It seems like every town of any size at all in Italy (so not lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea) has a shopping street -- or a whole area of streets -- lined with high-end international luxury goods stores. Firenze does, Siena does, even Pietrasanta does. There are always the same things -- couture ladies fashions, luxury handbags, pricey eyeglasses and even pricier shoes, and jewelry, lots and lots of jewelry.

In Siena, Jonathan and I strolled this street, holding hands and not even pausing to window shop. We are unmoved by luxury goods, it seems. Probably because of our great moral purity.

But we went nuts when we ran across the shop for the Consorzio Agrario di Siena -- basically, the local farmers' co-op. Local cheeses! Local pastries! Local wines and liqueurs and freshly made bread and pasta! Herb-infused olive oils and spice blends and fruit (fresh and dried) and veggies (fresh and dried) and salami and sausage and prosciutto in profusion. 

We went back twice and spent money like very drunken, very hungry sailors. 

We laughed about it. It turns out that (shockingly) we have no moral purity at all, but only very great appetites. "Well," we said to each other, "we guess we know who we are."

But it was good to be back home again, even though we either don't have or haven't yet found such a wondrous store here in Pietrasanta among the handbags and the jewelry. I intensely love the view at night from our windows of the two-and-a-half strings of Christmas lights stretched above the road outside the pub just below us and then, further down on the plain, all the coastal lights twinkling and glowing and then beyond that the velvet darkness of the sea.

"It's funny," I said to Jonathan. "I find the lights so incredibly beautiful, but the only way I can describe them is to say that they look like jewels. But I don't actually care about jewelry at all."

"No," he said. "The only jewels you care about are metaphorical ones." (Things like this are the reason I love Jonathan.)

Mimmo came by and brought us two bottles of the very precious new olive oil made from the local olive trees. I feel like I have been given gold, only better.