We picked up a car and headed out of Florence. I hadn't driven in over five months so am slightly nervous but the daughter is fantastic at staying calm when I panic and she's excellent at giving directions, so all good.
We found our Air BnB eventually but the road to it was so tiny and my car was slightly too big to even make the turn into what we thought was driveway. We called the agent, who sent someone to guide us in a different way. By the time we got there, it was raining and the house, although glamorous on the outside, was slightly creepy internally. There were a few too many clown paintings and very sad, confronting pen and ink drawings of devillish activity. The one in my room I had to hide under the bed. There was an overwhelming smell of talcum powder upstairs and we chose our rooms with trepidation. The girls picked one bedroom, only to discover a chest with various old dolls and their body parts. It was so creepy, they backed out quickly and the sister bravely said she'd stay there. I took a back room with weird erotic, slightly possessed looking carvings on the ancient bed. We settled in uneasily.
A pool helped soften the blow of a house with many issues. The toilet in the girls ensuite leaked when flushed and there were blood-like streaks in the shower and on the wall. The kitchen had been moved into a back room where the sink kept blocking up. The stove had it's own idiosyncrasies of when it would allow heat and how much ,that had nothing to do with the temperature controls; there was no moka for coffee making (how was that possible in an Italian abode? It was brought to us a few hours later when we made a fuss, along with toilet paper, as that was scarce as well). The daughter took photos of the blood and leaking toilet, of the blocked sink and in the end we did get some money back as the toilet couldn't be fixed until the next day and we ended up cleaning the walls and mopping the floor.
The old lady talcum smell continued to haunt us at various times throughout the day so when the sun finally broke through, we tended to eat under the wistaria arbour overlooking the valley; the last of the mauve flowers perfuming the air.
We went to Vinci, Leonardo's home town; it was small and quiet, a tiny gallery dedicated to him. We took photos of ourselves, our faces stuck through a hole in a wooden Mona Lisa cut out - how very touristy!) and then made our way carefully back up the skinny curvy road with a cliff on one side. By the time I reached the house, 5.30 wine time had been moved to 1.30.
That night I made stuffed pumpkin flowers with ricotta and anchovies, we had turkey schnitzel and small but very sweet blood red cherries, in the arbour surrounded by pots of blossoming geraniums, lemon, apricot and Mirabelle plum trees, the fruit of which were still warm from the sun.
The next day, I braved the road again and we went to Pistoia, another small provincial town with Wednesday markets; interesting Florentine style churches, geometrically diverse on the outside, very unadorned on the inside. Unfortunately, too late, we discovered it was a town of funghi and tartufo, restaurants displayed their rich, perfumed ingredients under lock and key but we'd already stopped and had panzanella for lunch, (a summer salad made with hunks of rustic non salted Tuscan bread, absorbing the flavours of sweet tomatoes, basil and beautiful jade green olive oil) before we discovered the tartufo and porcini restaurants.
I made the gorgonzola pasta with pears and walnuts that night. It was full moon with an eclipse. We watched it rise voluptuously over the olive grove covered hillside and then stayed up to watch the shadow creeping over it. It suited the theme of the haunted Tuscan farmhouse. The daughter thought she saw a black shadow pass by her bathroom, the old lady perfume was overwhelming during the balmy full moon evening, a black cat was seen stalking some prey under the moonlight while the fireflies danced.
Later that night, we asked the sister, (who has a bit of a knack with dispersing ghosts to other locations) if she could move whoever it was onwards and upwards. Strangely enough, having told us that she felt that it was a lonely old lady who had lived in the house and that she was ready to move on, the talcum powder smell went - completely! We always were suspicious about the sister's ghost whispering powers but every time she did her thing, strange occurrences would stop. We're still doubtful but we're glad the smell has gone.
What a strange sojourn. None of us slept well throughout our stay. My sister had to make peace with the chest full of doll parts; the girls slept fitfully, I, at least, was bathed in moonlight and fanned by a faint breeze in my tiny room out the back but the weird paintings hidden beneath the erotically carved bed haunted me. We weren't sad to leave there when we left the next day on our way back to Florence.
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