What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Bill and I began talking about our European adventure about five years ago. Those who know me well will be surprised to hear that I was the first one to actually say the words, “Let’s live in Italy for six months.”

My life had just been impacted by a shake-up at the job where I had worked for 15 years. Up until that time, my life had been predictable, with few surprises, and I liked it that way. But my professional experience taught me that life isn’t always predictable. I began feeling like I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone and shake up my life in a way that I controlled. Bill, of course, is always game for an adventure, and he jumped at the idea of a brand new life experience. So we put motions into place in our life to prepare for me to retire at the young age of 54, and we began saving money towards a goal of spending time in Europe.

Our original plans of living in Italy for six months eventually morphed into a more reasonable three- to- four-month trip. Though I began getting cold feet almost immediately after we started making firm plans, Bill knows just how to deal with me. When I would say, “I don’t think I can do this,” he would say, “We will just take it a day at a time. If we get too homesick, we will come home.” I found I could handle it if I would say, “We will be gone for UP TO four months.”

Well, in fact, we were gone for a total of three-and-a-half months. We spent two weeks cruising over, two weeks in Rome, four weeks in Certaldo, and the rest of the time we traveled around visiting much of western Europe. And we did this at a time when the dollar was as weak as it has ever been. We learned how to travel wisely and frugally, and still had a wonderful time.

In total, we were in eight countries (including the United States): Portugal (remember the Azores?), Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Ireland. We attempted to communicate in a total of five languages (plus English) and a number of dialects within those languages: Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We saw a total of six bodies of water: the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the English Channel.

When we picked up the car in Barcelona, the odometer showed 27 kilometers. When we turned it back in, the odometer showed 11,109 kilometers. That translates to over 6,600 miles. In 6,600 miles, we drove around thousands of roundabouts and paid hundreds of dollars in tolls. In addition to that car, we traveled on airplanes, trains, a cruise ship, subways, buses, and of course on foot.

We drank espresso, café latte, cappuccino, macchiato, and café au lait. We enjoyed regional wines and beers, delicious hard apple cider, kir, lemoncello, sambucca, and vin santo. We ate paella in Spain, wienerschnitzel in Germany, bratwurst in Austria, wild boar and rabbit in Tuscany, and of course, the infamous andoulette sausage in France. (We passed up the opportunity to eat horseflesh in northern Italy.)


We attended a horse race in Siena, a circus in Honfleur, a confirmation in Roccotederighi, a medieval festival in Monteriggioni, saw a doctor in Salzburg, and made a pilgrimage in Lourdes. We visited somewhere near 50 churches, and all but one were Catholic churches. We heard Mass in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French.

We slept in a total of 20 different beds over the past three-and-a-half months.

Since we’ve been home, I find that the most common questions our friends and family ask us are twofold: First, what was your favorite country or experience; and second, was it worth it.

I was prepared for the first question. My favorite country will always be Italy. I love the food, the varying landscapes and colors, the strong sense of tradition, and most of all, the people. But when I try to think of what was the most beautiful place we’ve been, I also think of the Pyrenees Mountains in Lourdes or the beautiful Alps we saw from our window in Salzburg. The countryside in France was astoundingly beautiful. The people in each country are so unique. Each country’s food is distinct and wonderful. I enjoyed the uniqueness of each country.

As for the second question – yes, it was definitely worth it. When I am asked, “how was it?,” my first response is always, “very long.” But after I said that the first couple of times, I began realizing that, while that statement is true, I wouldn’t change it if I had it to do over again. It’s true I was homesick much of the time. I desperately missed my family. I thought very often of my friends. I missed being able to pick up my cell phone and call somebody who spoke English. But a shorter trip wouldn’t have been an adventure. It would just have been a vacation. I needed to push myself beyond what I thought were my limits. My goal was to spend so much time in Europe, and particularly Italy, that I would have a really strong sense of the people and the way they live. I have that.

I think this adventure has changed my life in many ways. I feel right now (and hope I am able to retain this feeling) like there is very little I can’t do if I put my mind to it. I also learned how differently the people in Europe live from people in the United States, and realize that they are happy living the way they do and don’t necessarily envy us our life. But, while I always appreciated what I have as an American, I am much more keenly aware of how good it is to live in this country.

And probably most important of all, my relationship with my husband of 16 years has grown stronger than it ever has been. We were together for three-and-a-half months, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we would start to bicker, we would stop and work out our difference because in the end, we were each other’s only friend. No one else spoke English! From that experience, I learned a lot about how to accept our differences and know what is important.

We will definitely travel again, as long as we can afford it. We will never take a trip of this length again, but we both still want to see southern Italy and Greece, and eastern Europe. We want to travel around Great Britain again. And of course, there are thousands of things we want to see in the USA.

But for the time being, I am happy to be home with my family, and am enjoying becoming acquainted with my new granddaughter and playing with the rest of the little ones. I am looking forward with great anticipation and joy to the birth of my son’s baby girl in the next few weeks.

One more thing: Many people have asked me if I will continue to blog. To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell you all how much I enjoyed writing this blog every day. It gave me the opportunity to solidify each day’s experiences by putting them in words for you. It made me feel closer to everyone. But, again, to be perfectly honest, my day-to-day life here at home is pretty boring. I am going to be thinking a lot about how I can continue to keep a blog. If I come up with an answer, you will all be the first to know. In the meantime, I will continue to write as things happen.

Enjoy your lives, your families, your friends, and your travels. Ciao!

Going Home

The next time you see a post from this reluctant traveler, I will be in the United States of America. I will not have time to blog about our day today, and will wrap up our adventure sometime during the next few days.

See you soon!

Walking Paris

We took it easy in the morning on Monday, and didn’t actually get out the door until almost 10. We walked to the corner of our block and discovered that the café on the corner was serving petit-dejeuner (breakfast) for 2,00. What a smokin’ deal! We got a cup of espresso, a big glass of orange juice, and a hunk of baguette smeared with good butter, all for only a couple of euros. The funny thing (and the thing that reminds you that you are in a big city) is that the café is called the Cuban Café and the music they were playing inside was salsa. The owners, however, were from India. A Cuban restaurant with Indian owners in Paris. The world’s mixing bowl!

Of course as good as that baguette was, it wasn’t quite enough to satisfy Bill’s sweet tooth. But just a bit further down the road we found a boulangerie that was selling fresh-out-of-the-oven pain au chocolait (chocolate croissants) for a euro. That made Bill a happy man. We are very tickled at the packaging in Paris. If you buy a couple of fancy pastries, the shop owners put them carefully in a little box and wrap the box with very pretty flowered paper. And in the case of this pain au chocolait, she put it in a pretty little bag and twirled the corners to keep the bag shut.

When we set off on foot, we didn’t have a goal. We headed toward the Seine and walked and walked – 25,241 steps in total. We worked our way over to Notre-Dame, but didn’t see the inside, as the line was too long. We shot pictures from the outside of some of the gargoyles. Bill thought one looked especially like my dad and stepmother’s wiener dog.

We stopped at a little shop near Notre-Dame for a couple of café crèmes, and the 9,80 total surprised us a bit. We’re down to our final days and don’t want to have to get any more euros. I think we’ll stick to our 2,00 breakfast at the corner restaurant.

