Wednesday, July 13, 2011. We arrived in Follonica around 3 p.m. and met my friend Francesco at the station. A short ride, about 10 KM, and we pull up to his home in the Tuscan mountain-side overlooking Follonica. It's a remote, quiet and beautiful setting. Like me, Francesco is an amateur astronomer and has several interesting telescopes. We have a number of other interests in common, including electronics, an old camera collection and technology in general.

Francesco's far covers quite a bit of acerage -- although I'm sure sure how much. But he does have an olive tree orchard with about 200 trees. The olives are harvested yearly and made in olive oil at a local "refinery". Francesco keeps some and sells the rest. He also has a substantial solar-power system that provides him with much of his electrical needs. The excess is sold to the city. Francesco tells me that his energy use is quite low and he will actually make some income from the effort. Pretty neat.

After a delightful dinner, we went into the small village Gavarrano on the top of the hill. The majority of the buildings are several hundred years old and the streets are narrow and winding. There is a working mine in the side of the hill that provides the area with income from pyrite. We got back to Francesco's placed around 10:30 p.m. and after an interesting discussion about some communications equipment he bought in the U.S., we hit the sack around 11:30 or so

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Tomorrow we have train tickets for Pisa, so keep tuned..... More to come.