HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

The Long Slow Summer (Late July 2009)

     So we were at Costco in Eugene, Oregon on a cool, cloudy weekday in late July, and we were waiting for our turn to get up to the pump.  The fancy Maxima in front of us had just pulled up to the pump; we waited while a rather short middle-aged man got out.  He apparently had no waist because his belted slacks were drawn up so far past his navel that the belt bucket was touching his chest.  It was obviously an attempt to disguise his pot belly.  Before I have a chance to say anything, Marianne speaks.

    “He’s Italian.”

    I take her at her word, having grown up back east with lost of them.  I thought he looked like a New Yorker, but what do I know, I grew up in rural Idaho.  The guy hands his cards off to the attendant, Bill.  I ask Marianne why some men actually try to hide their paunch with the high belt trick.  As quick as ever, she says, maybe he likes the feel of his underwear hiked up against his balls.  I think I blew the latte in my mouth through my nose just then.

    Bill, the attendant, seems to have has taken this new ‘bubba-do’ look to an uncomfortable extreme.  A ‘bubba-do’ is that sleek, trendy look so many ‘twent-thirty-plus-ers’ are sporting these days—the totally shaved heads with the moustache and goatee.  It would have been passable for Bill, a very personable, hard-working guy, except for one thing…he really didn’t have the right shaped head for the look.  Now I know that sounds harsh, but some heads are great bald, and some should wear hair (even balding hair) forever.  I should know--mine is like that.  So, Bill’s head was not all there.  What I mean is he seemed smart and a good soul, but the back of his head seemed to be missing.  A ‘well-rounded’ guy, maybe 250, with a full neck, Bill’s side profile was noticeable; the line of the neck continued straight up to the rather pointed crown at the top of his head. 

     “If it were me, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing that to my head,” I said.  The Jones boys, all four of them, have perfect ‘peanut’ heads and everyone knew this until we were about 11.  That’s when mom and dad decided to let us have some length to our hair instead of the burr cuts with front-bang cowlicks that she could always get to stand up by vigorous brushing or a little spit.  Spit was also good for cleaning a kids’ face.  Just a little on a hanky and a brisk rub could remove any extra dried-on food residue that might collect on a young boys face.  The red rash left by the rub however lasted a few hours.

     Looking at Bill, a distant but familiar tune popped into my head.  Now my younger brother Matthew, the doctor, who is one of the quickest wits I know, has a name for someone like this.  It’s ‘Bullet Man’.  Now B. Man was a stupid toy that was around for a very short time in the late 1970’s—kind of a weird headed super dude that could fly.  There was even a silly jingle that went with the ad that I can still sing, “Bullet Man the Human Bullet”.  Did you hear that?  I sang it perfectly—and so did Matt whenever he saw someone with a slightly torpedo-shaped head.  As it turned out, in college, he and I shared a room in a two bedroom apartment off campus for a semester.  The third roommate was a guy whose nose was unusually large—his profile was amazing, and he had little to no sense of humor.  My brother would go around singing that catchy jingle whenever Scott was not around, and he will still launch into it whenever the guy’s name is brought up to this day.  “…faster than a speeding bullet.”
     I decided not to follow suit, knowing the odd shape of my head.  Those who look really look like a Charles Schulz cartoon character should not throw stones.

      I woke on a late July morning, realizing that in a little over a week we will be traveling north to my home town in North Idaho—Sandpoint.  It is one of my favorite places in the world, but ‘progress’ and greed have started to take a toll on my once pristine childhood home.  Our cat, Maggie Mae, has already rousted me from a fairly deep slumber at 5:30 A.M. to try and get out of the screens to go after a stray Siamese-mix causally perusing our backyard.  I tried to fall back into dream-land for at least an hour, but by 6:30 that dog, a little Silky named Phoebe (a rescue but the sweetest animal we’ve ever had—even though she is a terrier) jumps on the bed and tries to give me a “French” kiss.  I pull the sheet high over my head to avoid the attack.  She snorts a few times and jumps off the bed—what fun is next she’s thinking.

     Immediately the same single-minded fanaticism begins to take hold of my mind, and soon I am wide awake worry about who will take care of the lawn, how the flowers and vegetables will be watered and tended, and a few dozen other items, while we’re gone for about two weeks.  I start thinking about why we have not heard from the apartment owner in Florence, Italy—dreading that there really isn’t an apartment or a Mr. Andrea, and that we have lost a $100 bucks to Marianna and Massimillian, the brokers.  This is after I had the gall to ask her if they had any references.  She ‘offense took’ but apologized in the next email and gave the address of the Florentine version of their Chamber of Commerce.  Yeah, that was a good ploy by the scam-artist to make the victim feel like a jerk so that they will send the deposit quicker.  The things you think when waking up.

  So I was up and getting dressed at 6:30, even earlier than I would be during the school year.  I water the lawn and plants, because today is the start of the next heat wave--mid-90s until we get to Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the 100s.  Ah, summer.  I do like the higher temperatures (mid-80s-90s) and it’s great to feel the sun or your back as you work in the yard, just like my dad did, but the 100’s are just cruel and adversarial if you ask me.  My plans for our vacation next week proceed during the day as I put the Italy trip onto the ‘back burner’ for a while.  The computer awaits.

