La Nostra Macchina Nuova... Our New Car!

We bought this 2009 V.W. Jetta Wagon with the clean diesel engine with the intention of shipping the car to Italy in the next year or two. This is what she looks like!

More videos from Roma!

Here's a few more short videos of Rome from our trip last summer. I have alot more videos of Rome to share, so I will be posting them soon! We will be spending 2 days in Rome at the end of August, so I'm really looking forward to being there at that time. Most of the city will be on vacation spending time on the coasts, so it's a great time if you love Rome to venture around with fewer people to bump into along the way. I hope you get a real feel for the city thru these videos! Ciao!

Some videos of Rome

These are a few of the videos we shot at the end of our summer vacation last year. I'll be posting more videos of Rome in the next day or two. I hope you enjoy these of ROMA!

Lago di Bilancino

These videos were taken on a day trip we made with our neighbor, Roberto. Lake (Lago) Bilancino is in the Mugello valley and is about a 15 minute drive from our house in Tuscany. It had just opened to the public when we made this visit as it had been in litigation for several years. It was formed by a man made dam of the Sieve river which flows into the Arno river. A dam was built across the Sieve river to control the Arno and the city of Florence in general. Florence flooded in the 60s with the water rising several feet and doing alot of damage to the city.

We hope you enjoy these videos and are able to appreciate the true beauty of the Mugello valley.

The day water was found to drill a well...

On the day that we had our land tested to see if water could be found, we drove to Emila Romania to see a friend, Monia, who we met in Las Vegas. She was working for Mario Batali's Enoteca San Marco in the Venetian Hotel. She's from a small town called Poretta Terme and we had a fabulous lunch there!

After our visit we drove back home and met with Dario, the contractor, who organized all the work that was to be done on our house. It was a special day and here's some video and pictures from that day lasy summer.

More pictures of November 2008 construction

The foto of the stake with the rocks around it was the spot where (Acqua Dio!) The Water God, the man who came to our property with divining rods and found water on our land, told me was the best spot in which to drill for water. Our neighbor, Piero, trimmed our trees so the macchina ( the drilling machine), could get thru the trees and be able to come onto our property. Dario, the contractor, organized the muratore, the masons, to work on the chimney while the well was being drilled. Like I said in the earlier post, we were extremely happy with the work done on our house and actually became good friends with several of the workers. I'll post some videos in the next post!

Pictures of Work Done on Our Tuscan Home!

These are photos taken by our contractor, Dario, as the work was being done on our house in Tuscany. We had to drill a new well as the existing one just wasn't producing enough water. We shared the old well with 3 other families and it just didn't replentish our holding tanks and we're very fortunate that we had water beneath our property. The 2nd job we had done was putting in a new chimney with a fan system to heat the house with the fireplace. We were extremely blessed that both jobs were done exceptionally well. I'll post again with more of the pics along with some of the videos. Ciao!