Saturday is the free day at Art Toscana when most of our guests, who come on our painting holidays in Italy, choose to go to Lucca. I go into Barga to buy the fruit and vegetables. Not all of our guests go to Lucca as some prefer to stay at Val di Pozza to relax and paint, or just hang out around the pool. Sometimes our guests pop into Barga to have lunch and visit the wonderful cathedral at the summit of the town with the most beautiful views across the Apuan Alps.
I love going to the market on Saturday to choose the fruit at Massimo’s fruit and Vegetable stall. Apart from the usual strawberries, apricots, peaches and nectarines, Massimo selects the melons which will be perfect for melon and Parma ham for the first Art Toscana meal. For pizza night Massimo suggests some enormous deep red cherries and then he throws in a large bunch of basil, the aroma of which hits you as he puts it into the fruit crate. If cherries are out of season, we have water melon. Even Massimo struggles to lift the enormous water melon and steady it ready to cut in half with the longest knife you have ever seen. Then he proceeds to cut one of the halves into a quarter for the guests who come on our art holidays in Italy. A quarter of a water melon is far too much but it’s never wasted because our Art Toscana guests like to eat it at breakfast time, coffee time, tea time, in fact, at any time. Delicious sweet water melon; you can’t beat it on a beautiful summer day in Italy.
