8/7/07: Tirrenia, Italy – Frutti Di Bosco

A pretty lazy day due to heat and Keen not feeling 100%. Cath and I went for a walk through the woods just before the heat. There are two parts to the woods. In one part, according to local rumour, escaped Albanian prisoners hide out and attack everyone who enters. In the other part, on the other side of the road, animals scamper freely and birds eat seeds out of your hand. We went into the latter part. We didn't see many animals, especially not the wild boar that the posters promised, and nothing ate out of our hands, but on the other hand, we didn't see any escaped Albanian prisoners and were not robbed, kidnapped, raped or made to sing the Albanian national anthem under pain of death. I'm a bit sceptical as to the truth in these rumours, by the way. But not knowing the Albanian national anthem, it was best to be on the safe side.

In the evening, we walked into Tirrenia town centre. Keean decided he only wanted to be pushed half the way and would have loved to crawl the rest pushing one of his toy cars. As this would have made the journey last an hour, we (that is his parents) carried him.

In the trees, many a cicada (Italian: cicala) chirruped. We don't really have cicadas in the UK. They sound like crickets, but in the US they act more like locusts and every few years descend en masse to carpet the streets with their carcasses.

There was a funfair in Tirrenia. We all went on the kiddie roller coaster. It was about as cramped and bumpy as an easyJet flight, and Keean decided very early on it was not his thing. In a few short months, he'll probably be screaming to get on them, but not just yet. The merry-go-round was more to his liking. We then found one of those nice sedate racing cars they have outside random places that move about for 50 cents. Keean loved just sitting in it, spinning the wheel like a pro, but when we put the money in and the thing started moving, it was a different story. This he didn't like. He's certainly a cheap baby, in this respect. However, after a few more minutes just sitting in the thing, we had to make room for paying customers.

On the way back, we stopped off for a drink and a delicious home-made ice cream. I had fruits of the forest (Frutti Di Bosco, who sounds like one of the girls from the TV show) and pistachio (Pistacchio, who sounds like a little wooden boy with a nut for a nose).

Our evening hot drink of choice in Italy soon became orzo. This is a hot barley drink which tastes remarkably like coffee but with zero caffeine. That's less than decaffeinated coffee, which does have some caffeine still. Obviously during the day we were on the coffee which is great in Italy, of course, but usually served way, way stronger.