Under the Tuscan sun

My new life as a wedding planner was going great. I was always discovering new places and meeting new interesting people. One day for one of my events in Tuscany, I was lucky enough to meet Antonella, also a wedding planner and who had come to help me as coordinator. I was fully in tune with her, a beautiful blonde woman with blue eyes and infinite sweetness. She had worked for many years as a Hostess for Alitalia and lived in a beautiful castle between Cortona and Montepulciano with her husband Massimo, a famous sculptor of works on the wood of olive trees.

I remember that it was very hot for that wedding and I had just returned from another event a few days before. Antonella probably saw me very tired and invited me to spend a couple of days with her before returning to Friuli. Therefore, I willingly accepted.

As soon as I set foot in her house I fell in love with that place. A Paradise on earth, nestled on rolling hills dotted with vineyards as far as the eye can see. That was the real Tuscany, told in dozens of books and seen in countless films and documentaries. A green Tuscany, flooded with intense light, with starry nights and crickets chirping in the moonlight. Of thousand-year-old villages, enclosed in powerful walls, with narrow streets that you can only navigate on foot, where you can smell history in every corner and Renaissance culture reigns supreme.

Also a Tuscany made up of small artisans , of farmers who have worked those lands for generations and produce wine like the Faralli Family, of people who have seen in the growing tourism a new opportunity not to be missed and have been able to seize it fully. I spent wonderful days with Antonella and Massimo.

I visited Cortona and Montepulciano, dined with them at rural village festivals, rested on the edge of their gorgeous swimming pool. And there, my desire to live among so much beauty matured. I called Denis on the phone and told him: "You absolutely must come here and if you too like these lands as much as I do, we will have to seriously think about moving to live here.

We returned together to Antonella and Massimo's house the following year, in April. And Denis, like me, felt in love with that place. The decision was simple to make, we would move to Tuscany from Friuli. However, it was necessary to find a home, and it wasn't easy. But Antonella and Massimo were helping us with the search and after ten days they had already found 3 homes to rent. We then returned to Tuscany to take a look at these houses, but, unfortunately, none of them were right for us. The evening before returning to Friuli we all went out together for dinner in Valiano. We spent a pleasant evening and near our table there was a couple who were old friends of Antonella and Massimo. At a certain point Antonella asked the couple if they knew of houses for rent in the area and they said: "Yes, we have something that might interest your friends". The fate...you leave home without hope and instead fate gives you a hand. We agreed to meet the next day to visit the house.

What we found in front of us was so beautiful that we were left speechless. It was an old farmers' farmhouse that had been renovated and redone with several apartments of various sizes. It was located on a hill overlooking the Valdichiana, in the middle between Cortona (behind us) and Montepulciano (right in front of us). The name of the farmhouse is Poggiomartino. The property was surrounded by olive trees and it had also a beautiful swimming pool. It was going to be a holiday home, so we had to expect to share it with tourists from April to September, but that didn't scare us. Chiara made us visit all the apartments and in the end we chose the largest and most beautiful apartment and agreed that we would move in September.

We spent the summer working as hard as we could, in meanwhile trying to organize the move. I don't know how we managed to do it, but we did it, without much stress. Consuelo would have moved with us, while Niccolò, my son, chose to stay and live in Friuli, where he had found a job. At the end of September 2016 we moved to live in Poggiomartino. Once again our lives saw a radical change. New home, new habits, new situations, new friends.

Everything was so exciting. We spent two years in that house, we visited everything that could be visited around, Antonella and Massimo were always by our side, as good friends. We spent a lot of time together, when work allowed us to do that.. Many friends from Friuli came to visit us. The heat of the Tuscan summers was sometimes unbearable, but the providential swimming pool gave us some relief. Every week, from May to September, there was always a village festival to visit, and it was fun.

Otherwise there was the Tjmory in Bettolle, a fantastic and well-known pub in the area, where live music on a weekly basis was promoted. Little by little we became regular visitors and the two owners, Roberto and Claudio, became friends. We spent wonderful evenings in this pub, we met beautiful people like Attilio and Ketty, wonderful memories that still reemerge today and make us nostalgic about the place.

After two years at Poggiomartino we decided it was time for a change of scenery; we were a little tired of the constant coming and going of tourists and wanted to have a little more privacy.

In the meantime, my son Jacopo had returned to Italy, after a few years spent in Beijing; he had found a job in Florence and got married. I could see him more often and that made me happy. Niccolò continued on his way and he often came to Tuscany to stay with us for a few days.

We found a new house just outside Arezzo, in La Poggiola. We perhaps missed friends we had left in Valdichiana, but in Arezzo we were enjoying another "modus vivendi", less isolated from the surrounding world. I liked my life in Tuscany a lot, it was much easier to travel for work, I had good friends, I often went to Florence, I went everywhere to discover new places. We had built a perfect microcosm, with a high quality of life, and a perfect balance between work and free time. We were happy. But then Covid arrived and everything changed for a second; we were overwhelmed by this unexpected wave and we had no life jackets. The situation had changed again and we would have to make other decisions soon in order to be able to float and escape unscathed from this flood wave. Follow me in the next post and I'll tell you how it ended.

There are a few people I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart for helping me achieve this path of my life. Thanks to Antonella and Massimo, who without them all this would not have begun. Thanks to Chiara and Deborah for welcoming us to Poggio Martino. Thanks to the Faralli family, first and foremost Patrizia, who were excellent neighbors, and who delighted us with their splendid wine. Thanks to the Tjmory Pub and its staff, for giving us beautiful evenings. Thanks to Claudio and Roberto for being hosts and friends at the same time. Thanks to Ketty and Attilio for their sincere friendship.