I thought that what with it being November-almost-December, there's no time like the present to do a nice, timely post about my trip to Italy with the fam that happened in.......August. Go me.
First and foremost, my parents alone took 500+ pictures during the course of the week. If I tried posting all of them, Blogger and possibly also the Internet would explode. So, if you'd like to see more, you can check them out on Facebook, where they fill no less than six albums AND that's not even all the pics. If for some reason only a COUPLE hundred pictures of my family horsing around in Italy is not enough for you, email me and I'll invite you to the group room on Snapfish.
So the back story is that Mormor turned 80 this past January, and the only birthday present she asked for was...for us to all go to Italy with her. I know, the drudgery of it all was almost unbearable. Such hardship. So this is the place she booked for us to stay.
Needless to say we all just about died when we got there. It's called
Borgo Iesolana and is in a teensy town called Bucine, which is approximately the size of my house. You get to Iesolana by first driving through said teeny town and crossing "the Old Roman Bridge"...
Cool, no? On the way to Iesolana from the airport, we were like "okay, so how do we tell which one is the Old Roman Bridge?" Turns out it's not exactly difficult to figure out. We were driving three Fiats amongst the 10 of us on the trip, and Fiats are one step above Matchbox cars, but let me tell you that those goddamn inconsiderate Romans did not plan properly for automobiles of even the teeny variety...
If "Holiday Road" is not playing in your head right now, you either have a shitty Movies Watched repertoire or you have no soul. I can't help the truth. You may also notice from the preceding picture that the bridge has a fairly steep angle, so there are parts of the bridge where you can't see the crazy little Italian grandfather coming at you from the opposite side. In any case, once you made your way safely over the Roman Bridge o' Doom, you got onto a dirt road that went through Iesolana's vineyards, all the while being bombarded by these psychotic blackflies that hang around the grapevines. It was a little alarming, I have to say...they would just HURL themselves against the windows of the car until you got to the parking lot, but then once you got onto the actual residential, non-farm part of the villa, they vanished, never to pester you. In fact, even when little scout parties of the family ventured out into the vineyards, all they would do is bounce off your head and irritate the everloving crap out of you, not bite you. Very weird.
Iesolana was just aggressively beautiful. It's a converted farm, parts of which are obviously still working, but most of the buildings have been converted to gorgeous living spaces. Our gang had two apartments...my nuclear family (Mom, Dad, my sis and I) stayed in one called Cipressi, whose patio overlooked the pool and surrounding hills, and the rest of the clan (Mormor, Dick, Auntie C and Uncle T, Uncle TT and Annie) stayed in Tiana, which faced a perpendicular direction from us. Here's the whole gang on the porch at Tiana:
Clockwise from far left: Auntie C, moi, Mom, Uncle TT, Sis, Dad, Mormor (foreground), Dick (red shirt), Annie...and okay I guess I lied, Uncle T seems to have weaseled out of this pic. I think that picture is from the first or second night in Italy. On to the travels...I will apologize in advance if this account seems repetitive, because I really could sum up the whole trip in one sentence: "We had this fabulous home base, and we went out to little hill towns which rocked, and we had a blast." All of our trips out of Iesolana were to small hill towns, but they were different and great in their own way, which I'll TRY to explain but always feel like I miss the true essence of.
The first day was a two-fer...Volterra and San Gimignano.
Volterra is a very old, very neat town, and we arrived in the midst of a sort of Ren Faire type extravaganza celebrating the fact that the town has been around since triple-digit years. Let me put it this way...the cathedral was consecrated in 1120. So, by 1120, they had had time to BUILD a cathedral, and lest we forget, this wasn't exactly a quick process in that time period. Very, very old. Now, as I mentioned before, we were travelling in 3 cars, and this was our first experience with going to a place and meeting somewhere. Important Italian Travel Fact: Many of these hill towns have you park outside and walk in, so parking is Darwinian at best. Luckily, most towns have an Info Stand, so we decided to meet there. Needless to say, the Info Stand was in the middle of the RenFaire Adventure, which you needed to pay admission to, so we eventually abandoned the plan and decided that if we ran into the rest of the fam, great, if not, also fine. We stopped for lunch, which was fabulous, and wandered around, looking at all the little shoppie-shops. Volterra is apparently huge on alabaster, so there was a lot of really beautiful alabaster sculpture in the stores, along with the usual art along the theme of "Tuscany is freaking gorgeous, isn't it?"
