Thursday, May 13—On the Road Again

Last night we did laundry and let it dry overnight and this morning, as we took a walk in our “neighborhood.” The sun was out today, for a change, and it was a beautiful spring morning to walk, enjoy the thick vegetation of Tuscany, listen to the birds sing and smell the blossoms. After our clothes were dry we packed what we would need for a long weekend in the southern part of Tuscany.

We stopped in Camaiore and picked up some bread, meat, cheese and a bottle of Coke Zero for lunch in a park in town, before hitting the road for San Gimignano. Our plan was to spend the night there, then go on to Siena tomorrow for the weekend, and on Sunday go to Montelpuchiano. We wound our way through the Tuscan countryside and in about two hours arrived at San Gimignano without incident late this afternoon, even though for some reason our GPS is not working. Bev gets the award for navigator extraordinaire. Driving in Italy for an American is definitely a two-person job!

As is typical of a lot of old Italian cities, we had to park our car in a lot outside the city wall and then walk into the city centro. We walked around the old part of San Gimignano to get the “lay of the land,” and because it was Thursday, it was market day here. There were a lot of people milling around, and a lot of them were tourists. We heard Americans from time to time, but most tourists seemed to be Italians. We consulted Rick Steves for a decent place to stay. We weren't looking for anything elaborate; just something clean and modest, especially since we were only staying one night here. Following a tip from Rick, we went into a tobacco shop and asked about a room. It was about six o'clock in the evening. The woman we talked to, Vanna, was very nice, spoke good English and told us they had one double room left for just tonight and that it was a “suite” that they usually ask 120 euro for, but she offered it to us for 90euro. Rick's book had said that her doubles went for 80 euro a night, and we told her that. She said that she had no more double rooms left, and this suite was her only room for tonight. We hesitated and she threw in breakfast, for 5 euro each; we hesitate a couple seconds more and she came down to 90 euro and Bev said we'd take it. She then took us to our room and it was beautiful—clean, spacious and it had a beautiful bathroom, shower and jacuzzi tub down some stairs from the bedroom, but within the suite. Vanna then drove us to our car so we could get our luggage, and brought us back and dropped us off at the room, gave us several recommendations for dinner, and we said goodnight to her. Rick Steves had commented in his book that San Gimignano is a little touristy and tacky during the day, with hoardes of tourists coming from buses and otherwise to hit the tourist traps that are unmistakably here. But he said he finds the evenings here to be charming, so we went to dinner and walked around a bit.

It was my brother Terry's birthday, so I called him to wish him happy birthday, and we went to bed in our very nice room in San Gimignano. Tomorrow we plan to briefly tour the local civic museum before heading out for Siena late in the morning.

Wednesday, May 12—Leaving Cinque Terre

The clouds still hung over Vernazza today as we woke and walked down the hill to Vernazza's main road, to enjoy our second consecutive breakfast at La Pirata, which consisted of Americano coffee, fresh-squeezed juice from blood oranges, and the flakiest pastries known to man. We walked back up the hill to get our things together in our backpack and pay for our lodging. We met a nice retired couple from Massachusetts and visited with them and Guili for awhile, then said our goodbyes and “Gracies” to Guili, got back in our Fiat Panda, and headed South toward our “beach house.” By the time we left, wouldn't you know the sun was out, the waters in the sea were calm for the first time since we'd been here, and it was gorgeous. If the hiking trains had been open, we would've stayed another day. But the trails were still closed and would probably not open for several days, to allow time for cleaning up falling rock and let things dry out. So we decided to keep to our own schedule and go back to the house, to re-group and get ready to head to the southern part of Tuscan tomorrow.

On the way back south, we decided to stop at Porto Venere, where ferry boats come and go from the Cinque Terre. We grabbed a quick lunch there. Since the weather was sunny and fabulous by the time we got there, we decided to take a 40-minute boat tour of three nearby islands, and that was really nice! It was so nice to see and feel the sun again! We then got on the autostrade, Italy's interstate highway, and made our way back to the house via Camairore. I wanted to get a haircut, and there was a barber shop on the main drag with two veteran barbers. I put my trust in the one who was available, and got a little nervous when he started out with the electric sheers. By the time he was done, I had a nice, if not short, haircut.

