Italy!

Villa Gnocchi - Our B and B in Santa Margarita

View from Our B and B

We love the Greek islands, but it is Italy that beckons to us with the sweetest voice. We love the people, the rolling, swelling hills, the food, the wine, the language...

We are now in Santa Fiora, having spent a night at Villa Gnocchi in Santa Margarita and a memorable dinner at Sigae, where the proprietor took us under his wing. After I said, “Che cosa mi consiglia?” he began to speak in perfect English with a London accent. Born in Santa Margarita, but educated in England, he brought plate after plate of delicious food. The Italians are more than happy to have you share each plate, affording you the opportunity to try many different dishes:spaghetti with shrimp, gnochhi with squid, veal with porcini mushrooms and (wait for it!) truffles in wine sauce.

Driving to Santa Fiora is like coming home to us. This is our third year at the Stone Cottage, and I think we know our way by heart now. It is something to leave the “autoroute”, with its countless tolls “gare de peage”, and turn on to the smaller roads wending their way through the countryside. Your mind slows down as you pass wineries, chateaus with driveways lined with Cyprus trees, small towns carved out of rocky hilltops, and fields filled with olive trees hundreds of years old.

We have learned to schedule our days around the openings and closings of the little shops in the village, so we stop at the Coop to get the basics for the Stone Cottage: wine, beer, coffee, milk, croissants for the morning, pasta, tomato sauce, bread, cheese and ham.

You put your mirrors in to get down the tiny path to the Stone Cottage. We know the way by heart now, but the first time we came, a helpful young man drove us down, past the peschera, past the narrow streets lined with houses leaning over the road, through impossible turns where one must back up if two cars meet, ever down, trusting that your brakes won't fail until we arrive outside our home for the next few weeks.