Dear Italy

I love you and I miss you. You might be my BBF.

But, no offense - your waffles suck and you have no idea how to cook eggs. In fact, you might want to give breakfast another look altogether. Also, we have a little secret in the US called unscented soap. Also, don't brag about your wild boar so much - nobody likes a bragger.

However, you have us totally beat in many other places, including but not limited to design, transportation, recycling and energy use - especially your lack of dryers and to-go packaging, beauty of the language, coffee, wine, polenta cooking methods, independent hotels, wrapping paper and alot more, so good for you.

Thank you for all the coffee and everything else.

xo

Dear Florence, If You Love Me Check This Box. PS, I ___ You

I could live here forever or go home and never come back. I don't care at all right now.

We are all pretty done traveling and ready to come home and get back to what we do, how we eat, who our friends are, etc. The kids are spent and Ezra has declared his mouth so tired of Italian food to the point that it will really only accept gelato. Itzel has taken to pooping like 16 times a day and is ready for some vegetables and fiber already.

We've been in Florence the last day and a half and in a sweet location right next to the Duomo which is incredibly central and you can walk to everything. Despite the hotel's mild scruffiness, due mostly to a need of renovation and its charming nod to the old days by having ashtrays in all the rooms, and maybe because the night staff is always feasting on greasy takeout. But whatev. Its nice and we are sitting in the lounge chatting with a mother and daughter visiting from Argentina.

We are trying to figure of just where in this city the statue of David is hiding (I'll be looking that little piece of info up when I get done here) and we are so deep-tired and out of sorts now that we left the huge deal Uffizi until tomorrow and have just now read that, Duh! Its closed on Mondays. However, we have seen the statue of the wild boar, and we rubbed his nose, which ensures our return to Florence, so... thank goodness for that.

Tomorrow, we are tying up loose ends, returning to Pontessieve to give the borrowed GPS back to our lovely friends Agnese and Samuele, shopping (I hope) and changing hotels one last time in Florence. We are moving to a sweet hotel a block and a half from here and right across from a shoe store that looks super great, so I still have high boot hopes.

OK. Kids are down finally and I have a few minutes to catch up with Josh and have a few sips of Nastro Azzurro, which is known as the Budweiser of Italy - the name actually means "Nasty Donkey Balls," but despite that it's pretty good.

Don't Be Such Assisi

This is our second and final night in Assisi, the home of San Francesco AKA Saint Frances and also lesser but quite lovely Saint Clara.

Our Hotel La Fortezza is worth talking about for hours. Run by very polite and non-jokey Stefano, who spends his time in the information booth office in Piazza San Rufino until 6pm and then is the evening on call from his home nearby. He is only here when you need to check in, out, or have some issue that needs resolving, like if the wifi goes out, which is often so we are getting know each other pretty well.

The hotel has only 7 rooms, 3 on the first floor and 4 on the second. The third floor is accessed by a windy staircase full art books, art and vases and comrpises the breakfast and teatime room, and a terrace which are self serve, free with your reservation and open all the time. When we arrived we were shown how to make espresso, and where the tea, milk, juice, yogurt, cereals, jam tarts, ceramic dishes made in Assisi are. There are 6 little cafe tables and chairs inside, and a terrace that overlooks the tile rooftops of the town.

I learned from Stefano that Assisi, inside the walls, has 1000 residents and outside the walls about 35,000. This is not unlike other walled city in some ways, but the whole place has such religious overtones and is so quiet and old that it makes all all the bars, pizza and gift shops everywhere seem out of context. Assisi is comprised of the Basilica of San Francesco, alot of old, old stone buildings, and is just monks, nuns, tourists, the residents who are mostly all monks or people serving the tourists, and more tourists - and yet somehow it remains beautiful and serene. The whole story of Saint Frances is inspiring and it makes people come here from all over the world. And the town, which inside the walls remains much as it looked when he was alive, is one of the prettiest in the world.

Needless to say, we are feeling a little hemmed in by it all and are missing the action and non-austerity of the world outside. We will leave in the morning and head back through Umbria and Tuscany towards Florence via Lucca, where we must return the rental car by noon, as we are winding up our big tour of middle Italy.

