Under the Tuscan Sun (Thursday, October 13, 2011)

Under the Tuscan Sun (Thursday, October 13, 2011)
It’s getting harder to remember what the day or date is. Repacking all the clothes and other stuff is getting old sometimes, too. We packed up again this morning and went to eat another free breakfast, which we took full advantage of, knowing how much we were now paying for the room!

Towing all of our belongings once more up and down the steps of countless bridges, we bid farewell to Venice. It really was a pleasure to be there—a very expensive pleasure!

Relieved to be back in the car after the long haul, we drove out of the Venice area, headed south for the Florence area. Why do we call it Florence when Italy has named it Firenze??? Anyway. Wow, after being practically alone on the highway in Croatia, Italy’s highway was a wake-up call. Semis line up in the right lane, while cars like us squeeze by in the left lane. I will, however, take back my disparaging comments about the Italy’s bathrooms—we encountered the perfect gas station stop today.

So we had the car GPS (Helen, as we now refer to her, in honor of actress Helen Mirren), a printout of the Google Maps directions, and a set of directions emailed to us by our hotel. We were prepared. I knew this hotel was not in the city, but south of it in the vineyard area of Tuscany, really more of a B & B.

We ended up taking Helen’s advice. We drove and drove through little streets until it seemed impossible that we could be near anything. Finally we backtracked and ended up in the outskirts of Florence. We found a backstreet café and bought some sandwiches, and we tried to regain some sense of equilibrium, not to mention good humor. Helen had finally steered us wrong—so disappointing.

The lady at the café drew a map to get us back to our highway, and I’m sure she breathed a sigh of relief when the big, awkward Americans who knew no Italian left her tiny store.

Eventually we found our way, using the directions from the hotel. We had not gone nearly far enough on the main highway. We made our way through the directions and finally pulled into the old Tuscan farmhouse. LOVELY. Later, Brian consulted with Helen some more, only to find out that we’d been 1 kilometer away from the place from the other direction—Helen was right after all!

Tuscany is wonderful. They have had a long dry spell, so it is a little browner than usual, but as we drive over rolling hills, we see the green rows of vineyards, lines of trees, other fields patchworking the landscape, and lovely farmhouses and winery buildings presiding over it all. Brian and I went to get bread from a bakery in the next town, leaving kids to homework, and what a pleasant ride it was.

When we returned, we thought we’d share the joy with them. We dragged them out of the attic room where they were happily relaxing, and we led them across the street to walk down the hill. This is when we realized two things—this road’s no good for walking as it has lots of blind corners, fast drivers and no shoulders—and every farmhouse has at least one vicious-sounding dog who goes ballistic when we walk by. Our house, in fact, has a huge black, noisy dog who wants nothing more than to be near us. Tata made a break for it today and bounded up the steps to our room, where he got on his back legs, put a front paw on each of Allison’s shoulders, and commenced licking her face. The lady of the house, a sweet woman who is eager to please, tries to no avail to get the dog to behave. We get a kick out of her rapid Italian reprimands that blow away with the wind, having no effect on the dog.

For dinner we headed to a nearby town. A small restaurant with outdoor seating offered calzones, and that was all the youngers needed to hear. Calzones here are basically a big pizza folded in half, so looks like we have dinner tomorrow night too. Brian ordered some pasta that mentioned “scampi,” thinking shrimp. It turned out to be two enormous crayfish, but he enjoyed it.

Tuscan life is good, and we will sleep listening to the strong, dry winds and little else.

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