Internet Espionage  (Late July 2009)

     I need to make a confession here.  I have been using the internet to ‘eavesdrop’ on some of these Italian writers to see where they live.  I know it must be a sin of some kind.  I plead no-contest to the charge.  I found Google Maps(Satelite-view) a few years back, but the spy camera technology from space is getting incredible these days.  Originally, I started innocently by looking at houses in places around Tuscany that I thought would be great to live in.  My tastes were simple, on a wooded hill away from population centers, but near a good road, and not to far from civilization.  Come on, let’s be reasonable…you have to be practical when you dream about living in a foreign country.

     First, I found some great areas around Lucca.  One did turn out to be near a friary, so it probably wasn’t for sale.  The ones down in Umbria, while breathtaking, were too spendy.  Then, when I found the podere in Chianti that I had been lusting after for months, I thought I died and gone to heaven.  It was not only a working podere (farm), but a casale used as an Agriturismo destination.  From the air it’s a huge property; there are so many hectares of land, a pool, vineyards, oil trees, etc.  Since I had a recommendation from Dario Castagno, who had stayed there once in high school, I have daydreamed about retiring to that very spot.  

    Then I got a little too ‘focused’ on finding things.  I have found all of the spots we plane to visit on our sojourn.  Found the B & B in Magione, the apartment in Firenze, an art studio in Chiusi, and countless other places.  They appear to be real now, and not just places I have read about.  Here’s where it kind of takes a ‘kinky’ turn.  I have been trying to find some of the homes of these authors that I have been reading.  Some are well-known enough to already have it marked by some considerate contributor to Google earth.  Even Ferenc Mates’ winery is listed, although I know that the indicated spot on the map is not a winery, it’s just a bend in a road.  Bramasole, Ed and Francis Mayes’ Cortona home, has a handful of possible locations, but if you know what you are looking for, you’ll find the right one. 

     Now, Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker’s (the Tuckerberry’s as I refer to them) remodeled ‘rustico’ was a little harder to find, but no challenge is too great for me.  I found a blurry, but old shot of it on Google Maps.  The Italian site, PagineGaille.ItVisual has the best close-up view and it’s an up-to-date satellite image because you can see the pool and the new addition on the Tuckerberry’s casa.  It is not as Michael Tucker wants you to imagine, near Spoleto.  It’s near the tiny village of Poreta.  I hoped I could one day see the estate.  I could imagine all the things that the Tuckerberry’s and the Jones’ would have in common—mainly theatre and food.  Maybe we could stop in for a visit next summer?

     I have also had the Weather Underground site permanently set on Magione--Ponte Felcino, Perugia, Umbria.  This is where the B & B Bella Magione (Fernando and Rosetta) is located.  It has surprised me how Roseburg’s and Umbria’s weather patterns are so similar.  Of course they didn’t get the record heat blast we lived through earlier that week, but there time is coming.

     Why, you ask, would I do this?  Why did I spend this much time looking for these places?  I guess it’s to try and take myself out of the place I have always been and imagine a life in a place far away.  You see, it was not real to me yet.  Yes, I’ve read about it, I’ve seen the pictures, communicated with it’s people, but until I set foot on it’s soil, breath it’s air, and deal with it’s reality for myself, Italy won’t be real, to me.   Recently I saw a video of Rick Steves sitting down to dinner with an Italian farm family and I wept a little because it was so wonderful.  I wanted to do that.  It was the act of stepping out of my existence and touching the life of someone’s half a world away that hit me square in the heart.  I wanted to live ‘larger’ than rural America and finally be a part of this world I lived in.  Not politically, not with an opinion, not with any pretexts or prejudices, but just as one being to another.

   And I wanted that for us.  I wanted it more than I could say.  Maybe it had been a long journey, through childhood hopes and dreams, through the vicarious pleasures of others, but we had to go.  We had to experience Italy.  Marianne and I are doing this for us.  Something most people rarely do.  Our lives get tangled up in doing for others.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s the way to live.  I just think after 30 years of ‘their’ time we needed a big ‘our time’.  The Italian saying really applies: Chi si accontenta gode: “Contentment is happiness, or enough is as good as a feast.”

HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

A Friend in Italy  (August 2009)

     God bless the day that Marianne found Fernando and Rosetta on the internet in the spring.  I, without knowing it, had stumbled upon them via the website for their B & B Bella Magione in Magione, Umbria, Italy a month before.  Their ad claimed custom tours to suite your specific wishes and desires.  Great.  Sad for them that I had a hell of a lot of wishes and desires that I had coveted for a long time in my heart.  Everything I had seen from the time I could remember, I wanted to see and experience. 

     Marianne just knew that this was the way for us to get to know Italy before we ever thought of striking out on our own.  She was impressed by the fact that this Fernando would drive us, and a group of up to eight, anywhere in central Italy.   Rosetta, his wife, cooked dinners and would even take guest to the weekly market and an olive oil mill.  However, as Marianne was quick to point out, I did not come cheap—about $5,000 a week for two.  We started to talk about a trip in mid-June of 2010.  She thought they might already be booking for that time and pushed for me to write.  I believed that she was right and I eventually emailed them in early June.

     The response to our first inquiry was:  

Conferma del messaggio inviato a <info@italyescortedtour.info> alle 04/06/2009 6.40 

Il messaggio è stato visualizzato nel computer del destinatario alle 04/06/2009  12.22

Okay.  Italian.  I thought I could decipher it:  the message about a visit via the computer was received on June, 4, 2009.  What it didn’t say was:  you have a place to stay.  Oh, I see, this auto-response gets kicked-out every time you enquire to most places.

