10/25 Firenze/San Miniato/Lucca

Chet and I chose the Arno Valley route, a series of side roads that would wind us about 60 kilometers toward Lucca.  On the road, we passed a truck of terrified Holsteins, eyes bulging and ears pinned back, peering out through the slats of the truck. Neither of us said a word, but we were glad we had passed on the famous steak.

Of Wine, Truffles and Alleycats

And to our right, up the hillside were signs toward the town of San Miniato.

“Chet, can we take a break here?”

We wound up a roadway, into cobbled streets and paths, following the signs. I had been here before.

In July 1972 Uncle Bill and I went to an organ concert at a nameless spot near Florence. He was leading 40 college students on a six week trek through Europe, and I was helping out. That night  he was still explaining things, and the monks were serving Benedictine.  The rosy fingertips of a sunset were crossing the Tuscan sky, bringing a flow to the red tile roofs of the Arno valley.  The energy was palpable – radiance from a warm day? shifting breezes? The view was indelible, a marriage of natural beauty and the efforts of man.  We sat on the low stone wall to reflect, then entered a cool darkened sanctuary for the music, a womb cut into the earth.

“You know Con, there is something to be said for despotism.”  

I nearly dropped my drink.  

“Organ Concert”  The summer schedule was still posted on the church door, and there was the wall where I had enjoyed the Benedictine. The autumn sun showed different colors, the golds of fully ripened fields. The current signs said “White Truffle Festival.”  A special harvest was coming in.  A sausage and cheese shop held the answers.  One taste, and we now knew what this was all about.  The dense earthy flavor is like nothing else.

I’m perplexed by Chet’s question. “What do they give the pig after he finds the truffle? He gets a reward, right?”

What kind of gift would a pig like?  Apples? nuts? Pigs – sausage, roasts, chops, pate….Oh my gosh, they use truffles in pate.

Note to self.  Don’t eat pate that has truffle in it.  Someone might have tricked the pig.

Puccini’s City

We are seeing the exits toward Lucca, and I type in the address of La Romea, our B&B – “centrally located in a 14th century palazzo”   The highway becomes Europa Blvd., a broad avenue with tall trees and stately houses set back from the roadway.  On our right is a green embankment rolling down toward an impossibly well preserved wall.  The old moat is now a park. This wall goes on forever.  According to the GPS we are less than 1.2 kilometers away, but the time is 30 minutes.  That can’t be right.  Traffic is moving very smoothly.

We turn into the city gate, and are faced with red barred signs, No Entrada, no autos.

We poked the end of the car into the crowds of people in the marketplace, and into a rats nest of closed streets. One cannot park in these walled cities.  There are no garages, no driveways, and the streets were designed for oxcarts.  Roman chariot tracks became medieval wagons, horses and carriages, and finally the narrow Italian autos.  To complicate matters, white tents and striped orange barriers were being set up across all the pathways that were marked for passage into the city.  What the heck?  Our trunk is fully loaded, and neither of us can carry bags any more.  I dial La Romea.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Mr. and Mrs. Hood.  We have a reservation to check in today – we are arriving in Lucca, but we don’t know how to get to your hotel.”

“We have no reservations for Hood.”

“But we corresponded by email several times in the last couple weeks.”

“Let me see – yes, I see the notes, but I don’t have your payment.”

“You didn’t ask me for a payment.”

“Oh I see.”  That room is ready for you.  Where are you?

“At the gate, but we see the signs.”

“Go ahead and drive through.  I will issue a Lucca residence pass for you. Call me again when you reach Via Arancia.  You may park there, where it says “resident” and I will come down.”

 

After a second phone call an impossibly slender and stylish woman comes down the alley – “You may park here – just for a few minutes.” She begins to haul our luggage from the trunk. One large bag is full of  coats, sweaters and shopping.  An autumn trip meant at least three seasonal changes.  “My B&B is here.” We look up at the back side of a stone building, and follow her into a hallway where a Vespa is parked.  The broad stone staircase beckons us, and she begins to drag the big bag up into the dark.

A heavy double door opened into the main hall – an inlaid stone mosaic floor, antique chests, leather sofas and bookshelves, painted plaster patterns framing the ceiling.

Over the past 16 years Gaia and Julian, her husband  have renovated the palazzo where they now offer five elegant suites. “I have you in Cielo, our Skyblue suite. By the way, there is a 25 Euro per night discount for Rick Steven’s friends, if you can pay in cash.” That certainly explained the kerfluffle over the credit card deposit.  There wasn’t one.

