Living Conditions- My room is small, but it is mine and at any point I can close the door and have all the privacy I want, however along with it (and my private bathroom) comes a very, very high standard of cleanliness. Liz, I take back every bad thing I ever said about your cleaning demands. They were child's play compared to what Caterina wants! I am expected to make my bed (in a very specific way, which I did not know about or do correctly the first morning), vacuum the rug on my floor, and mop the brick floor of my bedroom and bathroom EVERY DAY! The obsession with cleanliness does not stop there, but that is where my contribution ends (for the most part... I help with dishes during meal times and with general tidying up around the house). The family itself does not clean or do any amount of physical work whatsoever. There is a Romanian couple living here that cooks three meals a day and cleans constantly. Another lady works only in the mornings to help clean, but she does not live here. I think that the entire house is vacuumed/mopped/dusted everyday (except for the unused rooms, more on that in a second). There is a window in my room that is usually open that has a spectacular view of the courtyard area of the house. Speaking of the “house,” it is more like a castle! It has been in this family for many years (since 1820's) and is frequented by tourists daily, but they only look from the outside and at the vineyard, they never come in. I estimate the number of rooms to be somewhere between 15 and 20. The tour went something like “Here is another room we don't use. And another. Follow me. And another and another..” for several minutes. One room had many many animal heads on the wall and animal skins everywhere. Later, I asked Alessandro about them and he said that his uncle was the hunter, and that he only shoots annoying birds from the window of his office (he is quite funny). Every room was elaborately decorated and had old and expensive artwork of the de Renzis Sonnino family. The meals so far have been terrific. All meals are brought to us on serving trays using fine crystal and silver. Several plates are used for entrees, sides and fruit, as well as a glass for wine and another for water. Lunch is something like a meat or fish dish and steamed vegetables with fruit and wine for dessert. The dinners so far have been stereotypical italian meals, yet homemade and scrumptious. The first night was pizza and last night was a vegetarian eggplant parmesean. All of it has been excellently prepared, though I am fairly sure that at the end of each meal Alessandro calls the Romanian couple in to tell them exactly what he didn't like about it (I am guessing about this, due to my inability to understand anything anyone is saying unless they are speaking directly to me, in which case they use english. Most of the time they have explosive italian yelling matches against each other while I sit quietly chewing my food and pretending to watch italian TV). Dessert is always fruit, usually fresh peaches and/or grapes from the vineyard, which are very sweet and delicious but have seeds which only seem to bother me. The house is very very old. There are secret rooms and cubby holes everywhere, the paint is peeling in places, and it appears to have three layers of tile roof but I could be wrong. Dad- they definitely could use your services. There is a clock tower which chimes every 30 minutes. The tower is the oldest part of the house, I was told it was built in the middle ages.

The view from my window:


My room:


The clock tower:


View of the front of the house from the courtyard area (Top middle window is mine):


Two pictures of the kitchen:



Downtown Montespertoli: