Dinner on the Hill.

We had a wonderful visit with Illaria, Gabriella's sister, and her family, who live high on a hillside overlooking Lucca, in a restored (or perhaps rather - adapted) farm building. The metamorphosis was nearly complete, and Nancy especially was quite inspired; " i could live here." The building remained from the outside a conventional farmhouse, but inside the layout had been transformed as some walls had been removed, creating large bedrooms out of small multiple rooms, creating a larger kitchen, and a combined dining and sitting room area, while retaining the typical huge overhead beams, plaster walls and tiled floors.
Illaria herself proved to be a wonderful chef, and for once we were not pressed to overeat; her husband Raffello was an extremely outgoing and talkative fellow who told us of month-long trip through the United State that he had made as a young man, which provokes many comparisons of things Americans vs. those European. The language was almost entirely italian (though something an English word or phrase was tossed out to us by way of confirmation of meaning), but either by habit or kind intention the pace of words was relatively easy for us to handle, and we found ourselves pressing the limits of our Italian abilities in response to the friendly atmosphere.
illaria and Raffello's two sons, about 12 and 18, had both had English studies at school, but were mostly too shy to try their skills in front of us, except the younger of the two, who would spontaneously burst out with 2 or 3 perfectly pronounced English phrases ("Good Evening, Good Morning, Good Night!") only to bury his head under a couch pillow or to run from the room afterwards.