We continued to walk down the sidewalks overlooking the Seine River. About lunchtime we happened to be near the Tuileries Garden, between the Louvre and the Champs Elysee. We strolled past the garden and stopped at a hot dog stand on the Champs Elysee to enjoy a hot dog on a baguette.

What I noticed yesterday is the contrast between Rome and Paris. First of all, the weather yesterday in Paris was absolutely lovely. It was probably only in the high 70s or low 80s with a blue sky. Rome, as you will recall, had been deadly hot during our entire two-week stay there. An even more notable difference, however (since I assume Paris can also get hot), is the pace of the city. Rome is high energy all the time. Everyone has a purpose. Tourists walk towards a sight they want to see. Priests or nuns walk purposely towards their jobs or places of study. Students or working people are in a hurry to get to school or their jobs.

Paris, on the other hand, moves at a slow pace. There are park benches all around to sit and look at the sights or work on a crossword puzzle or a sudoku puzzle. Old men sit on chairs by the river. Kids ride bicycles with bells. Even the tourists seem to be taking it a bit easier, not in such a hurry to look at the museums but maybe more inclined to stroll over to a place where you can see the Eiffel Tower.

After our lunch, we walked down past the expensive shops and fancy hotels that line the Champs Elysee near the Arc de Triomphe. Since I couldn’t afford anything, and since we had promised ourselves that we wouldn’t push ourselves to exhaustion, we caught a metro that dropped us off very near our hotel. We rested a bit in the afternoon.

Around 7, we walked down to the Bastille area to find a place to eat dinner. We were, of course, way ahead of the dinner crowd. But after walking around looking at different restaurant menus, we found one that was very close to the metro stop. We shared a plate of smoked salmon for an appetizer (what they call the entrée). Then we each got roasted chicken (I was going to get something else, but because it’s August and so many people are out of town, their menu was very limited).

After finishing our dinner, we caught a metro train to Trocadero, where we emerged to the sight of the Eiffel Tower looming before us. Bill’s plan has been to take the elevator to the top. However, we soon learned that there was a 45-minute wait in line. He elected not to waste time in line. We walked around a bit, and then found a park bench on which to await the tower’s nightly lighting. As it began to get dark, the tower turned blue, which was very pretty. As we sat there awaiting the final lighting of the sparkling lights, we began to see rats running back and forth between trees, apparently waiting until all of the picnickers on the grass were finished dining so they could enjoy their leftovers. I immediately thought of the movie Ratatouille, which I saw with my granddaughter. Somehow these rats didn’t seem so darn friendly. It reminded us that Paris is a big city.

Since the rats were making us somewhat uncomfortable, we began walking away from the tower where we would have a more distant view and be nearer to our metro shop. We found some steps to sit on, and at 10 o’clock, the tower lit up in sparkling white lights. It was very beautiful. I’m so glad we waited.

We caught our metro home and dropped into bed about 11:30.

Gay Paris

We left the Normandy Coast midmorning and headed off to Paris (or Pah-ree, as our GPS says, to my amusement). Since it was only about a two-hour drive, we decided to stop in the town of Rouen, which was right on the way.

Rouen is a relatively large industrial city with a very pretty city center. The church (Notre-Dame, of course) is one of the loveliest we have seen from the outside. It is filigreed and a wonderful example of Gothic architecture. Apparently Claude Monet painted 20 different pictures of this one church, and for good reason.

We then walked down the street lined with half-timbered buildings occupied by restaurants and stores, towards the main town center, Place du Vieux Marche. On the way, we walked beneath a big clock. Back in the 1500s when the clock was built, it only had one hand. Apparently it was unnecessary to know the time to the minute as we do today. At the end of the street is the town center.

Rouen is famous (or perhaps infamous) for being the site at which Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. You know Joan, the little teenage girl who dressed up like a boy (after claiming to be told to do so by a variety of saints) and helped France kick England’s butt in the mid-1400s. Well, England was not too happy about this, as you can imagine. As a result, she was tried and sentenced as a witch, and burned alive. At the time, Rouen was under English rule. Later, the Catholic Church apologized for not believing her about the talking saints, and canonized her in 1920.

In the middle of of the 13th Century Place du Vieux Marche stands a contemporary church, built in 1979, in honor of St. Joan of Arc. We attended the noon Mass, our first Mass in French. Following Mass, we picked up a sandwich at a market and ate it as we walked back to our car.

Our drive to Paris went flawlessly. With the help of our GPS, we found our hotel fairly easily. We checked in and dropped off our luggage, and headed for Orly Airport to hand over our car. It was with great joy that Bill turned over the keys to the man from Auto Europe, and proudly walked away after having driven over 11,000 kilometers (which amounts to 6,600 miles) without one dink on the car.

We took a train back into Paris and walked to our hotel. We unpacked, rested a bit, and about 7:30 we went out for dinner. We had the Paris version of Tex-Mex at the Indiana
Café at the Place de la Bastille, just down the street from our hotel. Not quite like Mexican food in Denver.

D-Day

After spending the entire day yesterday looking at the various sites of the battles that were fought to liberate France, and eventually to win World War II, as we drove home I asked Bill how he felt. “Pretty proud to be American,” he answered. I knew exactly what he meant.

The day was kind of dreary, one of the few overcast days we’ve had during our entire adventure. It couldn’t quite make up its mind – it would drizzle, then the sun would peak out of clouds. It never quite rained. The weather suited the day, we felt. The weather was overcast too on June 6, 1944.

Traffic was awful. Everyone was on the autostrada getting away for holiday. What should have been an hour-and-a-half drive took us twice that long.

Since we only had a day, we decided to focus on the areas in which America had the impact. As such, we only saw the Canadian cemetery in the distance as we drove by, and the same was true for Sword, Juno, and Gold Beaches, where Great Britain and Canada soldiers came on shore.

Our first stop was just above the little French town of Arromanches, high on the cliffs above the Normandy beaches, where there was a 360 degree theater. The film shown on this circular screen was powerful. The film director intermixed current scenes from the little towns that line the Normandy coast with film taken on June 6, 1944, as our soldiers stormed the beach. There was no dialogue, and the only sounds you heard were the sounds heard by the soldiers as guns fired and planes flew overhead, or the sounds of a peaceful rural French life. The 1944 scenes were graphic, violent, poignant, and awe-inspiring while the current scenes were pretty and colorful and filled with joy. The contrast made a very strong point – the towns around the Normandy beaches owe their freedom from the Nazis to the United States of America and the other allies.

After viewing the film, we got back in our car to drive to the little French town of Longues-sur-Mer. Here we stopped in a small boulangerie and picked up two ham, Gruyere cheese, and tomato sandwiches smeared with good French butter, and two wonderful pastries for dessert. We then drove a few blocks towards the sea, to an area where there were four German bunkers with their guns still intact. These guns had the ability to shoot up to 13 miles. The clear shot the Germans had of the beach was absolutely bone-chilling.

We ate our lunch at one of the little picnic tables they had set up for that purpose. As we ate, we tried to figure out how the French bakers can get the baguette so perfectly crusty on the outside and so chewy and delicious on the inside. It’s a reality I will continue to ponder.