    The next day Fernando wrote:

Dear David, thank you for your kind request !  We will get back to you with our tour suggestions for you as soon as possible. Saluti dall'Italia, Fernando.

Score!   A week went by, then 10 days.  On June 14 Fernando wrote:

Dear David,

thanks again for your kind request for 2010 and sorry if we have taken some days before to send you our information.. we are in this period every day busy with tours.

If what you are looking for is experiencing Italy more as insiders rather than as tourists, it will be our pleasure to get you into the genuine Italian way of living and treat you with all that's enjoyable of our country.

I'll  personally escort you through some of the most beautiful Italian sceneries and share with you some historical information,  fine food and wine, while Rosetta will spoil you with the traditional dishes of Central Italy...

To have look into our suggestions, budget and booking terms for your trip in Italy please click on  Mr David Jones' tour  print a copy of it and let us know what you think about.

Saluti dall'Italia

Fernando

     I quickly clicked on the link with my name on it and found a web page devoted just to my trip!

SUN:  Arrival between Tuscany and Umbria. We will pick you up in Rome airport in the morning and transfer to our Villa. If you are not too tired, after lunch we can have a tour along the way. Relax and Welcome Dinner… Antipasti of Umbria and Tuscany and local wines.

MON:  Siena and the Senese Countryside (Tuscany)  Breakfast: the "Crostata di Marmellata" hand made by Rosetta. Siena: you will see one of the world’s most unique piazzas del Campo and visit the precious Duomo. Cheese tasting. The heart of the Senese countryside is perfect landscape of enchanting hillsides. Dinner in our villa with a coutryside menu of Tuscany and Umbria…

TUE:  Assisi and Spello (Umbria)  Breakfast: the "Torcolo Umbro", hand-made by Rosetta. Assisi with its amazing ensemble of masterpieces, such as the Basilica of Saint Francis with Giotto’s and Cimabue’s frescos, represents a unique example of city sanctuary. Lunch in a typical trattoria. Spello, a charming town near Assisi. Dinner in our Villa: "Umbricelli al pomodoro", hand-made pasta.

WED:  Gubbio and Perugia (Umbria)  Breakfast: the "Ciaramicola", typical local cake. Gubbio: one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Europe, perfectly preserved. Lunch in a typical trattoria and in the afternoon visit of Perugia, the main town of Umbria and promenade in the shopping area. Dinner in our villa: will taste the "minestrone" and “arrosto al forno”

THU:  Caprese Michelangelo and La Verna (Tuscany) Breakfast: the "Torta di mele", hand-made by Rosetta. Shopping in the open market in Magione with Rosetta. In the morning a mystic moment for your soul at the Sanctuary of La Verna on St. Francis' tracks. Lunch in a typical Tuscan trattoria at Caprese Michelangelo: Michelangelo’s native village. Dinner in our Villa… we will taste Italian Pizza!

FRI:  LakeTrasimeno and Cortona (Umbria & Tuscany)   Breakfast: the "torta al cocco e cioccolato", hand-made by Rosetta. Guided visit with Rosetta at an oil mill and extra virgin olive oil tasting at our villa with bruschetta and wine. After lunch Cortona the town of the descendants of Dardanus from Troy, now modern day Greeks… setting of the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun”… Farewell Dinner

SAT:   Departure or Transfer to Rome Airport: it takes about 2 and a half hours from my place to Roma Fiumicino.

     We were overwhelmed and suddenly full of emotions.  Almost everything we possibly could have wanted was in this package.  Well, at least I was.  Marianne was just happy he responded.  As I examined the itinerary more closely, I realized I didn’t know some of the places Fernando had scheduled.  I also didn’t see places I had originally suggested to him.  Places like Orvieto, Spoleto, and the Tuscan triumvirate—Montalcino, Pienza, and Montepulciano.   I most certainly didn’t know places like Spello and Gubbio and I wondered why he hadn’t taken my first suggestions into consideration.  I thought better of just firing off an ill-conceived email that would strain a young relationship.  It took several days for me to craft an email that I hoped would not offend our future hosts.

Dear Rosseta and Fernando:

    Thank you so much for getting back to us.  Marianne (my wife) and I think the tour package that you have put together looks wonderful.  There are a few things on our “wish list” that we have always wanted to do and are not listed.  That being said, we understand if tour packages cannot be changed.   Please, I hope you don’t take offense if we have a few requests if our week with you is flexible.

    First, we could be in Rome as early as June 13, 2010--more information to follow later.  There are so many things we would love to see and experience, but time is a factor.  Just sitting by the pool at your villa, would be great.  Also, Marianne has some mobility problems. 

   I am an amateur painter (want to sketch & watercolor while there) and want to see the art, architecture, and the country.  Marianne also wants to see museums, find fabric, and shop.  We love live music, theatre, opera, eating and wine.  Cooking lessons with Rosseta would be wonderful. Wine tasting and seeing the process of wine making also interests us.  We are especially interested in the wines of Montalcino (brunello) and Montepulciano (vino nobile), and your suggestions, of course.  We are curious about Pisa and Lucca, but not in high tourist season (?). 

Fernando’s Tour with Jones’ Wish List:

SUNDAY--Perfect (piu espresso, per favore!)

