Doug Anderson is excited to be in Pergine Valdarno, our go-to spot in Tuscany.  Here is what he posted:

“Dale and I were sent on a food gathering expedition after our arrival at Pergine Valdarno. Due to the late hour, all the shops were closed so we returned to our villa only to find the door closed and locked. Being a resourceful guy, Dale said “no problemo, I’ll just pitch euro coins 3 STORIES up at the window to get their attention”. Around 20 euros later we are getting nowhere. I suggested hoisting Dale over the 8’ wall into the garden on hopes of the back door still being open. Dale reminded me of his two previous back surgeries and suggested we reverse roles. Ok! Upon hitting the ground on the other side, and once the ensuing hernia was under control I entered and let Dale in. I’ll let Dale finish this little tale.”

Doug and I couldn’t figure out where the ladies could possibly be inside the Villa Fracassini.  It was dark in all areas upstairs except the area where Lynda’s and my bedroom is.  I was pitching coins off of the two windows of our bedroom area from the town square, trying to draw their attention to our plight of being locked out.  Despite bouncing coin after coin off of the windows, no familiar faces came to look out the window to see what the commotion was about.  Doug and I tried ringing the door bell but despite a constant ring for a minute or two, there was no movement from the inside. I asked Doug if he had his phone with him as I had left mine inside the place.  He did and we decided to text the ladies so they would come downstairs and let us in.  He sent the text and we waited.  That was a pointless exercise because we could hear both Barb and Lynda’s phones alert with the new text on the downstairs dining room table just outside the door we were standing.

Where could they possibly be we asked ourselves as I continued to bounce coins off the windows upstairs.  They both can’t possibly be going to the bathroom for the past 15 minutes.  Are they sitting in the dark?  There is only one area that is lit and that is where we’ve been bouncing coins off the windows for the past 15 minutes.  This is a quiet little town and neither one of us wanted to start shouting to the ladies inside and break the decorum of this lovely place.  Finally Doug suggested one of us try and climb the wall around the back yard that bordered along the town entrance.  As I boosted Doug over the wall and he disappeared on the other side with a loud thump and an oomph, I looked up to see an elderly woman walking by watching me with a curious look on her face.  In my broken Italian/mostly Spanish language, I told her we were locked out and our wives were inside.  She smiled and nodded and just kept walking.  Probably thinking about these crazy Americans.

When Doug reached the inside and let me in, I left him recovering from his recent plummet, and I headed for the elevator to go upstairs to find our missing wives.  Some people might’ve said I was hot, but the outside evening air where we had been standing for a while had been cool.  Anyway, I came around the corner to the area where Doug and I had been pitching coins off the windows and I was greeted with smiles from both ladies standing in front of the two windows we’d been pitching coins at.

Their smiles quickly left their faces as I, in a perhaps not so delicate fashion, demanded to know why they left us outside and didn’t respond to our apparent feeble attempts at getting their attention.  We had no idea they told me.  That sort of an answer would not do.  What about all the coins that we pitched at these windows, as I opened each window and retrieved the hundreds of coins we’d tossed up from the window sills.  Why didn’t you come to the windows and look?  “Well, I guess we did hear some clicking, but we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.  We adjusted some heat controls and then the clicking stopped so we decided we must have fixed it!”  As the three of us rode down the elevator to check up on Doug’s recent injuries, our two lovely brides were by now doubled up laughing so hard at the situation that they couldn’t even walk off the elevator.  That sort of laughter is contagious.  The four of us stood there belly laughing for the next 4-5 minutes.  Laughter is such a great tool to bring the appropriate perspective.  All of us now had that perspective and after chuckling for another few minutes, decided that we should head down to the local cantina for some evening nourishment.  What a lovely place we’re in.