Current location:	Tuscany
Current mood:	content

La Dolce Vita
As was the first time, Tuscany is a multi-sensory experience.

The work is not exactly scintillating, I'm basically a waitress/ kitchen hand. But even when I'm on breakfast shift I get to set the table looking out over that amazing view of the Tuscan hills. On the mornings I work I put on a couple of pots of fresh coffee to brew before popping up the to the bakery and walking back with an arm full of hot, freshly baked bread with the morning sun warming my back.

For the lunch shift I mostly help with food prep. I don't have to shop or decide what I'm going to eat or cook or make any decisions. The cook just says 'chop this, peel this, dice that'. I am surrounded by luscious food smells and sights - plump red, juicy tomatoes, fresh fragrant green sweet basil, round ripe nectarines that are such luscious reds and yellows I just want to paint them before I eat them. At lunch time we eat colourful buffets of fresh salads, crusty bread and olive oil and at night a three course meal consisting of pasta and home made pesto or tangy cold gazpacho soup followed by warming chickpea curry or creamy spinach and ricotta lasagna (I could go on), all rounded off with dessert of fresh fruit, or baked apples or lemon tart or . . . and a couple of glasses of cold, crisp white wine.

After work I usually head up to the local bar with the other kitchen helpers and sit out side and people watch and play cards and eat gelato or drink prosecco (a light, bubbly Italian white wine). When I get home I open my bed room windows and spend several minutes gazing up at the starry night sky and twinkling lights of distant villages, listening to the cicadas chirp and watch the soft shadows of feeding bats flit past my window, and breath in the cool, clean evening air (where's my mobile phone with a bat detector!).

Since getting back to Tuscany I am taking life at a slower, more relaxed pace. What is there to rush for? The sun is usually shinning and warm, the food delicious and plentiful and views of the surrounding country side continually stunning.

I am taking the time to enjoying the simple things in life. Sheets dried in the warm sun shine for example smell different from ones dried inside over radiators. Sun dried sheets somehow smell fresher and cleaner, like the sunshine has infused into them. One of life's small pleasures is having a nice cool shower, putting on clean PJ's and getting into a lovely clean, freshly made up bed with fresh smelling sun dried sheets :)

Ciao
Sarah