MONDAY--Siena--Wonderful!   Is wine tasting in Chianti possible this day?

TUESDAY--Our Umbria list is 1) Oriveto, 2) Civita di Bagnoregio (if possible), 3) Spoleto, and 4) Assisi (if there’s enough time).

WEDNESDAY--Gubbio sounds fascinating, but we would like to see (and taste) Montalcino, Pienza, and Montepulciano.  Perugia—I don’t know.

THURSDAY--More Umbria or up to Arezzo (shopping)?  A trattoria?

FRIDAY- Olive oil & Cortona--si!  This sounds absolutely great!  Too crowded? 

SATURDAY-Departure—sad, but true. 

Scusi.  Please don’t be offended.  If it were possible for us to stay a couple nights in Firenze, could you drive us there on Saturday?  Do you think that trains and busses are reliable enough to get us back to Rome on our own (via Lucca and Pisa maybe) for our flight home?  Let us know if this is pazzo.

Molte grazie

David and Marianne Jones

Roseburg, Oregon

USA

A week later, he responded:

Dear David and Marianne,

thanks for your suggestions, they are very useful for me to plan a right tour for the two of you.

Next week we will send you a new programme considering your suggestions but also the real possibility to realize day by day what you suggested.

We will also send you train information a.s.o.

Thanks again.

Fernando

And Later:

Dear David and Marianne,

 we are working to the new plan and taking into account your suggestions...

We would like better understand some aspect of your wishes:

 About excursions:

you wrote that Marianne has some mobility problems... as the medieval towns in Tuscany and Umbria are up on the hills, we would like to know if there are problems if you have to walk up and down...

We can organize a plan to visit the different places you suggested but this means also to walk a lot... 

We don't have museums in our itineraries for a question of time and also because we give more importance to the real life with people, trattorias a.s.o. but if Marianne has an idea of what she would like to see, it could be useful to know it..

About wines:

We generally use to visit a place in the morning, have a typical lunch with local good wine and then another short visit in the afternoon before to go back home.

We offer you an experience and know like Italians generally do  and for you we organize everyday a  different visit a different flavour of food and a  different wine. We naturally drink good wines (as we have an offer very large and good quality) but not Reserve every day.

Therefore we would like to know if you would like to have professional wine tasting with: Brunello, Nobile of Montepulciano, Chianti Riserva, Sagrantino a.s.o. or if you mean just to have the opportunity to taste them as "tourist" in local wineries and perhaps by a bottle to drink at home. 

What we suggest is a mix of a different aspects of our life with some general information about our history to help to understand the expression of character between Umbrian and Toscan people.  

As we can see in your email here under, you know very good what you want to see so, are you sure that you would need our services ?  Sorry but we don't like that people could be disappointed.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Saluti

Fernando

Our response:

Dear Fernando and Rosetta:

     Thank you for returning our request email with suggestions and cautions.  First, we want you to know we trust you on everything, especially Italian culture, food and wine.  Disappointed?  We will be in Italy—how could that ever be disappointing?

Our dates can be June 13 to 20, 2010.   Does that work for you?

     Marianne’s mobility problems stem from chronic arthritis and bursitis.  She is used to a more active lifestyle.  Although she is retired now, she had a long career as a theater director and working with non-profit organizations.  She still directs plays when possible.  She looks forward to the trip and will say when she has had enough.  David should be fine walking, etc. almost anywhere.

    We totally understand about museums, and would prefer to “meet and taste” the region.  We see now that trying to do Orvieto, Civita and Spoleto all in one day is just too much.  We have been told Assisi and Spello are really worth the visit.  Maybe focusing on Orvieto and Assisi might be enough. Visiting Montalcino, Pienza and Montepulciano would be great, but if it’s too much, just say so.  Yes, Gubbio looks wonderful, but this might be our only trip to Italy.

     As for wine and wine tasting—we are tourists.  Whatever you let us sample will be wonderful.  One wine we are unable to buy locally is “Brunello” and would very much like to sample it, if possible.  We are sure that your own wine cellar will be more than adequate.

     The week following our visit with you, we are trying to book an apartment in Florence or Siena/Chianti area, reachable by train, and do day trips to Pisa, Lucca, etc. and focus on churches and museums there.  David met a teacher from Milan in a class he just took who wants to help us ‘experience’ Tuscany. 

     We are concerned about what happens after our visit with you.  Maybe you can answer some of our questions:  Will the trains get us there and to our other day trips?  Pisa, Lucca etc.  Are the buses reliable?  Finding food, etc.—all daunting tasks in a foreign country.  Oh, is driving in the Tuscan country-side even an option?

     We are both very anxious to work out an excursion schedule that seems most manageable for you.  Thank you again, and we hope that all our planning pays off beautifully.

Arrivederci,

David and Marianne

Dear Marianne and David,

We thank you for understanding!

If you follow our programme we are sure you will be satisfied... if we have to follow you we can not guarantee...

If you go in a nice restaurant and you want to eat something that is not included in the chef's specialties or you want something new outside of his knowledge, you have to know that you risk to eat bad ... 