Our next stop was Omaha Beach, and the American cemetery. We walked through the museum, which gave a lot of information about the events leading up to the war, and even more interesting (at least to me), the events and discussions that went on during the days just prior to D-Day. While I could always imagine how much thought went into planning a battle such as that fought on June 6, I had never really realized that the Americans had tricked the Germans into thinking a bigger battle was going to be fought elsewhere. The Americans used false communications, fake airplanes, and other kinds of trickery that helped catch the Germans off guard and lulled them into thinking that, even as our soldiers were storming the beaches, this battle was not to be taken that seriously.

After visiting the museum, we walked down to the beach. I think of my entire day, this was what moved me the most. The beach area from where the water meets the shore to where the soldiers would have some trees or shrubs for protection was easily the length of two football fields. (And speaking of football, the next time I hear a sports announcer refer to a football player as a hero, I think I will put a rock through my television screen. Football players are not heroes. Twenty-year-old boys climbing off boats carrying hundreds of pounds on their backs, running to the shore, and then crawling on their bellies for 200 yards or more while getting shot at are heroes.)

After looking at the beach, we walked back up to the cemetery. Of course, the sight of all of these white marble crosses and stars of David is poignant beyond belief. Each marker has the name and rank of the soldier and the day he died. I always forget that the battles of Normandy went on not just for this one day, but for months. There are a number of markers that bear no name, but say only God knows who he is. Very sad.

We left the cemetery and drove a bit further up the coast to Pointe du Hoc Ranger Monument. We decided to stop here at the last moment, and I’m glad we did. Pointe du Hoc was an area where, early on June 6, 300 US Army Rangers climbed the cliffs of this heavily German-fortified position to secure it for the allies. They were successful, but only after losing over two-thirds of the soldiers. Out of the 300 Rangers, 95 survived. The area was heavily bombed and the huge holes where the bombs had dropped are amazing and a somber reminder of the power of those bombs.

Our last stop of the day was in Ste Mere Eglise, the first town to be liberated by the American soldiers on June 7, 1944. This pretty little town is in the general area where the 101st and 82nd Airborne soldiers dropped early on June 6 to land behind enemy lines. If you saw the movie The Longest Day, you will recall that one soldier got caught on the church steeple and played dead for a number of hours while German soldiers took shots at him. As he hung helplessly, he watched the ensuing battle below. The people of this town, to this day, have American flags hanging and have a parachute with a dummy hanging on the steeple of the church in commemoration.

It had been a long and somber day, but one that made me very proud.

The Big Top

Now here are some words that I never thought I would write in my blog: Bill and I went to the circus.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen (or should I say, as did the ringmaster last night, mademoiselles and monsieurs), we spent our Friday evening in the little fishing village of Honfleur, France, inside a circus tent watching the Cirque Lavatta.

Bill loves the circus. This might be an unknown and surprising fact to everyone who knows Bill except for his children. Since I’ve known him, he has told me how very often when his kids were young he would get tickets to the Ringling Bros. circus. He would try to get the tickets early so that they could sit in the front row. One year, his kids even marched in the circus parade.

I, on the other hand, am not sure I have ever even been to a circus. Maybe once. But when Bill saw the circus tent set up as we walked into town for lunch, and saw the flyer that said (I presume, since it was in French) that the circus was in town, we were soooo going to the circus.

We got there early, and much to my surprise, the circus animals were grazing out in the open. I’m very serious. There were camels, zebra, a billy goat, and a bull all grazing out in the open where you could walk up and touch them (if you had the nerve, which I didn’t). Horses, donkeys, miniature horses, and llamas were in little pens, but were available to go up and pet. Even the three tigers, though they were, I’m happy to say, behind bars, were unattended so that anyone could go up and attempt to pet them through the bars. It was the craziest thing. It is certainly nothing you would see in the US.

About 45 minutes before the show, a man comes out of one of the trailers and walks out to the animals, followed by a little boy who looks just like him (clearly father and son). The little boy, who couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 years old, proceeds to begin gathering the animals into the place where they would be kept for the show. He goes right into the pens of the horses and donkeys, puts a little harness on them, and walks them to the chosen spot. He does the same with the zebras.

There was only one ring, and it was quite small. The circus was a family affair, and the performers were also the ones who took the tickets, sold the popcorn and souvenirs, and walked you to your seats. The ringmaster spoke French, but as it turns out, you really don’t need to understand the language to enjoy the acts. After all, snapping a whip doesn’t sound different in France than in the US. You can cut a woman in half, juggle, hang from wires on the ceiling, and tame the tigers, horses, and a bull in any language. Even the clown could be understood. And the little 5-year-old boy who had herded the animals was dressed in a little circus costume and played trumpet, along with his daddy, as part of the act.

It was a fine and funny end to a very pleasant day in Normandy.

We got an early start from St. Malo, and beat the first tour buses to Mont Saint-Michel, a surrealistic-looking abbey that appears from afar to sit out in the middle of the ocean. In fact, there is a causeway that goes from land out to the abbey, but when the tide is high, the castle really does mostly sit out in the ocean. It is beautiful, especially before the little town around the abbey fills up with tourists. By time they buses arrived, we were already back on the road.

We got to Honfleur around noon. It was too early to check into our hotel, so we left our car and walked the mile into town. Honfleur is a pretty village that sits at about the point that the Seine River flows into the English Channel. It is a fishing village, and the fishing boats (and other boats) lined the harbor. The town was filled with happy tourists, many who sounded British.

During the month of August, many Europeans take their holiday. We had heard this, and it is definitely true. As we have driven down the autostradas the past couple days, we drove past cars full of vacationing gear, many pulling trailers or campers, many others with bikes on top of the car or behind the camper. We have read that the big cities, like Paris, will empty out so that the shop owners can spend August in a seaside resort. In fact, we will likely run into many closed stores and restaurants while visiting Paris.

We had lunch at a little café near the harbor. Bill decided to try a salad with the area specialty fois gras. I, once again, ate mussels and frites. The lunch was good, though we both decided the fois gras was a little too rich for our taste buds. And I must say, though I thought it was impossible, I’m not sure I can eat another mussel for a while.

We walked around the town for a bit before coming back to our hotel to check in and rest a bit before the greatest show on earth, French style.

Brittany Coast

Bill and I seriously packed a lot into our Thursday.

We got a fairly early start, and drove more than 500 kilometers to get to our final destination of St. Malo, in Brittany, the most northwestern region of France. Since we had driven so hard on Tuesday, we took it a bit easier Thursday, stopping every hour or so for an espresso.

Before getting to St. Malo, we decided to stop in Dinan for lunch, even though it was only a few kilometers away from our hotel. Dinan is considered by some to be the finest town in Brittany. And it is a very pretty town.

What has surprised me is how different various parts of each country can be. I know this is true also in the United States, but this uniqueness is funny when you consider how small Italy and France are in comparison to the US. During the various times we have been in France during this adventure, for example, we have been in a Riviera resort, an area that felt almost like Germany, the Pyrenees Mountains, the beautiful Province region, and now an area that feels as though we are in Great Britain.

Dinan could have been a town in Great Britain. The buildings look just like those in Wales or Scotland. The native people look very Celtic, with reddish hair. Still, despite the appearance of being in Great Britain, the language is very French.

