At the table, one does not age. (Italy, 11-17 May)

My friends Tim, Jon, Krys, and Randi, Poggi the Cat, and I definitely enjoyed testing out this Italian adage.  I flew from Morocco into Nice, then two days later took 5 trains into the heart of Tuscany – a little town called San Gimignano on the train line between Sienna and Florence.  Actually, San G isn’t on the train line but is about 15 minutes from the Poggibonsi station.  Those of us coming by train all had difficulty getting our tickets since Tim and Jon couldn’t decide how to spell Poggibonsi – it changed with each email we received.   Once we’d arrived, the proper spelling and pronunciation were practiced, but we finally had to name the cat Poggi (pronounced Puji) and sing songs about her in order to remember.  I’ll let the rest of the gang recall their own favorites, but mine was written for the Flinstone’s song.  Our Italian didn’t improve much beyond that. 

The wonderful villa Rosa dei Venti is about five miles out of San G in Saint Andrea.  We each had our own rooms – suites really – except Jon who was gatekeeper of the washing machine.  The first evening, the caretaker, Graciella (a beautiful name – I kept thinking of grazzi, which is thank-you, and grace when we saw her) brought us a 4-course real homemade Italian meal as a welcome.  Jon & Tim had already found the Coop (the omni-present supermarket in every town) and stocked up with wine and breakfast stuff.  [As a side note on breakfast, don’t bother.  Whatever they call bakeries in Italy really aren’t, and if the bread you buy isn’t stale, it will be by the time you get it home.  Skip breakfast and eat more pasta.]  Aside from the pizza (my favorite was pumpkin & truffle cream with mozzarella cheese) and the pasta (several favorites here, usually either including garlic, basil, fresh seafood, or truffles) and the wild boar dishes, the chianti was wonderful.  I’d never been a fan of chianti, but that’s probably due to my last bottle being cheap and I was, um, 19.  I ended up bringing 3 bottles of the chianti local to San G back to France (as if I couldn’t get a great 3 or 4 euro wine here!).

It was cloudy and cool, sometimes rainy and cold, most of the week, though the guys did take advantage of a few warm-enough afternoons to sit by the pool.  When we weren’t out on the town, Jon fixed us a few wonderful meals.  I don’t usually eat pizza and pasta – just not my thing – but even the dishes Jon made with Coop ingredients were so much better than anything in the States.  And getting an in-house chef with the price of the villa was fabulous!

Monday was a sleep-in morning, though by 11:30 they were about to bang on my door.  We spent the day in San Gimignano, a tiny little medieval town perched on a mountain boasting 7000 inhabitants.  (Did I get that right, Jon?)  It is really a tourist town now, I suppose because it is so picturesque, but fun nonetheless.   I enjoyed deciphering the wall murals inside the church which depicted most of the major Biblical stories.  The tower, something like 5 or 6 stories up, gave us the opportunity to say “I can almost see my house from here!” but gave incredible views of the village roofs and green Tuscan hills.  Then there was shopping!  I really didn’t want to shop after Morocco, but looking at all the products was fun in itself.  I also stayed amused by photographing kids and others (like a priest) eating gelato, as well as rewarding myself with a cappuccino every few hours.  My other obsession became the Italian men.  No, not in that way, exactly, but just the way they wear clothes, especially all things pink!  I saw an entire soccer (football) team wearing solid pink jerseys, as well as a cycling team!  In a high-end shop were displayed button-down shirts splashed with bright purple and pink flowers, and another with lace down the front.  They were very classy, and I told Tim he’d look great wearing them at the office.  He didn’t agree.

