September 4 to 24, 2023 - Tuscany
By now our fair readers have learned that I post in (mostly) date order and fall way way behind (posting back to our September 4 travel-day and today is.. Oct 24) while Scott posts color commentary fairly regularly. We both do what we do well and that is the way it is! With that intro, I give you.. Tuscany...
Pisa
You are lucky, I already posted about our best 24-hours yet
and our excellent two nights in a hotel that was located a 40-second walk from
the Leaning Tower of Pisa (literally, the hotel had an awesome promo running in the tiny lobby
showing a stylish couple strolling from the hotel door to the Leaning Tower
while a timer clicked to 40 seconds, NOT fake advertising).
Our first train ride in Italy, train from Pisa to Florence, was very easy, we just had to get out of
the Scotland-train mindset where there is sort of plenty of room; these trains
are full and you’ve got to find a seat and claim it without much
indecision. We were so lucky to find an
apt near the place my sister Natalie and her boyfriend Max were staying, just a
few blocks from the Ponte Vecchio bridge. Very good location, but a five-flight
walk up; turns out its pretty comfortable to walk up four flights, that fifth
flight really stretches your lungs! We
arrived just a few hours before Nat and Max; the kids were so excited to see
them that Alex, Luke, and I went to find their apt and ended up on a stakeout –
We hung around on the tiny sidewalk, dodging scooters and walkers and then
nonchalantly stormed them when they got out of their cab (they had just arrived
from Venice). We had dinner along the
Arno; it was so lovely to hang out with them (not that being together 24-hours
a day isn’t AMAZING; it is just nice to have some different energy every once
in a while!). True to her promise, this night, and ever other night we managed
to hang out together, Aunt Natalie bought each of the kids gelato so they did
not have to use their scarce trip money on the delicious treat.
Now let’s get to the sights! I had never been to Florence (I had been to Pisa) and I read The Agony and the Ecstasy (historical novel about Michelangelo) a few months before we left, so I was very primed to soak in Florence. Happy to say I was not disappointed. So many of the places I’d read about came to full-color and vivid life.
Santa Maria Del Fiore, aka, The Duomo – This was my first visit to a multi-marble-colored (“fiore”, flower) style of cathedral and it was very impressive. None of those drab greys or even plain white stone facades; this one is bursting with colored marble, joyfully shouting Look at me! I am beautiful!
We ran right up to the top of that Duomo just like a 14th century stone worker (we had watched videos about how Brunelleschi had solved constructing the large dome (still the largest stone-dome on Earth). Part of the solution included the double-dome, so, we were walking up to the cupola by stepping on the outside of the inner dome. The great builder Brunelleschi won the design competition, beating out Ghiberti; who himself had beaten out Brunelleschi to design the doors to the Baptistry. Brunelleschi’s dome was completed in 13 years, in 1436 and was the inspiration for Michelangelo’s design and execution of St. Peter’s dome in Rome. Ghiberti’s doors took an incredible 27 years to complete; they are so beautiful and intricately designed that Michelangelo called them the Gates to Paradise; we checked it all out (doors outside are replicas, we saw the real ones inside a nearby museum).
So of course the next place we went was Santa Croce, another beautiful church which is the burial place (or, memorial site) to a great many Florence-luminaries. We had a great audio tour here. I have to say, I was moved looking over Michelangelo’s tomb which was decorated with very glum and grieving statuettes representing sculpture, painting, and architecture, mourning, as Earth had lost their greatest creator. We stayed a long time, looking over memorials to Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Ghiberti, etc.
In front of Michelangelo's tomb. muses mourning.
We finished up our first full day in Florence with a visit to
the Accademia dell’Arte where Michaelangelo’s real David is
located. It was a tough visit, very full
but luckily, the statute is a mammoth and we were able to enjoy all sides (most
of us, Alex was pretty glum about the visit and handled his emotions by keeping
a lot of distance from us, which I don’t normally object to and I appreciate him
self-regulating, except it’s a little tougher in a giant museum-crowd). No one got lost and we made it out a little
bit enriched by having seen the Gigante and imagining a master sculpting it.
We finished up this hard-traveling day with some late-night pizza and gelato with Aunt Natalie and Uncle Max, we met them near the Ponte Vecchio, we enjoyed some live music on the bridge and the kids’ got their much needed new energy-fix from their hilarious Aunt.