At one time, Brittany was independent of France. According to our guidebook, back in the 1490s, a French king married a poor, innocent 14-year-old Brittany girl, and, as a result, Brittany became part of France. But the people have maintained their independent spirit, which is why the feeling of the town is Celtic though the language is French. One of the benefits that came out of this marriage was free roads. Believe it or not, that still holds true today, with Brittany being the only part of France that doesn’t charge a toll for use of its highways. Talk about hanging onto history!

The Brittany region is reknown for its crepes and its bowls of hard cider, so that is what Bill and I had for lunch. Bill had a crepe with bacon and eggs, and I had a crepe with scallops, leeks, and cream. We each had a bowl of cider, which are actually small bowls that they fill with delicious hard apple cider. Ours had little handles, but as we shopped, I saw some for sale with no handles at all.

As we walked around a bit, we marveled at the Celtic feel of the place. The street entertainers included the performer of Celtic music pictured here, and, randomly, Peruvians singers. Go figure.

Following lunch, we checked into our hotel, and then went into the town of St. Malo for a visit. St. Malo has a very medieval feel to it, with the large wall surrounding the town. But the town sits on the banks of the Atlantic and is the most popular of the Breton seaside resorts. The beaches were appealing, sandy and large. There are old forts out in the water just outside the walls. When the tide is right, it looks like you can just walk out to those forts. At one time, the town must have been hard to penetrate.

After we walked around the wall, we went into the town to look around. They were having some sort of festival, and we watched the children having races up the wall and different musicians and dancers performing. Bill had a delicious waffle, called a gaufrey maisson, with apricots. We then split a huge dish of moule marniere (mussels with leeks and wine), and some wine.

We will take off on Friday for our trip to Normandy.

A Pretty French Village

Thanks to the light-blocking metal blinds on our hotel windows, Bill and I slept in until a decadent 8:45! That is seriously late for us, but I think we needed it after our long drive. We ate breakfast at the hotel, which included café au lait. I think café au lait is one of the best things about France. They let us make our own, using the hot milk that they keep in a pot right next to the hot, strong coffee. I make mine about half and half; Bill puts more coffee than milk. It’s delicious.

We went back to our room and did a couple of things we needed to do on the computer. Then we got in our car and drove to the little village of Saint Emilion, about 40 minutes from Bordeaux and still in the Bordeaux region.

Our guidebook told us that while Saint Emilion wine sales only account for about 5 percent of the total Bordeaux wine, Americans buy 40 percent of that wine. Because of this, the book assured us, the town is very friendly to Americans and everyone speaks English.

The drive was very pretty, through fields of grapes. The town was even prettier than I had imagined. There was, of course, a Notre Dame Church (I guess every city/town in France has one), and this one was quite lovely. The streets were all cobbled and wound around like a plate of spaghetti. We refrained from buying any bottles of wine. We were tempted, but knew we could get the same wine cheaper at the grocery market.

We stopped at a restaurant in the Place Marche for lunch. Though we had been promised English, the menu was entirely in French and our waiter spoke little, if any, English. We just took the plunge. I ordered the menu du jour, which included gazpacho (a name I recognized), and a main course and dessert about which I was entirely clueless. Bill pretty much did the same, ordering the plat du jour and frites, having no idea what they were (well, he knew about frites but not the main course).

We were quite lucky, because they brought Bill beef and vegetables on skewers with his wonderful hot frites. Mine ended up being sausage and frites. I was somewhat skeptical about the sausage, having been burned on French sausage before. I am happy to report that this sausage was very delicious, and covered with a wonderful sauce. The dessert, which we shared, was a dollop of meringue floating in a bowl of yummy runny custard. Heavenly.

While we didn’t buy any wine, we did buy some of the macaroons for which the area is famous. They were melt-in-your-mouth delicious. We had them for dessert with our evening picnic.

Thursday we leave for Brittany.

The Long Drive

The drive from Nice to Bordeaux was long and tiring. Driving seven hours on the autostrada is so much more difficult than driving even the 12 hours from Denver to Phoenix. The driver (always Bill) must keep such a close eye both ahead of him and behind him because cars are coming up so quickly. We had a lot of truck traffic, and we noticed that in France, a truck going a couple of kph faster than the truck in front of him will pass, thereby bringing all traffic to a slowdown. It also was a very curvy road. So we were very tired when we got to our hotel just south of Bordeaux.

France charges a fortune in tolls. We just can’t quite figure out how their toll system works. Sometimes you pick up a card and sometimes you just drive for a while and there is a random toll stop. We paid a total of 60,00 in tolls. That, along with the 50,00 in gasoline, made it an expensive drive. We will be glad to turn the car back to the Peugot dealership in Paris. Bill likens it to the boat owner who says the two happiest days of his life were the day he bought his boat and the day he sold his boat.

To our delight, however, the hotel in which we are staying through Thursday morning is very pretty. As I said, it is just outside of Bordeax, and sits right next to a pretty little wooded area. There are geraniums in the window boxes, and many bright-colored flowers all around the grounds. If we want to do any touring, it will be necessary to take our car. We might drive around a little bit to see the area. Bordeaux, obviously, is wine country. I think most of the grapes they grown in the area are Merlot grapes that are used for the red Bordeaux wines.

We took some time to get settled in our room. I have noticed since we left Certaldo that when we get to the hotel room, we sort of nest like little birdies. We put our things in tidy little drawers and set out our pillows and fill the bathroom counters with our toiletries. I honestly think we are both so ready to be home that we nest without even thinking about it.

We located a grocery store to refill our water and goody supply. We spent some time looking at the vast array of local wines. Amazing selections with amazing prices. We bought a liter of water, a liter of soda, a bottle of Bordeaux wine, and a baguette for a total of 5,41. And we even went middle-of-the-road on the wine! We will definitely miss the inexpensive (and delicious) wines we have found in Italy and France.

Since we were both tired and didn’t feel like facing a restaurant (which is always difficult for us since we struggle with the language), we went across the street from the grocery store to MacDonalds. We have only resorted to American fast food a couple of times on this adventure. I fully admit to you, however, that it tasted really good to me. And I don’t even like MacDonalds. It was fun to have Perrier as one of my drink choices with the meal deal!

I shot this photo of a woman (and thankfully didn’t get arrested in doing so) because I wanted to show the pants that are in fashion in Europe. I have seen them all over, so I predict that they will be showing up in the United States in a few months, though most I have seen here are Capri-length. The inseam is down near the knees, giving the back of the pants a droopy look. Bill and I decided the woman looked a lot like our two-year-old granddaughter with dirty diapers. Little did I know that our little Miss D was not just pooping her britches, but was actually setting a fashion trend.

We went to bed fairly early, and Bill fell asleep while I was still reading. When I turned off the light, the room was pitch-black because of the light-blocking blinds they have on the windows. About that time, I remembered the woods out back and the room started feeling like something out of the Blair Witch Project instead of the chipper flowery hotel I had seen in the daylight. But we survived.

Nice is Nice…

….but off we go to the Bordeaux region of France.

Before I tell you what we did on Monday, however, I want to wish my stepmother a wonderful birthday. She and my dad are two of my most loyal readers, so I know she won’t mind if I tell you that she is happy to be turning 39 (again). Happy birthday, Shirley! We will see you both very soon.

