the pleasures of jet lag: my Italian journey
I was up at 7 this morning. For those of you with children and jobs, this may not be cause for surprise. But for me, this means my body clock is seriously whacked. A, my beautiful son, is a sleeper. He goes to bed late and gets up late, the little genius. I don't think it harms him in any way, and it certainly keeps me from snapping at him when he's in a feisty morning mood.
The past few days, I have taken afternoon naps nearly every day and got up at very odd hours in the morning--11:30, 8, 10, and now 7. Who knows where the fun will stop? Hopefully around 8, since that gives me 4 hours to get my act together before lunch, instead of the 2 I normally squander. I could have blamed the sleeping on depression before, but now I am feeling so much better that it's no longer an excuse. Praise God! The best reason is jet lag, of course, and travelling a tremendous amount in a very short period of time.
We left for Italy on a friday afternoon, got to the house in Tuscany the next evening after a nearly feverish ride through 5 little towns that weren't on my map, thorough as it was. We got lost a few times, went down a dirt road that led to a very untidy house, and then finally down the gravel road to a staggeringly beautiful villa on a hill. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't fair, really.
The place I have already written about, but there are pictures here again for you to see, and they don't even do justice to the place. It was built in the 18th century, fully restored recently, and sleeps about 12-14 comfortably. Reeeeeallly comfortably. Lots of adverbs.
When we arrived, there was a basket of complimentary snacks, and wine and olive oil that were made on the premises. A round of fresh pecorino, some wild boar sausage (so good, and SO bad), and very hard toast squares that Italians like to get instead of white bread loaves I think.
Our room upstairs was huge, had a beautiful armoire and dresser, our own bathroom, and views over the valley to a neighboring town. Directly below were the vineyards and olive groves, the caretaker's cottage, and the pool. I didn't swim at all, since I think hypothermia would have been the result, but it was great to soak one's feet in. The weather was so nice that I didn't need to cool off. I could wear light sweaters at night, unlike the sweltering inferno of Italy in August.
Looking out from the kitchen, you could see the cypress trees lining the driveway and Montepulciano rising in the distance, a little jewel of a city that sparkled at night. The first night, I heard sheep and cows, and vowed to find out where they lived and take some photos. More on that later. Also, to the side of the kitchen was an outdoor dining room, sheltered from the wind on 3 sides. There was a pool table, a huge sitting room with fireplaces, another outdoor table and a gazebo next to the pool. There was a TV with about 300 channels, many of them Arabic. D watched a little bit and was deeply disturbed. A cell phone commercial, for instance: a man sitting on a park bench gets a call, and walks away. Seconds later the park bench explodes. WTF???!!! I know, American ads are messed up. But this is way beyond the pale.
We shared the place with 7 other people: one was D's roommate right after college, then his girlfriend who found the villa, and then the rest were all her girlfriends from school and college etc. Nearly all were pale, brown-haired ladies, so that someone might think from a distance we were all some strange Mormon family or something. It was great getting to know them all, and several times during our trip D and I would go off somewhere and then run into everyone else randomly. It was kindof creepy but cool at the same time. Asking for a table for 9 was always an adventure.
Nearly every meal I was awake for was excellent: a restaurant where all you choose is the wine, and they take care of the rest, a little trattoria in Florence that served local comfort food (lots of fava beans, stews and risotto), a very hot place in San Gimignano with some stronger wine than I bargained for, and our final outing to Castiglione del Lago where I got the Umbrian menu, a four-course extravaganza of lamb, bruschette, bean soup (yum!!) and vin santo with biscotti. Vin santo is like port, I think, very strong and sweet, and you dip the biscotti in and thank God that you're not driving anywhere afterwards. I haven't even mentioned the fruit, how fresh everything is, the pecorino and prosciutto that I wolfed down like it was going out of style...also the two huge meals our friend Leslie coordinated and cooked like a champ. whew. Amazingly, I only gained 2 pounds. A sacrifice I can handle.
I went into this trip with the resolution to not care if I didn't see anything at all but the back of my eyelids. I had maybe 3 or 4 places I wanted to go, but even then I wasn't going to be upset if they were too far away or if I was out of energy or whatever. Just being in a foreign place is exhausting, since so many things you take for granted just aren't so there. Like lines: people don't stand in line in Italy, they scrum. Everyone knows who's before them and after them, but it's all one big pile till it's your turn. Stores close for siesta, mostly, and you can't get everybloodything you want at one store. Fridges are small, because it is assumed you get your food every day from the market or the COOP. Oh yeah, and everyone speaks Italian.