We later met Nat and Max to visit the Galileo museum where the kids (and all of us 😊 received reminders of how GG built the first telescope and observed Jupiter’s moons orbiting that planet and how radical and threatening that concept – that bodies orbit non-Earth planets – was to the Catholic church. That evening, the kids had a much-anticipated and super-generous OVERNIGHT at Aunt Natalie and Uncle Max’s sweet Florence apt; oh my gosh, they were so excited; they stayed up way too late and watched Marvel movies and played video games and I hope were very good guests 😊.
During our visit to the Opera del Duomo Museum, we saw the real Ghiberti doors (wow, much better view than the crowds outside) and an unfinished sculpture Michelanglo nearly completed and intended for his own tomb (he broke one of the figures legs while sculpting and was so enraged at his mistake that he took a hammer to it – it was still beautiful). We also took a long walk to the Fiorentina stadium – It was so lovely to get out of the center of Florence; only about 10 minutes from the Duomo, we could walk on the sidewalks without bumping people, the pace got a lot slower, the kids got to play in good parks and… Katie got her scarf, such a successful walk! And for our last night, we made sure to take the kids to the Fontana del Porcellino, to the statute of the piglet where visitors rub the piglet’s snout to ensure a future return to Florence (the piglet’s snout is a polished sort of golden color from all the rubbing while the rest of him is a more full, patinaed-brown). Nat, Max and our gang walked back from the Porcellino across the Ponte Vecchio and of course stopped for some live guitar and song. Along with the crowd, we were treated to an engagement proposal during one of the songs, ahh, luckily, the lady said yes and the crowd went crazy. Walking home, Katie noted that she would have a hard time now agreeing to get married anywhere but the Ponte Vecchio. A great way to leave Florence!
Ghiberti's Doors! Luke looks like he is ... not entering the Gates of Paradise! Maybe too many pictures today.
Walking atop part of the museum's excavation areas. This was really cool, curators believe this is an area Brunelleschi used to practice stone laying patterns to find the right one to make the Dome.
Lucca
We had to leave Florence and get to my Dad’s birthplace,
Bozzano, a small town located next to the larger Massarosa city and nearby the
more well-known historic city Lucca (all in the Tuscany region), all on Sunday
because one of the only family members who spoke English was returning to
college bright and early Monday morning. She was good enough to hurry us along
to come to Bozzano so she could meet us and help translate. Our group of 7
hopped on the train to Pisa (where rental cars are cheaper than Florence),
found the airport shuttle, and rented cars – of course, given the choice to
ride with us or Aunt Natalie and Uncle Max, our little traitors left Scott and
me alone in our little fiat for the drive to Bozzano.
Wow, unforgettable terrain. We drove up north through this very hilly country, with uncommonly tall highways running across valleys (each time we drove on one I repeated “don’t look down, don’t look down” and said a little hopeful prayer that all of the engineers were very good at math). After figuring out that those uncommonly tall highways (and all highways) in Italy are tolled and how to get paper tickets and managed the payment system, we made it to lunch at Ristorante Pizzeria Adriana.
As explanation and for posterity – My Nonno, Benedetto, was one of 4 Benassini boys (his parents’ names were Argenide and Aniceto). After WWII, 3 of the 4 boys moved to California with their families (including my Dad, who was about 4 at the time). The 4th boy, Renato, stayed in Bozzano. He married Adriana and they opened the restaurant. Renato and Adriana had 5 kids – all of them are Dad’s first cousins who, as far as I can tell, he went to see once in Italy when he was in his 20s. Three of the kids are alive and all 3 of them work in the restaurant together (though one is semi-retired, a “pensione” as his brothers call him). They are at the restaurant all the time it seems, so, the way to meet them? Go have lunch at the restaurant!
I felt a strange sort of nervous walking in – how would the
meeting go? how would the communication
go (aka, would I remember any of the Italian phrases I had studied in the last
few weeks)? would we like each other? Well.. I did not need to worry at all, of
course. We had such a special visit,
great food, lovely hospitality, sharing of photos and stories of which family
members we all knew or remembered, and most of all just that indescribable
feeling you have when you are around new blood relatives – you don’t really
know each other but you just instantly feel connected and generous and caring
with that individual. It’s some strange
human-tribal-village thing, I just want well for these folks I have just met
and know they want good things for me too. 
With the real Benassinis of Bozzano!
So! We were in the restaurant, after they have closed for lunch, so no guests were there, and I remembered the film. Scott brought it up on his tiny phone screen – Well, the whole family was transfixed! It was 25+minutes and the whole group of us just sat there staring at the film and each person commented in amazement about who was in the film, where the film was, how the village has changed, one scene included one of the men, in his 70s, who had never seen a moving image of himself as a child (of course)! It was so special.