Now, on to our day in Nice. We got up early and decided to set off on foot. Our hotel is near the airport, so I think it is somewhere around three or four miles from Vieux Nice, or the old town. It is right on the Mediterranean, however. Our plan was to catch a bus and take it the rest of the way if and when we got tired. Well, we started off on a side street so that we could find a boulangerie (to buy a croissant) and a cup of café au lait. Once we had a bite of food and some joe (can you call it joe when it’s loaded with sugar and hot milk?) under our belt, we walked a block over and started walking down the street that ran along the ocean. It was so beautiful and we were enjoying the walk so much (in particular, Bill was enjoying the women’s lack of modesty in their bathing styles), before we knew it, we had walked the whole way.

Along the way we saw a variety of beautiful apartments and hotels that overlooked the ocean. Bill shot this photo of a particularly pretty hotel (which, I emphasize, is not ours).

We looked at some of the things we had missed the night before in the old town center, and then began searching for a place to eat. We walked down a street called Rue Droite, which is a long, skinny medieval street. We were looking for a bakery that is reported to have won awards for the best baguette in France. We found the bakery, but unfortunately it is closed on Monday. We did find a little restaurant that served a Nicoise specialty called socca. Socca are omelettes made from garbanzo beans – basically fried hummus. Bill and I split an order of socca and a Nicoise salad. He had a beer and I had a glass of the ice cold, and very delicious, Cote de Provence rose wine. Afterwards, we tracked down Fenocchio’s, a wonderful gelato place that offers 86 flavors. The grand marnier flavor I selected was maybe the best I’ve had on this trip.

We caught a bus home and spent a quiet afternoon reading. Once it got dark (and a bit cooler), we walked over to the market and bought some pate, cheese, and wine. We found a little store that sold wonderful baguettes and enjoyed a picnic in our room.

We will be up bright and early tomorrow as we head north to Bordeaux.

Ciao Italy, Bon Jour France, Again

We drove out of Certaldo with somewhat mixed emotions this morning, following our last stop at our favorite pastacceria. In addition to our pastries and our cappuccino and machiato (always 3,80), we also got a couple of sandwiches to take with us on the road. While we are eager to be on the next leg of our journey, and certainly eager to be enroute home, we enjoyed our stay in Certaldo a great deal and were somewhat sad to see our long-planned adventure come to an end.

As we approached the Mediterranean, the color of the air seemed to change. It’s always amazing to me how the atmosphere feels and looks so different when you are around the ocean. We drove past the Pisa and the Cinque Terre and finally stopped at a little roadwide service station on the Italy side to have our lunch.

Around 1:30, we finally crossed the border into France. We had no sooner crossed the border when we saw our favorite road sign, the exploding car. Our readers will remember that road sign as the one and only sign that we have not been able to figure out. We noted this time that it was just prior to the entrance of a tunnel. Perhaps, I speculated, it means no exploding cars in the tunnel. Bill reckoned that was a possibility. He noted it could also mean that any cars exploding in the tunnel would be subject to eviction from said tunnel. Nevertheless, it remains a mystery.

We made our way to Nice, that pretty city on the Mediterranean, and easily found our hotel. After checking in, we caught the bus that took us to the old town, Vieux Nice. We looked around a bit, and then made our way to the Mediterranean. That really is the most beautiful body of water anyone can imagine. Even with hundreds and hundreds of people on the beach (not all of them entirely clothed I must note), the water is clear and the air feels, well, so French.

We stopped at a little café near the beach in the Cours Salaya and had a glass of wine and a glass of beer, and then began thinking about what we would like for dinner. I had my handy dandy Rick Steves France book, and he talked about a place very near where we were at that exact moment that specialized in all-you-could-eat mussels and frites (French fries). That sounded pretty darn good to us, so we found the restaurant, and each ordered a dish of mussels. Bill got the mussels with garlic and white wine and I ordered the mussels marniere. We each got a pile of mussels so high you would think we couldn’t possibly eat them all. Of course, we did. That, with the French fries so hot you could barely touch them and a bottle of ice cold white wine made for a wonderful dinner.

We found a bus that we were pretty sure would take us home. We were right. We got off the bus, along with a pit bull and its owner. Hmmm. I can’t say I’ve ever shared a bus with a pit bull. Another notch in my adventure belt.

Around Certaldo

As we prepare to leave this town where we have felt at home for the past month, we want to share some pictures of strange, amusing, and beautiful things we have seen in Certaldo.

In Certaldo, old folks ride bicycles. Both men and women ride around on bikes, particularly in the morning, fearlessly traversing the traffic circles, waving at each other and saying “ciao” as they pedal around town. Men are apparently not embarrassed or reluctant to be seen riding on what we would call a girl’s bike. Here is a photo of one man proudly pedaling around on his girl’s bike.

Between the Priest’s House and the town limits of Certaldo, there is a mysterious water pipe built in a hole on the side of the hill right next to the road. All day long, we see the tops of the heads of men and women filling up bottles with the water that comes from the pipe. We haven’t been able to figure out what it is. My best guess is that it is a natural spring and the water must taste good. Italians drink lots of water. It is always ordered with dinner and people buy bottles and bottles of water at the grocery store. I think many Certaldoans must use this spring water as their drinking water.

The gardens in this area are beautiful, full of all sorts of vegetables, and very well tended. Instead of tying the tomatoes to metal rings like we do in the United States, every tomato garden I have seen here has sticks that are built into the shape of what we would call a tee pee, and the tomato plants climb on those tee pees. In addition to lush red tomatoes, most gardens have huge cabbages, corn, squash, rhubarb, beans, onions, kale, and various other vegetables. The garden in the photo is on our way into town, down below the street. It is very large, and my suspicion is that the gardener sells the produce in markets around the area. But wherever you see a nook or cranny in a yard, you are liable to see a beautiful garden.

Bill regularly turns on the television, apparently hoping that by some miracle there will be something in English being shown. It never happens. The best that he can hope for is a sports program that doesn’t require knowledge of Italian. He recently has been enjoying the Tour de France for this reason. The other day, he optimistically turned on the noon news program, and the newsman presenting the day’s stories made us laugh until our stomachs hurt. For those of you who remember Dan Akroyd on Saturday Night Live back in the 80s (who this newsman remarkably resembles with his long hair and mustache), just imagine this man saying, “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

Each morning, there are several dozen scooters parked just outside the pastacceria we frequent. The past couple of days, we have noticed this particular scooter. It is an old Vespa, very small. However, it has a gigantic windshield and a cover that attaches to the windshield and goes over the driver’s head. The whole get-up looks very strange to us. But this scooter is just one of the many scooters you see flying around Certaldo and all of Italy, whether it is on regular streets, larger highways, or even the autostradas if the engine is big enough.

A month or so ago, you will recall that Bill got his hair cut at a local Certaldo barbershop. The name of the shop has made us laugh every time we drive by it. The shop is called Alex for Man. We are not entirely certain just who “the man” is, but I told Bill that since he has frequented the shop at least once, for that period of time, he was “da man!” The mix of English words into Italian store names always perplexes me. We recently noticed a business in Certaldo called the American Bar. Ah ha, we thought! Perhaps we can speak English to someone. Maybe they will have American newspapers. Well, what they had was one Budweiser tap and a picture of New York City on the wall. Other than that, it looked just like any other bar in Certaldo. They served the same Italian wines and beers. They had on an Italian radio station. Behind the bar, the nice gentlemen spoke no English.

