Why Italy? Oh, Why Not … Can I Drive? (Mid-July 2009)
So why is it I have jumped on this “idol-worshipping” bandwagon kowtowing to a place I have never been? Why is the world so enamored with Italy? I don’t know. All I know is this place has got every savvy world traveler and Madison Avenue ad man mesmerized. It’s Tuscan ‘this’ and Tuscan ‘that’ everywhere you look right now. There’s the Tuscan salad at Wendy’s here, and Olive Garden Tuscan pasta endless buffets there. We bought a chicken roll-type dish from Costco and it was called Tuscan Chicken. I was not Tuscan. If it were Tuscan it would have been rabbit and instead of rice inside there would have been ground pork and turkey. And, it wouldn’t have cost$17.95 either. Even pet food is Tuscan? How the hell does your cat know it’s eating a Tuscan feast? This is getting completely ridiculous.
Rick Steves has made a quite tidy income from pushing all things Europe—Europe through the backdoor. Not only does he know how to travel in every possible place in France, England, Germany, Austria, Spain, etc., he also two books about Italy and specifically Tuscany. I have purchased both the 2009 books, and I can’t wait to get on the list of the 2010 ones. I am sure that everything he has in these books and true and up-to-date, and he of course has “first-hand” knowledge of everything that he writes about. I just hope it’s all true because I am banking our life savings on these things and it had better be the truth.
Italy. Italy. Italy. Ever since our parents took us to the first Italian restaurant in our small town of Rupert, Idaho, I have been hooked. Even though the restaurant shared a wall with a tiny gas station downtown, it offered spaghetti, a mural-sized photo of the Bay of Naples, and basket-ed Chianti wine bottles with dripping candles stuck in them. My older brother, Tom, claims that this is also the restaurant where our mother “tooted” during a special visit to the establishment’s kitchen. Aw, the things we remember from our youth.
Around this time (early 1960’S) we also received two important Italian artifacts that cemented my quest to go to Italy—an authentic coin embedded lava from Pompeii and a Readers Digest Young Readers book with the history of that town’s fateful day in A.D. 79. I nearly memorized the entire story. Both my twin brother, Doug, and I shared an equal passion for the ancient ruins that Vesuvius had preserved so many years ago. It wasn’t long before I was having dreams of being in Pompeii. Hell, we even turned the clay deposits in our ditch bank into pottery (broken of course) and dead dogs from Pompeii—how creative, aye? I remember once when my parents flew back for a funeral in Michigan, we tired to fake the baby sitter out and watch the late movie “The Last Days of Pompeii”. We never even go past he first fifteen minutes of the flick. Doug got to go to Pompeii last year. I didn’t. He has been to Italy and Europe several times. Where’s the justice?
In passing one day I say to Marianne, “Did you know that in Rick Steves book, they say that Italy has the same longitudes as Oregon?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“You did? So why didn’t your ever tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“oh…”
Today I have started ‘negotiations’ with Marianne about staying a partial third week, renting a car and driving to some of the out of the way hill towns that we can’t get to by train. The driving part has intimidated us both for a long time. We have heard horror stories one after another about driving in a foreign country. We read about ‘pazzo’ drivers that think their fiats are the lead car in the Grande Prix and have no concern for anyone on the narrow roads of the Tuscan country side. And driving in a city? Who would be insane enough to try that?
They drive without brains over there. I know. I have read Beppe Severgnini’s satirical look at his fellow countrymen, “La Bella Figura”. Beppe states it simply; the Italian knows how long that light will take to go from yellow to red, and how long it will take for the right of way drivers to react. Five seconds is an epoch of time to get across an intersection. And signs, signals, etc. are merely suggestions. How could anyone civilized society still exists if this is the way they drive? I thought as I pulled a gasp into my mouth. “Well, says Marianne, “At least they do drive on the right side of the road.