We stopped at our favorite pizzeria for some "take away" pizza on the way back to the house. While waiting for our pizza, we noticed photos of the owner on the wall, who was waiting on us, with several of his buddies, sitting aboard Harleys. He doesn't speak much better English than we speak Italian, so as Bev and I were heading to the door, I pointed at the pictures and said, “Do you know Sturgis?” His face lit up like a Christmas tree and he nodded and tried to say something. Then he quickly gave up, took out a pen and wrote on a napkin, “2011” and handed it to me with a championship smile on his face. I said, “You are going to Sturgis in 2011?” He nodded and smiled, and I held up 5 fingers and said, “We live about 5 hours from Sturgis.” By this time his early-20-something son was in on the conversation, interested and amused like the rest of us. As we left, in the best Italian I could muster on the spot, I said, “Tu amore,” which in my mind was saying, “You will love it [the bike rally at Sturgis]." The owner and his son laughed and waved goodbye. As we were driving back to the house, I said to Bev, “I just realized that I might have told that owner of the pizzeria that I love him.”

Tuesday, May 11—The May Monsoon Continues

The next morning we awoke in the middle of Vernazza to the sound of falling rain. Looking out the window, we saw people walking on the narrow, all-pedestrian street below, all under umbrellas. Any hope we had of the hiking trails opening today were washed down the gutters with the rain. But life goes on, so we packed up our backpack (we had left most of our things at the beach house and were able to travel very lightly to Cinque Terre) and we headed up the hill to Guili and Michelle's, where we dropped our things and checked in. Things are pretty informal at their six-room accommodation. As we were ready to set out, Guili noticed that we only had a small umbrella, and he offered to loan us a large one of theirs. Guili apologized up and down for the rainy weather and assured us that the old-timers of Vernazza, as well as himself, had never seen a month of May as rainy as this one! Lucky us—getting to see meteorological history made in the Cinque Terre! Since the trails remained closed due to the rain and falling rock, we decided to buy the very inexpensive train passes for the Cinque Terre. So we boarded the train at Vernazza and headed South to the southern-most town of Riamaggore to check it out. The trip only took about 10 minutes, and when we got there we joined all the other tourists wandering around in the rain with umbrellas. We checked out some vistas of the coast and of the town of Riamaggore, then had lunch and got back on the train to head back to the northern-most town of the Cinque Terre, Montarossa. Again, we wandered around there in the rain. We liked that town much better than Riamaggore, as it was more charming and less gritty. When we went back to the train station to return to Vernazza, there was a pretty major train stoppage, and no one explained why. We waited on the train for about an hour, and the train finally left Montarossa for the five-minute ride to Vernazza. We had made dinner reservations that morning for the cute little trattoria, La Pirata, run by two brothers who joke around with guests, most of which are American tourists. When we got to dinner, we were seated in this tiny restaurant right next to another American couple, Dick and Joanna Wright, who were being seated at the same time. Since we were on the same timetable, the four of us had a nice visit while we had dinner together. Joanna suggested we go to “The Blue Marlin,” for a nightcap, which is the local hot spot at night for the “younger crowd.” We decided that with four of us, there was strength in numbers and we'd braved it. We had a couple drinks there and had a great time enjoying each others' company. Plus, a young man we'd met on the train this afternoon from New Jersey was at the bar too, with a bunch of friends, all of whom were American. By the time the lights came on in the bar, we were all friends, comparing notes, and getting information about Pompeii and other things to see South of Rome, where we plan to go the last few days of our stay in Italy.

We said goodbye to our new friends, Dick and Joanna (pictured here), who are leaving tomorrow on a train for Milan and ultimately their home in San Diego.

Everyone from here keeps apologizing for the rain and saying how rare it is in May. They say the place looks completely different when the sun is shining, and I'm sure that's true, especially with the sun bouncing off the water, and the beaches inviting to swimmers and sun bathers. The rain kept us from hiking and it made getting around a nuisance, and it didn't exactly enhance any of the vistas. Yet we were dry and comfortable under our umbrella, loaned to us out of goodness by Guili and Michelle, and we commented on how rare it is we have a chance to stroll around in the rain under an umbrella. We saw beautiful lemon trees and many wild flowers. We can tell from all the dense vegetation that rain is no stranger to this area, even if not in May. Then the day ended with meeting new friends, having a great dinner and all in all, a really fun evening. We truly made lemonade out of lemons today!

Sunday, May 9th, Mother's Day

We had seen a church or castle high on a hill across the valley from Camaiore (can barely be seen in one of the photos) and wondered what it was. After asking a couple of locals about it, we found it was a village called Pedona, so we decided to put Dick's driving skills to the test, go out exploring and try to find it. Pedona wasn't far as the crow flies, but as the car drives, it was a windy, curvey trek up into the mountains. Upon arriving, we found the church of Pedona, which is what we had seen from a distance, basically in ruins. Though very pictureque, there isn't much else to the Pedona. Then we drove back across the valley and up into the mountains on the other side of the valley to Vado, pretty much a repeat performance of Pedona, minus the old church. The scenery was spectacular and, just for something different, it didn't rain!

