May 21: Hands Full of Mountain

At noon today the owner of the house was coming to receive our key and the rest of our rent money. Dan got up and went on a ride, I got up and began leisurely packing and sorting things out, and the kids rambled about. We knew we were going to spend a night in a hotel in Cesenatica so Dan can do the Nove Colli, so we had to sort our big bags into little bags that we could more easily tote into the hotel. There was a fair amount of stress accompanying this sorting, since we also had to cope with the bike in its bike box, needing to be put together, uncertainty about hotel parking, uncertainty about whether I’d have to check us out of the hotel while Dan was still riding, uncertainty over a whole bunch of other things – it’s the usual thing when you do something for the first time.

Finally in the car and headed west, we managed to shove a Dramamino down Benny, but Sadie refused. Somewhere in the wilds of Umbria, we entered a region of absolutely insane mountain roads. There’s a mountain range that goes down the middle of Italy like a spine, and we had to go over it, see? But instead of finding some sort of flat part to go through, the Italians just build their roads right up over the top. There were switchbacks in the switchbacks, and the children began to look green. First to fall was Benny, who switched into the front seat after heaving into the ditch, and then professed to feel better. We were racing motorcycles all the way to the summit of this crazyass mountain, and at the top there was a giant congregation of racing motorcycles and speedy looking people in leather jackets. Clearly the cyclists own this road.

Up and over, and down the other side. Dan was having so much fun that I knew an eruption was imminent.

“Sadie, do you have to vomit?”

“No.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“STOP THE CAR. SHE DOES. SHE DOES.”

“I don’t!”

But she did. Dan stopped the car, I grabbed the nearest plastic bag, which happened to have a couple of biscuits in the bottom of it, and attempted to get her to aim for it – which – she – refused! She explained later that she didn’t like the smell of the cookies. Which Dan said he could understand. Uh, you are vomiting. You have a choice of slopping it down your front, destroying another outfit, your carseat (again) and the car (again), or you can stick your head in this bag which may not smell appetizing at the moment but may I remind you – you are VOMITING. Does stuff have to be perfect?

Anyway, she puked partly in the bag, partly on her shirt, and we carried on. Minutes later, her face went grey, her lip trembled, and more puke. This time there was no way to stop the car, since there’s only a shoulder on the road every few kilometers, so I valiantly caught the expulsion in my cupped hands, and on we drove down the hill back and forth, back and forth, precipice on the right, sheer cliff on the left. Oh, it was a golden moment in my life as a mother, I can tell you right now. Dan gave a big lecture on the importants of Dramamino, and eventually we got stopped, Benny managed to find the hand wipes, we cleaned up, and carried on.

Then it was all flat. We found Cesenatico huddled near the ocean, found our hotel. There were cyclists everywhere milling about, drifting here and there, floating around the roads Oceanside. The hotel parking lot was a grassy field that was padlocked, and you had to check out the padlock from the desk and then lock it up and take back the key. Strange! The hotel itself is pretty fancy, and the children and I went immediately to the pool while Dan rode down to the main headquarters of the gran fondo to pick up his race number and packet and whatnot. The pool was just perfect, with a small pool the right size for Sadie and a big pool that Benny could dive in. They had a great time swimming, and when Dan came back he called to us from the balcony and we came up. The kids got showered and dressed and we went out to find sustenance. We also had to find food for Dan’s breakfast tomorrow, because he’s going to have to get up at 4:30 and eat something, then go ride for 8 hours.

After following multiple sets of directions (One set came from a woman who managed to sell us a German chapstick! Huzzah! My lips are saved!) we finally found the little market, which had a very strange selection. We bought unrefrigerated milk, cereal, packaged croissants, canned fruit, nutella, and a sort of rectangular pie pan to eat the cereal in. Weird but functional, all of it. Thus armed, we made for the oceanfront and found a ristorante by the seaside. The kids had pizzas, I had gnocchi, and Dan had tortellini. We left well fed and sleepy, rolled up home to the hotel. We had decided to take one of our rooms for a second night, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about checking out during the race. While we were getting this straightened out, Benny asked very politely if he could play the piano. The desk clerk was completely charmed by his “perfect Italian” and gave him permission. He played his Verdi with great enthusiasm, then pronounced the piano too far out of tune, and said he felt hesitant to play any more.

