Italy--Part 1

After many months of anticipation, we finally made it to our Umbrian holiday in Italy—the first trip to Italy with both girls.  I was sure that something was going to happen to prevent us from actually making this trip. Namely, chicken pox, which was spreading like wildfire through Evie’s nursery and from one after-school playmate to the other.  But luckily, we managed to get out of England and onto Italian soil with Millie unscathed!

The trip was as good as can be expected.  Gatwick has made major improvements in the ‘traveling with children’ department and we got to go through our own special security check and then hang around in the kid’s area (with kid shows on a big TV and lots of comfy kid-sized chairs).  The flight was short and sweet and while we didn’t exactly breeze through customs, everything went pretty smoothly until we actually drove out of the Rome airport in our rental car.  We aren’t really sure what happened, but somehow we went the wrong way and a 2.5 hour drive turned into a four hour one, complete with exhausted, screaming children and lots of bickering between adults. 

Finally, at around 10pm, we arrived at our destination…Pian Di Cascina near Casacastalada.  We were supposed to have dinner in the onsite restaurant, but we missed that by several hours, so our kind hosts brought our dinner to our apartment and we enjoyed fine dining after a very long day.  The girls, too tired to really eat their delicious pasta, seemed to find the energy to eat their ice cream sundaes and Jim and I forced down as much of our dinner as we could. Going to bed was a relief for all of us!

And in the morning, we woke up to this! What a view we had, overlooking the Umbrian countryside, from our deck!  It was worth getting lost to be able to see this for a week!

Our first day was chilly and overcast, so we decided to go visit the Grotte Frassasi, reputed to be the most spectacular system of caves in Europe.  Some cavers accidentally stumbled upon them when they were out wandering around in 1971 and they are so big that a cathedral can easily fit inside.  To get there, we had to wind through Umbria and into the mountains (not without yet another round of bickering about directions).  I drove with lots of impatient Italians in fancy cars tailgating me (and I was going 20km over the speed limit!). 

We parked about 1km from the caves, had a fun, casual, Italian lunch and then walked up the hill to the caves.  I offered to take a picture of these people with their daughter and then they wanted to have a picture with OUR daughters as well.  Evie, of course, was thrilled to oblige. Millie wasn't so sure about this complete stranger picking her up.  It was pretty funny.

 We opted not to take the bus up to the caves (partially because the really crabby guy who sold us our tickets had no interest in giving us any guidance.  The coversation went, "Deutche!?" "No, English." "2:45!  2:45!"  Upon pressing him further he replied, "2:45!"  So at least we knew when our tour was going to be!)  Walking up was fun and scenic anyway.

And when we got to the caves and had time to kill before our tour, we knew just what to do:

When 2:45 finally arrived, we almost took off with the German tour, but one of the Germans clued us in to the English tour and off we went to explore the caves...in English. They were spectacular with gigantic stalagmites and stalagtites, which looked deceptively small in comparison to the hugeness of the caves.  Some of them were 7000 meters tall and looked tiny from down below.  The coolest part (to me, at least)were the "candles", which were accessed by a bridge between two caverns and sat in magical looking pools of water.  Millie got tired of being in the sling and we were running out of snacks, so we ended up leaving our group and walking back through the caves to the beginning on our own, which was really special.  Without the tour group, the caves were silent and we could hear the water dripping.  It felt like we had it all to ourselves...and we could take pictures that we weren't supposed to be taking! But we also had a professional, legal picture taken of us in front of one of the biggest Stalagtites (our scanner is broken, so it won't be displayed on this blog).  

The Candles:

When we got back, I decided to hand wash our laundry, which was quickly piling up.  To use the washing machine cost 5 Euros per load, so I wanted to save money, but after scrubbing our clothes in the tub, I now understand why women in the olden days were a lot fitter! It was hard work...and the clothes weren't exactly clean either.

 

 The next day, the weather was warm and sunny, so we headed to Gubbio, a nearby city, for the Tuesday morning market.  To get there we drove through the countryside and the hills and the windy roads…Evie somehow didn’t get sick, but we did have to make a pit stop and let her pick some flowers so that she didn't toss her cookies. Even I was feeling a little green by the time we arrived at Gubbio!  

We parked near an old Roman ampitheatre (circa 15^th century) and joined the crowds at the Gubbio market.  On one end were fruits, veggies, cheeses and stands selling pork buns.  There were also lots of Truffle themed foods, as the region is known not only for it’s special pork, but also for it’s truffles (black and white).  We sampled some truffle cheese and bought some truffle olive oil (the latter delicious, the former too ‘pongy’ to put it the British way).  

 On the other end of the market were clothes, purses, shoes, toys and a pet store (not my favorite thing to see five or six bunnies pushed into one small cage).  Evie picked out some delicious cherries for us all and we happened upon a fruit and veggie stand, which was apparently having a clearance, because all the old grandmas suddenly started shoving and throwing the fruit and veg into their shopping bags willy-nilly and then mobbing the people at the cash registers.  Not knowing Italian didn’t keep us from joining in and we managed to get enough fruit and veg to last us for at least three or four days, all for the bargain price of 7 Euros.  Evie put on the requisite plastic gloves that one must wear before handling fruit and veg in Italy and helped me bag our food.   

While we were waiting in line, we watched an old Italian Grandma type get screamed at by the guy at the registrar after she paid and then started slinking around some produce she clearly wasn’t supposed to be messing with. She just kind of sniffed and then walked off, mostly unfazed by his verbal assault (or what I assume was a verbal assault.  The tone seemed pissed off, but maybe he was just speaking Italian).  

After all that drama, the girls took a ride on a merry-go-round...which was not the highlight of Millie's day:

 

But Evie loved it, and the nice guy operating the carousel let Millie get off and let Evie have two turns. We waved at Evie as she zoomed by in her Formula One car and everyone was happy again.

After the market, we wandered around and stopped for lunch.  The sullen, young waiter could barely contain his eye rolling when we asked if we could sit in the outside area of the restaurant (which required him to open up a different section and unroll some plastic windows). But in the end it worked out because the girls were a little uncontainable and we had the whole outside area to ourselves.  And by the time we left, our waiter had warmed up to us, although he had no interest in looking at Evie’s bo bos and clearly did not think she was “Bella” like all the other men we encountered that day.

Learning from our mistakes, we took the less scenic, shorter and less winding way back home and as soon as we got back, the girls wanted to get in the pool.  It was the coldest pool I have ever been in and I am not exaggerating. Despite that, we all swam, the girls getting bluer and bluer as time went by.  After everyone was purple, we forced them out of the big pool and into the warmer baby pool and Millie staged a temper tantrum like never before seen, hitting Jim and shrieking like we were torturing her.  But in the end, the adults prevailed and after a few more frigid minutes in the water, we got everyone bundled up and out of the pool area before hypothermia set in.