My Italian is passable: I can get through a conversation about most basic things, and maybe a few things about my specialties (art, teaching, diapers--pannolini--, and I learned the words for crochet and yarn before I left). I am by no means proficient, but I try to speak Italian solely and then ask if they speak English, if it's really important (a rental car agency, for example). Otherwise I speak Italian until I am completely lost, then resort to pantomime. The whole process is exhausting, though, and I had to study a little bit before I asked for some things, or before we went someplace new. Looking up words for "farm," "goat," "cow," all those rural things they didn't think to teach us in Roma. We learned words like "Vespa," "va via," and "ho un fidanzato" in Roma (Vespa the scooter, go away, and I have a boyfriend, respectively)
These challenges were things I knew ahead of time, but it was hard for D to take when it looked like some old ladies were cutting in our line and all. He looks very tense in a new place, and pissed off. Eventually he relaxed a bit, but it was still hard for him because he did all the driving.
We did go to some pretty far-away places, too. Not far away as the crow flies, but far away because they built little highways on medieval pilgrimage roads. So Siena, the closest "big" city, was a 2 hour drive on the scenic ways (we took the bigger road back, but it was still a long drive). We weren't even going to stop in Siena: we went on to Monteriggione and San Gimignano, both beautifully-preserved medieval towns that I hadn't been able to visit before. Monteriggione looks like a stone crown on a hilltop, perfectly-spaced towers forming the high parts of the crown. Inside, it looks like you'd expect a completely preserved medieval town to look, except it smells good and the people have all their teeth. S.G. has about 14 intact towers rising all over the town, built by competing families. They're so close together, I don't see why they didn't just reach out and strangle each other. Then the walls are fortified as well, and there's an intricately frescoed church with some of the scariest pictures of hell I have ever seen. More graphic than Michelangelo and Giotto and almost Bosch. Ew. Can't even mention what was happening to the old usurers and fornicators. All I know is I want to be in heaven, even if it looks like a boring harp recital in comparison.
Every other day, we decided to stay local, which usually meant sleeping in till 2:30 in the afternoon (it's a 6 hour difference, so very unsettling to the body), or getting up a little earlier and trying to get to the market before siesta. Otherwise, we would decide the night before where we were headed the next day. So besides the aforementioned towns, we also went to Florence and Cortona, and visited the farm down the road as well.
Now I better post some pictures and continue my saga later! Ciao.
the view of Montepulciano from the villa. Vineyards in the middle distance and to the sides of the road.
san gimignano, from the piazza. little high-pitched swallowtails were everywhere, and nested in the little square holes made to support scaffolding.
The past few days, I have taken afternoon naps nearly every day and got up at very odd hours in the morning--11:30, 8, 10, and now 7. Who knows where the fun will stop? Hopefully around 8, since that gives me 4 hours to get my act together before lunch, instead of the 2 I normally squander. I could have blamed the sleeping on depression before, but now I am feeling so much better that it's no longer an excuse. Praise God! The best reason is jet lag, of course, and travelling a tremendous amount in a very short period of time.
We left for Italy on a friday afternoon, got to the house in Tuscany the next evening after a nearly feverish ride through 5 little towns that weren't on my map, thorough as it was. We got lost a few times, went down a dirt road that led to a very untidy house, and then finally down the gravel road to a staggeringly beautiful villa on a hill. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't fair, really.
The place I have already written about, but there are pictures here again for you to see, and they don't even do justice to the place. It was built in the 18th century, fully restored recently, and sleeps about 12-14 comfortably. Reeeeeallly comfortably. Lots of adverbs.
When we arrived, there was a basket of complimentary snacks, and wine and olive oil that were made on the premises. A round of fresh pecorino, some wild boar sausage (so good, and SO bad), and very hard toast squares that Italians like to get instead of white bread loaves I think.
Our room upstairs was huge, had a beautiful armoire and dresser, our own bathroom, and views over the valley to a neighboring town. Directly below were the vineyards and olive groves, the caretaker's cottage, and the pool. I didn't swim at all, since I think hypothermia would have been the result, but it was great to soak one's feet in. The weather was so nice that I didn't need to cool off. I could wear light sweaters at night, unlike the sweltering inferno of Italy in August.
Looking out from the kitchen, you could see the cypress trees lining the driveway and Montepulciano rising in the distance, a little jewel of a city that sparkled at night. The first night, I heard sheep and cows, and vowed to find out where they lived and take some photos. More on that later. Also, to the side of the kitchen was an outdoor dining room, sheltered from the wind on 3 sides. There was a pool table, a huge sitting room with fireplaces, another outdoor table and a gazebo next to the pool. There was a TV with about 300 channels, many of them Arabic. D watched a little bit and was deeply disturbed. A cell phone commercial, for instance: a man sitting on a park bench gets a call, and walks away. Seconds later the park bench explodes. WTF???!!! I know, American ads are messed up. But this is way beyond the pale.
