Friday Night in Contignano

It's Friday night in Contignano, and I am in the teen center. There's a public internet site, and I thought I'd be standing in line for a computer, but the eight or so high school kids who are here are playing a rowday game of something like hide and seek. I hear counting, quiet, then running, shouting. They have left me in the dark computer room, and have forgotten me completely, and yikes! It's closing time!

Must run!!

All is well.

Slowing Down

Well, it has happened. We finally crashed and burned, and have emerged from the wreckage with a kinder, gentler plan. So many medieval cities in a row, all packed with irresistable art treasures and magnificent works of food, and yet, we've grown tired of packing, moving and learning a new city every four or so days. It does not sound like a fast pace, but it is. So we have cancelled our trip deep into Sicily for later in the month, and are going to chill in the Aeolian islands for a full seven days in low season. Palermo and Erice will have to wait for another day.

We are now in Florence, and I can see why the city made Stendahl swoon to the point where he needed medical attention. We have climbed the 435 steps to the top of Brunelleschi's dome, and have seen the Renaissance works that I taught in Humanities class years ago--the lovely frescoes of Fra' Angelico, Massacio and Lippi, the lovely Botticellis and Raphaels, too many Madonnas to count, and Michaelangelo's David.

And I've seen my personal favorites, Artemesia Gentilleschi's two paintings of Judith and her maidservant during and after the gory removal of Holofernes head, wielding the huge sword, pulling away from the spatters on her arms and neck, two sturdy and determined women. I loved that in the next room at the Pitti Palace is the sylph-like Judith by Cristofano Allori, gently holding the nasty head near her spotless golden silk gown, with a look of peaceful composure on her delicate face--this Judith could not squash a Florentine mosquito.

UNESCO says that 50% of the world's great works of art are in Italy, and I think that 96% of them are in Florence, and, silly me! I thought five days would be comfortable! Yesterday we retreated a bit--only two greats (David and the tiny Brancacci Chapel). We shopped a little on the Ponte Vecchio.

We found Beatrice Galli, who says she has "lived in the yarn all my life." She has a lovely yarn shop on the Arno, just beyond the Ponte Vecchio, and we just happened to see her knitting there through the window. She has lived and worked there for 39 years, fifteen of them doing custom knitting with a machine, before she gave it up and returned to handwork. Her grandmother taught her to knit when she was six. Now, she never leaves, not even in August, she explained, because her customers expect her to be there. She showed us the flowers on her deck, and let Dan take a picture of her stunning view. And she is on top of things--you can even order over the internet.

Someone will have a pair of socks for Christmas, because I bought some more yarn for our slow time in Tuscany and the Islands. Beatrice picked it out, and she knows who they are for, but I'm not telling you!

. . . and we took shelter from a tiny rainshower in a gelato shop--Dan finally found riso flavor, and I went for the limoncello.

And we capped off Florence with a dinner in our little Piazza San Pier Maggiore at Restaurant Natalino. Our waiter, Paolo, who we thought owned the place, but no, is "laborato, professionista, ma laborato," said it's been a restaurant since Napoleon. The ravioli with duck sauce, oh, my oh my! And the translation on the menu said 'meatloaf,' but don't you believe it.

So we're back on track. Dan's cold is waning, I'm getting it and getting over it in my typical fashion. I am the goddess of the four-hour cold, and am still proving to be pretty bulletproof.

Gotta run! Next train in two hours! But soon, I'll tell you about the burrata I missed in Venice.

Da Vero

I had my first conversation in Italian in the Milano Centrale train station.



Our late TGV from Paris caused us to miss our connection, and I stood under the board watching for the platform number for an inter-city train to post. I leaned on the gift shop's bullet-proof glass--it has revolving windows for payment for plastic cathedrals--and an older lady complained. I caught something like "manque del banco" and made my best guess, which was that they needed benches here. Thousands of people moving in every direction here, and not a seat anywhere--this had to be it. But how to respond, other than the mute nod, which is too timid. Long pause. "Da vero." I think that I remember that this means it's true. Then I try, "dové va?"--where are you going. She names a town, and I cannot tell what town it is, but I knowit is not one of the big ones near us, so it is probably a small one.

Pause. "Lei inglese?" "Si, inglese. United States."

Pause. "é a vaccance?" "Si, vaccance." Long pause, then I think: I can ask, is she Itailan? Not a hard question, and it keeps our little conversation going. "Lei italiana?" She thinks I am pretty funny now--she is so obviously Italian, at least to herself. To me, she is beige. She is wearing a beige sweater and skirt and shoes, her glasses are slightly deeper beige, and her hair has a blond beige tint. And quiet, and tired. She seems very sweet.

