Category — Travel

Sandra has a problem with mugs. My first night here I noticed this. It’s not like she hides it. When I helped wash dishes my first night here, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to fit all of the mugs onto the little shelf in the kitchen. That was before I noticed the mugs sprinkled across the shelves in the cupboards, displayed decoratively on the bookshelves in the living room, and filling overflowing bags at the studio.

“I like mugs!” she says with a wiley smile.

Tea time was interesting for the first couple of days. “NO, not that mug.” I had assumed that all mugs were equal while preparing our afternoon tea. “That’s Tommy’s, can’t you tell?” “And that one is Snoopy. Don’t touch it. No, it’s very old, don’t even touch it.” “What about this one, Sandra?” She just smiled, and reached into the sink to rinse one that we had used that morning.

I’m getting better. I’ve had some time to watch which mugs she uses in the morning for cappuccino (and which ones Deb uses), and which ones she uses for afternoon tea, versus evening tea. I can anticipate which ones I can use, and which should be left alone. I haven’t had my choice corrected in maybe a week now. Wait. I just realized that might be because the ladies were on a cruise for the last week. Damn.

While they were away, I spent some time with friends in Lucca. We had a couple of day trips to Florence and Viareggio, and several days in the beautiful city of Lucca. Along the way I’d been looking for gifts for Sandra and Deb. It turns out it’s a little difficult to buy gifts for artists I barely know. Their home is filled with many beautiful things – and mugs. I kept finding lovely mugs, but rejected them all out of principle. There are plenty of mugs in the house and I was sure to find something better.

On my last evening, as we made our way to the train station, Giovanna took me to a slightly unexpected place – a Scottish tea house. Nestled in one of the winding backstreets of Lucca was a white-walled shop, lined floor to ceiling with white tins of tea. Gio and I chose a seat in the back of the shop where a great Japanese-style tea house stood. (I have no idea how they got this thing in through the little tunnel connecting the front and back of the shop. Probably piece by piece.)

We spent some time pouring over the tea menu. The shop-owner spent some time talking with us about the differences between Bancha and Sencha, Japanese Sencha and Chinese Sencha, and all manner of tea.

By the time we had finished, there were tea tins littering the little table where we sat, the owner having brought them to us, gently scooping leaves for us to smell. When the tea arrived, it was in lovely little pots with stainless steel covers that sat over the body of the pot. Gio and I wasted no time disassembling the interesting pots. The steel, it turns out, was lined with felt. Sliding smoothly over the white ceramic pots, the liners functioned as built-in tea cozies. Fantastic! I was put in mind of the mismatched teapot that Sandra and Deb use, and how quickly the tea goes cold.

I boarded the train to Fornaci an hour later with my gigantic backpack full of new coats and boots, and a teapot under my arm.

The day Deb and Sandra returned, I tried to make the house nice. I swept, went to the market for bread and flowers, and I actually managed to put all the mugs on the little shelf. It was a triumphant morning. The van arrived and we unloaded the extra bag they’d bought to carry all of their treasures. The dogs were ecstatic to have their moms back. I was happy to have my friends home.

After settling in a little they noticed the box on the table and opened their new teapot. “Bello, bello.”

“We have something for you, too.” They were both grinning. After some serious excavation, a package appeared and was thrust into my hands. How fabulous! A present. Who doesn’t love presents? I pulled apart the wrapping and laughed. A mug.

“Bellissimo!” We all had a good laugh and the mug, along with the teapot, was sent to the kitchen to be washed and put into service. I’ve used my mug about a thousand times in the two days since it appeared. There’s something wonderfully comforting in having it in the kitchen. I know that now I’ll get at least one mug right when making afternoon tea.

There is snow in the mountains. You can see it from the balcony in the morning. My friends in Oregon are starting to talk about the ski season, and my mom is writing with snow updates.

Ryo, Luigi’s father, asked if I’d like to go with him and André, Luigi’s little brother, into the mountains to check out the snow conditions. I’m always up for new terrain, so I put on 4 layers and packed up everything warm that I brought with me to Italy (I came fairly well equipped – we’re talking the Alps here).

We started in Barga and wound our way up from 400 meters to 1500 (I think). Through quiet stands of poplar and along mountain ridges we wound, chatting about Italian driving and life in the mountain towns. The landscape was striking and, at times, startling. It reminded me very much of the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho where I grew up, except that in Idaho, you would have had to hike for an hour or so to reach a mountain ridge like the one we were casually driving along.

André, who is something like 20 months old fell asleep on the ride up the mountain, tranquilly dreaming as we drove.

We reached a village perched astride a steep ridge, and Ryo pulled over. “This is San Pellegrino. Want to have a roam around?” He stayed with the car and the child and I struck out toward an old archway and a sign to the sanctuary.

