Cielo Chiaro Vistas, Part 2

Now, I wanted to put up a few more pics of Cielo Chiaro, our house here in San Marino (which isn’t even really a cluster of houses, but a loose designation for a rural neighborhood on the top of a hill), but I don’t want it to seem like I’m saying “nah-nah-nah, look at our Italian house.” Really, I just want my mom (and Nat’s mom) to realize that we’re not in a complete Italian remote ruralness, and that we do have a charming house, with running water, and some grounds to walk the hounds on in the morning. With that, here’s a look at the hounds (that’s Sookie and Rory, if you’ve forgotten) regular hang out space, which is a big, about twenty-five yard-square fenced-in area (Andrew and Marianne put up a new fence before we got here) that they run around (you can see them barely in this pic):

Out the back gate of Sookie and Rory’s yard you can see a view (this is a long view) of the pool (sadly closed, but we walk around it every day), and the long yard, and a little of the top yard (notice the many olive trees):

Beneath the pool is another yard, and the little house, which used to be a pig shed (really), but now is almost rentable and a really sweet little one-bedroom number with new fixtures (you can see it through the trees here):

Back up at the house, here’s a view through one of the front windows into the dining room and living room (you can’t really see the complete living room area, but I liked the view through the window):

In the living room, we have a little wood-burning stove, which we’ve utilized almost every night since mid-October. It reminds me a lot of growing up on old farmhouses back in Kansas (buying old farmhouses seemed to be the family addiction for a few years), when sometimes during ice storms electricity would go out, and we’d only have the wood-burning stove for heat. Here, our electricity is fine, but expensive, and the stove is so warm and homey:

All that fire can make you thirsty though, which is why it’s nice we have a full, handy, cute, kitchen close by:

Of course, the kitchen is also necessary for all those Cielo Chiaro specials we’ve been cooking up.

PS: Want to stay in Cielo Chiaro your-own-self (after we've gone, that is)? Check out the Cielo Chiaro page on the Amici Villas site.