Our hostess explained. “We are getting ready for Comics and Games. Lucca will host 100,000 visitors next week. We are completely full then.”

Ah yes,  the white tenting and orange barriers. Crews were busy setting up tents for the coming week’s Comics and Games events. Chet turned aside and looked out at the banners… comics and games?

“I thought it would be like a, a… some sort of Faire?”

“You mean like jesters and jousts?  Doesn’t look like it.”

Gaia continued with her welcome. “Our Puccini Festival is also going on.  If you like opera they sing a recital from 7 – 8 over at San Giovanni each evening.”

Puccini played here.  He hated this organ. Every time a key would go false, he would simply pry it out and throw it away.

 

Puccini was from Lucca, and a leading family still runs the festival.  Each night a soprano and a tenor take the boards and sing their hearts out.  The singers change from night to night, but the program is favorites – the ones you could sing along if you weren’t listening. The town is much to small to host staged opera, but obviously the recitals provide lots of opportunities for young singers.  At the break, the impresario got up. “Tonight is a special night; it is our orchestral gala.  If you wish, you are invited back at 9:30 to hear a Mozart program.”  We enjoyed our wine and risotto, and returned to hear a small regional orchestra.  After the first divertimento our minds were wandering – it was drawn out to the length of a small symphony by playing every single repeat:repeat:repeat.

We slept like angels.

26 OCT – Alleycats

We met Julian, husband of Gaia.  By the time our second cappuccino was on the table, we were in a long conversation about old buildings and the life of a serial restorer.  How did you match period materials?  We admired the painted walls, not one matte color rolled on, but a series of glazes and finishes  that shimmer in every type of light. The wood floors and painted walls in our bath and dressing room were immaculate, but not new.

Down the stone stairs we went, ready to wind through Lucca’s cobbled streets.

Our guidebook had disappeared on our first outing in Florence, likely dropped in the Uffizi cloakroom.  A day later I had the presence of mind to download Rick Steves Italy onto our IPad – genius.  I’ll never buy another paper guide book.  The e books are hyper linked, indexed, maps can be blown up for details, and route icons can get linked into your phone maps.  OMG!  So, we had the map of the Lucca walk, and we took off toward the ancient coliseum.  It is fully repurposed now.  Side walls all became apartment buildings with shops underneath.  Old gates were filled in with pass through restaurants.

The nose led us to one trattoria in particular, and later we came back to enjoy a cheese platter as well as a cured meats plate.  I stayed with the cheese, and two absolutely amazing jams – pear with mustard, and teeny champagne grape berries in balsamico. The generous meat platter included many unfamiliar meats, things that I wouldn’t eat as a kid.  Oh, if only my mother had indulged my childhood wish to not eat fat. Chet rolled up the lardo, rosemary smoked lard and stuffed it into his mouth with a bit of bread.  I said nothing, even though he’s had four heart episodes over the years. He caught my glance, and “packed up the rest for later.”

Tiggers don’t eat lardo.  Alleycats do. I made friends with four of them before we headed out to a second evening of Puccini.

Rewards come to those who wait.  The fireplaces and chandeliers of Ristorante Giglio offered an inviting three hour meal late that night.

10/27  Carrara’s Marble Faces

The jeep jerked up the mountainside, pinning us flat against the rocks during its turns. In our discussions of building materials, Julio had agreed that Chet would love to visit Carrara. The wear and tear on the jeep was solid proof that it had been up and down these roads before.  The top of the mountains were sheer white faces, cut into terraces for giants.  The walls and cut blocks resembled a giant child’s playset, complete with lifting equipment and massive trucks to negotiate the mountain roads back down.

How had the ancients removed the tops of these mountains and gotten the brilliant white stone down to the cities?

Old photos told the story. Some of the answer lay in the pine trees.  In some places the stones could be slipped down on rollers, as long as no villages of stone cutters got caught in the way.  For hundreds of years they used teams of oxen – two to three dozen beasts of burden at a time hitched up to work as a single unit, dragging blocks that measured 2x3x2 meters and weighing hundreds of tons each.  The mountains end at the Tyrrhenian Sea where barges could move the marbles to Florence and Rome.  Even mechanized heavy equipment can only do so much.  The laws of physics, and hours of daylight still rule this process.

Marble is still being taken from the hills.  UNESCO also has an initiative on the table to preserve the next range of mountains from plunder.

On the road back to Lucca we thought deeply about the intersection between man and his desire to be surrounded by beauty.