We returned to our little mountain “home away from home”--have included a few photos to show the patio of the house where we're hanging out and the views from it--and picked up a very forgettable pizza from a different pizza place. Does getting to know the good and bad pizza places begin to qualify one as being local?

Tried to call the kids since it's Mother's Day. Couldn't get a hold of Courtney and did talk to Molly for awhile, but then ran out of time on the cell phone. Having a great time but I am looking forward to being back home soon and being able to talk to them anytime I want to!

Saturday, May 8—Italian Driving 101

Without being able to understand the Italian broadcasters on TV or radio, and having forgotten to check the weather forecast while online yesterday, we didn't know what the weather would be like, but earlier in the week I thought I'd heard the rain was supposed to end by the weekend. So Bev and I got into our little Fiat rental and headed for the beach on the Italian Riviera, about 20 minutes West of our house up in the hills. We were hoping that the sun would be out today, and that since it's a Saturday, there would be a lot of people on the beach and we could at least catch some rays and do some people watching. However, while it wasn't raining, the weather was still high overcast and when we got to Viareggio, a resort town that crawls with sun- and fun-loving Italians when it's hot and sunny. But today, although there were a fair number of tourists browsing around, the sand beaches were empty. We spoke to a woman in a snack bar who spoke pretty good English, and asked her about the forecast. She told us the sun was not supposed to come out until, hopefully, tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon. We then decided on Plan B, which was to get back in the car and drive East of Camaiore to Lucca, a Tuscan town we'd heard really good things about.

Driving in Italy is a challenge for a lot of reasons. Apparently the highway department has decided that it can't afford highway signs with numbers on them. Instead, signs contain names of the plethora of towns, pointing in different directions, as you drive through the many roundabouts. So you have to be a speed-reader of the Italian town signs as you figure out what lane to be in to make the correct turn. Then they pull this trick where they'll have the name of the town you want on a sign pointing in a certain direction. You go by it, then you never again see that town's sign at any of the turns in the roundabout. It just disappears as an option. Sweet! So the tendency is to drive slowly to look for the town you and the turn you want, so you make the right move. But the second—-and I'm serious, the very second-—you slow down to try to figure out where you're supposed to go, HONK, HONK! The driver “behind”you (read, riding your bumper, basically on top of you) is wanting you to speed up or get the hell out of his or her way! So it's baptism by fire learning to drive in Italy, and this from someone who just weeks ago was driving “on the wrong side of the road” in Ireland, without any real problems.

The Italian drivers have to be the absolutely busiest people in the world. They don't have a single second to waste on some dumb American driver who's trying to find the sign for Lucca among the twenty-seven other Italian towns' signs in some tight little roundabout.

But we did find Lucca, and it was lovely. The old part of the city is surrounded by walls that were build over many centuries to protect the city from invaders that never came. So Lucca was, you could say, all dressed up in their walls, with nowhere to go. Because the walls never saw any battles, they are very much intact and provide a 2 ½-mile biking and walking path around the old town area. This Saturday afternoon, the walking path was very crowded with locals out enjoying their “bike/hike trail.” The atmosphere was very wholesome, family-oriented. The sun was flirting with the idea of coming out, but the air was cool and breezy, and so it was a little cool for a bike ride, but we hope we can come back some day while we're in the area and rent bikes to ride this flat bike path. We then went into the "centro" part of the old city and walked around with other tourists and locals. The pace was slow and relaxed, and we stopped to have an espresso and watch people moving around the town. Dogs are common, and sometimes even dressed up, as shown in one of the photos.

After a couple of hours, we headed back to Camaiore and arrived about 7 p.m. We strolled around the town and couldn't get over how many locals (remember, this isn't a tourist town) were walking around, the men hanging out in front of little bars visiting and people of all ages were just out and about, everywhere. It reminded me of the Saturday nights in my hometown of Madison when I was young, when all the farmers would come to town and there were people out and about, visiting and getting caught up with each other. It was cool!

We decided to go to the restaurant in the middle of the town that our buddy at the computer store had recommended as a good place to eat. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so I told Bev I wanted to cook for her, but my gnocchi maker was on the fritz, so we needed to eat out! We stopped by the restaurant and found out that they didn't start serving dinner until 7:30, so we made reservations and had a half hour to kill before we could be served. I was craving an American movie, so we stopped by a video store and rented a movie. The choices weren't great, and we ended up with “Bride Wars.”