And just one more time, take a look at Certaldo Alto, the old town on top of the hill. This photo was taken just 1000 meters or so from our driveway. I don’t think we’ve seen a finer example of an old, well-preserved medieval town in all of Italy. The best things about it are the views of San Gimignano from the town, the flawlessly preserved old buildings, and the small number of tourists you see when you look around the town. And, of course, now that I have even learned about Giovanni Boccaccio and his classic Renaissance book The Decameron, I can even be proud that he is buried in the floor of the church in Certaldo Alto.

As for just plain beauty, you can’t beat the vines heavy now with grapes which soon will begin to ripen, and the olive trees full of little olives that will grow and be harvested and pressed sometime in the late fall or early winter. Both of these photos were taken from the field right next to the Priest’s House. The fields of sunflowers are beautiful, especially in late afternoon as they raise their heads to look at the sun. This field pictured is on the back road between Poggibonsi and the Priest’s House. When you live in a community like Certaldo and an area like Tuscany, you never forget its agricultural nature and how the people rely on the crops grown in the area for their livelihood. Though the crops are different, on very many occasions I was reminded of the area of Nebraska where I grew up. Finally, the landscape photo is a picture we shot early one morning from our kitchen window. I love the haze in the vineyards every morning until the sun climbs high in the sky. Ciao Certaldo!

Jimi-Town, One More Time

We spent the morning finalizing what we were going to send home, and then made our way one last time to Mailboxes, Etc. in Poggibonsi. Despite the cost, it is a great relief to be done with that. With luck, the boxes will be there to greet us when we arrive home on August 9. One has made it already, according to our son.

Because of the mailing cost, Bill and I have been hashing and rehashing what we chose to bring on this adventure, and whether we could have cut back. The reality is, of course you can cut back. We saw young kids every day get on the train carrying enormous backpacks which, in addition to their few clothes, held camping equipment and what they needed to live a very simple life in Europe. Bill and I could have each brought two shirts, two pairs of pants, one pair of good walking shoes, two pairs of underpants, and been resigned to doing a sinkful of wash every night and/or wearing pretty grungy clothes.

However, we started out the trip on a cruise ship that required some decent clothes. The several pairs of shoes we did bring (I brought a pair of Born sandals, and two pairs of Sketchers; Bill brought one pair of Ecco sandals and one pair of Merrill walking shoes) are so worn out from walking miles and miles in them that they will all likely be tossed when we return home. At the beginning of this adventure you might recall that it was very chilly, so we required some warmer clothes (of which neither of us brought many), but we have carried those clothes around with us for the past two months.

I think we did a pretty good job of figuring out the minimum we could carry given the variety of countries, climates, and venues in which we traveled. And the biggest suitcase we brought with us was, in the beginning, filled with English books to read. After completing a book, I would leave it in the hotel room with the hope that it would somehow manage to end up in the hands of an English reader. We also took some completed books to the library in Lucca, and traded some in the other day in Florence. As a result, we are down right now to the book Bill is reading, the book I am reading, and two spares to read next week in France.

So in the end, we are considering it the cost of traveling and moving on to France.

Last night we drove one more time into San Gimignano to have dinner at our favorite restaurant, the Trattoria Chiri Biri. We did it up right, with each of us having first and second course, along with some wine. Bill had the pasta with ragu and I had the tagliatini with pesto. Then he had grilled pork chops and I had (for the first time in my life) coniglia (rabbit). I must say it was delicious, and didn’t taste like chicken. It was somewhat disconcerting to be eating Bugs Bunny, but not disconcerting enough to make me stop. Rabbit is readily sold in the grocery stores and is a very common item on the Italian dinner table.

We were both so full that we didn’t even stop for gelato (shock!), but drove home instead. Bill shot this photo of San Gimignano, the tower town, which, I think, bears a strong resemblance to Manhattan from a distance!

One Last Look at Florence

Following breakfast, we caught the 9:20 train to Florence. We had a couple of errands we wanted to do there, and we wanted to look around one more time.

I had read about an English-language bookstore that would take old books and give you credit towards new books. We had finished a couple more books (including My Antonia, which I can’t believe I never read before, and LOVED) and there is certainly no use dragging around books needlessly. So our first stop was at the Paperback Exchange, where we dropped off the books and picked up a couple more. We had a nice conversation with the store owner, who is a British expatriate who has lived in Florence and operated the bookstore since 1979.

After the bookstore, we visited the Bargello Gallery, which is the sculpture museum. We saw lovely works by a variety of sculptors, including this unfinished work by Michelangelo. We had hoped to see Donatello’s sculpture of David, which I’ve always loved because of the contrast between his version and that of Michelangelo. Unfortunately, David is undergoing a restoration. They are working on the sculpture right in the gallery, however, and offer you the opportunity to see. It was interesting to watch the woman carefully, painstakingly cleaning the crevices of this beautiful piece of work. I’m sure they have to be so very careful when handling priceless works of art.

Bill had a couple more gifts he wanted to buy at the outdoor market, and then we went inside to the big food market and ate lunch. Bill had a wonderful lunch of meat and bread skewers. I made the mistake of ordering what I thought was a pasta soup, but upon tasting it, realized very quickly (thank goodness) that it was tripe. I know my friends and family who enjoy menudo are laughing at me right now, but I just couldn’t do it. The texture between my teeth was a no-go.

We made the trek across town to Vivoli’s, the wonderful gelateria, where I enjoyed the combination of cioccolato and crema l’arancia (orange and cream), and Bill decided to go back to basics with stratiatella and cioccolato. As usual, we enjoyed it. I don’t know what we’re going to do without gelato. Lose a few pounds, perhaps?

We wanted to walk across to the other side of the Arno River, but this time we eschewed the famous Ponte Vecchio for one of the other bridges. It was fun to see Florence from a different angle. We walked along the Arno, past the Ponte Vecchio, and then walked across yet another bridge to head back towards the train station. I told Bill we were walking through areas of Florence that I had never before seen, which was kind of fun. One area had extremely expensive hotels and stores, and I saw a lot of rich older men walking with their very attractive “daughters.” Bill said, “Yeah, right.”

We also walked through an area that was a lot more ethnic than anywhere else we had seen in Florence. There were people of various ethnicities, and a variety of restaurants selling kabobs.

I noticed that by this time I was very tired, though we had walked less than we had on many other occasions. It occurred to me that the effects of the trip have been somewhat cumulative, and I think the weariness is beginning to catch up with me. I think we will take it a bit easy today in preparation for our final leg to France, and particularly Paris.

Packing Up

We went through all of our things yesterday and made decisions on their futures: Either they come with us to France, they are put in the last box that we will take tomorrow to Mail Boxes Etc., or they get left here. As a result, we have two full suitcases that we will take to Poggibonsi tomorrow to mail home.

I did several loads of wash so that of the clothes we are bringing with us for our final week in France will be clean, if somewhat saggy and worn. The goal of being down to just two backpack suitcases is realistic, I’m happy to report.

