Tuscany- Vacation

TUSCANY: EVERYTHING ITALY IS SUPPOSED TO BE AND NAPLES IS NOT!

Nana arrived on a Sunday and we successfully met her at the airport in Rome (3 hours away), parked at a metro, and took the train in to visit the city for the day. The girls were troupers, despite the heat, and they walked their furthest so far for touring. We hit the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and finally made it to the Coliseum (viewed slightly at a distance from the outside only!). Many of the buildings have been cleaned up considerably since I saw them once upon a time ago (23 years ago!) backpacking through Europe. The gelato at the end of the day was well earned. It was my personal goal, along with the girls, to have Nana’s visit be a great excuse to enjoy gelato everyday. We almost made our goal! The rest of her visit we tried to find some balance of sightseeing days and the much begged for days by the girls of just staying at home to relax and play. Many outings began with screams and tears “I don’t want to go to….. I’m tired!” During one of our days sightseeing in Naples, I think the girls enjoyed most seeing all the wedding gowns in the store fronts – we seemed to have hit wedding store row. “Yeah’ the 1,000 year old church was beautiful too, but did you see how many sparkles that dress had?” The beautiful cloisters of Santa Chiara and all of the tile columns and scenes did provide a peaceful respite at the end of tiring, hot day.

On Thursday, June 26th we successfully piled all five of us into the Prius for a 4 hour road trip to Southern Tuscany. We stayed through Sunday in a VERY old farmhouse (several 100 years) converted to small guest apt’s outside of Monte San Sevino (an hour or so from Siena) . The girls loved the swimming pool, I loved hearing the wild boars rooting around in the field at night and we all enjoyed great food and incredible sights. The weather was HOT- I think well into the 90’s, and we opted to visit only small towns, not anything big or significant. As a whole, I really enjoy the small towns much more than the big cities, particularly with the girls. Much of our pleasure was gathered while driving in the car. Around each bend the view seemed even more spectacular- rolling fields of grain, blue, blue skies, fields of sun flowers, rows of cypress trees lining the road to some ancient villa, quaint hill top towns crowned by an old castle and surrounded by crumbling walls and still beautiful churches. (Nana mischievously suggested she thought a lot of people must have spent a lot of time in prayer because it was so much cooler inside than out! The girls heartily agreed. ) They also have begged to give an offering to light a candle or two in each of the churches. A small offering, a prayer for peace, and lighting a candle of hope is such a small price to pay for enjoying the beauty of each magnificent church- some simple, some amazingly elaborate, and all, hundreds if not thousands of years old.

For Rachel, other than the pool, the highlight of the trip was a small zoo in Poppi, rather sad if I really thought about the animals, but it still brought delight to the girls. We operated in the evenings on much more of an Italian schedule- i.e. LATE, hence the girls were pretty tired. After the zoo, we attempted to visit a beautiful little castle in the town nearby and Rachel was miserable- constantly whining that she was tired and just wanted to take a nap. We all lost our tempers with her, as she was so miserable to listen to. I did feel rather badly when she fell asleep in the car about 10 nanoseconds after we started driving. So often, we expect them to be little adults and have difficulty coping with their behavior when they’re not. She kept trying to say what she needed, we just didn’t want to listen and change our plans. Alyssa discovered that she prefers dark chocolate to milk, likes her tuscan rosemary steak rare “it’s just SO, SO good!”, and in the end she does enjoy seeing some of the beautiful old buildings, even if it is tiring and hard walking. We did have to keep prompting her to take her nose out of a book and look around a bit as we were driving. At our best restaurant meal, we had been advised to just enjoy the house wine. We did, so much so that we decided to get two bottles to take home. We were pleased that it was only 7 Euro a bottle- we were even more pleased when we found out that each bottle was a 2 lt. bottle!

On Sunday, before making the trip home, we detoured to the town of Assisi, so worth the effort! Totally different feel and look to the town, mostly because of light cream and pink colored stone used to build with. We also marveled at the ease of getting there to visit, road signs, readily identified underground parking garages at a reasonable cost, sane drivers, etc. It all felt very different than what we had enjoyed in Tuscany, incredible views (it’s another hill/mountain top town) and the church, Basilica di San Francesco (St. Francis) once again absolutely amazing with frescos by Giotto. At times I get tired of all the churches, and than we find another one that’s more beautiful and different from the last. And once again, it provided great refuge from the 90+ degree heat outside.

Good wines, good food, great gelato, good company, great beauty, (no trash all over!) GOOD VACATION!

Other highlights of Nana’s visit: I had asked our primary Italian contact, Antonella, if her mother would be willing to come over and teach us to cook something. Wow! We made some sort of zucchini egg dish, fabulous eggplant with tomato and basil, and braciole- or rolled up meat slices with a thin slice of egg and cheese inside and cooked in a yummy tomato sauce, and also eggplant boats with a meat stuffing. I don’t think I can recreate any of these dishes yet, but I’m learning that the key to good Italian cooking is both great tomatoes and truly enormous amounts of olive oil. I had to go out to buy a second bottle- and I think between the different dishes we used at least 2 cups of oil. Yikes! Not sure how that Mediterranean diet is healthy, but for now I will be content that I have not gained weight during our time here so far. Side note: Bill has actually lost 25 lbs since getting here- less stress, and has eaten more fruits and vegetables than I’ve ever seen him eat before, and wow- cut out the diet coke! Truly amazing is he’s eaten and liked a number of tomatoes and learned to caramelize onion and like it!

We attempted to visit Pozzuoli, which is nearby and has the 3rd largest and best preserved amphitheather in all of Italy. This required me to try and get over some of my fear of navigating, using the GPS electronic gadget (that Bills whizzes through using) and driving to someplace new on my own. After finding our way there, squeaking into a parking space, we found that despite multiple guide books assurance that the ruins were open 7 days a week, there was a large sign saying it was closed on Tuesday! Luckily we did find a gelato store open! I also attempted a driving tour of a scenic area nearby and Bill had programmed in a site with a huge water cistern the Romans had used. We eventually found a road with the right name, but it happened to be so narrow that there was absolutely no way to stop. At one point, we had to pull in both side mirrors and we squeaked past a car and a wall with about 1-2 inches spare room on each side. Nana was impressed with my driving- I just kept trying to take deep breaths and took comfort in the fact that Bill has often put far more dents and dings in our cars than I have so far. We eventually found our way home and managed to stop at a nursery and find a great bargain on a small hydrangea bush to plant. Alls well that ends well.

Another day we finally made our way to Caserta Palace. It’s not terribly old- only some 250 years, but is the largest palace in Italy and rivals Versailles in it’s splendor and the size of it’s gardens. The highlight there (for Rachel) was finding a horse jumping show to watch. Sigh, I wish anything having to do with horses wasn’t so expensive!