he asked for, including a special vintage of Scannagallo from 2007. By accident Noora brought him a bottle of limited edition wine; with a label to celebrate the anniversary of Scannagallo battle re-enactment.

Since Marta’s leg was still not ok and she had had some scans done on Wednesday, the day we usually organize our weekly aperitif, we had to move it to Friday. This time we decided to hold it in the front since there was only showers of rain to be expected. As we had laid the tables it, of course, started to rain and our tablecloths were soaking. We took the wet cloths away, waited for the rain to stop and laid the table again before starting. In the end everything went well and fortunately we still had extra paper lanterns to replace the ones broken because of the rain.

On Saturday we cleaned after the party and changed the apartments and in the evening we had a dinner with eight people – two ladies came to help, so we only brought the water, the wine and the bread before Mauro shooed us away. We changed our clothes to ankle-length dressed Marta had given us and went to the Scannagallo battle re-enactment to gaze the skillful flag-wavers and light-show with Nightwish on the background.

On Sunday we went back to Pozzo for the re-enactment; on one moment we were looking at the parade with men in their armor, men with flags and drums and on the second Marta told us we needed to go too. We hadn’t had an idea we were supposed to take part on that, too, but there we were, walking the streets of Pozzo with all the dignity in our cotton dresses. Later they had a play of soldiers attacking the marketplace and kidnapping the women and we got to take part on that, too. Later we stayed in guard on our stand selling wine and chick peas and as we closed everything we went to Il Tempio for a well-deserved pizza.

In Italy we have eaten more fruits than probably ever in our lives and when we saw a pineapple waiting on a market’s shelf we had to bring it home with us. We prepared half of it the way our teacher taught us to and put the other half in the freezer in pieces. On Tuesday Marta’s leg made a turn on the worse; it had been acting up but now it started really making things difficult, so Siru drove her around for the morning and on Wednesday Noora carried on taking her shopping for groceries. Every week that our agriturismo is fully booked Marta throws a party free for her guests and friends and anyone who requests to join in are welcome for a small fee. There are some snacks, Santa Vittoria’s own wines and great atmosphere. Usually we host it in the front but since the weather wasn’t so great we ended up having it in a small, covered platform in front of the restaurant.

We also had a really nice Finnish family; the parents were really easy-going and the boys were just great, constantly joking with us. We told them we had to been to Pisa and the boys wondered why anyone would like to see a tower where “some common guy” had thrown things from. When they left back to Finland and we went to clean the apartment, we found a wonderful drawn Thank you –card with, among other things, a picture of the leaning tower of Pisa and us staring at it.

On Thursday Marta and Mauro invited us to La Lodola for a dinner with a Danish wine importer couple. We had some cheeses and sausages, salsiccia bruschetta, cucumber soup with yoghurt and pecorino (goat cheese) and pepper beef with zucchini for Noora and pork fillets and salad for Siru. We also had some wines, mainly from Northern Italy and for dessert we had a cheese cake from heaven sided with a liqueur made of Sicilian berries and Shepherd’s drink. We all had a good time and all the foods were really tasty.

On Saturday we cleaned the apartments as usual and new guests arrived one after another as the day went on. In the evening we had guests from three apartments, total of 12people, over for a dinner. On Sunday morning we decided not to put the alarm on just for a change and we just rested the whole morning. In the afternoon we decided to go once again – you guessed right – to Valdichiana, since we couldn’t come up with anything to do. This time the idea and timing was good, since the summer sales had found their way in the Outlet, too. We both found a pair of beautiful shoes (they were screaming at us from the shelves, we swear!) among other vital stuff.