Monday, our last day

On our final day in Italy, I got up early to go put money in the meter so that we could park our car all day without getting a ticket. It was about 7:30 when I headed out and the only other people around were Italians, going to work and opening up their shops. It was so peaceful.

When Jim woke up, we ate a couple of pastries, slammed some coffee at the hotel restaurant, checked out, stashed our backpack behind a chair, and headed to the Duomo. We got there around 9:30 and this was the scene. Can you find Jim?


We stood in line for about 45 minutes. There were signs all over the place saying that no shorts were allowed, and I was wearing shorts so I was sure that when we got up to the ticket counter, they would turn us away...but they didn't! We were in!

Getting to the top of the Duomo involved walking up about 500 steps, in a narrow passageway without windows and making frequent stops while "traffic" got backed up. At one point, I got pretty nervous about being stopped on the stairwell with no way to get out, but then I got over it. We were behind a group of young Italians who were laughing and goofing off and that made me happy. Some people were very pious and quiet while in the Duomo. Some people shushed other people (there was lots of shushing going on at Sant'Antimo, too. The Italians are serious about their churches!)
Going up:



We finally made it to the first tier of the dome, where we could see straight down into the nave and up to the gruesome scene on the ceiling. On the ceiling is a painting of heaven and hell and all that comes between. Hell was most interesting to us, as it featured various devils eating and killing people, women with six teets, people writhing in pain and agony, a six headed monster....we never got to the Jesus and God part because we were so busy looking at the torture scenes.

From the top of the dome, we could see across the city and could look down on people in a tower next to us.

Then we had to line up to get down again, which took almost as long as getting up. It was worth it, though. I love the Duomo!

After the Duomo we went to the Duomo museum, which featured statues that had been removed from the outside of the Duomo, restored,and displayed. Jim was very excited about the models of the dome and used a model to show methat the "statue of that guy with the pointy hat used to be right there." Even though he went to Catholic school almost as long as I did, Jim obviously never got a good look at the pope. We marveled over the relics of saints-things like fingers in ornate boxes-and saw a famous Leonardo Da Vinci sculpture.

After so much religion and seriousness, we needed a break. We walked through the leather market, where lots of people selling fake designer purses were lined up along with the licensed merchants. In London, the people who sell illegal things are a little more discrete. In Italy, the guys set their goods up on tables made out of carboard boxes or on sheets and when the police come around, they fold everything up nice and neat. I think the key is not to get caught selling the goods. You can hang around on the corner with a sheet full of fake purses slung over your shoulder, though, and no one bats an eye.

After the leather market, we went to the indoor food market, which was full of meat and cheese and veggies! Jim posed next to his favorite new food: Lard.

There were also some delicious pigs' feet!

We enjoyed one last cappucino before leaving Florence:

And then a piece of coconut that we bought on the street:

And we were off again, heading back towards the PIsa airport!

On our way to Pisa, we decided to stop off in Lucca, which is about thirty minutes north of Pisa. What a wonderful town! Napoleon lived there, too, and his wife Marie somethingorother played a huge part in making it the beautiful place that it is now, with lots of trees and gardens and a peaceful stream running around it. On top of the city wall, there is a paved path, where people were walking and biking...and that's when we saw the double bike and it called our names.

Into the Lucca wall:

Jim on the paved path:

Some Lucca Buildings and scenery:





THE BIKE!

Every couple should ride a double bike. We think we're going to buy one because we both had permagrin the whole time we were riding that thing.It was kind of hard to balance and Jim kept trying to get all dare devilish...and it rained,so we were FORCED to stop in a frozen yogurt shop and eat some yogurt until it stopped raining (sort of). We want our very own double bike, so that when we get annoyed with each other or in a bad mood, we can just hop on it and ride through London like big goofballs!

Sadly, we DID have to go back to Pisa, return our Fiat, and queue for the Ryan Air flight back home. There was lots of groaning and moaning amongst the passengers on our flight (no one wanted to go back home) and when we all got back to Stanstead airport, the lines for customs were incredible. We got home at 2am, slept for a few hours...and it was back to reality.