So, if you will arrive two or three days before and start visit Rome on your own, you will be our of  jet-lag and we will pick you up at your hotel on Sunday morning and start visit as following:

Sunday 13th:     Civita - Light lunch - Afternoon Orvieto (this town isn't crowd)

Monday 14th:     Siena - Light Lunch - Afternoon Montalcino

Tuesday 15th :   Spoleto - Light Lunch - Afternoon Assisi

Wednesday 16th: Gubbio - Light Lunch - Afternoon Perugia

Thursday 17th:   Montepulciano - Light Lunch - Afternoon Pienza

Friday 18th:        Oil Mill on Lake Trasimeno - Light Lunch - Afternoon Cortona

Saturday 19th:  Departure for Florence at your Apartment or nearby if it's not possible to reach it by car.

 As you can see we start our tour on Sunday and ending on Saturday and we cannot change the dates as we have to pick up other people on Sunday again a.s.o. so, we suggest you to reserve one day earlier in Florence (19th - 25th ?).

In this case you will be charged with our basic budget for an exclusive tour for two people and we will include a couple of wine tasting, a cheese tasting and an extra-virgin olive oil tasting.

If you agree, we will send you the final proramme including budget and booking terms.

Saluti

Fernando

We responded ecstatically—finally letting them know about our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  They wrote back:

Dear Marianne and David,

happy to know that you like our proposal.

Once you are here and touring with me, if it will be too much we will stop early, no problem!

The ideal for us is a mini-group of 6 persons arriving in Italy at the same time at the same airport, so if your friends would like to join you, we would be very happy and you would benefit of a better price (see: http://www.italyescortedtour.info/prices.html

About an Hotel in Rome:

http://www.hoteldiocleziano.it/en/reservations.htm  Hotel Diocleziano (near Train Station - 4 stars)

http://www.hotelmadisonrome.com/it/index.htm  Hotel Madison 3 Stars at train station Termini - Via Marsala 60 - Contact: Anna Maria: aana@phh.it    TEL. +39.06.445-4344 FAX: +39.06.445-6993

Please, as Rome is a big town with thousands of hotels, fell free to search through all search engines that you prefer like www.booking.com  a.s.o.

Congratulation to your 25th Anniversary, we will open an extra bottle at you arrival.

Saluti

Fernando

     TRIMUPHANT SCORE!  GLORIA DEO!  Hot diggity dog!  It looked like everything we could possibly want was there, plus a little Rome thrown in to boot.

HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

Peter and Lana-- Our Friends

     It is such a rare gift to have good friends.  Marianne and I have many friends, and usually they are as unique as we are.  Peter and Lana Graff is one such couple.  Lana is a walking fiend and knows the best routes.  She is a local, a former elementary music teacher, a choral composer, excellent soprano, jewelry maker and peace activist.  Her husband, Peter, a former business-development expert, originally from New Jersey, is active in the theater and a true bass.  Marianne and Peter formed a quick bond 20 odd years ago, through the theater, and enjoy martinis and Metaxa together—oh the stories I could tell.  He is a little older than Marianne and has had to start wearing hearing aids.  Recently he got a cutting-edge of technology set that he is trying to get use to.  Lana still has to yell at him, “turn them up, or pay attention--you old coot!   

     They both meet back in 1992, during a production I created and directed “Impossible Broadway”.  It was a high-powered Broadway Musical review that was one of my crowning achievements.  Later, we were witnesses at their civil marriage ceremony at City Hall after Thanksgiving that year.  They went on to do “The Mikado” with us, just before we left the theater for the first time.  They have sung with Vintage for years.  She’s got a beautiful, pure soprano, and he is as ‘bass-y’ as you get—having sung with the Nassoons at Princeton, 50 plus years ago.   

     We have been to the coast and Yachats several times with them.  We always have a great time.  I remember one Fourth of July, walking the beach in Florence (Oregon) for hours with them.  The tops of my feet got so sunburned, but the walk and the company were wonderful. 

     Friends share food and good times and the four of us have certainly had conspicuous consumption together.  We started a dinner group and had progressive meals—with international themes from all over the world.  Lana started her a couple of her own annual parties, a summer festa and a winter solstice party.  It’s always fun with them.

Tidbits to Travel Tuscany By

     I had started to read as much as I could about traveling in Italy and smart ways to travel for our "Soggiorno in Tuscany".  Yes, Rick Steves is the pro, but he is also selling things.  One unforgettable quote comes from his endorsement of a money belt that looks like a regular belt.

  “Relax: When you wear this money belt, feeling a street urchin's hand in your pocket becomes just one more interesting cultural experience.”

  Or in pushing an agriturismo…

“One of the joys of staying for at least a week in one location is you can develop a true dolce far niente ("sweetness of doing nothing") attitude.”

HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

 “Oh, The Horror” Travels with Bad Beds (Late July 2009)

    We have been through ‘traveling with torturous beds’ many times before.  Strange mattresses and just bad beds—oh the ‘horror’!  Whether it’s the guest beds at my brothers’ houses, bad motels, or even the dreaded foldout couches, trying to negotiate through your day after you have had a permanent crease etched into your spine is no picnic.   Somehow, feeling like you slept on concrete with a four inch metal pipe being ground into shoulder blades doesn’t make you exactly bright and chipper the next day.  Ah, the hide-a-bed--what exquisite torture.  Please, sir, may I have another? 

