This is the final travelogue of our trip to Italy ....
So, now Florence.....our last leg.
John finished his bread school and it was a strenuous week if you can believe it. Here is an excerpt of what he started to write a couple days ago before someone planted themselves right behind us at the computer with a rather quiet yet loud declaration that they wanted to use it imminently. Actually, we found that just about every time we sat down, someone would come and "wait" behind us - guess that's how they do that here. He didn"t have the energy to finish writing...and will write more later:
howdy,
Donna has graciously allowed me to write an update so pardon the momentary change in style. school is out, i graduated, wow what a week. we each baked about a dozen loaves of bread. the party room has piles of bread that were amazing. sourdoughs, ciabattas\focaccias (pardon the spelling). my final exam was a Polenta Sultana sour dough and it was perfect....
He will write more later as he went to nap upstairs...that's four flights up in this pensione in Florence. As for my week before we came to Florence, in Mercatale while John was baking, I had the freedom of the Go Ka, and Lorna, my South African roommate was happy to come along. It rained the whole week which made it more difficult to just roam about the countryside, even with the faint thoughts of taking out the sketchpad. I was not interested in driving around to every ancient hilltop fortress in order to check them off the list. However, I managed scheduling a cooking class with an American Italian woman which was immense fun. I took along a fresh goose egg from Chiara's geese as she told me it makes great pasta. So pasta we made in our four course meal in the class, the usual, and then if that wasn't enough, drove back "home" to have our other usual four course meal. It's ludicrous, our eating habits here in Italy. Changes must be made when we return! Like, I'll make Crostatta now!
The company we kept in the 1000 year farmhouse in Mercatale was a very interesting blend as I mentioned before. Being the party house such that it was the meeting place and final prep area for our cook, Christina, we (Lorna and I ) found that we tended to be the primary domestic clean up the morning after each four course meal and gathering (not All the dishes, mind you, but party clean up...). We also found it very satisfying to start a fire to welcome all in the 1000 year old fireplace as well...after searching for dry firewood! Her husband, Clive, is very very entertaining and endearing...I"ll miss the ole chap. It would be nice to someday visit them in "JoBurg" as they fondly call their home. He is very serious about opening his own bakery, so if you hear of a place called Bentley's Buns when you visit in the near future, I'll bet that's our Clive!
We were getting the piles of bread daily from the school and every few days we'd pack them up and deliver to the estate owner Chiara to feed to her horses. There was just no way to eat it all ourselves! Our last day there, we had a sunshine break and I jumped into the car and drove to Assisi - another hilltop fortress in Umbria. The landscape is different there in my brief assessment; a bit more rugged with pale browns, as contrast to Tuscany, rolling hills of the famous reddish dirt that makes up the hues in the buildings. Not knowing in advance that I would be going there I had no background information other than I know that a noteworthy saint is from this place and it holds special meaning for pilgrims here. Yet, however sadly, another "shopping" tour is what it tends to be for the average tourist. I heard more Americans in this place than in all our adventures so far. And, we drove home to our last four course meal.
Saturday, as we wound up our time in that area, John and I were able to go back to Cortona; he didn't have a chance to get out all week as he was either baking or eating or drinking wine. It was our second day in a row of no hot water and Chiara stopped by to apologize and to show us early pictures of the dog-horse, as well as to deliver our olive oil from last year's crop. I have some understanding that Chiara, being the noble lady she is, doesn't just mingle with any old visitor, so for some reason Lorna and I got a tour of portions of her estate in her old 4x4 Suzuki, as well as our whole group invited to her home for "happy hour", where I spied (and paged through) a bible from 1599 in Latin on one of her tables (I am thinking NOT KJV!), and I received a warm hug and kisses on the cheek (they bus 3 times there) from her, and her email address! A fine experience all in all.
We only messed up a bit when returning our rental car; working days in Italy are a bit different there, and trained on to Florence. I was not entirely looking forward to ending our trip in Florence. We'd been enjoying the pace of being in the country, knowing our way around and seeing familiar and friendly faces in small villages, and now we hit the city.
So, now in the pensione, which is a typical lodging; a door off a back street entering into yet another ancient building to find rooms and apartments in and up. Four stories feels more like about six since the ceilings are so dang high. No lift. And we had accumulated a bit more than when we started! We tried not to, but it just happens! We are usual tourists staying in usual places and that's just how it works.
Florence is a shopping mecca. For some reason I simply let John handle the map in this place and by the end of the day he knew his way around and I couldn't get my bearings for the life of me, so as a friend coined: Let go, Let John! We missed our lovely meals and were back to the expensive brand of some sort of protein on some sort of bread to make our lunches that typically adds up to twenty bucks quickly, unless we sat down somewhere for more of the same that might include pasta that quickly adds up to thirty bucks! We gave ourselves a grand tour of the town seeing all the good stuff, planning to visit the Ufizzi the next day as well as David. Strangely though we both felt as if we were suffereing from jet lag; an odd feeling after being in country for 3 weeks. And, it suddenly warmed up. We were dragging! So what do you do when you are dragging? Sit down to a nice cup of Florentine cappucino!
We also found the Cinema Teatro Odeon and slipped in to watch Indiana Jones in Italian. In case you haven't seen it; he gets a good whoopin', gets back to teaching, is off on another adventure, gets a few more whoopins and administers some while juggling the treasure, all with a great soundtrack and loads of fun. Hope I didn't spoil it for you. We knew like 5 words. Monday, off to the museums where we quickly realized our huge mistake: museums are closed on Monday. We knew that, from a distance, say in the Stati Uniti, but here and now, after 3 weeks of being in the country? We completely forgot. Also, it hit us that day like a lightswitch: going home tomorrow. We were suddenly and immediately tired of travelling. We succumbed to our loads and bought, for a whole 12 euro, a very large, no-name brand of suitcase that is simply made to transport goods across the ocean for silly tourists who can't help themselves. We chuckled all the way back to the hotel at our bargain (not a bargain if it busts open and then we're the laughing stock when we pick it up and it's stained with wine and olive oil though!), happily packed it up and called it good. We found a nice restaurant and drank ourselves to sillyness (amazing feat considering our bottle a day average) and walked around the beautiful duomo at night, and passed by again, a lovely Ukraine woman classically trained in voice, singing in an alcove with great acoustics with her accordian playing partner.
As we made our way to the plane I found myself looking forward to our 2 hour layover in Frankfurt. I wanted to eat a hamburger or frankfurter or something, since we left too early for breakfast. I figured those crazy Germans would have this whole airport thing down to a smooth running German machine. Nyet. Our little puddle jumper taxied to a spot just off the runway where we loaded onto a bus that gave us a tour of the backstreets of the airport to deposit us at a door where we climbed many flights of stairs to get me totally disoriented as to where the heck we were. We eventually dumped out into the main concourse, but we needed a different one. We walked all the way to this concourse where they claimed we needed to be inside the gate area to board an hour before the flight leaves. However there are no planes at gates here, they are somewhere else apparently. We mooed ourway down several flights of stairs again (not sure what happens to the elderly or others who just don't do stairs), around corners, down hallways onto another bus that looked suspiciously in the same neighborhood where we got off an hour ago. We got another tour of the backstreets to find our plane just two doors down from the original puddle jumper. You'd think they'd handwalk our luggage over to it. The smooth running Germain machine? I guess they like their moving parts!
Thanks for bearing with us on our silly journals, typing on Italian keyboards where not all common symbols are readily available. We have so many more details of days of touring around and who knows maybe we'll send something every now again as we remember. We have bucket loads of pictures that will take some time to cull out for the viewing pleasure of others. And we're home.