an afternoon with lauro and maria.

after we had explored pisa, lucca and the devil's bridge, we headed to san pietro in campo to explore my great-grandfather's homestead. this is where the generation of pieronis were born and raised. in a very very small farming town. carl had been there before but like i said, it'd been since 73 since he'd been to italy. apparently things have changed! there was an extra road and the church had been renovated and so had the pieroni homestead! we stopped in front of the gate and saw a woman standing outside. carl decided to go say hello and see if it was indeed the former pieroni house since it looked so different.

in his italian, he explained who we were and then the woman, maria, and her husband, lauro, invited us in to look around! we did not go inside as they had not been expecting guests (obviously).



they bought the place in 84 and spent the next 5 years renovating the entire place.


i have no idea what carl is doing here, but lauro is listening and they were chatting away in italian most of the time.


wonder what the heck they were talking about! haha


this is the former chicken coop, now their winery!


they had never been a pool when my great-grandfather or the rest of the ancestors were growing up!


carl was probably showing where things or how things had originally been to my dad and lauro.




the vineyard!


i, of course, made friends with this big fluffy white kitty named memo. he was super friendly and kept following me around wanting to be loved.


memo and his mom, fragolina, which means strawberry in italian. i was quite proud of myself when maria was telling me his name b/c she couldn't remember the english version - and i had learned strawberry from eating gelato!



listening to lauro who was so nice and beyond cute! he had lived in england for 40ish years so he spoke very good english as well.


inside the winery area. i think he said his vines produce like 3500L of wine a year? i can't remember, but it was a lot!


lauro and his wife maria. not the best picture, but i didn't take any of these. most of them were taken by tonee. or my mom. not that i could have done better!


lauro was so nice that he invited us to join him and maria on their patio for some homemade wine which was wonderful! we ended up drinking several bottles.


and then maria brought out a couple of photo albums to show us the progression of their remodeling.


this was how the old farmhouse used to look. at some point, there were even animals that lived underneath the house! mom seemed to think the original structure had been built and lived in by pieronis since the 13 or 1400s.


and then, as they were talking, carl mentioned when he had last been there and when he was a kid, there had been a caretaker and her son that he had played with. and lauro said they still lived in town and would give them a call! this is my mom walking with carl and emma who is now in her 90s and nilo, the boy carl used to play with in the yard!


how cute is emma?! i love the look on her face of just love.


neither nilo nor emma spoke english so it was hard for us to communicate but carl's italian just got better and better the longer we were in italy.


emma is talking to my brother who understands nothing, but somehow they are able to semi-converse.


and this was their dog, thomas. they had rescued him from a breeder who was going to put him down b/c he is 7 and done being the sire to puppies. how sad is that?! so they rescued this adorable super friendly dog.


my sweet little kitty! meemo!

lauro and maria were so beyond nice and welcoming! they told us to come back anytime and that they loved having visitors. i decided that they would be wonderful grandparents. well, they are grandparents... but i mean, i can just envision how great they must be with their little grandkids. they were just cute. i wanted to make them mine!!