It might interest the people who are always losing things to know that there is a big shrine to Saint Anthony of Padoua here and I might have seen his tomb today, or at least a beautiful room dedicated to him inside the Basilica.

In other news, we should be home in only 5 days! Itzel started talking in Italy and now we cannot get her to stop. Ezra is still the same, only more cocky while longer hair. And the new one is kicking around like crazy, probably pounding its little fist saying "another cappuchino! And step on it lady!" And I hope to post some pitcures soon but am not on my own computer and can't seem to get it online. Oh well, "va bene," as they say here.

Fano via Rustico

We are on the road again, leaving Rustico after three days of magic. We have been in Marche, (Mar'-kay) a region of Italy from somewhere in the middle to the East Coast across from Tuscany. We had driven here on the superstrada, stayed 2 strange days with Maddelina in Ostra and then drove an hour to our final hosts Giacomo and Marguerita. They put us up in the country house of her parents, as they live in a small apartment in Osimo. We were their first Servas vistors and maybe they were showing off a little bit, but they gave us a beautiful newly renovated house, complete with hot water on demand, a washing machine, 2 goats and a yard full of chickens, and a park next door with an amazing zipline–swing combination where Ezra rediscovered himself as a champion zipper every morning and afternoon.

Our hosts have Emma, who is Itzel's age and has just figured out how fun it is to bop other kids on the head with objects, and Leo who is just 12 weeks old and has begun smiling. On our first night we arrived to a parking lot in Osimo, where our hosts spied through their apartment window and met us. We then followed them from the city (here anything that is not countryside is so densely packed that even a town of 12,000 feels like a city for the minute it takes to pass through, though I think Osimo is bigger) for a 10-minute drive out to the country. They left us at the house to relax and unpack with plans to meet for dinner. They brought pizza and gelato, which was the first time we'd had either to-go and both were delicious.

The following day, they took us to see an inspiring Adriatic coastline abutting a mountain with white rocky beaches and blue-green water almost Caribbean-looking. In the evening, Marguerita made a several course dinner and invited an old schoolmate, his Polish wife and their 8-week-old baby for dinner – garlic and tomato crostinis, tortellini with peas and bacon, whole zucchinis stuffed with meaty filling, and a giant homemade tiramisu. We had local wine and talked about how the visiting couple live in a village of 12 in the Italian Alps, and how when their baby was born it was the first in the village for 55 years.

Our next day was a very exciting and important trip to Fano, a town of 62,000 where my best friend's family on her Dad's side is originally from. Fano is on the coast an hour North of where we were staying and doesn't even get a mention in our Italy guidebook. We expected it to be semi-industrial and maybe a little roughneck, since no one talks about visiting there. We found instead a busy and thriving little city which inside the old walls was charming, full of cool shops and a big weekly outdoor market in the middle of the main square. More chic than most American towns of its size, Fano offers great shopping, boasts a Benetton, Max Mara and lots of other hipster shops, some international and some independent, alongside cheese shops, Internet cafes and pasticcerias, and a refreshing lack of tourists. We took a million pictures and collected some special treasures to give to Olivia.

We drove next to Urbino, a much smaller and heavily-touristed walled city high on a mountain, with some important sites that we did not see. The whole town is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and so you have to pay to park. We had macchiatos, pastry and gelato, bought some little things and headed back to meet our hosts for dinner at a restaurant, which was big, brightly-lit and full of locals and a waiter who seemed to be in charge of serving the entire place. We slept well, except me since I am now dreaming in Italian of invaders trying to break into my walled castle, said goodbye to the goats, chickens, zipline and our hosts and left Rustico.

Today we are driving back towards Tuscany, through the countryside of Umbria to Assisi where we have a hotel in the center of the old town. In fact we are driving now and I should be looking out at the views, which are the most amazing yet, instead of making myself carsick, typing this on hairpin turns.

From Sea to Shining Diaper

We went via downtown Florence back to Pontassieve to borrow a much-needed GPS from our lovely new friends Agnes and Samuele, stayed for coffee and then got directly on the autostrada to drive across Italy to the east coast. This means Josh can now claim country, city and highway driving it n Italy.