Tuesday was a rainy day spent in Sienna.  Jon, aside from being our chef, was also our architectural and history expert, so we were educated as to why certain buildings were famous and how to know which buildings had excellent facades and which ones were crap.  Aside from getting a really cool pair of Geox shoes (think silver Keds and multiply the price by 10), seeing the Duomo (where I bought a 500-piece puzzle of a Renaissance painting to put together when I get artists’ block), and having dinner at a small local restaurant (with incredible dishes of the now famous truffle pasta and wild boar), the highlight of Sienna was the Red Hat Man.  Jon, Tim, and I happened to see him soon after lunch – a man pulling out a squirt bottle to spray water on people’s heads so they thought they’d been given a pigeon present.  As we watched, however, his talent became evident.  He approached women of all ages and races to get a kiss, others for a bite of their gelato.  As couples looked at the menus in front of the restaurants, he would take away the menu and begin to look at it himself, or he would use a giant make-up brush to tickle the ear of the man, or attach a leash to his back-pack, or even stick a measuring stick between his legs (unbeknownst to him!) and, after getting an accurate measurement, give him a thumbs-up!  Tim and I decided we needed to be a part of the drama, not just spectators, so we walked by him, pointing up at the buildings and acting like tourists.  As we passed, I leaned over and gave him a big kiss on the cheek (although for a second as he saw me coming, I thought things might go very, very wrong).  Apparently he gave the restaurant crowd a big thumbs-up, so I did get a moment in the spotlight, then we got pictures together.  Tim, Jon, and I were so entertained that we brought Krys and Randi back to the same restaurant later in the day to watch him!  Check out the pictures…

Wednesday was basically relaxing – taking walks to look for the donkeys that the guest book insisted exist, going into San G for lunch and a bit of shopping (and Tim was the group’s sole representative to the Torture Museums), and returning later to watch the nightlife.  Since Wednesday mass isn’t too well-attended, there wasn’t much.

Thursday was Big Day in Florence.  We took the train in, then split up since we all had different agendas.  I’d been 3 days in Florence in 2001 with my brother and cousin, and although this trip was much cooler and less crowded, there wasn’t much I felt I needed to still see – except the Uffizi Museum.  Good thing  I had all day since it takes at least an hour to get in (more than 2 in the summer!) and is on par with the Prado in Madrid and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (the tour book also includes the Louvre, but I don’t think it compares).  The museum itself certainly isn’t as big as the Hermitage or the Louvre, but like those museums, what is incredible is the amount of artwork held, not necessarily displayed since there’s not enough room.  That being said, only one floor of the Uffizi was open due to installation of a new exhibition, but it sufficed.  I spent three hours admiring the bright colours and flow of fabric, the gold and gilt, and the precision portraits of incredible Renaissance painters.  I saw Botticelli’s Venus and Spring as well as smaller paintings – I loved the round ones he did!  The room containing Reubens was closed unfortunately, as Reubens is my favorite, though I did get to see two huge (something like 30x20 feet – and gilt-framed!) paintings done by him (or at least his workshop).  Overload finally hit, and decided I would love to go to the Duomo and just sit in there for a while.  I had about 2 hours before I met the group for the train back to Poggi (“His name was Poggi, Poggi-bonsi!”).  Unfortunately, Thursday mass in Florence is well-attended and the Duomo closed at 4:30.  I thought I might be able to find another quiet church, but as I headed down the street, a good-looking guy with sunglasses started talking to me.  Why me??  I even wore my Moroccan jallaba to hide under!  Well, you guessed it, the guy recognized my jallaba and happened to be… Moroccan.  So we walked around Florence and talked about America (mostly politics) and Morocco (mostly religion).  He asked me where I got all my crazy ideas about how things get done in Morocco and what life is like there, so let me just say now that none of my observations or even statistics should be considered absolute fact.  This isn’t a Lonely Planet travel guide, but hopefully is a bit more entertaining….

Luckily the group had planned to catch the train and have dinner back in Poggi, Poggibonsi, she’s a cat from an Italian fam-i-ly!! (sorry, it’s all coming back to me now).  I was able to ditch the Moroccan without exchanging rings.

Krys and Randi left early Friday, so Jon, Tim, and I drove out to the coast to look at the beautiful green Mediterranean under a cloudy sky.  We had a wonderful fish lunch at a nice place right on the beach, then of course back to San G in the evening to see if Friday night mass is well-attended.  Definitely more activity than mid-week, but it would’ve been great anyway since it was our last evening in Tuscany.  Besides, sitting around a table in Italy prevents aging...

 

Italy