We later took a drive with Olga and Sebastiano to the Bozzano
cemetery (interesting, the cemetery is small and full of “new” arrivals; Olga told us that it is typical for the
cemeteries to keep folks for 50 or so years, then move them along to make way
for people who have relatives still alive who will mourn them. I am not sure
where the older bodies are moved to).
They also showed us the house where my Dad and his older brother were
born/lived in – It is owned as a second house by some folks who were not there;
the friendly lady next door came out to talk and watch us survey the area; she
also had us walk through her side/backyard and to take some figs from the tree
on the way out. She sort of remembered
that Benassinis lived next door and maybe remembered my dad. Maybe.
We spent three lovely weeks in the Bozzano-Lucca area, some
highlights:
-
Visited my Nonna’s hometown Pieve a Elici which is
just up the hill from Bozzano, an even smaller village, precariously clinging
to the side of the hillside.
- Sunlight Water Park visit was a huge hit (thank you to Luke, for finding this place!).
-
Sunset and dinner in Livorno (we ate at this pizza
place the kids loved; it was 15 Euros per person, all you can eat and drink,
BUT they just bring whatever pizza they want AND you have to eat the whole
thing before they bring another one… We are more pizza than generally health
practitioners would advise).
- Cinque Terra. Arg, it was a hard day; we planned to go to Cinque Terra (just a short car and train ride away) for a day trip and kept putting it off because we had so much time in Tuscany – Finally, during our last few days there, we picked the day and got up early to leave, only to see.. sort of a bit of rain in the forecast. It is generally not advisable to go hiking there in the rain because of mud and landslides. We spent a few tense minutes looking at translated National Park advisories, at the forecast for the rest of our stay, and finally decided to risk it – Oh, I am so glad we did! We made it through the crowds to the northern most “Terra”, Monterosso and hiked from there to the next village, Vernazza. It was even better than I imagined it would be in terms of scenery and just that enjoyment you get from walking a fun but still challenging hike. We made it up, up, up and then down, down, down on the hike with incredible weather and then.. the drizzle started.. We stopped hiking and started train-riding between villages; Scott had the great idea to have the kids go impromptu news reports about the family hiking the Cinque Terra in the rain; this entertained them long enough to stop in each of the remaining three villages, parent success!
-
Navigating bureaucracy, in Italian: Just in case I
do want to go after Italian citizenship and also just to have a piece of paper,
I decided to try to find my Dad’s birth record. It is so interesting how this
sort of little activity has so many steps where the language barrier makes each
move such a big energy suck (gives me a little insight into how hard new people
to a country have to work to do each little life-administration thing). I found maybe the right office, I called and
struggled through understanding when they are open. I drove to a place,
struggled through understanding that actually, the right building is somewhere
else. Found the new building, struggled through finding the door and the right
office. Learned they closed at noon but I should come back tomorrow at 9am.
Confidently came back at 9am only to find the door locked and a sign outside
saying “closed every day but Monday and Friday”. Prepared my Italian diatribe
and went to some other window; the nice lady told me just to knock on the
door. Tentatively knocked on the locked
door and was welcomed into the office by the same lady from the day before. And
then… struggled through telling her what I wanted and she and her office mate
gamely worked to understand and look for the right books. It was amazing! In the office, they had shelves and shelves
of giant paper books with the birth, marriage, and death records for all of
Massarosa area. The shelves had this
sort of mechanical-elevator thing that spun them up and behind other
shelves. Ah, yes, they found it! His birth record! I got a stamped copy; they explained that
they cannot give anything official because, as they put it, in Massarosa, he is
still alive, they have no record of his death. Just the way they phrased it
sort of brought tears to my eyes. I said
I understood and would send them all the records to get the official document.
It was very gratifying to have that little photocopy of the handwritten
birth-entry!
-
Lucca soccer match. We went to our first, non-world cup, European
club match! Lucca plays in the 3rd division of the Italian league,
so there were just a few thousand people there, very easy and fun game. The
“end zone” area was still full of dudes with face paints, shirts off, waving
flags, singing, at more than one point they set off smoke-bombs that billowed
fog from the end zone, very fun, and we learned that adult women’s tickets are
priced as children’s tickets are priced, ha, sorry adult men, you have to pay
more because you are trouble.