We miss Italy! (but we still love London)

Sunday...to Firenze

And we were off to Florence! But before we left, we gave many hugs and kisses to Fiorella who told us to tell our friends about their farm. So, here's the info:http://www.lacrociona.com/ Check it out!
Chiao Chiao Fiorella! Thank you for a fabulous time!

And some some socks:

We arrived in Florence around mid-day on Sunday. We checked with Rick Steves who told us to park in Porta Romano (or something like that), outside of the city walls, so that we would not have to register our car with the hotel or pay a fine. There was much celebrating when we found out that parking was free on Sundays. And we were really glad that we didn't drive into Florence, because there were SO MANY PEOPLE THERE!

After checking into our hotel (which was definitely not worth what we paid for it, but was right around the corner from the main piazza and from the Duomo, we wandered back towards our car to visit the Boboli Gardens. We weren't so impressed. Part of it, I think, was that we were hot and tired, but mostly it was crowded and lots of the fountains and gardens were closed for renovation. So, we pretty much got dehydrated and seriously dusty (like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown dusty...we left little clouds behind us as we walked).

Jim does some stretches before heading up a giant hill in the Boboli Gardens:

Actually, the view from the top of the gardens was pretty awesome:

Eventually, we made it to the Pitti Palace, but we were too tired and dusty to go inside:


We straggled around through the crowds some more, walked across the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge of buidings that goes across the Arno River, pushed our way through the crowds to look at the Uffizi from outside (I am SURE I am spelling all of these names wrong). The crowds were massive and there was no way we were getting in that place. Unfortunately, it was closed on Monday, so we looked at the fake statue of David outside and continued on our sweaty way. Back in our hotel room, we cranked the air conditioner (which stopped working after that) and watched a Gerarad Depardieu movie that had originally been in French but was dubbed in Italian. You kinow the plot isn't too complex when you can't understand a word of what they are saying, but still can follow what is going on.

Once twilight fell, the crowds dispersed and we could walk around Florence, unempeded. We followed the streets out of the cetral part of the city and into more local type area. We stopped to look at the river and discovered that the River Arno has big, huge nutria, just like in Louisiana! They kept us entertained for a good half hour, swimming back and forth...and then the bats started up. We could hear them squeaking and, occasionally, they flew past our faces. It was pretty cool.

From the bats and the nutria, we ended up at a really cool wine bar, where Jim ordered a red wine, but got a Campari Soda (language barrier again). Then we decided to try to find a place to eat and eventually settled on a restaurant that was near our hotel and where the waiter said, "English?! You have to order in ten minutes." So we did...and he forgot my meal. Then, when we got back to the hotel, we got chewed out by the guy at the desk for not having turned in our key before leaving the building. We said we didn't know we were supposed to turn it in and he said, "Well, if you had turned it in, you would have known!" huh? That's the second time I cried on the trip. Sometimes two mean people in a row get to me.

The night was hot because the air conditioner was broken (on the farm, with the many windows, we didn't need an air conditioner), but we heard the Duomo's bells ringing at every hour and it was beautiful.

Italy blogs to be continued...

I'll finish updating the Italy blogs later this week. Ciao!

Saturday hike with monks

After we had determined that we weren't going to find a place near Montalcino to stay, we gave up for a while (this was before Fiorella told us about the apartment) and decided to take a hike near Sant'Antimo. We brought along a picnic and headed up hill for about three miles. This hike was one of our favorite experiences, as we ended up in a tiny village at the top of the hills.

Tucany has what are called "white roads" that weave through the hills and fields. They are gravel and chalky and we walked up one of the white roads on our hike.


On the way up, we saw men working in the vineyards, "cleaning" the vines. They were pulling the lower leaves off of the bottom of the vines. We also almost stepped on a huge snake and that set us a little on edge for the rest of the walk.

Along the way, some Italian Jehovah's Witnesses stopped by to try to talk to us about their mission and later we sat under a tree and had our picnic.