     I remember some time back giving up the bed for a fold out sofa in Newport, Oregon.  We had two friends join us in this condo with a great bead and the oldest pullout you could imagine.  The mattress must have been 2 inches thick—I swear.  And, of course, when I laid down on it, one of the main supporting bars hit me square across the back.  I felt that one for a week.  I still can feel it now, after 15 years.  Isn’t it amazing how the mind can remember pain so well?

Maybe I Should Get In Shape?  (July 2009)

     I have decided to go back to yoga after a 20 year hiatus.  I needed to do something.  I started in college and stuck with it into my thirties until my job and other commitments got the best of me. 

     Teaching children is the greatest, but it’s the other stuff that goes with it that makes it hard.  Sometimes I liken teaching to nine months of holding your head under water and coming up for air around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the end of March.  In June, you’re actually allowed to come out of the water for a couple of months.  Here in the past ten or so years I think the water has become increasingly more stagnant and swamp-like, thanks to so many school reforms, bad politicians and tax initiatives.  How many times can one foul ones water supply before everyone gets a ‘poo-flood’? 

        So, we joined the “Y” in June and I now can choose from about six different yoga classes—a variable smorgasbord of ‘pretzels and pain’.  I have been proud of my accomplishments in the past month.  I am bending and twisting quite well thank you.  I now have some strength in my shoulders and upper arms.  However, the first week of sessions absolutely got me.  I pulled a muscle in my lower right back and over stretched some tendons in the back of my left calf. 

     This last injury was probably actually caused from dancing in a musical last April.  Marianne directed the show, “Once on This Island” which was a great success.  I told her I couldn’t do the show because it opened Holy Week, which is the most intense time of a Musician in the Episcopal Church.  Yes, even more than Christmas.  There are about five services during that time, and any thought of prancing around a theatre stage was out of the question.  Plus I had a spring concert with our community a ccapella singing group, The Vintage Singers, so I had no time for a play. 

     Well, Marianne didn’t have any mature men audition, who could sing.  So by a ‘force-out’ situation, I became the old man of the show.  All the other performers were in high school, college-aged or their 30’s.  Oh, just to make it work better for me, she also moved the show forward one week so it opened the week after Easter.  Thank you sweetie, I love you too.

   I don’t think this out of shape 50 something body could have worked so hard to learn the excellent dances our 17 year old, slave-driving, choreographer created.  It was obvious for the first month that I might not make it.  Still, I think I pulled it off.  I lost about 10 pounds and felt better than I had in years—even though I screwed up this tendon behind my left knee.  I’m getting better.  I’m not quite dead yet--feeling much better.

   So this day’s class was very crowded and I didn’t recognize the instructor at all.  She hadn’t been teaching classes for the last month, but I guessed the regular gal couldn’t make it.  She started off briskly and had us bending and contorting in ways I never have thought or wanted to move.  We all got through it, but that was very intense for lower intermediate class. 

     The “Yoga Nazi” as I began to think of her, also kept a pleasant smile on her face, but knew precisely what posture she could inflect next to really challenge us.  Afterward, I checked with Harry, a long time acquaintance to see how he was doing.  He has about eight years on me, but handles himself well in the class.  I taught both his kids, directing one as Scrooge in a school Christmas play.  Harry himself was our Narrator/Mysterious Man in mine and Marianne’s joint production (she directs/I do the music) of “Into the Woods’.  He is also on the board of the Community Theater in which we are so active.  Harry usually cheerfully greets and says goodbye every Tuesday when I see him.  This day, he mumbled ‘see ya” as he left, looking like he’d ripped a muscle in every possible body quadrant.  Yoga makes you feel so centered.  It’s great.

     I have been preparing myself, physically, for the marathon of Tuscany.  It’s all built on hills, and the buildings don’t have elevators—that’s what we’ve been told.  Dario Castagno, who’s book “Too Much Tuscan Sun” exposed American (and other nationalities) tourists for their “out-of—shape-ness”.   He was really was amazed the huffing and puffing of the folks he guided.  From a cultural perspective, we came out looking pretty pathetic.  I vowed to myself, as I read his book, never to be like that if or when I go to Italy. 

   So I have been walking the hills of Roseburg to get ready.  Okay, a year in advance, but if I don’t start now, when will I?  Let me tell you, I now know that Roseburg is built on hills.  At first glance from the freeway, I-5, that ‘tears’ the town in half, it’s a flat, cozy river valley with the meandering South Umpqua running through, and bumps of high hills, like Nebo and Callahan ridge, that break up the ‘hundred valleys of the Umpqua’.  Over the past 20 years the town has slowly spread out and up the sides of these hills, in a very hap-hazard way.  Some developers have tried to keep the hillsides in tact, while others have scared in so deeply, we’re just waiting for the next big rain during the monsoon season for all those half and million dollar homes to come sliding down into the older neighborhoods.

    During my summer break, I recharged my body by taking walks, a mile or two, around the greater neighborhood area of our southwest home.  I have had some physical problems, three hernia operations, gout, and various bronchial-asthma related issues, that can sometimes limit me.   The flat part of town, where we live, gently sloping down to the river and has been great for walking.  Now that Marianne and I have a goal in mind, I have decided to push myself and take to the hills—literally.  Just a block away to the east, the southwest hill of town rises up sharply.  Mt. Nebo is on the east end, near I-5, and the ridge to its west might not even have a name. 

