A kitten called Merkin

Well, in case you were wondering, it is a LONG way from the heel of Italy to the bit near the French border... we left the dry arid land of Puglia, went through the rolling hills near the Adriatic, and ended up for the night in a town called Reggio della Emilia.

We almost came unstuck as the first 3 hotels we tried all charged E100 per night... then we found a little family run albergo for E60 and they recommended a great pizza place too.

We met our friends Justine and Fatos at a place called Taggia Di Arma. Fatos's "English" mother (long story just go with it) owns a little house in the hills, overlooking the Ligurian Sea. Fatos and J have restored the olive groves and now produce extra virgin olive oil (available to buy). Ah, it's lovely. You go up a windy, bendy dirt track of a road, which had hair pin twists and tested our clutch (some say clutch, others say driving ability) to the limit. Kara looked sceptical when Martin informed her that burning the clutch out every now and again is good for a car.

Then you come to the house. It's a one bedroom house with a shady veranda, shaded by kiwi vines growing over it. Kiwis grow like grapes do! The land has many terraces and two of the terraces were thoughtfully combined so that a gorgeous swimming pool could be put in. Ah. Bliss.

As well as the pleasure of two of our good friends being there, the house is also blessed by two feral cats; the pregnant one and the kitten. Tragically the kitten's mother got killed the other week, so this little 8 week old tyke is making his own way in the world. He had a habit of curling up in your crotch for a sleep. Merkin was the obvious name. (look it up, we're not making it that easy for you).

So we passed a lazy week in blazing heat, swimming in the pool, going to the beach, to a tiny hill side village, eating lovely food, watching a kitten, and finding novelty ways to drink vodka.

Things we learnt:

• being half Maltese does not improve your ability to cope in the heat. Kara almost died. It was too hot for her.
• Martin can tan! He is now a lovely brown colour and even has obvious white bits. The lesson is that if you spend a year slowly building up your sun exposure, even "pale and interesting" people can end up looking less sickly.
• we're suckers for a cute kitten. it had us eating out the palms of its paws.
• Fatos does nothing by halves. A drink of vodka lemonade means he gets the lemons from a neighbour, juices them up, makes his own lemon juice, then adds the vodka that has been in the freezer for two days until is is "perfect".
• If you look up "hot, sweaty work" in the dictionary, you may well find a picture of Martin and Fatos scrubbing down a (dry) swimming pool with sulphuric acid. Fun. But worth it for the beautiful blue pool glory that followed.
• Getting woken up in the middle of the night by a purring cat head-butting you is not adorable. It then loses it's appeal on subsequent repetitions.

Onwards to France

"The Tour De France is passing by our front door on Thursday" so we felt we had to get back to Rob and Em's earlier than planned to see it. In fact, we did the 7.5 hour drive from J and Fatos' to Rob and Em's in one day. It was pretty cool to drive along and see the mountains looming up. it was even better when we realised it was a good 10 degrees cooler than italy and Kara gained some energy back. We never thought we'd be so pleased to be back in a cooler climate!

Tomorrow is the Tour final... photos to come....