Leaving l'Aperegina

Our last two days with our Abruzzo hosts were spent making 108 jars of jam, mostly grape.

We went to a real live Italian vineyard to collect the grapes!

 Making the grape jam was much more complicated than the other jams because Marino really wanted to keep the entire grape except the tiny seeds. The only real way to do that is to remove the seeds by hand, but we started out with 40 kilograms of grapes, so he had to compromise with us, and we only did about a fistful of grape skins in each batch.

So now, our hands and mouths stained purple, we leave Marino and Elide. The number of days that we stayed with them was reduced from what we had originally hoped for because they are going on their own trip around northern Italy. We’re using it as a good excuse to go to a couple of extra Umbrian cities during our week of travel between host families. It is sad to leave these guys, though. They were very good to us!

Goodbye, Marino & Elide!