We came upstairs, reveled in the WIFI a bit, marveled at the fold-away bidets a bit, obsessed about setting an alarm a bit, and then went to bed. Tomorrow is an early morning!

Now our hotel

We are on our way to our next house, but we have to make a quick stop at a hotel. It's a very neat hotel. It has a pool, is close to the beach and a lot of resteraunts. But best of all, WI-FI!!!!!!!!!! We went to the pool, got pizza, and now we're kikcing it, and blogging. We enjoyed it, and we are going to the beach to live it up even more. I hope we go to Italy again, because we eat pizza for dinner every night!

May 20: The Leaning Tower of McPisa

May 20

This morning I woke up to the daunting task of stringing a violin without tweezers or any tools, but at the end of it Benny had a functional violin and was able to march around the little town with his violin and his sister, playing duets for the entertainment of the neighbors. This resulted in one of our more lengthy conversations in Italian, when we were able to chat about how old the children were. Quite an accomplishment, just in a question/answer exchange. My mother would be so proud. :/ And I did some laundry.

The other thing I did, which is pretty surprising in my mind, is to start my new novel over again, and grind out a chapter and a half. I’ve been stuck on this book since November, so being able to write it even while the children were awake and frequently poking at me with requests and sticks – this was significant. Felt like an enormous weight had been lifted. The only problem is that there was a paragraph in that first draft that I really liked, but it’s not on this computer and I don’t have internet. I know that at some point I’ll be able to squish it in, but just at this point it would be nice to have it, to sort of anchor the book. For those of you keeping score at home, I decided not to go with first person. Too many feelings and too much intellectual intimacy, you know I don’t like that.

Dan had a long ride to do this morning, so when he came back it was lunch time. We ate salad and fruit and then set off for Pisa to see the Torre Pendente. Pisa is a coastal town and lots and lots of people want to go there and see the leaning tower. The town around the medieval part is fairly nondescript. We saw our first billboards there, for places like Carrefour. GPS led us to within visual range of the wall to the old town, and we managed to park beside a fence, again ROCK STAR parking for this little ragtag band of adventurers. We found that the tourist traffic inside the cathedral plaza (piazza il duomo) was not so bad, since it was mostly tour groups.

Hear me now: Watching the tour groups we’ve seen so far in Florence and Pisa, I am loathe to become one of those dead-eyed zombies, following the brisk person holding a numbered flag, each zombie with a matching number pinned to his or her garment. Flocking to the bathroom, flocking to the important painting in each room, jostling politely to be the nearest one to the front, falling behind and looking about them nervously, and mostly never having an interaction with an Italian person. I am sure that with our Suzuki group it will be different, being as we are chock full of lively children and rowdy parents. Most of these people are senior citizens. However, it does give me pause.

When we came through the wall and got to see the leaning tower right there in front of us, we were shocked and amazed. It is really leaning, big time. It’s one of those things, like the Eiffel tower was, where you look at it in person and it looks fake, because it’s so iconic that it doesn’t seem like it could actually be real. Benny and Sadie were delighted – they love to find things they can recognize, and they’re all about visiting iconic things. They often have discussions about which artifacts are most famous – the coliseum or the leaning tower? The Eiffel tower or the leaning tower? The Eiffel tower or the coliseum? These are very important distinctions for the kids.

We got our tickets for the various things to see and do around the cathedral. The leaning tower is actually the campanile of the cathedral, like the campanile we climbed in Florence. There is also a baptistery, and a cemetery. This is something we’re noticing about Italian cathedrals – rather than having a baptistery, cathedral, and tower all in one building, the Italian ones are separate, with separate entrances. We vowed to Google this at our earliest convenience. Unfortunately Sadie was too young to go up in the tower – I think maybe it’s a matter of spaces between the guard rails or something, being too large to safely let tiny people climb it. Really we’re lucky any of us got to set foot on it – it’s periodically been closed for years at a time because of the… leaning. It leans, you know. So Dan and Benny got tickets to climb the tower at 4:20 and we all went to wander around the cemetery.