Here in Europe where people don't eat dinner until late, and we didn't want to wait that long before eating, then having to drive in the dark on very narrow paths up into the hills to our house.

We felt like your classic senior citizens when we showed back up at the restaurant promptly at 7:30 to be seated! It had to be the European equivalent of the 4:00 p.m. early seating for pancakes! But the server who had taken our reservations greeted us and told us that although they didn't have an English menu, he would explain things on the menu to us. And did he ever! As he explained his way through the anti-pastas, the primis, the secondis, and the meat dishes, they all sounded irresistible! And because we were the only patrons being served for the first hour we were there, we got great personal service, and the best Italian food we'd ever eaten in a restaurant! To die for! In time, other patrons showed up, all of them with reservations, and by 9:30 p.m., the place was finally full. We took our time enjoying the fabulous food, great dessert, coffee and people-watching, then headed for home. We navigated in the dark and were greeted at our door by all the neighbors' dogs. They settled down as we settled in to watch “Bridal Wars” on our laptop, in English! Who needs Italian television?

Friday, May 7—Trying to blend in with the locals

We were able to make our own breakfast here at the house, because we had picked up a few things at the grocery store in Camaiore on the way to the house last night. We then went for a walk up in the “neighborhood” of the house here in the hills above Camaiore. About ten minutes from our house is a tiny church, Catholic, of course, as is everything in Italy! The sign on the wall, in both Italian and English, says that this was the church for the territory of Camaiore, and that there are records for this church dating back to 817! However, the church was remodeled to its present state—in the 11th century. So it's not so old after all. Not! It was cloudy and cool today; comfortable for hiking, but still not sunny as we'd imagined Tuscany (thanks to the title of the famous movie).

This afternoon we went into Camaiore to try to check it out, as Alex had told us it had just about anything we would need. For one thing, we were in search of an internet cafe, as the house has no internet access or telephone. Also, the television channels are all in Italian, so we are really out of it, which is hard for any news junkies like us. We found a computer store where this heavy-set 40-something guy sells and services computer equipment. He told us there was no internet cafe in town, but that he “sold” wi-fi time and he let us sit in his chair in this very cluttered, little computer store with computer parts everywhere. It wasn't ideal, but it worked fine and it was great to get online and get some banking and bill-paying done, not to mention checking email, Facebook, etc.

Anna had pointed out a pizzeria to us last night as we went through town, which she said sold good “take away” pizza, so we stopped there and picked up a large pizza. Ordering a prosciutto pizza with green olives proved to be a huge endeavor with the friendly proprietors of this pizzeria! Camaiore is not a tourist town whatsoever, which is great in many ways. But because they are not used to having Americans in their town, most of the locals speak little or no English. We tried to help them out by using the Italian word for “green,” which is “verde.” This did not register with them one bit! They started pulling out all sorts of bins of ingredients that had nothing to do with olives, including some relish and other things that I would never think of putting on a perfectly good pizza. Somehow, we finally identified from one of their bins of ingredients some “green” olives that are actually Italian olives that still have the pits in them, and they put those on the pizza, along with the prosciutto. Obviously, they do not consider their olives to be any shade of “verde,” even though they are! It was more funny than frustrating, and we bid them “Ciao” and “Buona notte” and left with all of us smiling, and obviously mutually amused at each others' linguistic shortcomings! After many nights of being in hotels or guests in homes, it was nice to hunker down on this Friday night in “our own” place and eat pizza, drink a little wine, and wish we understood Italian television.

Wednesday & Thursday, May 5-6--Under the Tuscan Rain

Yesterday, as scheduled, our surrogate “tour guides” arrived at Alex and Anna's home to drive us into Florence. Karla, a friend of Alex and Anna's a retired high school English teacher, and Sara, the college-aged daughter of another friend, were very nice. Sarah was the driver, and spoke a little English. Karla was obviously here to be the main communicator, as her English was quite good—and of course, much better than our Italian! Karla immediately apologized for the rain, saying this was not a good day to tour Florence on foot, but we would make the best of it.

We parked near the train station, and headed out for a museum where Sara's father had arranged an “appointment” at about 11:00 a.m. We went in thorough a side door, she spoke to someone at a desk, and then we followed her up some back stairs to a second level where she shook hands with a middle-aged man and exchanged pleasantries, in Italian, of course. Then he shook hands with each of us and warmly wished us “Buon Giorno,” and in English, welcomed us to the museum and waved us on to enjoy our visit. After we left his company, Bev asked Karla what museum this was, as we had seen no signs to indicate where we were. She told us this was the Uffizi Museum, which Rick Steves describes as “the greatest collection of Italian paintings anywhere” for which there are “infamously long lines to get in.” And so here we were in the midst of this great collection of Italian art—without having to wait in line or pay! We spent about an hour enjoying the art, including some of Michelangelo's work.

