Nella settimana tre

This time, a collection of short items connected only by being from this past week:

Sunrise last Monday.  Our hillside faces east, looking over the Arno River valley.

Guida italiana:  If football is the national passion, tailgating is the national active sport.  We were driving to Incisa the other day, zipping along our winding little road.  As is typical, before long there was a car right on my tail.  Looking in the rear view, I saw that the driver was a young woman who was talking on her mobile phone held in one hand while gesturing with the other (it is impossible to talk in Italian without waving at least one hand), all while maintaining one car-length behind me around the twists and turns in the road.

Here are some of Carmen's photos from walks near our place:

Our neighbor Sara's front porch.  This is the apartment below ours.

The church below our villa.  While no services are held here, it is well-maintained and we occasionally see someone or a car there.

Wild flowers beside our road

Walking farther up our road, this view looks down on a villa that is above ours--it is very well maintained and clearly owned by someone with money.

One mystery solved, another presented.  Re: the string on the bottom of the bag.  It is attached only loosely by being tucked in folds at the bottom.  A gentle pull removes it so you can use it to tie off the top.  Now here is the new mystery:  Carmen wants to bake cookies for our neighbors and hosts, but there is no baking soda in Italy.  None in any grocery store, large or small.  Do Italians rise everything with yeast?  Carmen got a lead on a student blog on the Internet to an Asian market in Firenze that carried it, so yesterday we made our first foray into Firenze.  We accepted the fact that we would get lost trying to find it, and we did.  But eventually after circling around very wide avenues and incredibly narrow streets, we found some landmarks and eventually figured out we could park nearby in the underground beneath the train station.  The market caters to international students (it even has a Mexican food section--with tortillas!) and we picked up a few staples (chili-garlic sauce, etc).  They had baking powder...but no baking soda.  So I stand by my statement, there is no baking soda in Italy, until proven wrong;-)  Any ideas on either what Italians use instead, or where you get it (the hardware store, maybe)?

One last quick note:  Carmen and I would love to get more comments from you on our blog.  Use the comment link below to enter them!

the road home