The cemetery was fully enclosed by a high wall, like its own building but without a roof. There was a central courtyard with lush green grass and flowers, and all around it was a sort of hallway paved with graves, with decaying but interesting frescoes on the walls, and sculptures and whatnot lining the path. We like cemeteries. We found much to like here, with spooky skull and crossbones on the graves, and weird memorials. We went into the small attached chapel and found a lot of really really spooky reliquaries. You know how the joke is that if every skull in a catholic church that was supposed to belong to St. Peter actually did, he would have 47 heads? Well we saw some skulls today, let me tell you. I don’t remember any of the reliquaries in France being windowed, but these are proudly transparent, so you can see every finger bone, every little bit of saint. A bit gruesome, in my eyes. But who doesn’t like gruesome, you ask? I do like gruesome, but I guess not mixed with my religion.

Speaking of religion, having looked at a lot of art in the last few days that deifies saints in the various ways they died, and hearing about all the modes of torture and how many people were burned, torn apart, etc. not just by people in other religions trying to repress Christianity but by Christians trying to repress different sects of Christianity, it makes sense to me the urge to raise up a few particular people to a different level than the rest of us. As protestants we don’t really believe in saints, but maybe at the point that protestants had the luxury of splintering off from the catholic church the concept of saint wasn’t really as meaningful or necessary as it had been in medieval times. It was a dark, horrible period of history, mostly, with a lot of ignorance, a lot of suffering, and a lot of abuse of power. The idea that there were sweet, good, pure people who had such beautiful faith and strength of spirit must have been really needed.

Anyway, Dan and Benny went to take a look at the top of the tower, and Sadie and I began a long leisurely crawl down the stretch of souvenir shops. Reuniting, we went to the baptistery, a beautiful round building where we heard an echo demonstration. A man stood in the middle of the room and sang the notes of a chord, and the sound reverberated through the dome so long that the whole chord hung there at the same time. It was really cool. Benny desperately urgently wanted to try it for himself, but there were a lot of shushing Italians around us. The man who did the demo told us there was a statue near the pulpit which was supposed to have been used by Michelangelo as inspiration for the strength of his David, but we promptly forgot to look at it.

Next was the cathedral: massive, exotic, and elaborate. I just kept gasping and saying, “It’s so FANCY.” Even the floors were tiled mosaic, and there were beautiful marble mosaics left and right. And gold. And huge beautiful paintings. This cathedral was not austere and it was not perfectly made – there were a lot of asymmetries and strange little design flaws. But its sheer enormity and all of the details and elegant parts still had an awesome effect.

After the cathedral we fed the children at the only McDonald’s we have seen in Italy (it’s where the Simpsons went while they were in Pisa, you know!), hoping for WIFI but finding none. There was a sign on the wall that promised a hotspot, but when we asked about a connection, we were told “It’s not working these days.” Dan had to urgently check and manage work email so he used a bit of precious data roaming while we ate. It was 7:30 by the time we left Pisa, walking around the outside of the wall to the car. Benny proclaimed it a great day, and we motored on home. At home we got the children bathed and in bed, and I, much to my amazement, finished chapter 2. It’s quite possible this book is fairly dreadful. Let’s face it: all first drafts are weedy at best. But at least it’s getting written, and I am pretty happy about that.

Torre Pendente

May 19: Uffizi Eye-ffizi We-ffizi

May 19

This morning I woke up at 8:30, felt reasonably well situated in time, and toddled off downstairs to make myself coffee in the strange coffee maker. This coffee maker is something I’ve not seen before: you put the coffee grounds and the water down in the bottom of the pot, then a metal filter, then you screw on the top part of the pot. Then you put the whole tiny thing on the gas stove and it boils up into the top part somehow through a valve or pipe or something. With coffee in me, I toddled out the door, around the back of the house, down some highly irregular stone stairs, and to the laundry room. From the terrace down there, you can see where the stream comes under the house. The laundry I’d put in last night was done, and I strung it out on the drying frame and left it on the terrace, put another load in.