I stopped inside the church that was tucked inside the rocky tunnel, but missed the mummy (evidently there’s a mummy). I left an offering and took a holy card then headed back down the passageway that lead from the streets of the small town out onto the ridge. I fell in love with the view from the tunnel and spent quite a lot of time trying to capture it.  By the time I emerged, my hands were nearly numb.

I turned to look at a cat sitting in the alpine sun, when a little Dachshund came running up behind me. She sniffed my pants and ran up ahead into the snow on a mission of her own. My attention was captured by a placard that explained the history of the place. I walked over to it and began reading, but was interrupted by a shrill and persistent bark coming from just behind the placard. The little Dachshund was suddenly barking at me and did not appear to have any intention of stopping. Her ears were flapping as she jumped with each bark.

There was nobody around and she was raising quite a racket. So I did the only thing I could think of: I bent down and put my bare hands in the snow, made a snowball and tossed it in the air for her to catch. It was exactly what she was looking for. She ran and jumped and pounced and champed. Ball after ball I threw as the little dog danced around in utter delight. After maybe 5 minutes of this, I said “ciao, ciao” and continued along the path to look at the shrine perched at the furthest point out on the ridge.

I took pictures, admired the scenery and pondered the complex in utter silence and solitude. Until my friend reappeared. She came from below the trail and started barking again. So, my hand finally thawed from our earlier game, I reached back down and started again. She was absolutely transfixed. Every snowball was magical to her, worthy of total exploration and attention. She would thrust her face into the indentation left by a missed catch, searching out every last bit of fun. We played our way back to the arch, me tossing increasingly shorter throws to reel her in, her short legs carrying her through the snow. Before I left she chanced a tentative poke at my hand and then ran a few feet away waiting for another toss.

The cats came over to see what was up and I bid them all “ciao,” heading back through the arch, past the church and out into the town where Ryo and André were both asleep in the car. We stopped for a quick cappu and headed down the mountain to the ski slopes that were our real destination. As soon as we crossed over the ridge at San Pellegrino, there was snow everywhere, the landscape completely transformed.

Down the mountain we wound, the bare tracks of the ski slopes sliding in and out of view as we drove. It became increasingly clear that we would not be skiing this weekend. The parking lot at the bottom of the slopes where we stopped the car for lunch was completely bare, and the tennis courts below were green. Still the trip to the slopes brought us to a lovely place for lunch, where we had pasta frita (fried pasta dough) and gelato with blueberries. Fantastic.

And I learned the valuable lesson: even if the waiter says it’s pasta with funghi, confirm that it’s not also with meat. Bastard meat sneaking in places it doesn’t belong… Anyway, Ryo was kind enough to share, and André liked the meaty mushroom pasta, so it all worked out. Then we headed up the mountain for a hike to check out the snow.

Once again, my Vasque Blur Gore-Tex shoes were awesome, if a bit unnecessary. The snow, at deepest, was about 4 inches – not so good for skiing but just right for a hike and breathtaking scenery.

We headed back, collected ourselves, and started the descent from the parking lot to Barga. Along the way, Ryo brought us to Sasso Rosso , a notoriously beautiful town set into the side of the mountain, and built out of the local, pink rock. It looks like a giant grabbed a hunk of the hill, crushed it and then rearranged the pieces.

On our way from the pink town, André started to melt down. It had been 5 exhausting hours of excitement in the mountains, and he had had enough. We tried singing and little piggies. We tried peek-a-boo and cookies. Nothing worked. Something would hold his attention for a short time bringing a smile to his little face, and then the smile would fall into a tragic, gaping pit of despair, wailing about his boots, always his boots.

André has a pair of yellow wellington boots. They’re perfect for going to the horse arena, or into the mountains. He loves his boots. He loves that they are yellow. “Lello.” He calls them. Today it was:

“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!”

There’s something about a child crying – I mean really crying their heart out – that has an effect on people. I think it can go one of two ways, usually. 1. A person will want to comfort the child, in order to make them stop crying. 2. A person will want to kill the child, in order to make them stop crying. When it’s a child I don’t know, it’s a toss-up for me, comfort or kill. When it’s a child I do know, though, I just laugh. I know it’s not helpful to the situation. I know it won’t make them stop. But the honesty with which a child will cry when they are truly melting-down is amazing, and André was crying with complete honesty.

We had taken his boots and socks off when we got in the car. It was warm, he had wanted them off earlier, and there was really no need for them now. Or so we thought. After the initial 5 or so minutes of negotiating about the boots staying off, we thought the situation was solved. He was grumbly and obviously tired, but so was I. We drove, sang, talked. And then it hit. Full on tantrum. It took us at least another 10 minutes to figure out that he was still upset about the boots. After some excellent kiddy translation by Ryo, he reached down, tugged a boot off the floorboards and handed it to André. Quiet. Then “two.” So I reached back, picked up the other and handed it to him.

