Beyond the Yalla Dog

31.11.11

At the end of a very happy year filled with the pleasure of  meeting many new people and making new friends in Florence and the UK, I would like to say thanks for the successful collaboration with new experts in their field who have provided activities in Florence in addition to the my longstanding ( or should that be long suffering? ) friends who have continued to support me trying to start a luxury holiday business during a global financial crisis!

To start with the new activities –  Thanks go to:-

Alan Lawson for 2 sessions of oil painting- and a 2 days of watercolour up at the Hotel Villa le Rondini. It has been an inspiration just to watch him at work and we all learned a huge amount from his tuition.

Scott and I painting with Alan Lawson

And thanks also to Francesca Reale for providing the extraordinary view over Florence for us to paint – and to singer Sandro Romano for introducing me to her and providing the musical entertainment at my parties for the past 4 years! I do hope we have plenty more of these painting classes up at the hotel in 2012.

Scott and Alan and the view

Thanks also Riccardo Luci and all the team at Alberto Cozzi for paper marbling lessons and patience with my small group size – I do hope we brought you extra business through all the people who came in to watch the process.

It has been a great privilege  to work with Dr Katie Campbell and listen to her inspirational explanations about Italian gardens and how they were reinvented in the late 19th /early 20th Century by the Anglo-American Exiles who chose Florence as their new home.

The gardens themselves have also been a delight to see and visit in spring and summer plumage! Thanks also to Filipppo Fattori and his team for driving us to all these  places for garden and wine tasting tours. Shown below is part of our first garden tour group who visited Iris Origo’s La Foce in May.

Katie and group at La Foce

Thanks also to Diane Venturini for some great photos of that day!

La Foce

Further thanks to Diane and Andrea for suggesting that I work with their father when I have guests who need a good meal – I remembered Andrea’s father Antonio, bringing us a mouth-wateringly delicious frittata made with fresh vegetables from his garden which he cooked up and brought back to one of our earlier watercolour painting classes . Lured back from retirement he certainly hasn’t lost his touch and he is once again running one of the best restaurants in Florence – Trattoria San Lorenzo is already ranked in the top 25  in the City and only opened in May 2011!

Other restaurants that have looked after and amused my guests include Santo Bevitore, where ace waiter Michel delights us in almost every language we try to catch him out with, and Ristorante di Dino where Lesley and her family look after us all – especially young Barnie the pomeranian – so well!

Rensa and Barnie enjoy a pre-tidbit cuddle!

And a huge vote of thanks also to lovely Lisa Banchieri who has  provided inspirational cookery classes in Florence at Amor di Vino - now renamed Pinocchio restaurant. Thanks also to Paulo Zoppi for letting us use his facilities.

Paulo with Lisa and Cookery group May 2011

Lisa has also come over to London twice to share her secrets of Tuscan Cookery with some friends , and you only need to look at the commnets on my various posts to see what an inspirational job she does!  I hope to see some of them in Florence as well in forthcoming years and in this respect my special thanks to Kay Lundy who has brought so many of her friends , and her lovely daughter Harriet , to my classes this year and acted as a great advocate through Facebook.

Kay and her friends also introduced me to The Re-invention Diva - enthusiastic on-line magaizine journalist Sharon Simpson, who enabled me to share my first ever Podcast- a fascinating experience – and my thanks to Sharon for that.

With all these new contacts I don’t want to forget old friends who have been in this act from the beginning – especially watercolour portraitist  Glynis Barnes Mellish for her regular watercolour workshops – including our recent one in October.

Thanks also to Franz and Isle Moser for producing the Opera at St Mark’s that so many of my customers have enjoyed over the past 4 years. It is so marvellous to have an evening cultural activity so close to home that is unfailingly appreciated by the audience – and the productions are just getting better and better! Long may they hold their position as No 1 on Trip Advisor for “Things to do in Florence”  - preferably through me of course!!

Franz explaining the plot of the Opera

Love and thanks to Debs Gray for letting us use her kitchen and spread pasta flour over her lovely house in December and for all the friends that she encouraged to join us there – and for generously lubricating the evening so liberally.

My accountant Haseeb Hassan of Rocliffe Accounting – who is never failingly patient when I call and ask how to fill in my on-line expenses whenever i do them ( not often enough!) and even brought me back a lovely – and very useful- pasmina from his recent trip home to Pakistan.

Thanks for the support of all the members of our local Book Club who come to my UK cooking classes and even regularly come to the painting classes and party that I hold in Florence every October despite the fact that my reading list - whilst still extensive – seems to have been devoted exclusively to a particular part of Tuscany for the past three years!

Final special thanks to Tina Bycoski founder of BBT Webmasters, who adapted my website to this new magazine formula so I have been able to post Blogs and send Tweets and generally maximise my audience through social media such as Linked-IN, Twitter and of course Facebook.

Below Tina at Beaded Lily - where we did bead and bracelet making for the first time during her visit in July.

All of my social media activity has increased my visitor traffic by an incredible 900% since we went live – on-time and under budget in May 2011. If you are looking for someone to develop or rework your website at a reasonable price – look no further – but hopefully you won’t have to make her work overnight as I did this year when fundamentalists hacked into my site and converted the home page to a row of brandished scimitars – Not funny!

I know there are lots of people I also need to mention and i will update this to include them – but now I have to go and paint my face so I don’t disgrace my long-suffering and super tolerant husband at the New Year’s Eve party tonight. …multiple thanks have to go to him for letting me do this venture so far away from home in the first place….!!

Buon Nuovo Anno a Tutti – Tanti auguri e tanti baci per 2012 xxxx