After Natalie and Max traveled back to California, we wonderfully had another friend to visit, one who Scott had not seen in 20 years and I had never met. So fun, we drove to the outskirts of a small town outside San Geminiano, up and over rolling, cultivated hills, to see Hilary, her friend Sarah, and Hilary's twin girls. Scott and Hilary were in Peace Corps together and she was in Tuscany for a few months teaching ceramic arts. It was such an adventure to find (and later, navigate out of, in the dark evening) their villa off of a narrow, hillside, dirt road. They prepared such a lovely risotto meal for us, the kids played in the big house with a pool table, ping pong table, and other amusements. I don't know that we properly thanked them for the wonderful company, food, and conversation!
Carrara
Wow, going to see marble being mined from the mountains of Carrara was a very impactful visit. First, this was the day that ALMOST went down as the most infamous day of the trip, topping the near-loss of the violin in Wales, on the leaderboard. You see, we had a long and tricky drive to get up there, tense and small roads and of course angry children in the back who cannot seem to adjust to more than an hour in a car in Europe (cars in US, fine, they will go 16 hours for AZ, but the small cars where they are squished, they cannot abide!) – The driving was so tricky, that we had to take a quick break when we were 85% of the way. We all got out to stretch our legs and I… wondered where the keys to the car were (this rental was one of those cars you don’t have to use the key to turn on). I silently could not find them and thought the worst – that I had left them in the carport at our rental, that our car had turned on in the driveway because the keys were close enough to work and that we had pulled away, driven to this edge-of-a-mountain-top-nowhere location and I had just turned off the rental car and now had no keys to turn the thing back on! I, still keeping all these thoughts to myself, silently started the car and breathed a sigh of relief, it turned on on! So the keys were… somewhere in the car. While the others enjoyed the view, I scrambled through all the seats, then got out to think. My eyes rested on the car windshield, you know, that little spot on the bottom where the windshield wipers rest? Well, there were the keys, on the OUTSIDE of the car, sitting on the windshield (where I had placed them while packing the car), having ridden on the OUTSIDE of the car the entire twisty, 75 minute drive. I snatched them up, put them in my bag and cheerfully bade everyone to get back into the car to finish the journey to Carrara, telling no one in the group what had happened (I did tell Scott a few days later, once my mortification had worn off).
So! Into the Carrara mines – we went to a very different ‘cave mine’ where the company has tunneled inside the mountain and retrieve marble that is only used by sculptures and for other artistic applications; the exterior-mountain mines are much larger scale operations. It was cold, wet, and strangely beautiful inside the cave, completely surrounded by marble.
And.. the… crazy.. day.. did not end here! I had booked us a “local experience” to make
Napoletano style pizza in someone’s home that evening, so we had to kill some
hours in a town near Carrara until dinner. We stumbled upon an anything by
soccer Sports Festival. This little town was celebrating non-soccer pursuits
for kids; one rugby coach told us that he didn’t want his kids to play soccer
because all kids’ soccer coaches in Italy cared too much about winning.
Mercifully, it was time for dinner and we made our way to our experience location, pretty spent from a long and eventful day. And we had another hilarious adventure. Turns out that our host did not speak a lot of English at all; he had a lovely small apt, ready with the dry ingredients for each of us to make our own pizza; he was very skilled in the process however he just didn’t speak very much at all. So, we were left to sort of chat with one another to fill the silence. And, cutely, a few minutes into our visit, his two kids and wife came running down the stairs because the kids were of course being shut upstairs during our cooking and could not stand it anymore. He shooed them away and we continued our funny and somewhat awkward quiet-cooking lesson. In the end, we all made pretty good tasting pizza! Trick is definitely the fresh dough and the hot pizza oven (he had an electric one on his tiny balcony). We also tasted these potato-doughnuts which were sooo strangely good, I just could not believe potatoes were in them... A quick search for "potato donut" recipes made me a believer!
And then, after two weeks, the visit to Tuscany was over.. I bade our family a warm goodbye-for-now, reluctantly packed up our sweet apt (it was here that we realized that 2 bathrooms is such a great luxury for the five of us, leaving the house is rough for the day, with 5 people clamoring for the bathroom!), and we spent our last afternoon searching for “the best” gelato place in Lucca, that Aunt Natalie had shown the kids (we found it) and at Luna Park, a carnival that had opened during our stay. Some rounds on bumper cars, a few small coasters, and a terrible, swinging ride that I agreed to ride with the kids (first time I have ridden a ride and felt like I just wanted to die; I have gotten old! I cannot ride amusement park rides anymore!) and the boys paid some money to not knock down beer kegs with a few soccer ball kicks. I made it off the ride without tossing any cookies and we journeyed on. Final Tuscany photos that I maybe didn't aptly describe in the post but deserve publication!
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