When we first visited our house on the hill we asked Eleonora, the real
estate agent, if it often snowed in this valley (did you know the climate can
change a lot from one valley to another in Italy?). She told us it did snow a
little every year, but not much, and it was always gone in a few days.
So when we woke up on the 28th of November 2008 we were in for a big
shock: more than 50 cm of snow had fallen overnight. Of course we weren’t
prepared, we didn’t even have a snow shovel. I can assure you it was not easy
to go to the outdoor toilet that morning and I didn’t even think about taking an
(outdoor) shower.
Luckily we soon received a call that somebody would come to clean our
road and our builder promised the snow would not stop them either from going forward
with the renovation works.
We were lucky to have them, because it seemed like every time the snow
melted a bit, a new batch of snow fell out of the sky. We ended up being surrounded by a snowy fairytale
landscape for at least 2 months.
PS. Side note about road cleaning in Italy. The municipality cleans all the municipal roads, but not the private ones or those owned by consortia (groups of owners). For us this means that when it snows the road gets cleaned to a certain point by the municipality, and we have to do the rest ourselves or pay somebody to do this for us. As they’ve always been super supporting of us and our touristic activity (the only one in Merana) they have moved the point were the road becomes private to the border of our land, which means we have no road cleaning costs anymore and we’re never stuck on our hill.
Did you know our Agriturismo has 4 sunflowers and what does this mean?
For an agriturismo the classification goes from 1 to 5, similar to that of the "stars" for hotels: they will indicate the level of the accommodation based on the comfort and services provided to their customers.
Category 4 Sunflowers means : Agriturismo that harmoniously takes care of the comfort and the agricultural and naturalistic characterization of the accommodation, providing the guest with a high-level of services and lodghing in an excellent environmental context. ... See MoreSee Less