Casa dolce casa

Italy is perfect. We're staying in the countryside near Cortona, and we can actually see Cortona from our house. We have a car and have been going all over the place, but our very favorite place to be is at home on the farm. Here is our villa:

The couple who own Margherita Holiday Home, Bernardo and Beatrice, are just the most wonderful people. This is the edge of their house:

They love Tuscany so much, they have a painting of it in the breakfast room. They don't want to have to stop looking at it for one second.

Beatrice gets up and makes an enormous breakfast every morning. No matter how many times I hint at the fact that we don't need so much food, there is still basically an entire new pie on the table every morning. She even makes those jams: fig, plum, pear, and apricot. The woman is amazing.

I'm not kidding. It's so much food. She also makes us fresh eggs from her chickens.

In addition to all the other parts of the farm, they raise donkeys. They realllly love these donkeys. The view below is from our villa:

And here they are, cheesing for a shot:

 

It's so perfect here.

 Bernardo is a trip. He used to work in defense, and he and Beatrice followed their dream to buy an old broken down farm & fix it up for others to enjoy. He has learned everything about farming, and Beatrice became a professional cook and is currently learning everything there is to know about everything.

When we first arrived, there were several days of bad weather. The storms roll in to the Tuscan countryside very quickly and without warning. I loved it:

 So far we've been to Cortona, Siena, Arrezo, and Camucia. The trip up the hill to Cortona was exciting, and I was so happy to share this special place with Jesse:

Siena is still gorgeous:

Arezzo doesn't have much to show, but I did have this really nice double espresso (and we picked up our new rental car):

 It was market day in Camucia today (Thurs, Oct 3). Beatrice insisted we get a "panino porchetta (pork sandwich)" and gosh, was it worth it. They stuff a pig with delicious herbs and roast it, then slice the meat off and put it on bread.

The porcini mushrooms are here! This weekend we're going to a porcini mushroom festival. We saw zero of them until today, and suddenly they were everywhere, including the market:

Needless to say, we're having an amazing time.