Day: 13, Tree: 4

So we come to the end of our first week in Praiano. It's been a quiet and relatively relaxing week, living and working somewhat like locals. Ok, maybe not, unless the locals run IT companies and do remote work to another country, but you get the idea. Just in case anyone missed it, here again is the arduous office environment I've had to contend with this week:


Better get the tree out of the way and get on to more pleasant things: the other night something that G ate disagreed with her badly. This would have been awkward enough, but Tara also chose that night (probably picking up on the bad vibes, man) to decide to forget how to sleep. She also felt compelled to scream like the demons of hades for most of the night, as an alternative. It's times like these that you quickly realise that - as a substitute for Mum - Dad is on a par with an exotic tropical disease, when child is hungry and distraught. So, a fun time was had by all, but little if any sleep.

The rest of the week was far more tranquil and pleasant. Most days were spent with me working remotely - and surprisingly productively - either inside or out on the terrace (my mobile broadband reception was theoretically better outside, although in practice it appears to be universally slow - 3.6Mb/s my a***..). Meanwhile G tended to T and occasionally popped out to the village to get supplies for lunch or dinner.

Coming from cosmopolitan inner city South Melbourne and the world of online grocery shopping, I look at the previous sentence and in my mind it roughly equates to 'G popped out to discover fire'. Bizarre but very quaint, especially juxtaposed with me using wireless 3G broadband technology to interact with clients and colleagues 12,000km away (this is a guess and I'm too lazy to look it up, don't mail me).

We've done well catering-wise. We brought down a wild boar with arrow and throwing axe and supped on its hearty flesh with.... Ok, so we bought local proscuitto and formaggio and made awesome sandwiches with the fresh italian pane from the local stores, but it was equally satisfying. Only eaten out 3 times in the week, which is pretty good for us.

Someone asked for a coffee update, and surprisingly there is little to report. Being a decent walk from the main parts of Praiano (Vettica and Praia) there's no popping out for a quick coffee at a bar as I'd imagined. Coffee most days is made italian home-style in a moka pot on the stove, but it's still pretty good. One restaurant in town that we've been to twice makes extremely good coffee, the one bar we've tried was very disappointing. Full of Americans and clearly making tourist coffee.

We just got back from dinner out at the above mentioned restaurant, which has a lovely terrace right near the moderately famous church in Praiano, with fantastic views to Positano. The photo doesn't do it justice but here's basically what we looked upon while dining (although it appeared less tilted at the time):



The blob of lights is Positano, looks a little more impressive life-size. And on the walk (climb) home, the view back to Positano and the village church was also pretty cool:





So that's about it for a brief summary of our first week. Tomorrow we move houses to Casa Ivetta, which is down on the Piazza from where we are in Casa Costantina. We'll miss the huge terrace and the tranquility of being away from the road, but Casa Ivetta looks like it will be lovely in its own way as well. Ciao for now!