We then walked around Florence a little more, to the Ponte Vecchio and the famous Duomo and stopped briefly to admire its awesome and intricate beauty, but the rain cut our strolling and viewing short. We then drove to Anna's school to meet up with her. Anna reported the latest news about Alex's father was that he came through the surgery without much trouble, but that the next 24 hours would be critical. We said goodbye to our surrogate tour guides, and rode back to the house with Anna and had lunch and relaxed for the rest of the day. At night, Anna took us to a ristorante near their home for a wonderful dinner. We had been going at it for quite a few days without much “down time,” so this was a welcome day of relaxation.

On Thursday, Anna had to be at school very early, so we were picked up at their home by another friend, Elisa, a young, beautiful actor, who had agreed to give us a ride into Florence because she had to go to Florence for a hair appointment. Elisa lives nearby and Anna had assured us that it was no big imposition for Elisa to be our “ride” to the city. Elisa spoke a little English and was very sweet, as she put on a demonstration of the multi-tasking that is loosely defined as “driving.” In the midst of congested traffic on the way into Florence, as well as in the middle of the city, with little cars stopping and starting, and motorcycles scooting around and between cars, Elisa was unaffected as she used her ear piece of her cell phone to have no fewer than 10 different phone conversations, occasionally turning to ask me a question, such as “Your first day in Florence?”, read from notes in the open day book in her lap, and make occasional notes while talking and driving. I know I gasped at least 3-4 times as we came quickly up to a car or truck stopped in front of us. I was convinced that the day book was getting much more of Elisa's attention than her driving—or our mutual safety—was getting! But, we did make it into Florence without damage to her car or to us. She let us out near the train station, and we walked to a tiny cafe, and had a bite to eat and coffee. Then we walked through an open air market of clothing and on to the museum behind the Duomo, featuring sculptures dating back to the 11th century. After about an hour there, we got a call from Anna and met up with her. We got the positive update on Alex's father, and we were relieved to hear that. Anna told us that Alex was back home, making “lunch” for us, so we drove home. Alex, an accomplished cook, and his “lunch”consisted of a spinach pesto pasta as a primo (“first course”) and then a secondo (second course) of a huge tuna steak on a bed of lettuce. We could have easily shared both. Bev and I did our best to eat, but neither of us could finish either the pasta or the tuna. Not to worry: the dog was treated to our left-overs. Alex told us that if things continue to go well for his father, he may get to go home on Saturday. This was naturally good news.

Alex had worked with his travel agent, Isabella, to find us a rental car. Apparently there is a lot going on in Florence because the only available car she could find was at the Pisa airport. Isabella said she is sorry the car is so expensive ($256 Euro for one week, including all insurance), and said she would continue to try to find a less expensive car for us during the coming week for the second week.

Alex had some work commitments this afternoon, so Anna would take us to the Pisa airport to pick up our car, then to their “beach house” near Camaiore, about 30-40 minutes from Pisa, to show us the house and get us set up there, before returning home. So we drove with Anna this afternoon in the pouring rain through Tuscany. Obviously we are not the only ones who find the road maps and driving directions confusing as it took us a couple attempts to locate the Avis rental building at the Pisa Airport. The torrential rains did not help matters, but we finally we did finally find the Avis building and picked up the car-- a brand-new little Fiat, with a stick shift. (Bev will not being doing any driving!) Because I had learned to drive with a stick shift, it was not a problem adjusting, and in fact the car is fun to drive! We have to bring this car back to the Pisa airport by 6:00 p.m. next Thursday, May 13, to either trade it in on a less expensive car, if Isabella can find one for us, or to renew the contract for another 10 days.

We then followed Anna to the beach house. The rain had stopped by the time we set out from the Pisa airport so we could enjoy some of the beauty of the Tuscan hills. We stopped at a market in Camaiore and picked up some groceries for the next day or two, and a bottle of wine. Then we wound our way up into the hills outside of Camaiore on roads that make Irish roads seem wide, about five minutes from town, to the beach house. The two-story house is very charming and old, like something out of a fairy tale. Even the interior walls are at least 18 inches thick, with a slate winding stairway to the three bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom upstairs. Anna was so gracious as she showed us the “tricks” of the many keys to the gate, the double-wooden front door, and the storage room, as well as the plumbing, heating and electrical systems. She then said goodbye, and headed for home in the damp and dark. This house will be perfect for us to relax and to base out of for the next 2 ½ weeks!