Aside from packing, we had a quiet day of reading and cleaning up. We did go into town yesterday morning to have our morning pastry and coffee only to find the door of our favorite pastacceria locked and the place dark as night. The sign told us they were closed on Wednesdays. We stood there looking at the sign with our mouths open in astonishment. Closed on Wednesdays? We’ve gone there every day since we’ve been here in Certaldo and it’s never been closed. Sigh. So we walked down the street to the next nearest pastacceria and made do with their goods.

We picked up a steak at the market and cooked it on the grill last night. It might be the last meal we cook on our little grill.

We plan today to take the train to Florence where we hope to drop off the rest of our books that we’ve already read to a book exchange store near the Duomo. If we have time, we may visit a few things that we haven’t seen yet on this trip.

Italian Logic

Tuesday morning we spent time packing up some more items to send home. Once we had gathered up a sufficient number of things, we drove again to the Mail Boxes, Etc. in Poggibonsi to mail the box home. We held our breath as they broke the news to us about the cost. Again, we swallowed hard and paid the bill.

We did get a laugh, however, as the parking lot offered a perfect example of that amusing and unexplainable thing we have taken to calling Italian Logic. As you can see from the photo, the parking lot has a number of fairly narrow parking spaces. On the line separating every other parking space, the Italian owners have planted one of the beautiful tall Italian cypress trees. It will likely be very pretty, especially as the trees begin to grow larger. However, because of the location of the trees, no matter where you park, either the driver or the passenger is unable to open the door of the car. What can they be thinking, we wonder.

After dropping off our package at Mail Boxes, Etc., we took an afternoon drive on the Chianti road, or Via Chiantigiana. This road winds through the fields of grapes that make up the delicious red wine so familiar to this region. I never get tired of seeing the Tuscan hillsides that look just like patchwork quilts made from grape vines, olive trees, cypress trees, sunflowers, and hay. We drove through Castellano-in-Chianti, Panzano-in-Chianti, and the prettiest town of them all, Greve-in-Chianti. We drove with the top to our car down, and as such, we were able to see the breathtaking vistas below as we drove through the region, past numerous wineries and ristorantes.

After an afternoon spent quietly reading, Bill and I put on some decent clothes and went to dinner at the restaurant where my sister and brother-in-law and we had enjoyed that wonderful meal (and fought the insect bombardment) last weekend. You would think that the bugs would have put us off, but the fact of the matter is that the food was so delicious, and the people were so friendly, that we returned, like the swallows to Capistrano, though we had no intention of sitting outside. I had simply not been able to get that delicious veal chop out of my mind.

Last night was, all told, the third time we had eaten there. All three times, the wait staff, though they speak no English, have been extremely friendly and kind. Just like an Italian mother who wants to make sure you are enjoying her food, they bring all sorts of little extras that you haven’t ordered but that taste just wonderful.

The first thing they did was bring us each a glass of sparkling, ice cold Proscecco. Next they brought us a basket of the fried bread covered with heavy salt, as they had done the last time we were there. I don’t know exactly how they make these delicious pieces of friend dough. They are light and fluffy like a doughnut, and the salt makes you simply have to lick your fingers.

This time Bill ordered mixed crostini, and I ordered soup with cannelloni beans. For our main course Bill got grilled chicken and I, of course, got the sublime veal chop. Both came with potatoes roasted with rosemary and sage that melted in your mouth. As I ate my veal chop, I recalled the young boy from the other day picking up his pork chop with his hands, and yearned to do the same.

The restaurant’s manager speaks very good English. In fact, last night he asked us where we were from, and when we told him Colorado, he said his son was trekking through Colorado. I asked him if there was any special preparation or seasonings for the veal chop to make it so delicious. He said nothing but salt and pepper. “It’s all in the good meat,” he explained.

After our meal and wine, Bill ordered the chocolate torte he had eyed the night before but had been too full to eat. It was a piece of chocolately heaven. I enjoyed the biscotti that they have brought to us each time we’ve dined there. All in all, it was a wonderful way to experience our little neighborhood restaurant one last time. And this time, no bugs.

Italian Noon Meal

With nowhere to go and nothing to do, Bill and I hopped on the train headed towards Florence and got off at the first stop, a little town called Castelfiorentino. We pictured a quaint little town with a castle set on top of the hill. Well, much to our surprise, there wasn’t a castle to be found in little Castelfiorentino, though the town was pretty enough.

We walked up and down several of the town’s hills in search of the elusive castle, but kept running into dead ends. We saw some pretty streets and some lovely flowers and pots of basil and sage, but no castle. I guess we will never know from whence the town gets its name.

Since it was nearing lunchtime, we found the Il Giglio Restorante and Pizzaria, and it was open for the noon meal. The restaurant was full of Castelfiorentinoans, with nary a tourist in sight. In fact, Bill and I decided that, with the exception of Roccotederighi (the little town on top of the hill in Maramma in which we spent those four days before Rome), this town in general and this restaurant in particular had fewer tourists than any other place we had been in our travels in Italy.

Their menu, however, did include English translations. Bill concluded that someone must have one of those computer translation programs that never really work very well because some of the translations of the meals were just hilarious. Our favorite was tagliotelli alla porcini, which they translated into English as spaghetti for the porky ones.

Bill had salami pizza and I had pasta made with fresh tomatoes and basil. Both were very good. Since it was such a typical local restaurant, the atmosphere was very relaxed, and we had lots of time to study the Castelfiorentinoans while we sipped our vino rosso and waited for our meals.

Two tables particularly caught my eye. The first was a table of four men who were clearly working on some sort of road crew. They were all wearing t-shirts and the bright orange pants you see on road workers so that they can be easily spotted from oncoming cars. These four men were there when we arrived at around noon, and were still there when we left around 1:30. When we got there, they had three big bottles of water and one bottle of white wine on the table. Shortly after we ordered, the waitress brought each of them a plate of short pasta with a red sauce. Over the course of our meal, I watched these four men consume their four plates of pasta, a pizza, two large salads, four main courses that looked like veal scaloppini, and two bottles of wine.

These men were such a typical example of the afternoon siesta. When all those stores are closed from noon until 3 all over Italy, and thereby driving me crazy, the workers are eating a meal just like this one, perhaps at home, perhaps in a restaurant. As the men slowly enjoyed their meal, they talked and laughed and talked some more. The midday meal is something we will never again see in the United States.

The second group that interested me was a man with his son or grandson. The older man had a bottle of white wine. The boy and the man each ordered a plate of the same short pasta that the workers had eaten. They then each ordered a main course – the older man eating the same veal as the workers, and the young boy eating what appeared to be a pork chop. The boy enjoyed his chop so much, picking it up with his fingers so that he could get all the meat off the bone (just as I wish I could do when I am served a particularly yummy chop of any kind in a restaurant). At one point the man began speaking to Bill in Italian. Bill said, “Non capisco.” The man then asked, “Inglese?” Bill said, “Si, para Stati Uniti.” The man asked from which state. Bill said Colorado, and the man didn’t seem to understand. So Bill began to use hand gestures to indicate mountains, and the man said, “Oh, Montana.” Bill said no, Colorado. I’m not sure he ever understood. But he told us the boy was his son, and asked the boy to tell us how old he was in English. The boy told us he was 11.