The autostrada is as fascinating as a highway can be. Its totally straight and with very few exits, alot of tunnels and strange lights and glittery signs that make you feel a little like you are disco-driving. The speed limit is not that high (110 k) but in our tiny Spanish-made Siat Ibiza, it feels like we are rocketing through space. We chose to drive on the highway only because we were due in Marche at 6pm and would never have made it taking the very scenic, very curvy through around the mountains. Its nice though to have the choice of either very direct or very scenic. Even the view from the big highway was pretty, even though I didn't see to much of it because together with Ezra and Itzel, I fell asleep for the majority of the trip.

Maddelina is our host until tomorrow morning and she is a family psychologist living alone in a nice 3rd floor apartment with alot of nice things including a really well built Berloni kitchen, the formula for which is like Ikea x aweome x 1000, and a huge American movie collection that includes Shrek 1-4. Ezra and Itzel have been having a Shrek-athon as there are no other kids movies here. Ezra has been exhibiting surprising and wonderful table manners while here ("Mom or Dad, may I please have a bit more water? Its delicious.") and tells me if I want it to continue, I am going to have to buy all 4 movies.

We had a kitchen table dinner of pasta with pesto, pasta with porcini mushroom sauce, salami, bread, salad, local oil and vinegar. We finished with coffee (I love that! No matter how late, its always coffee after dinner) and a lavender boxed sweet bread cake, popular at Christmas time, of the type that until now I've only seen on a good week at TJMaxx.

Today we went on a diaper quest, to see the Adriatic Sea, and a for little tour of town of Senegalia. We spent far more time on the diapers than the rest because its Sunday and here all the markets and every damned thing it shut on Sundays and only a dumb American would run themselves out of diapers to coincide with the lord's day. We finally did find some Pampers at a farmacia in the old town which is a big relief, as its been a day of many poops, maybe due in part to the new diet of sugar for first and second breakfast. Ir was lovely to see the Sea and I hope tomorrow we get to stick a foot in it and maybe collect a shell or rock or two.

We had a take-away lunch from a lovely restaurant where I'd have liked to eat as it was full of local families but the wait was over an hour and I was not in charge. There were a handful of dishes accented with meats from an uncomfortably unfamiliar variety of animal species, including the regionally popular wild boar ravioli. Happily, we were given spinach gnocchi instead of the house specialty of duck gnocchi that Maddelina ordered for us, and there was some delicious deep-fried zucchini to go with it.

After lunch Itzel and I retreated to the bedroom for a long, dark nap and the others went out and had some big adventure that I have heard nothing about. Tomorrow we are supposed to spend the morning sight-seeing with Maddelina and then head an hour from here to Osimo where we are excited to meet our next and possibly final Servas hosts - Giacomo, his wife and two little children.

My Other Car is a Stranger With a Mean Dog

This morning we were treated to a rare house concert by our main clown, Pascuale- stage name Paco Paquito, who I've just realized looks alot like a dyed-red-headed Danny Devito. If you haven't been following, he is a music teacher and with his wife Guilia, stage name Celestina, is the creator of a beloved Tuscan children's stage show called Circusbandando. Today, our last day together, he pulled out his guitar and performed some originals accompanied by Ezra and Itzel on the recorder. We then got to have a look at the lively hand-painted backdrop murals that Guilia made for the show, each 12 feet wide and 8 feet tall childlike scenes painted in acrylic.

Pisa did not work out, and no matter because everyone here says you go to Pisa to see one thing only, and so what? So we were to spend the day in the local's favorite town of San Gimignano and we arrived after a long breakfast and performance hour, and a stunning 40-minute drive through a part of the Tuscan countryside, which is beyond lovely. Most of the hills are cleared, grassy and pastural. Small curving roads and tiny villages dot the landscape and the hills look like you could roll down or go bounding across any of them. I am so glad to be here now and I especially like that we are in the less touristy places in the least touristy season, however, I hope we come back one day because all the paintings and postcards I see of the summertime Tuscan countryside are so colorful and flowerful it is simply not believable.