     I had been up the first street, Winter Ridge, which end in a field after a cul-de-sac, and it was a challenge.  Our neighbors, old friends, Peter and Lana, who live at the west end of the subdivision, first told me about the work out.  Once I return from the hill top I traverse the side of the hill and take every opportunity to take a one block cul-de-sac or side road to climb more of the ridge.  The highest street is Military and the last uphill assault is a killer.  It gets your heart pumping and the sweat a poring.  On a summer morning, there is nothing healthier than ‘huffing and puffing’ my way up there, and taking in the Roseburg vista as I try to keep from passing out.  I figured if I keep doing this throughout the coming school year I might be ready for Tuscany.

HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

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?

Help I've Fallen In (love with) Tuscan and I Cant' Get Up!

The Italian Writing gods and The Lotto (July 2009)

     It wasn’t the first time I had done the emailing ‘thing’ to writers in/about Italy.  Michael Tucker (Living in A Foreign Language) got one as did Phil Doran (Reluctant Tuscan) and Dario Castagno (Too Much Tuscan Sun).  Castagno had been an occasional Facebook ‘friend’ who most freely imparts Tuscan wisdoms to me, non-gratis.  He was a tour guide throughout his native Chianti, Siena, and Tuscany for several years.  I found him on his own “prosperous-looking” web site, selling olive oil, Tuscan retreats, and tours with a “knowledgeable staff”.  “Cool”, I thought when I clicked through it.  His known dislike of all things “Florentine” was still evident in his tour offerings. 

     Dario is part of the Caterpillar contrada, which won the Palio in 2003.  That’s the short bareback horse around the piazza, Il Campo, in Siena.  It is an absolutely ‘pazzo’ event that happens twice a summer.   Dario’s first book clearly details his passion he has for his native land.  He takes the reader through a year, and a crazy herd of foreign tourists, and gives us the real story on Italy.  Sadly, the last time he emailed things weren’t going well.  He told me wouldn’t be attending the second Palio of the summer and he thought he might be waiting tables by next summer.   Bad economy everywhere, I guess.

     The work at the church caused me to be late for my appointment with the Red Cross.  Yes, I give blood—sometimes often.  There the new blood drawer couldn’t get the needle into my good vein and so I was sent home.  I ask you, is saving a life worth this kind of hassle?

     After a 5:30 P.M. meeting, Marianne and I headed out to get a quick meal.  With the drive thru lines running long and full color ads screaming specials deals at the over-stimulated, weary consumer.  Delightful poetry like “BK BBQ Triple Decker Stackticom!”  All this for a meal we will consume it five minutes or less. 

    We are glad to pull forward and wait in line to pay and get our food.  I hand Marianne my wallet to get money, and I caution her to leaves a few one dollar bills so I can buy a Powerball ticket tomorrow.  As I always do, my mind races to do the mental math to determine how much could actually be won off of the $74 million dollar jackpot.  I figure about $24 m or so.  I ask her how much is a quarter of 74, and she reconfirms it. 

     “Do think we could live on $24 m?” I ask her, tossing it off as a silly pipedream. 

     “Yeah, we could just move to Italy and resolve it all, “she immediately answers.

     I try not to appear shocked and startled, but she had just, again, after 24 years said the very thing I had been thinking.  Sometimes we are so intimately aligned that it’s spooky.  We have always had that connection.  That’s what makes me fall in love with her--over and over again.

     We are asked to wait 3 minutes for my food to cook, because I ordered the chicken, not the whopper.  So we wait in the parking lot.  Our chit chat is light.

     “Am I the only one in this town that eats chicken?” I muse.  “Oh, wait, what am I saying, its Roseburg isn’t it.”

     “Notice how, when men think that this is 12 inches,” Marianne quips, holding her pointer fingers about 7 inches apart to illustrate, “that BK thinks 10 minutes is really only three?”

    We both laughed.

     Later, at home, Marianne calls to me from the TV room that the final “Jeopardy” question is about Dante.  “Longfellow was talking about who when he wrote “Thou art the Tuscan poet who dwells in gloom.” 

     See, it’s like this all day, every day.  I don’t want to think about this thing, this trip to Italy, but I am constantly reminded.  Here it is, mid-July and we have eleven months until we can take the trip.  How can a sane man stay sane for that long if he is going to be ‘beat over the head’ with this stuff 24-7?!?

Help! I've Fallen (in Love with) Tuscany and I Can't Get Up

The Negotiation Process (Early July, 2009)

     Yes, it is true.  Marianne and I have decided to throw caution to the four winds, plus about half of my retirement, and go to Italy.  This is the land of ancient wonders and ruins, feudalism, the Renaissance, baroque treasures and architecture, fascism, and the vespa.  More exactly we want to discover Umbria and Tuscany.  Florence, Siena, Spoleto and Assisi, Orvieto, Cortona, Montepulciano, San Gimignano, and Pisa are all on the list.  Oh, and we need to do it all in about a week.  This creates some tension when ever we start talking about the trip.  We have ‘words’ about planning it at least twice a day. 

     “Wouldn’t it be nice to go to Lucca after we take the train to Pisa and climb the Torre?” I say. 

     “Wait.  I am not going to Lucca.  I don’t wanna go to Lucca.  Got it?!” she snaps back as she looks up from her Nora Roberts’.

      “Got it, goddamm it.”  I say under my breath.