He clutched the boots to his chest and a great, shuddering sigh came out of his little body. Ryo and I chuckled. There are times to put your foot down with a child, but this was not one of those times. If he wanted his boots, that was totally fine with us. The next 10 minutes was quiet. André flirted with sleep, his boots pulled to his body, his breath coming in great heaving gasps.

Ryo and I looked at each other and smiled.

We were fools.

“ONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONON.” Ryo was first to reach back and pick up one of the fallen boots. He had it on André’s foot in about 2 seconds while maintaining perfect control of the car on a mountain road. “Is he saying ‘on’, or ‘no?’” I asked, fumbling for the other boot. “On, I think.” André was definitely awake, and the presence of the boots was no longer enough. I jammed the other boot on his bare foot thinking how difficult it would be to get it off later.

“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!”

I tried to tell him softly that they were his; that nobody would take them from him. I imagined him in therapy years later, clinging to a pair of yellow boots, talking about vague memories of a stranger in aviator glasses taking his most favorite thing in the world and how is dad let it all happen.

“DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY!” “Yes, André, I’m right here.” “DADDY!!!!!”

There was nothing for it. Ryo comforted his son as best he could, and André did his best to scream himself out of the car. I just laughed to myself.

There are times when we can communicate our wants and needs so clearly that, with a single bark, a stranger knows to throw a snowball for us. And there are times when we want something so terribly much that we want to scream ourselves to sleep. Even after we get it, the wanting is so intense that its memory won’t let us go.

When I dropped Ryo and André in Barga on the way back home, I was ready for some quiet. And I was happy for the invite from earlier in the day. “Want to come to dinner tonight?” “Sure, Ryo, that would be great. Thanks. What can I bring?”

Lucca, as well as being a super-cool city, is a stone’s throw from a ton of other cool places. Florence is an hour bus ride away, and Viareggio, on the Mediterranean Sea, is about 15 mins drive. I spent one glorious day and evening in Florence with Giovanna and Franca, and one lovely morning in Viareggio with Gio.

For my last day in Lucca, Giovanna suggested that we make the run to Viareggio, a coastal city that plays host to a range of VIPs. This cloudy day, however, in the middle of the off-season, it had the feel of Coney Island in the movie “Big.” Many shops were closed, the beach vacant, and even the dark-skinned vendors that usually harass passers-by with their umbrellas and counterfeit goods seemed unconcerned with us, busy themselves contemplating the vast, empty beauty of this place.

We headed first to the beach, having to walk some distance to find an entrance between the pay-to-play beach stands that stretch the length of the waterfront. The swimming-pools stood empty and the umbrella stands littered the beach, giving an eerie feeling to this amazing, contrasting landscape.

We spent a fair amount of time walking across the sand, snapping pictures, considering the waves, examining shells.

When we found our way back to the street that runs the length of the beach, we found it equally empty.  Growing up in a tourist town, I understand the concept of slack.  For locals, it’s a time of quiet.  A time to recharge, and to prepare for the coming onslaught of the next season.  The majestic buildings lining the street stood witness to this reality; quiet, waiting, a great exhale seemed to come from the city.

We found a favorite record store of Giovanna’s and picked up a few cds then walked along the great jetty that extends from the city out into the water.  Fishing boats lined the jetty, their masts standing tall against the grey backdrop and giving rise to a stark picture.  The Madonna stood in the harbor, high above all, eternally blessing those who venture out, welcoming those who return.

Outside the protection of the jetty stood another shrine.  One evoking great sadness.  A constant reminder of those who do not return from the sea.

The quietness of the day, the cold sea and distant cranes building naval vessels put me in mind of my grandfather, who survived a perilous morning at Pearl Harbor, and survives quietly, night after night its memory.

—

Then it was back to Lucca for another fantastic meal, scarf-shopping and a train ride back to Fornacci.  Back to the present, back to my adventures – a great exhale in my journey through life.

Things are starting to be familiar in the little towns of Barga and Fornaci. Some of the shop workers recognize me when I walk in, and I don’t get lost every time I walk the curving streets of the hilly city. I even understood two complete sentences yesterday. Amazing.

Last night, we visited a familiar place, a restaurant with tall ceilings and exposed rock walls, and a deep-voiced owner. Six months ago I sat in that same restaurant with three new friends, my dad’s cell phone, stashed deep in my pocket the only lifeline to my family and my ride home – and to the life I was about to leave.

Six months ago!