San Gimignano is near Volterra and close to Sienna, but smaller than both and completely walled. There are several tall towers which were built forever ago and create a skyline unike most in Tuscany. I heard it was called the Manhattan of the Middle Ages or something, which I didn't understand at first, but now think refers to the height of the towers- which are more like three or four stories than a hundred, but I guess that's something for time when they were built. Its small and charming with nice gifty-type shops everywhere and the best views we've seen yet, marred only by the occasional parking lot or gas station. For the most part, everything for as far as you can see is a picture.

We had a nice walk-about, as usual feeling like the tiny streets are sidewalks until a car comes zooming through. We stopped in the main square at a cafe for an eggplant, mozzarella and tomato bruschetta, some cappuchino, and gelato, of which my kids and I are becoming fairly serious connoisseurs. (The best we've had was at a roadside cafe in Lucca and found the famous gelato in Rome to be not so va bene.)

About 5:30, just as dark was approaching, we made the short hike to our little car - which must be parked outside the walls (so far San Gimignano is the first town where we've paid alot -10 euros- to park.) We were expected at 6pm to meet Pasquale and Guila at Chianni's local pizza restaurant, where we called ahead to make sure they'd be open. We expected the drive home to take about 40 minutes, accounting for the inevitable stops to pee, look at a vista, change seats with Mom to tend to Itzel in the back or navigate in the preferred, more roomy front.

About two hours later, when we were still driving and again saw the signs for San Gimignano and Volterra, we thought maybe we'd gotten trapped in some weird twilight loop.

As chief navigator, the only one who can see well enough and is old enough to read a map besides Josh, who is the driver, I would like it known that we have only a map of all of Italy to guide us through the Tuscan countryside, and no phone. In any case, we eventually found highway 439 and took it in the right direction to find the town of Terricola, and then another, and another, which finally had a sign that pointed us to Chianni. The signs are something. You turn a hair-splitting bend and there are a list of 8 signs of names of tiny towns with arrows pointing in every direction. In a split second decision, you have to decide where to turn or you are off into the night, or back to San Gimignano as it were. And this while using a pen light to look at a map of the entirety of Italy and trying to find the names of towns like Empoli, Castelfiorentino, and San Donato del Lucato.

During the drive, Itzel mercifully fell asleep and Ezra was content to have the IPod all to himself - even though I had to make him stop with the Lady Gaga already- wierdly out of context in Tuscany. He did start to worry a bit about our situation as all the adults in the car where getting loopy and laughing when he thought maybe we should have been crying. I asked him, "But Ez, who would you rather be stuck in a car with than your Mom, Dad, Sister and Babcia?" His precious answer: "I'd much rather be stuck with a stranger with a mean dog."

When we did finally arrive in Chianni, we got right near Pasquale's house but despite Mom's warning, drove down a steep road that we thought was the driveway but got very skinny very quickly and turn out to be the path to the olive fields. With no way to turn around, we had to back up the steep, skinny, curvy hill which caused alot of bad smell due to squealing tires and a small accident when the mirror scrapped the stone wall and popped off its hinges. Ezra was beside himself and has declared that we are all crazy for wishing for a bigger car. "A much smaller car is what we need," he pointed out.

We did make it to dinner- three hours late is not so late in Tuscany.

Say Cheese!

Its midnight in Italy and Josh and I are the only ones awake in the house for the moment, except college student Francesco who is 20 and has the perfect basement setup - insulated orange shag carpet walls and a futon in the studio just finished for him where he makes techno beats with squinty eyes and a giant grin.

We just got back from another ping pong match between Josh and Pasquale, a comic duo of very tall and very short, at the little pub up the hill.

This morning we were taken to a cheese making operation that was so beautiful it seemed like it was put on just for tourists, only it isn't and wasn't because we are the only tourists around for months and miles. The cheese and bread and oil olive and vinegar and warm grape juice were all brought to us in Tuscan ceramic dishes served on an old wooden table in a house built a million years ago, by an old woman so sweet and lovely that again, she might have been hired by the board of tourism. We bought huge hunks of cheese for Pasquales house and paid not enough.





We were invited to school today with Pasquale, who is the middle school music teacher. All of us spent three hours in class with him and his students. We were offered up as visiting Americans and got to talk all about ourselves- where we live, where we've traveled, whether we have facebook accounts, and if we know of the NBA. The girls were enhanted with Itzel and Ezra who played their parts well and were just goofy enough to add levity to the discussion without totally disrupting the flow of the class. The kids were very open and not jaded and the only technology they seemed to have was one cell phone and one digital camera between them all. They were not posturing or feigning boredom like I think American kids their age would have been.