"Dové va?"
"Venezia."
"Ah, Venezia! Bella città!"

Then the pause is pretty long, and looks as if it might tun uncomfortable. I turn toward Dan--he's contemplating the plastic cathedrals. And I wander off after a minute to have a question answered about whether I need a reserved seat for this next train, since it is not a TGV.

Then, I'm back waiting under the board, between my fellow traveler and Dan. Her platform has just come up, and she starts to leave. But she turns back to me, smiling and animated, speaking quickly and with energy: I catch: "Bella Venezia. . . va . . . Murano per . . . vietri; Burano per le pizze." There are a lot of little words I don't catch, but they don't seem important. I repeat back to her, "Murano, vietri, Burano, pizze!"

"buon viaggi, buon vaccance, buon viaggi!" She takes both my hands. It's really a tender moment for us both.

"Arrivederci, buon viaggi!"

And her lovely welcome carried us through two hours of standing on the train. We only found seats after the stop for Verona. In the meantime, I chatted (in English) with a businessman operating men's underwear shops. It was Friday afternoon, and Venice is a weekend spot. But we arrived happy nonetheless.

Detours

Have you ever driven a Yaris? It's not very aerodynamic, so driving with the windows cracked open at all makes you feel like you are being buffeted by gales, and even though it's snub-nosed it is hard to see the front of it, and it's tiny but not tiny enough to handle EVERY medieval cloister arch. So we might have put a tiny scratch on the back side of the rear-view mirror trying to park in that 13th-century enclosure in Arles, but hey, it came to us with a big dent from someone else's adventure. So we don't LOVE our rental car, but it goes.

Until, of course, you fill the DIESEL car with SANS PLOMB 95, which is unleaded. Then it does not go, say, more than 4 km from the station. How does this kind of thing happen, you might ask? The gas cap has in big letters DIESEL on it, but someone just ASSUMED she knew, someone who had driven many Toyotas in the past. . .

Fortunately, the hideous knocking that ensued caused the aforementioned idiot to pull over, and once Yaris stopped, she stopped for good. Fortunately, too, a sign pointing to Argeliers said only 0.5 km, so off we went on foot to make a call, since the same person who caused the little problem had not had the foresight to charge the useless cheap cell phone reserved for such times.

In Argeliers, La Tonnerie, a bar, was the only place open, because we timed our depannage for the mid-day naptime that all France adores. Loud American music was playing for the six or so men who were taking construction job breaks inside, so we borrowed phone from an unbelieving bartender, and headed outside. Turns out that our mistake was not a terribly serious one, and after the bartender kindly described our location for the tow truck driver on the other end of the line, who could not find Argeliers on any map, we found ourselves within the hour waving down a grand camion jaune, or, big yellow truck, with a big Saint Bernard decal on the front, and Bernard and sons had us loaded up and on the way to the garage.

So we were treated to a ride to St Chinian, a town known for its wines, deep in the Aude. It was clear from the distance traveled that M. Bernard had hopped in the truck the minute he received our call, because St. Chinian was a good forty minutes into the mountains from our breakdown spot on the D5 at Argeliers. During the trip, the entire landscape changed from vineyards stretched over rocky white limestone to vineyards stretched over red rocks, and the houses in St. Chinian are all built from these lovely red rocks. The panoramas were marvelous, especially seen from the height of the front seat.

Our saviour had us back on the road within an hour--he drained the tank and replaced it with Diesel--and charged us only 40€, plus fuel.

Our entire detour cost us some three hours, and I'd say improved our level of confidence in our own problem-solving, and I gained a few extra freckles in the hot Languedocien sun. Our biggest worry, since clearly the car was running just fine, was that our picnic might have suffered a bit--remember the cheese list from last time? It's been baking in the trunk of the car.

Because, the night before we had opted to eat dinner out in Carcassonne at a little restaurant inside the medieval walls, and to save our market treasures for the road trip to Avignon. The Jardin de la Tour is mentioned in the Guide Routard, and it deserves mention. Our hors d'oeuvres were a cucumber gazpacho, green and thick and carrying some spice or herb that I could not identify, and a terrine of zucchini, cold with a tomato confit and a few slivers of prosciutto; then our entrees were a chicken with olives and citron, and lamb skewers with a very piquant chutney; dessert a soft chocolate cake and an absolutely perfect crème brulée.