Now I have talked to several people I know, including my priest who says she has driven all the way from Venice to Rome and dropped the rental car off at the airport. Other than the drivers and traffic (which I could imagine were like Roman-era chariot drivers racing breakneck through the streets around the Colosseum—with vicious serrated barbs sticking out of their hub caps, waiting to shred the tire of any Ford Fiesta with a Hertz sticker on its bumper) she claims it was fine. My jaw nearly dropped when she told me that. I had to believe her, she’s the priest. What absolutely excellent ‘artillery’ I now had at my disposal to go into to combat fighting for the beachfront position on my assault of the ‘dreaded’ a third week territory in the battle for “the full Italian experience” with Marianne.
I broached the subject casually one morning as I stopped at the door of our home office. Marianne was doing a little banking and an on-line crossword—part of the morning routine.
“You know, Reverend JoAnne told me she has actually driven in Italy before, and she said it had been no problem.” I half-jokingly stated. “She says that she drove the whole way from Venice to Rome and didn’t have a problem.”
“She did, did she?” Marianne said and she raised a skeptical eye and brow in my direction at the doorway.
“Yes, other than the traffic in Rome, she was even able to drop the car off at the airport.” I said calmly.
“Yes, but it was a rental, right?”
“Yeah,” I said suddenly thrown by the curving swerve in the conversation. “I know that there are rental companies in smaller cities, I’ve seen them on-line. We could drive from Florence to Rome and drop it off before taking the flight back home?” I raised the pitch of my voice at the end of the sentence in the hope that she’d bite.
“I could picture myself driving an Alfa Romeo and I would drive in the cities.” She said confidently.
“Uh, you don’t think I should drive in the cities?” Now I was piqued with thoughts of being defensive about my driving. “Well, you know it is the land of the Fiat.” I said keeping my ego in check.
“Oh, I could get into that. I loved my Fiat.”
Yes, I know she loved her first Fiat and how it was such a great car and how she took it across country when she, her dad, and another husband—the jerk, came to Bend, Oregon. I knew that would be a strong selling point, and hey, I wasn’t proud at this point, I knew she’d fall for it.
“Oh, yes,” I jumped in, taking a step or two forward. “I wouldn’t want to drive in the cities. I know how nervous my city driving makes you.”
She looked my way, without smiling, with a look that confirmed my words ‘yes you are terrible at driving in the city’. She loves to bring this up all the time, even though I am the one who has gotten us through every major city on the west coast, as well as Detroit, and some Baltimore suburbs. I can get lost, but I can get us to where we need to get…it’s just the amount of swearing that comes out of my mouth during the length of time can be ‘frightening’.
“I will be glad to be your navigator through the countryside. I can do a good job with that.” She said.
“And you can drive in Rome, because I’m not driving in Rome, okay.” I said. “And we don’t need a car in Florence, just afterwards. Heck, I could even drive us to Venice…”
“We’re not going to Venice.” She said ending the negotiations and casting the ‘evil eye’ at me. I realized it was time to stop pushing.
“Okay. We don’t need to go to Venice,” I said, back-peddling. “But we could drive down from Florence, through Chianti, south to Grosseto…”
“Where’s Grosseto?” She interrupted.
“Grosseto is south on the way back to Rome. “Remember, I showed you the pictures from our Tuscan cookbook?”
I thought it was strange that they referred to it as a coastal town when it’s inland. “If we would take the train down the coast from Pisa we would have to go through Grosseto to get to Fiumicino.”
I quickly move in behind her and give her shoulders a quick massage and back scratch. She moaned with contentment. This I find works most every time. She always says ‘don’t stop’, so I oblige.
Kissing the top of her head, I move close to her ear and whisper, “I’ll stop pushing now.”
She thanks me for the back rub and my retreat of the ‘vacation negotiations’.
Walking away, confident that I have made may point for staying longer, I am not sure I will lead with the advantage next time we talk about it. Besides, do I want to be away from home for three weeks? God, what if the beds are terrible there and we have sleepless nights and days with constant back pain? They only have twin beds, right?
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