We were treated to a performance by each of the classes, one group of 13 and 14-year-olds and then a class of a grade below. The children were broken up into sections, 5 guitars, 4 singers, 3 drummers, etc. They performed several songs in 3 languages including When the Saints Go Marching In, Stand By Me and Imagine. It was very touching.

I am told that American visitors to Chianni are not unheard of but also not usual. There is not a Tuscany magnet or postcard for buying anywhere in the village.

We also were invited to meet the family upstairs, a young couple with two small children who have lived their whole life in Chianni. Almost everyone we meet has always been here.

Tomorrow we are to go to Pisa in the morning and look at the leaning tower and then to do some GPS borrowing in Pontessieve and maybe exchange the rental car for something more reasonably-sized in Lucca, before a last night with the clowns.

Tuscan Specialty: Polenta with Mice

PHOTOS:
1 the driveway
2 the front yard
3 the backyard

We are at the house of the Clowns. We drove here from Lucca in the hiariously small Spanish car we have rented. Even after ditching the big suitcase and alot of stuff it turns out we can live without, we can barely fit ourselves and our things in the car. The only thing big about the car is the carseat we rented for 60 euros that takes up 2/3 of the back seat and makes Ezra have an absolute shit fit over lack of presonal space just about every time we get in the car. Getting the carseat latched requires a small miracle due to the Italian design and every time I manage it I can't figure out how for next time.

We have crossed a couple of hurdles - for one, food shopping in an Italian grocery, which is not so hard but you have to weigh your produce and tag it yourself and aslo, it is really hard to buy cookies because the ones that look good are not always so good. We have dicovered malt yogurt which is delicious, brown and looks and tastes a bit like coffee yogurt might. I realize that sounds disgusting but it is really pretty yum.

The other big hurdle - driving in Italy. Josh has done all of it so far, but being his passenger is also a big deal as he seems to be enjoying the thrill of almost dying on every bend.

We arrived in Chianni later than expected but found the town and the house with only a map of Italy, some brilliant navigating (me) and by asking someone to point us to the door of the house of the clowns. Chianni is a town of 1000 and everybody know the Circusbandando people, as they really are pretty famous in the region.

This house is outrageous. The most amazing place I have ever seen, and while I feel like I have been throwing this phrase around a bit, I really mean it this time. The front of the house opens to the village which was built in the 12oos and still looks it completely except for the cars which are few but fast. You walk to everything in two minutes or less - the post, pharmacy, butcher, grocery, bar (Oh the bar! We are headed there in a bit, once the kids fall asleep. Last night after a dinner of bread, salad, and sausage cooked on the open fire, we went with our eccentic host Pasquale at 10pm and first coffee, then limoncello, with 20 or more village elders - seemed like all the town's old men, watching a futbol game on a tiny TV with maybe 6 young people, all face-pierced.

Anyhow, the house. The back of the house opens to the Tuscan countryside. Because Chianni is up on a hill, the house has astounding views. There are several terraces and the inside is warm and cozy, bookshlves and lamps everywhere, one in particular that sits atop a bingo drum and changes colors with a remote control. It is pointed at a beautiful archway built forever ago and uncovered recently. Pasquale is really into setting the mood and right now has soft music from Istanbul (Cafe Anatolia: New Spring) and about 20 tiny lamps lit.

We spent the day in Volterra (of New Moon fame for all the vampire fans.) Very lovely, old, old and Tuscan views indescribable. As a family, we had many coffees, an astonishingly tasty wild blueberry tart, and some awful tea that tasted like it has baking soda in it. Wierd, because the shopowner tasted it an said it was normal. We drove back to Chianni without a map and in the dark which was another feat, but we made it and just in time for our polenta with mice.

Lovingly prepared by Guilia, the polenta is stirred for a long time and made with maize, she told us, but pronounced it "mice" which has us all still chuckling. We had another beautiful dinner and now that Josh is back from putting the kids to sleep, we are off to the bar.