By this time Dan was back from his ride, and we rolled the children out of bed (about an hour earlier than yesterday – baby steps to victory on the jet lag here), pushed some food down them, and headed off to Florence. I was determined to see at least one important art item while in Florence, but I also wanted to walk around and look at the fountains, the streets, the piazzas, etc. and pretend to be an E.M. Forster character. Of course no turn of the century doe-eyed ingénue had to contend with getting a van down streets meant for horses, complete with motor scooters zooming in every direction and pedestrians wandering around in herds and one way streets the GPS claimed did not exist. Fortunately I didn’t have to do that either, since Dan was driving, so I just kept pinching Dan on the leg and saying “FLORENCE! FLORENCE! IT’S FLORENCE!” and he kept trying not to cuss people out.

We (Dan) determined that it would be better to park on the south side of the river since that seemed marginally less congested. We ended up finding ROCK STAR parking right in front of the Pitti Palace – it was actually so rock star that we couldn’t believe it wasn’t metered or illegal or only for bicycles or something. But you can only try so hard to interpret Italian abbreviations on parking signs, so we just left it there and hoped to Neptune it would be there when we got back.

Speaking of Neptune, our first stop (after marching happily over Ponte Vecchio with me shrieking “FLORENCE!) was the Piazza della Signorio, where there’s a big fountain of Neptune and attending sea horses, mermen, etc. At the time I didn’t realize there was marker right next to the fountain, probably right where I was standing, in a spot where a rogue monk was immolated. Kind of glad I didn’t know: soul resin and all that. We looked over the giant Neptune, looked over the giant copy of Michelangelo’s David (the real one is safely inside, but this one is almost just as nice), and then got in line for the Uffizi Gallery. The wait time was reportedly 2 hours but we got in much faster than that. The Uffizi Gallery is not my favorite art museum that I have ever been in. It was hot, close, kind of scroungy, and lit with all the subtlety of a high school gymnasium. We saw The Birth of Venus though, so I am now able to say that I saw it, although in person it looked a bit dingy.

I do now understand why the painting was such a big fat screaming deal, however, because what preceded it in Italian art is about fifty thousand dopey-looking Madonna-and-Childs. I mean there was no limit to how many times Mary and Jesus could be sculpted, painted, drawn, and painted. And painted again. Mary looks sort of mild and modest, baby Jesus looks strangely wise and educated, and they’re soooo similar. Everyone is draped in a lot of fabric, and attended by angels, haggard monks, anachronistic bishops, and pious. I mean the piety will knock your eye out. So when Botticelli came along and painted this sexy broad with no clothes on, and you didn’t have to worship or revere her or believe in her or repress any desires for her, and she really was beautiful, the face, the body, everything, I’m not surprised that the world embraced it. If you take the Uffizi Gallery seriously, then Italian art is a centuries-long march of Madonnas, interrupted in one glorious moment by a buck naked blonde on a clam shell.

Benny and Sadie went through the museum like prisoners under torture, Benny getting more and more oppressed and Sadie getting more and more impishly devoted to oppressing him with every passing salon. In their defense, it was really hot and I’d made them wear long sleeves, and we had left the water in the car, and we were overdue for lunch, and and and. The best thing I can say about the whole experience was that I don’t ever have to do it again.

After we were released from the agony of timeless art, we immediately found a restaurant on the piazza, and sat down to tortellini, spaghetti, linguini, and pizza. And chianti and cappuccino. Then we felt better! We set out to stroll through Florence and meandered out way to Il Duomo, which I was greatly looking forward to entering. Unfortunately today only they closed at four, and the Netzers arrived at 4:11. Not to be discouraged, we climbed the campanile. I don’t like those miserable tiny staircases, I’m not going to lie. But the view from the top of this one made me glad I didn’t skip it.