We shared the place with 7 other people: one was D's roommate right after college, then his girlfriend who found the villa, and then the rest were all her girlfriends from school and college etc. Nearly all were pale, brown-haired ladies, so that someone might think from a distance we were all some strange Mormon family or something. It was great getting to know them all, and several times during our trip D and I would go off somewhere and then run into everyone else randomly. It was kindof creepy but cool at the same time. Asking for a table for 9 was always an adventure.
Nearly every meal I was awake for was excellent: a restaurant where all you choose is the wine, and they take care of the rest, a little trattoria in Florence that served local comfort food (lots of fava beans, stews and risotto), a very hot place in San Gimignano with some stronger wine than I bargained for, and our final outing to Castiglione del Lago where I got the Umbrian menu, a four-course extravaganza of lamb, bruschette, bean soup (yum!!) and vin santo with biscotti. Vin santo is like port, I think, very strong and sweet, and you dip the biscotti in and thank God that you're not driving anywhere afterwards. I haven't even mentioned the fruit, how fresh everything is, the pecorino and prosciutto that I wolfed down like it was going out of style...also the two huge meals our friend Leslie coordinated and cooked like a champ. whew. Amazingly, I only gained 2 pounds. A sacrifice I can handle.
I went into this trip with the resolution to not care if I didn't see anything at all but the back of my eyelids. I had maybe 3 or 4 places I wanted to go, but even then I wasn't going to be upset if they were too far away or if I was out of energy or whatever. Just being in a foreign place is exhausting, since so many things you take for granted just aren't so there. Like lines: people don't stand in line in Italy, they scrum. Everyone knows who's before them and after them, but it's all one big pile till it's your turn. Stores close for siesta, mostly, and you can't get everybloodything you want at one store. Fridges are small, because it is assumed you get your food every day from the market or the COOP. Oh yeah, and everyone speaks Italian.
My Italian is passable: I can get through a conversation about most basic things, and maybe a few things about my specialties (art, teaching, diapers--pannolini--, and I learned the words for crochet and yarn before I left). I am by no means proficient, but I try to speak Italian solely and then ask if they speak English, if it's really important (a rental car agency, for example). Otherwise I speak Italian until I am completely lost, then resort to pantomime. The whole process is exhausting, though, and I had to study a little bit before I asked for some things, or before we went someplace new. Looking up words for "farm," "goat," "cow," all those rural things they didn't think to teach us in Roma. We learned words like "Vespa," "va via," and "ho un fidanzato" in Roma (Vespa the scooter, go away, and I have a boyfriend, respectively)
These challenges were things I knew ahead of time, but it was hard for D to take when it looked like some old ladies were cutting in our line and all. He looks very tense in a new place, and pissed off. Eventually he relaxed a bit, but it was still hard for him because he did all the driving.
We did go to some pretty far-away places, too. Not far away as the crow flies, but far away because they built little highways on medieval pilgrimage roads. So Siena, the closest "big" city, was a 2 hour drive on the scenic ways (we took the bigger road back, but it was still a long drive). We weren't even going to stop in Siena: we went on to Monteriggione and San Gimignano, both beautifully-preserved medieval towns that I hadn't been able to visit before. Monteriggione looks like a stone crown on a hilltop, perfectly-spaced towers forming the high parts of the crown. Inside, it looks like you'd expect a completely preserved medieval town to look, except it smells good and the people have all their teeth. S.G. has about 14 intact towers rising all over the town, built by competing families. They're so close together, I don't see why they didn't just reach out and strangle each other. Then the walls are fortified as well, and there's an intricately frescoed church with some of the scariest pictures of hell I have ever seen. More graphic than Michelangelo and Giotto and almost Bosch. Ew. Can't even mention what was happening to the old usurers and fornicators. All I know is I want to be in heaven, even if it looks like a boring harp recital in comparison.
Every other day, we decided to stay local, which usually meant sleeping in till 2:30 in the afternoon (it's a 6 hour difference, so very unsettling to the body), or getting up a little earlier and trying to get to the market before siesta. Otherwise, we would decide the night before where we were headed the next day. So besides the aforementioned towns, we also went to Florence and Cortona, and visited the farm down the road as well.
Now I better post some pictures and continue my saga later! Ciao.
the view of Montepulciano from the villa. Vineyards in the middle distance and to the sides of the road.
san gimignano, from the piazza. little high-pitched swallowtails were everywhere, and nested in the little square holes made to support scaffolding.
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