A little further up the hill we came to Villa a Tolla, a tiny village with beautiful flowers and a kind of creepy old graveyard with wrought iron grave markers and a black coffin carriage marked with a skull and cross bone (somehow, we didn't get a picture of that, but it was bizarre).



As we were finishing our walk, we crossed paths with six monks, who were out for a stroll. At first, because one of them had his hood up, Jim thought they were the Italian Ku Klux Klan....HAH! Fortunately, they were just peaceful monks. We thought it would be rude to whip out our camera and take a picture of them to their faces, so we waited until they passed and took a picture of their backs.

After our walk, we headed back to the apartment for some more Italian MTV and a shower before going back to Sant'Antima for a free concert. We got to the church early and got great, if incredibly uncomfortable seats (talk about torture...those pews were HARD and straight up). The church was beautiful in the evening and the chorus who sang--and all male chorus from another town--were really incredible. One song gave us goosebumps. Sitting in front of us, was a thin little man. Suddenly, a family of Italians who definitely looked like the wife, sons, and daughter of the Mafia pushed in to the pew and almost crowded the little man off the seat. But, justice prevailed and the little man was relocated by an usher to the very front row. I, on the other hand, had my view blocked by one of the son's really big hair. A lot of Italians have hair like mine--kind of poofy! It was great! I felt right at home!

April 27--why our hosts are so awesome

We decided to have another slow day in Montalcino on Friday. It was market day in town and Jim bought a shirt and I bought a pair of Italian leather shoes, for the fraction of the price they would have cost in London (of course, that's usually the way it is everywhere that isn't London, but it's always a good excuse for shopping). In the afternoon we took a nap during siesta and then anticipated the Italian dinner that Fiorella was going to cook for us! At 8:00 sharp we headed down to eat (had we not been walking a lot, I think we would have come home to find that our clothes no longer fit). We sat at the "American" table (which actually was part American and part Canadian) and got to know friendly North American ladies pretty well over the course of a couple of hours. The two women on the far right of this picture are the Canadians. The other three women are from Portland, Oregon. We all had our Rick Steves books.


The food was delicious. We started with variou bruschettas and salami, followed by Ribollita, which is a Tuscan soup and was my favorite part of the meal. After the zuppa we had the prima plate, handmade ribbon pasta with meat sauce, followed by the secondi plate, which was a platter of meat: roast beef, rabbit, guinae hen, and some sort of souffle. Then salad and then dessert. All of this accompanied by wine from the vineyard and followed with grappa, which tastes like lighter fluid to me.

During the night, Barbara mentioned that she wouldn't be there to say goodbye to us the next morning. Jim and I thought we were staying until Sunday, so this was news to us. But the next day, after we searched without success for a place to stay, Fiorella told us we could stay in their private apartment in town. She was worried about us because we were so young and sweet and she didn't want us to have to sleep in our Fiat over night (we had already napped in our Fiat, so we knew that sleeping there was possible). Here I am, watching Italian MTV in the apartment. Fiorella rocks!

April 26--San Gimignano and Siena

Before we hit the big city (Siena...which after a few days of recovering, we were ready to tackle again), we drove a few miles down the road to see a church called Sant'Antimo. Behind the church, live monks and when we got there they were singing mass. We sat quietly in the back of the church to listen for a while and then snuck back out again. The church was built in the 800's and a few days later we would go back there to first take a hike and then attend a concert.


We overshot Siena by about 20 km to visit San Gimignano, another hill town, about which we had heard a lot. We were pretty unimpressed and found it to be a lot more tourist focused and expensive than the other hill towns we had visited. The spectacular thing about San Gimignano is that it has five of it's original towers still standing. Here is a picture of some of the towers. Very exciting:


Moving on to Siena...despite our inability to get OUT of Siena, getting into Siena was very easy and we also got lucky and found free parking right outside of the fortrezza, which is HUGE and star shaped. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't penetrate the fortezza:


...so we headed into the town centro.