As luck would have it, we did in fact meet up with the fam, but they had not had lunch yet, so they went off to find lunch, and we went to the torture museum, which was interestingly gross. Apparently to be considered a town in Tuscany you have to have a torture museum, because there seemed to be one in EVERY town we went to or drove past. It got to be a little creepy, I must say. Here's a good portion of the gang on the street in Volterra...
This is also a good depiction of a phenomenon we have all been witnessing for many years: Overactive Grandmother Photography Syndrome. Mormor LOVES taking pictures, and needless to say, being in Italy with her family set her on overdrive. Someone would stop to take a picture, and it would...activate her camera powers, and she'd have to take the same picture.
WHY MORMOR IS AWESOME, EXHIBIT A:
Me: Mormor, you know, we can all SHARE these pictures when we get home.
Mormor: Well, I know, but mine is BETTER.
Mormor rules. (As does this picture of Mom and Annie in Volterra.)
From Volterra, we went on to
San Gimignano,which is marked by it's tall towers.
San Gimignano has a LOT of up.
As you can see, some of the family made the trek to the top of one of the towers. This was where the meeting up and synchronizing of watches system started to evolve in earnest. Usually, the adults would break up according to what they wanted to do, and Sarah and I would go off to wander around. So that's what we did, occasionally picking up other family members along the way. We saw so many great shops, and had our first experience with these frightening toilets that were basically spiffed-up holes in the ground. There was literally a hole in the ground, with ridged places to put your feet, and the flush button was on the wall behind you. If you're a girl and have had to pee in the woods before, you see about eleven issues with this already. But, it was kind of exciting in it's own way.
My boss is a big Italiophile, and before I left, he told me I should go a specific gelato shop in San Gimignano, which I could find by "going to the top of the highest hill, towards the tower, and it's on your left." I have since showed him this picture and he thinks it's the right one, and the gelato WAS fabulous, so if you're ever in San Gimignano and you want some fly gelato, go to the top of the highest hill...
San Gimignano also featured two really wonderful "Life in Italy" scenes that we particularly liked...the first was a set of Carabinieri (police), who for the entire time we were in San Gimignano (about half a day), stood next to their van, which looked equipped to deal with any contingency, and did...nothing. They might not have been on duty. For all I know, they just really like wearing uniforms. So that was great. We also loved the Old People Storage Facility, which was a beautiful, ornately decorated little alcove along the main plaza, where every person over the age of 75 whiled away their afternoon. So neat.
Day Two took us to Siena, where the famous horse races had just happened a week previously. Siena is just a fantastic spot...there is this huge open plaza (where the aforementioned races take place) ringed with restaurants, and the streets that radiate away from it are full of beautiful shops and great restaurants. 
I mean, what more do you need? By the way, the weather was like this almost every day. Le sigh. The trip started out in a sort of haphazard way when we could NOT find parking in any of the close-by lots, and thus had to park somewhere in Germany and find our way back. I'm almost not kidding. We happened to catch a bus and relay to its driver where we wanted to wind up, so it all worked out. Sarah and I were wandering around when I caught sight of this poster:
EEEEEEEEE! PUCCI EXHIBIT! AND ONLY TWO EUROS ADMISSION! So we went in and had some mandatory fun, and luckily Sarah understood the awesomeness of Pucci even though much of what was on display was crazy ass stuff from early in his career like voluminous pantaloons with giant points sticking out mid thigh (oh yeah, you heard me). I also found the perfect present for fellow Pucci fan The Lucy - a beautiful museum book of the exhibit with all kinds of info on Pucci's life and career. Siena, as many towns do, has a SPECTACULAR duomo (cathedral). This picture? Is great. It also does not even scratch the top layer of ice on the iceberg of awe that you feel as you stand in front of it. 
And here we have me being fabulous and European on the Duomo's back steps.
The next day, we took the fabulousity parade on to Cortona, which was also about a zillion years old and had lots of up, as shown here by the lovely Sarah on one of the many stairways in the town.
The shopping. Was. Fabulous. I bought stationery, a beautiful purse, and we had a great time lounging around and checking out all the shops, which were really of a huge variety. We all had lunch at one of the many cafes, which was absolutely fabulous.
However, when the rest of the fam decided to go have dinner later in the day, Sarah and I stayed at one of the cafes to get hammered.
Really hammered:
Can't you just see Dad thinking "boy...having kids? GREAT idea."? I AGREE. Thanks Dad! In any case, here's what Cortona's main square looks like...and actually I have no idea where the photographer was in this, since it's from an elevation. Hm. In any case, the little arched open air space in the middle-ish of the photo was where the sane members of the fam had dinner. You can see Mom standing at the edge of the wall, under the white umbrella, wearing light pants and a dark top. 
