I needed to spend some quality time in Italy viewing all the wonderful accommodation Passion for Italy works with and their charming owners so I had to take advantage of our two months summer school holidays. Being such a long flight for Australians it is madness to go for a short time as it takes a week to recover from jet lag…..it was November and I was not looking forward to a long hot summer with children bored and trying to work...
Being a mother and a business owner is difficult with three months school holidays a year, trying to give both the attention they need so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone!! Take the children and work in Italy!! If I had had a year to plan, I would probably never have done it but as I only had three weeks to decide and get passports for the children, it was all systems go. Book the flights, hire car, an apartment in Rome, a villa in Tuscany and off we go.
I had the offer of a fabulous large six bedroom villa in a little village in Chianti for free for the whole two months from my wonderful friend Sandra. So this was a major motivating factor to have a base to work from like I do in my office here. However the Italian winter was to prove formidable with snow, winds and rain and we should have left our lightweight acrylic Australian jumpers at home as they proved to be useless. Only cashmere wool is warm in snow as we were to find out!! I will endeavour in to tell you about our winter holiday in Italy over the coming weeks. As you will find out.. it was the experience of a lifetime.