After descending the tower and drinking about a liter of water each, we stopped for postcards at a little store, and since the proprietress spoke English we asked about a music store, someplace to buy violin strings. We followed her directions down a narrow passageway where we were stopped in our tracks by the sound of glorious, booming organ music. There was a door off the alley, and inside was a beautiful little chapel, where an organ concert was going on. We made our donation to their restoration efforts in a box in the aisle, and then sat and listened to first Handel and then Bach – what an unexpected awesomeness. It was too loud for Sadie, but Benny was in heaven and came back out into the street nattering on about “when I play the organ” and blah blah blah. Thanks, unidentified tiny chapel full of music in Florence.

By now we were sure that the violin store would be closed, and hurried to follow the directions. We were surprised to find the music store was actually three levels of music store, including video games and CDs and violins and all kinds of stuff. Not only did we buy Benny a set of Dominant strings (which I told him had super powers because they came from an Italian store), but we also got Sadie a new DSi to replace the one that Brussels Airlines ate. We were walking away down the street, swinging our bag, mightily pleased with all our problem solving, I said, “The only thing that would make this more perfect is if we found an internet café and you found us a hotel room for Saturday night.” Dan lifted his hand, the matrix trembled, and then right in front of us was a chalkboard that said WIFI in front of a café.

At the café, Dan booked us into a hotel for Saturday night over on the Adriatic Sea, so that he can do his other gran fondo on Sunday morning. We got a hotel with a swimming pool that’s right on the beach, so it will be interesting to see how that all pans out. There’s a lot of fuss about checking out of here, checking in there, checking out of there, etc. I checked in with my email while we had WIFI and found one from my agent letting me know that my book announcement came out in Publisher’s Lunch on Tuesday. Here it is:

Lydia Netzer's SHINE, SHINE, SHINE, in which a young mother's "perfect" suburban existence unravels in unexpected ways as her astronaut husband's endangered mission to colonize the moon brings to light her dark childhood secrets, their strange and wondrous relationship and forces her to question the nature of motherhood, dying and what it means to be human, to Hilary Rubin Teeman at St. Martin's, in a very good deal, in a pre-empt, by Caryn Karmatz Rudy at DeFiore and Company (World).

Reading it made me so happy, I did a dance around the café. Probably they thought I was nuts, but I don’t care. No one took my book deal away, so I danced insensibly around the place. I know I will remember that café forever, on the corner of this little street and that little alley, and how it sprinkled a little rain on us, driving us inside. It was a great thing for me to see this announcement written down, undeniable, and real. We bounced back over the bridge and to the car, got inside, and drove home, where I fed them tortellini, fresh strawberries, and hazelnut chocolate gelato. Now I’m going to read, read, read someone else’s book, and charge up this Netbook. And tomorrow I’m going to start writing, writing, writing mine.

Our house

We live in a house that used to be an old mill. There is a river beside it, and it's in the middle of a small little town. It's very beautiful. I like the house, but not the river, because the river is actually the city grey water, which is why, if I found a way down, I didn't go down and splash in it. I am having a great time here in Florence, at an internet cafè, writing for the first time on my DSi! I saw the uffizi gallery, a famous art museum, and I will go home and snack on some gelato (ice cream.)

-Benny

May 18: Sleepless in Siena

May 18

Last night the children had an awful time trying to get to sleep, and I ended up just lying down next to a wakeful, wiggly Sadie and falling asleep myself. I think she was reading Golden Books on the Nook when I finally conked out, and Benny was still reading Ranger’s Apprentice volume whatever. For their little bodies it was only dinner time, not bedtime at all, and I decided to just let go of trying to make them sleep. They slept in this morning, and Dan went out on a bike ride to Florence and back. I made lunch: salad with fresh mozzarella, garden carrots and tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar and oregano, and crostini with prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, and olives. I must say this fresh mozzarella is pretty tolerable.

We left for the medieval city of Siena with no problems in this world, but by the time we got there we had many, many problems.