     Not all of our exchanges come out that way.  Sometimes we hit the ‘sweet spot’ together and click into a pleasant thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to have dinner near the Trevi that evening we have that lay-over in Rome?”  Our eyes meet, hearts swoon at the romantic possibilities, and she says, “Now that I could get into.”  Score One!

     I have spent several weeks shooting emails across the world to Italians like Marianna, Rosa Marie, Massimillian, Fernando and Rosetta, and more in the hopes for finding accommodations, transportation and tours.  My brain and my saved email folders are stuffed full of hundreds of URLs, locations, pictures, promises, and cautions from those ‘pasta people’ over there.  Try as I might, I can not escape the nearly constant thoughts and visions of actually seeing, tasting, and experiencing this foreign country. 

     Everywhere I go I am reminded of this possibly impending travel.  We have friends who go there every year.  We know friends of friends that just visited this place or that one and “thoroughly loved it”, and the woman who owns Toad Hall in Yachats, studying Italian when I walk in, tells me the couple that just left is going to live in Italy.  I buy at book at Borders the sales clerk says how great it would be to live in Tuscany for a year and go to all the feste (weekend festivals).  It won’t stop. 

      So, where was I?  Ah, yes, I had put the lawn mower away and watered all the plants and vegetables.  I showered because I had to go back to the dentist today.  My new crown doesn’t fit right and has been hurting for weeks.   I have had this dentist for about eight years now.  I like his work and his sense of humor.  He is also a guitarist and even though I haven’t heard him play, I bet he plays some mean Green Day and Prodigy. After examining the crown, and getting another x-ray, we are stumped to find a date that works for the both of us to do the needed repairs.  He can’t find a time that we can both be in the office to because I have a week in Montana and he will be on a three week trip to Europe. 

     Great.  “I will be avoiding hot and cold food and beverages for over a month!” shouts my inner voice.  

     “You mean that we will have to keep eating only on the left side of our mouth, and taking in liquid by cleverly contorting our tongue to avoid the right side, Doc?”

     “Something like that,” replies the Dentist.

     Oh, no.  Wait, did this guy say he’s going to Europe—possibly Tuscany—it can’t be?  Why not me?  Why do the public servants of this world (like teachers) have to sit at home and have their spouse’s think-up projects for them to do during the summer?  So just not fair!  There it is again.

   “I bet I can guess where, Italy?” I chime-in, after struggling to swallow after his gloved fingers are finally out of my mouth.

  “I wish,” he said.  “No, we’re going to Germany, Austria, and Paris.” 

   Ever since 1966, when Julie Andrews went yodeling through the Austrian Alps, I have had the unquenchable desire to be in Salzburg—home of Mozart, cradle of western music.  At that point I had to physically restrain my one hand from flipping off my dentist with the other.  Then I thought, “Is he touring southern Bavaria on my broken tooth payments.

     After the appointment, as I am pulling out of the dentist office’s long, tree lined parking lot, I nearly run over a kamikaze squirrel.  My day proceeds from sad to worse when I go to the church to check in with my priest about where things stand with music for the next month and a half.  While there, I talk music and Europe with our temporary office manager—the priests’ long time friend, who had the summer off and came to visit; we lost our office manager and Cindy happened to be in town.  She is a fiery contralto with dark hair and eyes.  She speaks fluent Spanish, Castilian of course, lived in ‘Barcelona’ (quite audibly lisping Bar-thelona) and studied piano for 15 years at the Madrid Conservatory.  I am also returning a handful of contemporary jazz CD’s she’d let me borrow over the weekend—all the hottest stuff from the Bay area. 

     I casually ask if she’s ever been to Italy and she explodes with a ‘diva-esque’ sigh. 

     “Oh, yes, she has been to Italy.”  Her boyfriend at the time was Roman.  “I love Italy.”  From the inference in her voice, I could tell that the five years romance a hot and impassioned one. 

     “Yeah, it was great until I got a call from his wife,” she hissed.  That’s the way Italian men do it.  At least the men in Spain tell you they’re married.”

     To diffuse the note of tension, I said “I heard bad things about Romans”.

     “Yeah, like they’re liars!”

    Okay, so Ferenc Mate said it like it was.  He had written in his book “A Vineyard In Tuscany” and didn’t trust a Roman, and his less than honest dealings with this landowner in Montepulciano, Italy.  Mate wanted to buy a small plot of vineyard by the house he and his wife were living in, and raise grapes.  The Roman agreed to sell him the land, but changed the deal mid-stream and poor Ferenc didn’t get his vineyard.  Later on he did get a whole vineyard, land and a Friary south of Montalcino, where the couple now produces award winner wines.   That would be another place to visit.  

     Confession time here (since we are in a church).  I emailed the author, praising his two Tuscan books and letting him in on my dream of Tuscany—realistically realizing he would never write back.  Well, he did, by gosh (remember, I’m in the church).  He said I shouldn’t let go of the dream and even invited Marianne and me to drink some wine when we get there.     

     Cindy proceeded to tell me all about her escapes in Italy, and specifically Rome.  It made me want to spend time in the eternal city.  I knew by our itinerary that we really only had one day.  Since I am always intimidated by really big cities, and foreign ones are way out of my comfort zone, I realized that we were going to have to book a tour (like of those bus things) if we ever wanted to see the sights of Rome.  I could see the dollar (euro) signs just piling up and the bank card literally exploding in my wallet.  Why can’t we skip ahead a year from now and we would be in Tuscany all ready?!