01 January 2007 - 15 January 2007
We spent a quiet New Years Eve at home with a few glasses of wine, etc. and at midnight we went out onto the balcony and watched the 100's of fireworks being let of in the valley below us and in the surrounding hills. That night and the following night were incredibly windy with windows and shutters noisily rattling. A much colder day then followed with sleet where we are but with more snow falling on the nearby mountains which now make a beautiful snowy backdrop to the local scenery. Our estate agent, Claudio, tells us that the ski lift on Mount Catria has now been fixed and should be in service this Winter. The lift is around a half-hour's drive from home so once the mountains get more snow we're hoping to get up there and give it a go.
We spent the last week in England to celebrate Fliss's mum's 80th birthday. Ryanair came up trumps again with our return flights to Liverpool costing 2 cents each plus taxes. Many thanks to Dave and Mary for organising the party and our hotel accomodation and for putting us up for a few nights. We had a great time in-spite of the English weather which was wet and windy for much of the time. We returned to temperatures of up to 19 degrees in the shade with blue skies and a gentle southerly breeze - stop me if I'm making you feel jealous here!!!
16 January 2007 - 31 January 2007
Kate had a birthday so we now have two teenagers in the house. She had a great party for thirteen school-friends in the Dancehall after we spent several hours cleaning it out.
Our Italian language lessons have restarted after Christmas. As well as continuing with masculine, feminine and plural nouns we've now progressed to verb structure commencing with to have and to be. Quite difficult and we're only learning the present tense so far. We have also now progressed to other verbs and to the indefinite article.
Well, Winter finally caught up with us. On Saturday 20th January temperatures peaked at 20 degrees. By the following Thursday we saw only 4 degrees and on the Friday, 2 degrees and heavy snow. No pictures though as the snowfall didn't stop until after dark and had all but melted by the following morning. Temperatures now back up to a more respectable 12 - 14 degrees. Plenty of snow on the mountains now but still not enough for skiing.
Having got our house deeds back from the Notary, we have now been able to register with the Comune. This proved to be relatively simple with only one form to fill-out and the provision of various forms of identification. Once we have confirmation from the Comune; (up to a month) that our registration is accepted then we can apply for planning permission.
We have now encountered our first problem; We cannot get insurance for our van. Our UK insurer won't renew our insurance because we live in Italy. Italian insurers won't insure us because the van isn't registered here. We can't register it in Italy until we have a Permesso Di Soggiorno (permission to stay) from the Police which could take a month or more. Our insurance expired on 1 February so a very kind friend has lent us a car for a week or so during which time we will have to buy another car (Italian registered) which we'll keep until we manage to register the van. All a bit of a pain and probably an issue which we would have expected except that we were told by our UK insurer that their sister company in Milan would insure us with UK plates - they won't.
| 