Problem #1: I forgot the Dramamine.

Problem #2: Dan lost his glasses.

Problem #3: GPS was convinced there were no one-way streets in Siena.

We determined that on any road that inspired Dan to make whooshing sound effects as he was driving around corners, one of the children would be guaranteed to puke. Today it was Sadie’s turn, and she sprayed eggy puke not once but twice during our trek through Chianti country, completely destroying her outfit. (I must interrupt this daily report to tell you there’s something on Italian TV that seems to be American Idol with accordions players. It’s called Cantando Ballando, and I must Google it at my earliest convenience. There is a virtual forest of grinning, dancing accordion players, all glittery and ingratiating. Don’t let me forget.) Anyway, by the time we were in downtown Siena, Sadie was stripped to her underwear, Dan was violently angry at the GPS, and I was doubtful we’d achieve anything much apart from killing each other. Yet somehow within an hour of being in Siena, we had a sack full of Italian Dramamine, Sadie was wearing a new dress, and Dan was wearing his glasses to see sparkling vistas from the Torre del Mangia with the children. (Now on Cantando Ballando, there’s a woman singing some kind of ballad. Behind her on the LCD video wall is a collage of random kitten pictures. One of the kittens has a shmush face, one has a toy, and one of the kittens is wearing a green hat. Everyone in the studio audience is a senior citizen, and now there are half-naked dancers all over the stage. Half-naked dancers, giant adorable kittens, and accordions. That’s entertainment on Cantando Ballando.)

Anyway, Siena turned out to be the city of our dreams, with a convenient and open pharmacie, a clothing store that had a woman’s top we could pretend fit Sadie, a horrifyingly tall tower to climb, a glittering marble cathedral and pretty soon: gelato. We tried very hard to get lost in the medieval byways again, but with such unmistakable landmarks as the tower and the cathedral it was impossible to not maintain our equilibrium. But you don’t really care about that. You want to know what’s going on with Cantando Ballando, and I’m going to tell you that Italian Taylor Hicks is now on the show, and *his* video wall background is concert footage of HIMSELF at a much younger age singing an entirely different song.

After shoving some Dramamine down the children we headed back out to the crazy mountain roads to zip around corners, zoom down steep hills, and also look at the Tuscan countryside in the province of Siena. Siena and Florence used to be at each other’s throats, each an independent principality, until Florence beat down Siena, stalled its art and architecture in the middle ages, and sent a Medici governor to lord it over them and live in their palace. Siena managed to hang onto some dignity with its local horse race, celebrating the founding of the city by Remus’ two sons who raced up the hill on two horses, one black and one white. This explains the black and white theme of everything from the cathedral marble to the ducal coat of arms.

On Cantando Ballando, there’s another old man singing, and HIS video wall background is himself playing the piano on ice while people in harlequin costumes skate around it in concentric rings. And the accordion players are all back, dressed in burgundy, and are swaying back and forth in unison, waving their hands like “here’s the flowing wheat, there’s the flowing wheat.” Dan thinks this is a variety show, not a competition. I don’t know what variety show actually means, but someone in the audience has fallen backward out of his chair, dead of old age or in a spasm of appreciation. Seriously, the audience is a sea of white hair.

Sitting in the piazza at Siena in front of the old palace, you can really sense the specificity of this Italian town. I was reminded of the fact that Italy has only been a unified country for a short time, relatively speaking. There is a strong sense of identity in each town we have visited. I don’t know why this surprises me in Europe, when each of our states has a claim on its own uniqueness. Maybe it’s because Italy is physically so small, and these little city-states so close, to be maintaining their own flavor. But distances mean more here. You just don’t have the same network of speedy freeways. It’s mostly creaky little country roads. So each urban center really feels like an island, surrounded by a sea of olive groves and vineyards and long mountain ranges. It amazes me how unpopulated it is here. Here we are in a countryside that has been civilized and populated for thousands of years, and you look around and see mostly nature. Makes Virginia seem so crowded, long strings of habitations stretching out along every road.