We spent some time people watching in the Piazza Del Campo, which is a large square surrounded by restaurants and cafes. We watched as people slowly moved across the piazza, following the sun.

In Italy, large groups of seniors get together to talk on benches. These old people were trying to block the sun from their eyes with newspapers (not trying to avoid having their picture taken):

Even macho guys eat gelato:

And the rat tail has made a huge comeback in Italy (although we saw many rat tails that were more prominent than this one):


Sylish mullets are all the rage, too (kudos to Jason W who has been leading this trend in the Dallas/Fort Worth are).

Siena's Duomo was pretty overpriced, we thought, so we just took some pictures outside of it. Here is Jim on the steps. It is a huge place.



We couldn't help but take advantage of this photo opportunity. Jim got his saint on (apologies in advance to all of the Catholics!):

After wandering around Siena, doing a little shopping, and eating some more gelato, we went to dinner in a very cool restaurant. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of batteries before we got to the restaurant, but it was like eating in a cave, underground. The food was delicious and, fat and happy, we waddled back to our car and promptly got lost trying to get out of Siena. Sigh.

Day 5, April 25--Jim's adventures with language barriers

Our original plans for the day were thwarted thanks to my illness, which kept me in bed until about 1pm. Liberation D'Italia celebrations were going on and I missed them, but Jim saw a parade and some men and women in renaissance outfits dancing and waving flags (the Italian version of Morris Dancing perhaps?). When I finally felt well enough to drag myself into town, there were people everywhere and it looked like they were gearing up for more celebrating. Unfortunately, I was ready to go back to bed again at that point, so we headed home. Jim dropped me off and went to find more toilet paper and to ask Roberto where we could buy bread on the holiday. Here is how the conversation went:

Jim (holding up empty toilet paper roll): Bon JOrno (I'm spelling phonetically here..how Jim pronounced things) Roberto. Can we get some more (points to toilet paper roll)?

Roberto: (Laughing) Buena Sera! Yes, of course, follow me!

Jim follows Roberto around the corner of the house and into a shed, where the toilet paper is stored. In the shed, Jim says:
Hey Roberto. Do you know where I can get some pene?

Roberto looks shocked and a little scared: Pene?

Jim repeats: yes, Pene, fresh pene...you know...Bread.

Roberto (looks very relieved): Ohhhh...PANE.

Jim: oh yeah, that's what I meant.

Roberto: big difference.

And then Roberto said Jim would have some trouble finding bread during the holiday, but didn't really explain the original confusion.

Turns out, after consulting our Italian/English dictionary, that Jim asked Roberto if he knew where he could get some PENIS (pene). Roberto probably thought that Jim was propositioning him in the shed. Jim was mortified. I thought it was really funny.

And then on April 24, Day 4, I got sick--but we still went to Isle d'Elba

Our fourth day in Italy was our first Secret Surprise Day, when we were supposed to pick someplace random that we had not considered before and go. We picked Isle D'Elba, which is where Napolean was exiled for a year before he escaped.

Well, it definitely was a surprising day, due to my surprise illness (which I caught from Jim) and general poor planning. We drove from Montalcino to Piambino, which is a port town full of smoke stacks and other not so pretty things. We parked the car in town, debating the whole way about whether or not we should take it with us to the island (I said no. I was wrong.)and then, when we got to the ferry, I got Jim in trouble with a bathroom cleaning lady because I asked him to go in and get me some toilet paper (my nose was running and the ladies bathroom was full). Man, that cleaning lady was NOT happy about that and she chewed both of us out in Italian before throwing toilet paper at us. We should have known at that point that our trip to Isle D'Elba was going to be doomed.

The ferry--Moby Baby:

And Jim on the ferry. As we pulled away from Piombino, we watched the pollution from the smoke stacks accumulate in the air.

A side note: joining us on the ferry were several bus loads of older tourists. These tourists were from Germany or someplace like that, but we learned that Italy funds tours for their elderly. SO, throughout our trip we saw bus after bus of Italiana and other tourists. We were pretty impressed with the bus drivers, who were able to maneuver the buses around the winding roads with ease.


