Happy Spring to everyone, we hope you all had a good winter season and are now ready to enjoy some nice weather.  Bill and I are looking forward to the nicer weekends with more people on the streets of Red Bank.  We have a new neighbor, Cold Stone Creamery, so you now have two good reasons to stop by our end of the block.  Although it’s not exactly the same as having gelato in Florence it is pretty good.

Speaking of which, our winter trip to Italy was great as usual, although this time we did encounter some snow.  As a matter of fact we left here on the day of the bad storm (January 23^rd) and it caught up to us again in Umbria a few days into our trip.  Nonetheless we had a great time and have some nice new things coming in this next shipment.

Speaking of something new, some of you may remember Andrea & Cinzia our friends from Ivrea who helped us out our first holiday season.  Well they’ve gotten into another adventure as proprietors of a Bed & Bedfast in Piemonte.

We also have some info on a great cantina we’ve been to in Tuscany.  And last but not least we are now on the web and ready to serve you from the convenience of your own home.

Hope you enjoy.

Laura and Bill

Snow Italian Style

This year Italy experienced a bit more of the nasty weather than they’re accustomed to seeing.  As a matter of fact on one occasion we experienced first hand the effects of a heavy snowfall Italian style.  We had left Deruta, where roads were dry; heading for Gubbio, a hill town

north of Perugia, which we knew had some snow the night before.  Keep in mind that road cleaning is nothing like here and even if they wanted to they don’t have anywhere near the equipment to handle large snowfalls.  The trip on the highway was uneventful and the roads were clear and dry.  At the exit for Gubbio we came upon a roadblock and the policeman was asking everyone to see his or her chains.  We explained that we were visitors with a leased car and had no chains.  They were very nice and explained that without chains we were not going anywhere near Gubbio as the roads were terrible.

We were directed to a conveniently located coffee bar and proceeded to spend the next three hours hanging out with the truckers, who also had no chains, until Paolo Biagioli and his friend arrived from Gubbio with a set of chains for us.  Needless to say when we arrived in Gubbio we parked the car and it didn’t move until it was time to depart.  We were actually fortunate in our situation, as over the next several days the weather in central and southern Italy was such that even the highway between Salerno and Reggio-Calabria was closed and people were stranded in their cars.  The moral of the story is if you travel in Italy or anywhere in Europe in the winter months make sure you have chains unless you like lots of espresso and truck drivers.

Toscana che Bella 

We only spent two days in Tuscany but as usual they were great.  We stayed in Artimino again and came upon one of those memorable meals

that you end up thinking about for months afterwards.

We had checked into one of our favorites Albergo Paggeria Medicea (www.artimino.com) and had casually mentioned to the desk manager our dinner plans for the next two nights.  Alberto agreed with our choices but then informed us that their ristorante Biagio Pignatta was having a special Cena del Pesce (seafood dinner) on Saturday night for their regular customers.

 He said since we are frequent hotel guests he was sure he could arrange a table for us.  We hesitated briefly, because we had never been to an Italian “customer appreciation” dinner and thought perhaps we did not have the appropriate cloths etc.  But fortunately we decided to give it a try.   Needless to say we had a wonderful multi-course dinner that