Next rule for travel: Get a good map. So here we are in St. Chinian, on the way to Avignon, and no real main road that does not take us through Nimes, which is like the ninth traffic circle of hell in rush hour. So we opted for back roads, saw many lovely little towns, turned around several times, passed through every traffic circle in the entire dèpartment of Aude, and crossed the Rhone and arrived in Avignon at dusk with a full moon facing us and a spectacular pink-and-blue sunset behind us. Our simple guidebook map took us straight to the hotel. These days "straight" means "going down fewer than three one-way streets the wrong way."

Parking in Avignon is outside the medieval wall, or just inside if you are lucky enough to score a blue-zone space. So off we went to get Yaris to bed after a hard day, and we strolled a little bit through Avignon, which only seems to get busier at night, in contrast to the othe little places we have been that roll up their streets and put them away.

Despite our worries about our picnic--we had it about 8 hours late, well-baked-- it was still excellent. The remains of our bottle of wine from last night's dinner went really well with our cheese and olives.

And this hotel has a computer for the hotel guests' use, so tomorrow I will let Dan sleep in again and catch you up on the next detour--back to Arles to retrieve the battery charger, or, How I Completely Missed the Fiber Fair. Today, Dan says he's not getting into a car. Me neither.

Just met a four-year-old from the Pyrenees. . .

. . .and a very tasty one at that. We are in Carcassone (exhausted, by the way). We've decided not to SEE anything today, but in spite of ourselves, just wandering, we've come across a street market. This one is very small, with produce, olives, flowers, and one cheese wagon. We bought some carrots, a handful each of roasted cashews and pistachios, greek olives. Then we were captivated by the pointy bright lime green Luques olives-- the taste is so fresh and they almost crunch, they are so crisp-textured.

The cheese man was busy, so we made a detour. The quincaillerie (hardware) would close at noon for the two-hour midday break. We had spotted a copper marmite in the window for making confiture on our way toward the market, but were flat out of cash (as is so often the case these days, and we likely would not have seen the market at all if the quest for cash had not taken us to a bank in the main square), so we took a chance that the cheese man would not be leaving the square before 12:30.

In Bayeux, we had the privilege of a lesson from our conviviql hostess at Villa Aggarthi, Myriam Sauvage, in how to make confiture the traditional way, without pectin. Her confiture is so delicious--if you stay two nights, you get both pear and strawberry--but the key ingredient seems to be the conductive, wide copper pan, because it cooks for hours over an extremely low fire. So I have decided that the pan is the thing I'll bring home from France, even if I have to carry it on my back, tinker-style, all the way through Italy. And Myriam also clued us in on the fact that the pan is relatively cheap at the quincaillerie (27.80€). I will tell you more about Myriam and Aggarthi and Bayeux at some point, because our visit there was spectacular, but for now, back to the hardware, and away with the pan, back to the fromager in the square.

After tasting three different ages of basque brebis (sheep's milk cheese), we've come away with a sliver of four year old cheese that we will have with a traditional black cherry confit and some inky red Languedocienne wine. This cheese is so savory, crumbly, strong, earthy, salty and dark--

And a sliver of St Nectaire from a farm north of here. This is no pasteurized-milk cheese. You should see it! Grey, wrinkly, a collapsed ashy-looking 8" circle, with a succulent center and a texture like silk. I love St N anyway, but our versions are pretty tame.

And a chunk of younger brebis, because we need a little road food for tomorrow.

And a chunk of emmental for Dan.

By this time, several people had collected around the cheese cart, and I offered in my staggeringly embarrasing French to go behind the scenes to help sell cheese to the crowd, and the answer I received from the young man was something on the order of , "non vous etes trop gourmande, vous allez trop manger" or, No, you like cheese too much, you'd eat too much!

Since my last message, we've been from Paris to Bayeux, Bayeux to Arles, Arles to Carcassonne.

I promise to tell you soon about my impromptu paella lesson in Arles, and our magnificent hosts at Hotel le Cloitre, Jean-François Hughly and Agnès Barrier in Arles, and about the fun of driving in medieval streets, and about Les Baux de Provence, and Uzès, and how ticked off I am that Charlemagne never really lived in the castle here in Carcassonne, but I do not want to fatigue you. I assure you, too, that there are many, many pictures of this adventure. Dan's faithfully taking photos all along the way, and we've given up that upload process and ripped them all to CDs. So we will make a slide show, or several of them, for you all.