Donatella, La Novella and another fella
Today we had a meeting with our realtor / property manager and our landlady Donatella. She had brought us back a registered copy of our lease. I'm not exactly sure who it gets registered with, some government body, I am assuming. But it needed to be registered to be valid for our Visa. Also, she wanted us to go through the inventory of all the furnishings in the apartment. She had previously provided detailed pictures of all the furnishings which Ira confirmed were or were not still in the apartment. She was very organized.
I suppose she should be, because we heard that her job was organizing art exhibitions in Siena. If you're interested you can read this article about her Interview with Donatella. In the picture, she is standing fourth from the left with the short silver hair. I guess she was a pretty big deal. She said she had an event with the emperor of Japan or something like that. Funny thing she asked us though 'Che cosa fai ogni giorno?' She wanted to know what we do all day. LOL Too funny, right? The second was when we mentioned that the oven wasn't working and that the electrician was coming over to check it out today, her response was 'Il forno, oh, non ha mai funzionato.' (The oven? oh, it's never worked!' What?! And she never thought to mention it? Goodness. Well thankfully, we're used to not having an oven so no biggie, but it would be nice to have one eventually.
Donatella accompanied us and the electrician back to the apartment to check out the oven. I'm pretty sure that they are first going to try to fix the oven, and if that doesn't work they will replace it. After dealing with that, we met back up with Serena at her office as we had plans to have lunch with her and Niccolò. We drove about 5 minutes out of town to La Novella. They both like it because it serves local food and is open 363 days a year. Which can't be said for any of the restaurants in Massa. They have a cold menu and a few hot choices for lunch every day.
Niccolò was running a few minutes late, so Serena suggested while we wait, we should drink! Ira took advantage of our table near the wine selection to find some bottles that Serena liked. We ended up having a Morellino called 414. Oh my goodness, so smooth. Serena decided at lunch today, that Ira was going to be her English teacher and in exchange she was going to teach us about Tuscan cooking.
I had the Tuscan soup, which was more like a stew and everyone else had the risotto. I don't even have to tell you, that it was delicious. We noticed they also sold cheeses and meats, wine and some sweets. We already knew we were going to come back to check it out when we had more time. But today, Niccolò needed to take us straight back to Massa. We had an appointment also to meet our friend Marco at his garden, so it all worked out.
Marco lives about 40 minutes away. He has a large property where he has his bonsai garden and also the family vegetable garden which includes a few olive trees which they harvest for their olive oil.
Here are a few pictures of his garden. He has an extremely high-end bonsai collection.
It's even more amazing how beautiful his garden is considering only a few weeks prior the nearby river flooded and the entire garden was submerged in knee deep water. Since the river has never flooded before, he was caught off guard. But now he has built up protection, in case it happens again.
Because of the language barrier, we thought the visit might only last a half hour at most. But we managed to communicate and stayed for over 2 hours! We had a great time and promised next to visit him at his work. He works at one of the most important wineries in Tuscany, per Tomasso.
A dopo!
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