The next day, what with some recovery being necessary, the gang broke up for assorted adventures. Dad went for a walk around nearby Bucine, Mom went to Pienza, and Sarah and I went with Aunt C and Uncle T to Ambra to check out this AMAZING shoe outlet and have a coffee in the town. Man, Tuscany really does nothing but "picturesque"...and smokers. We sat near this quartet of older women who all looked like they had been made of old leather, and they were smoking the most horrendous ciggies I have ever encountered. If I had to guess, I'd assume they were made of pure tar. Blech! But no worries, they departed soon after we arrived, and we could toodle around at our leisure. At said fabulous shoe outlet, Pratesi, I bought two pairs of shoes...a great pair of loafers for myself, and a pair of dress shoes for Speed, who did not go, because he does not fly. Now, Speed and I have the same size foot (mine are huge for a woman, his are average for a man - the math works), so you can imagine a.) the convenience of it all and b.) the inconvenience of trying to explain to an older Italian gentleman why I was trying on men's shoes when I was clearly not a man. Good times. I later went back to the outlet to pick up a beautiful chocolate brown purse in ostrich leather. I would kill to live near that store.
The next day, we all took the train to Firenze (Florence), where it was rainy but still fun. Sarah and I did some major window shopping, and some minimal actual shopping. We looked for a breakfast place, but kind of got foiled, so Sarah and I broke off and soon after, stopped at this cafe, where Sarah took this picture of me that I really like for no substantive reason. 
We continued wandering, passing through the sometimes-open-air, sometimes-not, market where we got a few items for Sarah's boy, and proceeded on to the Ponte Vecchio (which sounds really cool but simply means "old bridge"). Can we take a moment to wonder why anglicization of words is so popular? Where would you rather go...Florence, or Firenze? The Ponte Vecchio, or The Old Bridge? FEH, I say. 
The Ponte Vecchio has goldsmiths' shops all over it, the windows of which you can see here. And let me tell you...these people know what displaying jewelry is all about. I have never seen anything so sparkly and shiny and glittering in my life. You can insert all the jokes about my attention span vis a vis shiny objects you want, but until you have gone there and see these storefronts, I will ignore you cheerfully.
The next day, needless to say, we met up with a bunch of Norwegians.
Yeah, you heard me.
Some of Mom's friends from when she lived in Norway were visiting Firenze at the same time that we were in Italy, so they came out to Iesolana to hang out and toodle around. Later in the day we went for a wander in Bucine, which was very nice, and had some fabulous gelato. The next day, we were again split up, with half of us staying around Iesolana and Bucine and the rest going to the dreamstate of Cinque Terra, 5 little towns that dangle over the ocean. The scene is amazing:
The last day we set out for Rome by way of Oriveto, where we saw the most magnificent Duomo of the week:
In-credible. The whole town was very sweet, and we had a fabulous Umbrian lunch midday. I also bought these really cool bone earrings that...actually kind of defy description, so I'll have to put up a picture at some point, instead. From Oriveto, we went on to Rome, where it was so hellaciously humid we more or less had to talk ourselves into going out of the hotel. Mom, Dad, Sarah and I went for dinner in Rome and wandered briefly through St. Peter's Square. Naturally, we harassed some of the Swiss Guards by asking "clever" questions about whether the Pope was in town in order to get them to come over to us, only to feel REALLY stupid when the people near us just hollered to them and asked if they could take a picture.
I could go on and on about the food and the people and the scenery and all that stuff, but...you've heard it. You've heard how fresh the produce is and how amazing the wine is. You've heard about the Italian people and how much they rule. It kind of defies true, accurate description. To stand in front of some of these buildings and marvel over the fact that they were made by people instead of coming down from the heavens can't be described. Go to Italy, do more than 10 days, go everywhere, travel, get out, do everything. I can't say it enough.
The shopping. Was. Fabulous. I bought stationery, a beautiful purse, and we had a great time lounging around and checking out all the shops, which were really of a huge variety. We all had lunch at one of the many cafes, which was absolutely fabulous.
Really hammered:
Can't you just see Dad thinking "boy...having kids? GREAT idea."? I AGREE. Thanks Dad! In any case, here's what Cortona's main square looks like...and actually I have no idea where the photographer was in this, since it's from an elevation. Hm. In any case, the little arched open air space in the middle-ish of the photo was where the sane members of the fam had dinner. You can see Mom standing at the edge of the wall, under the white umbrella, wearing light pants and a dark top. 
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