Six months ago I owned a home, two cars, a bunch of stuff, had a steady job and a home with a wonderful woman. I had a lot of good friends who made me smile regularly and the best dog ever. And I felt lost.

Six months ago my life changed. I can’t really explain, other than to say that the deep feeling of belonging and connectedness that I found in the one day I spent here with strangers rocked my world. I was struck with the immediate understanding that the world is full of fantastic people and places, people and places that I was waiting to see.

Waiting. Waiting. And, the idea of waiting to live hit me in the gut. What was I waiting for? I like to think of myself as a pretty self-aware person (I know, insert laughter), but the justifications kicked-in. My job , my house, my life, my dog, my bank account all asserted themselves as good reasons for waiting. I heard myself saying that it would be great to travel when I retired. And in that moment, something snapped.

Six months ago, on the last day of my family vacation, I spent the evening in a restaurant with three beautiful, perfect strangers who welcomed me with open arms and open hearts. And that was enough. The questions about my life, my purpose, my place in the world, questions that plagued me for years melted away, replaced by a much simpler dialogue: “go back to Barga” and “okay, I think I will”.

Sure, a bunch of my stuff is in a storage facility, and my car is at my sister’s. Sure, my dog is living with my wonderful ex-girlfriend and I have standing offers to stay with friends whenever I need. It’s not like I joined the Peace Corps and moved to Africa.

But, it’s still a little shaking to think how little things can change someone’s world so completely. One evening of kindness and six months later I’m living with strangers who look more and more like family every time we cook together, and every evening when we say goodnight.

I hope that I will take with me the knowledge that anything, and I mean anything is possible in my life, and that kindness shown to a stranger can do amazing, powerful things.

When I packed for my trip to Italy, I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d end up.  I knew I’d start the trip with my friends Deb and Sandra, but from there, I didn’t know if I’d be in homes, hostels, or five-star hotels.  So, I packed light and deep.  Warm clothes that I could layer and other items that would make life easy.  I agonized over which electronics could share cords, and which jackets to bring (settling on one light jacket and one technical, winter coat).

There are a few things I’ve taken grief over.  Yes, it’s a little strange that I packed toilet paper and tampons, but as I said, I wasn’t sure if I’d be backpacking around.  Plus, I brought a big suitcase to fill with treasures for the return trip, so I had room.

There are other things that really make my friends laugh.  My headlamp, for example, isn’t something everyone would have brought, but it’s dead useful.  It’s good for reading at night, and can save you from being squished when walking at dusk.  However, it also might make your friends act like they don’t know you.

Also, for some reason, only “professional cyclists” – the ones wearing brightly colored team jerseys and riding fancy, fast bikes – only they, wear helmets.  I noticed this last time I was here.  I also noticed how American drivers tend to run cyclists off the road.  Thinking I might like to pick up a nice used Italian bike and ride around a bit, I decided to pack my helmet.

Every day, I assess the weather, select a combination of clothing, jacket, electronics and books that will get me through the day comfortably, and pack up my little messenger bag.  However, when I packed yesterday, it was with the assumption that I would be back at the house before I headed to Lucca that evening.

Bad assumption.

So, I started the day with two layers of icebreaker, my light jacket, sunglasses, my laptop and camera, and an array of books to help me plan my Italian itinerary.  Heavy bag, but lightweight clothing.  Good for bumming around Barga on a glorious day.

After a fantastic, surprise lunch with a new friend, I met up with my ride to Lucca.  Lucca is a really cool walled city.  The walls are hugely thick to withstand cannon fire.  Thick enough to ride bikes on the wide boulevard that sits atop them.  We got to Lucca (which is having a huge, international comic festival) just as the sun was setting.  Fortunately, I had my little wool hat, which I happily pulled on.  The 80 degree day was settling into the high 40s, and my light jacket was not so warm.  It was black, however, as was my hat.  Super.

As it got darker and darker, we stopped to turn on headlights that some of the bikes had.  I reached into my little messenger bag to see if I had my headlamp.  Nope.  But I did have a laptop and about 8 books.  Bonus!  Here I was, wearing black, riding around in the pitch dark cold with no helmet, no light, no warm coat and a bag of books and electronics, through an insane crowd of wandering people who were dressed like comic and video game characters.  Well done.  I probably should have put on my sunglasses and snaked some of the electronics cords through my hair.  I would have fit right in.

When we reached the restaurant after our harrowing ride, we all gathered around the fire to warm ourselves.  It turned out that the adrenaline needed to keep oneself upright through all the twisting, turning, swerving insanity provided exactly the right amount of warmth in the dark city.  Also, books are really quite insulating.

At any rate, the ravioli was some of the best I’ve ever had outside my mom’s kitchen. And I had my camera with me to capture it.  Va bene.