Haven't been around for awhile!

I didn't realise I hadn't been here for so long, until a friend of mine suggested I update our blog. So here I am wondering what one of the many things I can talk about today. There is the couch exchange drama, the traffic accident we saw just the other day, the sheep herder with his flock right in the middle of the street, or the pizzaria just around the corner. Hmm...I really need to come back more often because I have so many stories I could share tumbling around in my head!

A few months ago I was taking H to school and when I turned onto the street the school is on there was a small traffic diversion in the form of about 50 fluffy sheep and their babies! Of course thier "human" herder was along side with his long walking stick and his trusty sheep dog at his heals. Not the usual Monday morning event for me to say the least! I had never seen sheep in the middle of a busy city street, where R is from it's normal to have to stop and wait while one or two cross the road but not what you would expect to see here. Everyday is a school day I suppose! So I waited patiently for the sheep to go to their new grazing spot and got H to school....only 15 minutes late! It was actually an amusing sight and I hadn't seen it again until just yesterday, this time on the street we live on and less the "human" herder. R was driving and we rounded the corner only to find sheep causing mayhem in the road. Cars were everywhere trying to avoid hitting them or their babies and there was very nearly an accident or two. Now I found this time around to be pretty strange as it was the sheep dog taking to them to a new grazing spot and no human was in sight. R said it was the dog revolting and he was moving the sheep to make his owner mad! The most strange sight of all of this was when a van stopped at the side of the road and the sheepdog actually ran over and barked at it as if he was telling "it" to move on...ya know protecting his pack and all that? I guess they got to where they were supposed to be going, I do wonder if the farmer figured out where that was though?

Just another fast one while I am here about the pizzaria around the corner. There are pizza shops everywhere and some are better than others but the real deal Italian pizza is nothing even remotely like what you get in the US or UK, even if it claims to be Italian. For a start, they are rectangular not round and they don't have tons of toppings crammed on. The pizza is made fresh and I mean fresh right from scratch and then they are cooked in a wood burning stove. You walk into the pizza shop and there on the counter is a selection of at least 5 pizzas with crowds of people waiting to buy a slice or 3. It is a constant pizza making process, as soon as one is out of the oven it's gone and another is put in. They all have a cheese and tomato base but no more than one or two types of topping. This can be anything from salame, ham, tomato, and even potato...yes potato, sounds strange but it is really good! Oh, and we have even seen sliced hotdogs with potato on a pizza...that is a little weird for me I have to admit. The slices are huge, sometimes it takes both hands to hold it and eat! There is also a big selection of freshly made calzones, and other side accompaniments like a potato croqeuttes stuffed with mozzarella...mmm, really yummy! We went bowling last night and decided to stop off at our local on the way home. R went in but there were no pizza's on the counter as it was close to closing time, so the guy asked what we wanted. He whipped us up a pizza in 5 minutes flat! It was a huge pizza, part of it had potato, part with spicy salame and the rest with ham. He sliced it up and gave R only what he asked for, 5 slices... and there was still half a pizza left! I am really going to miss "real" pizza when we have to leave Italy, I know we won't have any like it again and it will be hard to go back to the way we used to eating pizza.