When we landed at Portoferraio, we realized that to get where we wanted to go, we really needed to have a car. For about a nanosecond, we considered renting a scooter, but then we came to our senses and realized that we would definitely kill ourselves if we tried to do that. SO, we took the bus. You can't tell from this picture, but the average age of the passengers on this bus was about fifteen.

The Italian kids were really polite, though, and some of them moved so that Jim and I, the old farts, could sit together. Throughout the bus ride, the teenaged girls around us gasped as we shot around the corners of the road and almost had a head on collision with another bus. Thirty minutes later, after the harrowing ride, we made it to Marciana Marina without a map and, of course, during siesta, so the tourist office wasn't open. That is when I started to cry because I didn't feel good and it was my fault that we didn't have the car. We found a restaurant with a nice waiter and I eventually cheered up.

The beaches at Marciana Marina are rocky. It's a beautiful little seaside town and after I got out of my funk, we walked down to one of the beaches. All around, Italians were sunbathing and hanging out, but no one was swimming. Except for Jim, who jumped right in to the amazement of the Italians:

I kept the camera firmly around my neck during Jim's sea romp (a tactic that unfailingly prevents my being thrown in against my will) and enjoyed the sun. It was super comfortable lying on the rocks:


After Jim's swim, we took a hike, straight up, and got a little lost because of lack of sign. We decided to back track and then ran out of water, ran out of steam, and couldn't wait to get back to the smoggy port so that we could just go home and go to bed. But the view was great!

April 23 Day 3--San Quirico D'Orcia, Pienza and Montalpuciano

On our third day in Tuscany, we drove out of Montalcino to explore some other hill towns. First we stopped of at San Quirico D'Orcia, which was not in any of our tour books, but was really a cool place with lots of old ruins. There was probably a less fun way to get into the walls of San Quirico D'Orcia, but we chose to go through this door:

Here are some of the ruins:

And more beautiful scenery as we made our way to our next stop--Pienza:

In Pienza,I was excited to see that there were public toilets. But I was really surprised when I went into the toilet and found this:

At first I thought I had gone into the mens by accident, but Jim patiently explained to me that some Italian public toilets are pretty much just holes in the ground. Interesting.

Pienza had some pretty incredible churches and also some delicious cheese: pecorino de Pienza. We also got to love Ossi Di Morto (Bones of the Dead), which are flat, sugary, biscotti type cookies.

A Fresco in one of the Pienza churches:


And me looking at it:


From inside of the church:


Jim checked out the view:


From Pienza, we headed to Montalpuciano. Our first stop was yet another church, but, unfortunately it was being renovated or refurbished, so the inside was not looking as glorious as we had hoped. The really wonderful thing about all of the old churches here, besides the beautiful architecture, is that they are so cool inside and, in the winter, I'm sure they are warm. So the churches were nice places to go for some serenity (because even the Americans were quiet in the churches) and to cool off a little.

Montalpuciano is at the top of a very steep hill, so we got our exercise on the way up.

Then we promptly ate some more and did a wine tasting. Jim was so excited about the wine tasting that he could hardly wait.

The kegs were huge!!

Ando, the wine maker, was excited for all the Americans to stop by and showed us all his picture in Rick Steves' Italy. And there we were. All the Americans with our Rick Steves books. Ando gave us generous tastes of the wine and then posed for a picture with a reluctant me. In this picture I look thoroughly flustered and red because he kept calling me bella and whispering sweet nothings in Italian into my ear. I don't know what he was saying, but it was intense. Plus there is something about being called beautiful, even if you know it's just a bunch of fluff.


Anyway, all the sweet talking worked, because we bought some wine from him, which we later ended up giving to the security guys at the airport, because we were anxious about putting bottles of red wine in our suitcases. I'm pretty sure that in the states, we and the security people would have been in trouble for gifting and accepting gifts of wine, but in Italy it is OK and the security screeners were very happy.