Had a couple more kind of lazy days – mostly sat around reading as Colin did little things out on the terrace. He’s sanded the hand rails and lower gate and painted them black – they look much better. Went with him to Marsciano and got a couple of little plants and a square pot to spruce the terrace up a bit more.

The ‘reclining nude’ statue in Marsciano still has her new hands and necklace, and is still holding a small globe – we stopped so I could take a photo in case they get stolen again.

Across the road from where Colin has to park in Papiano there’s a large plowed field that seems to have a resident cat – it’s a beautiful creamy-brown coloured little one and I imagine the field is full of mice or something because he’s always hunting in the field or the grass at the edge.

After getting the small plants in their pots and setting them on the stairs to the lower gate we tidied up and headed out for lunch.

We drove to the south shore of Lago Trasimeno and then went east to the village of Monte Buono where the restaurant ‘il Ristoro’ is – that’s where we stopped one time last October when Colin first came to the area to look at the house, and he’s been here once or twice since as well.

It was just as I remembered – you place your order either at a small window before you enter the restaurant, or go inside and crowd into a very small cafe-type room that has a coffee bar. You have to squeeze thru to the far end – it actually isn’t far, but takes a minute to get to because of the crowd – place your order, which you choose from the menu on the blackboard above – they give you a small pink piece of paper with a number on it and then you go and pick your table.

It was a lovely day so we chose to go outside. There were quite a few people there, both inside and outside – I was impressed by how busy it was. After a short wait one of the waitresses came out with placemats and cutlery calling ‘vinti siete, vinti siete’ – ‘27, 27’ – which was us. We waved her over and she just kind of dumped the placemats down in a pile – I set them out myself.

A short while later she arrived with the wine, then came our bruschetta, which was delicious. The restaurant has several resident cats – I think one is the mother and there’s 3 or 4 kittens that are all very cute. They scamper around the restaurant’s playground, and sneak past Mo when her back’s turned.

Our main courses arrived – we both got pasta. I chose the tagliatelle with meat sauce and it was just as good as when I got it last year, although I didn’t get the dish of parmesan cheese to sprinkle over it this time. The portion was larger than it looked and even though it was very delicious I wasn’t able to eat all of it so Mo lucked out.

When we were done rather than going straight back to Papiano we drove north along the east coast of the lake to the town of Passignano. When we were coming home from L’Eroica on Sunday we had left the highway and passed through the town – it had looked interesting so we wanted to visit it.

There was a fairly large parking area right by the lakeshore, and a lovely wide boardwalk that we followed west for quite a ways.

There are benches all over the place, and we passed through a small park that had some nice statues, and some kind of weird-looking ones.

Colin read on a plaque that the strange ones were done by a student of Picasso – that explained it.

We then wanted to stop for a quick drink – there are lots of bars across the road from the lake, as well as touristy souvenir shops. A big thing here seems to be hand-painted plates and little cups, etc.

The first bar we went into said they didn’t sell wine by the glass but only by the bottle so we continued on, turning down a small road away from the lake.

We found a really nice patio outside another bar and sat down- we eventually got our wine. After a nice little break we walked around and looked at a few of the shops – more boars, including some very cute little stuffed toy ones.

Upon leaving the town we got headed in the wrong direction on the highway, so had to take the next exit and get turned around.

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