After we finished our meal, we took the train back to Certaldo. After a quick stop at the market, we came home and spent the remainder of the day quietly. Our quiet evening included a very brief telephone conversation with our grandchildren, who were enjoying a day at the zoo with their mom, my sister, and my niece. Our 5-year-old granddaughter was entirely puzzled about how it could be evening while it was just midmorning in Denver. “How can it be dinnertime, Papa?” she asked her grandfather. "Because we're so far away," her grandfather replied.

Empty Nest

The Priest’s House was very quiet yesterday. After we went down to the pastacceria in separate cars and had our morning treats, TR and Bec headed for Roma. We went back to the Priest’s House and spent some time cleaning the mansard and washing bed clothes. It now looks like no one was ever there. As we walked around in the little loft area, we again realized how low the ceilings were and how everything looked like a miniature doll house. Standing by the bathroom door, I seem very tall. Nevertheless, my sister and brother-in-law insisted they slept very well, despite having to walk hunched over and spending half the night smacking mosquitoes!

As you will recall, we sent one box home already, and we will have at least one more box to mail. Our goal is to have – by next Sunday when we leave Certaldo – one suitcase apiece. Our suitcases have shoulder straps so they can be used as backpacks and are easier to carry. We will also have Bill’s computer case and probably a bag to hold a couple of books and anything miscellaneous that we want to have with us. This will make moving from one little town to the next so much easier for Bill and me.

So, yesterday was also spent gathering up the things that we will mail back home. Some of the things we bought to use at the Priest’s House (the grill, an electric fan, waste basket, and broom and dust pan) we will just leave here for the next guests. We will abandon the two-liter electric water kettle, which we use to heat water for our French coffee press, in Paris. As we consider what to send and what to keep, we are aware that there will be things that we will neither send nor keep. Some of our clothes, for example, have become so worn because we have been wearing the same things over and over again. We might just toss them in the Seine before we leave Paris!

In the evening, we cooked some pork chops on the grill and drank some Chianti wine and thought back on the past week and just how much of the Tuscan area we were able to show our guests. They saw Certaldo, Certaldo Alto, Florence, Siena, Cortona, Montepulciano, Volterra, San Gimignano (Jimi-Town), and Monteriggioni, plus numerous other little towns that we passed through. During their stay, Bec and TR also were able to visit the Cinque Terre and Pisa on their own. Not surprisingly, we were able to find a gelateria in each of the towns were visited.

Jimi-Town and Bugs

My sister and bother-in-law just left for Rome. I am very sad to see them go. It was wonderful to spend time with them and show them the Italy that Bill and I have grown to love. Those who know Bec and Terry understand how much they enjoy traveling and learning about different cultures and foods and lifestyles, so we had fun experiencing things together. I know they will have fun in Rome.

Our plan yesterday was to take it pretty easy in preparation for their drive today to Rome, and the energy of that city. TR had been wanting to see the big supermercado in Poggibonsi, so in the morning, we drove to the big Coop. It was a madhouse because everyone was shopping in preparation for all stores being closed on Sunday. However, despite the number of shoppers, it was fun to see the huge displays of fish, meat, olive oils, pastas and wine.

As hard as he tries, Terry really has difficulty remembering the pronunciations of Italian words, especially the names of towns. San Gimignano is particularly difficult for him. He reminds me of the television fathers-in-law who can’t remember the names of their sons-in-law and calls them something different each time. That was TR and San Gimignano. We finally told him to just call it Jimi-Town. We drove to Jimi-Town for lunch. We sat on the Piazza della Cisterna, which is the town’s main piazza, and ate our pasta and drank our wine.

Afterwards, I know you all will be shocked to read that we had gelato. The gelateria we chose has won an award for best gelato, and we all concluded it was justly earned. Bec loved her nutella and pistachio flavors. Pistachio is one of the flavors that every gelateria will have, along with stratiatella (chocolate chip), cioccolata (chocolate), crema (vanilla), melone (melon), and fragola (strawberry). Then, each will have some interesting unique flavors, such as riso (rice), banana, limetta (lime), and nutella. (Nutella, for those of you who don’t know, is Italy’s answer to peanut butter, which you can’t find in Italy. Nutella is a mixture of hazelnuts and chocolate.) As for me, I always choose stratiatella and something, and Bill always chooses cioccolata and something. TR chose something different each time, and this time he chose pompelmo (grapefruit) and ciliegia (cherry).

Following our afternoon rest, we drove into Certaldo. This weekend is the medieval festival in Certaldo Alto, and in conjunction with that, the town of Certaldo was having a big market in the church square. As we walked from where we had parked to the church, we were surprised at the number of people who were out and about. We went to Mass, after which we walked a bit around the market to look at the wares, and then drove to Restorante Latini to have dinner.

Bec and TR told us earlier this week that they wanted to buy us dinner one night, and we chose the restaurant that is near the Priest’s House. We had eaten lunch there one time when we first did our surveillance trip to Certaldo, but hadn’t been back. We got there around 7:30, and they showed us to a table in the garden.

A traditional Italian meal consists of a number of courses. You will have your antipasta course, which is your appetizer. That is followed by the primi piatto (literally, first plate), which is pasta, risotto, or soup. Following your pasta course is the secondi piatto, or main course, often stewed or grilled meat or fish. Potatoes or vegetables might accompany the meat or fish. I simply can’t eat that much food, so Bill and I have generally each gotten a pasta dish and then split a main course. We were all discussing what we were going to eat when the waiter brought over a plate of what he called fried bread. The little pieces of fried dough were liberally sprinkled with salt, and it was delicious.

We were just finishing our surprise appetizer, when the waiter brought over another little appetizer he called bread salad. It looked to me like they took what was probably leftover bread, placed it in the bottom of a dish, liberally poured over good olive oil, then covered the bread with garlic, tomatoes, and onions. It was delicious also. We were all laughing because we were getting full and we hadn’t yet ordered anything!

But we finally ordered our dinner. Bill and I split a pasta dish of homemade spaghetti with sausage and kale. Bec and TR split asparagus risotto. For our main courses, Bill had a filet mignon with fried zucchini flowers (literally the flowers from which the zucchini come, breaded and deep fried). TR had a sirloin steak marinated in rosemary-infused olive oil. Bec and I each had a grilled veal chop. Everything was absolutely delicious.

But this is when the bug problem started. First it was just one or two, but within minutes, as it began to get dark and the lights came on, we (and everyone else in the garden) started being bombarded with these awful-looking flying insects. It actually was quite comical. It got to the point that we were hoping the bats would come out so that they would eat the insects. We probably should have moved inside, which some people did, but the garden area was so pretty. After a bit, the bugs seemed to sort of dwindle, and we were able to enjoy our meal.

After dinner, as we were discussing whether we wanted dessert, the waiter brought us each a plate with two cheeses – fontina and parmagiano reggiano. It was wonderful with the rest of our vino rosso. Unfortunately, about that same time, we began to get bombarded with new, smaller insects. At this point, we gave up and went inside.

As we awaited the check, the waiter brought over a dish of homemade biscotti and little glasses of vin santo (which is a sweet Tuscan wine in which you dip your biscotti). All in all, it was an interesting evening. The dichotomy between the amazing food and the annoying insects is so typical of Italy.

I’m looking ahead to a quiet week of packing in preparation for our final week in France.