Since I last wrote about the Perugia episode, I've been to a few more spots. Here is what Siena, Lucca, and Prato are like.
Siena
Felipe, Alex (roommate), Julian, myself, David
You know the crayon called Burnt Siena? It's like that.
The buildings are brown/red, and every street is a new surprise. It's also cool that Siena was the location for shooting the last James Bond film.
I went with a big group of us, but my friend David and I split off and went out own way. When we felt like taking a left, we did, and when we felt like eating lunch, we ate. We found a small fruit stand, and I bought an apple and washed it in a street fountain, and after that, we found some warm bread... so food in hand, we found a wall and sat on it, and we watched the mountains and the people below us go.
We had a really good adventure that day. We went back to thank they lady for the really good bread. We found a Christmas museum (and it was the end of January!).
There was one time when we could have taken a left or a right, and we took a left because the right sounded like jackhammers. At the bottom of this street, we heard music and we ended up stopping outside a door where inside, someone was practicing piano (Clair de Lune, by Debussy).
By the end, my hands were so cold, but we found a small pub where I could warm them on a blue, china teacup of English Breakfast.
The thing I like about Siena is that even though it has its crowded, noisy parts, you can take a right or a left down any street and find yourself in silence in 2 minutes. David said he liked how you can even hear your shoes as you walk. You can't always hear your shoes in Florence. And everything was a painting, even old ladies smoking cigarettes out their windows.
Lucca
Also small and beautiful, but not quite as pretty as Siena.
I went to Lucca for my Literary Travels class, and we stopped in a museum for a little, a church for a little, and then I had the most incredible soup for lunch. It was polenta and vegetables, and some sort of Luccan magic all mixed together. And for dessert, I shared a pear/chocolate cake with someone.
Go dip a pear in some chocolate. It doesn't sound like something that would be very delivious, but trust me.
So then we walked around with a young tour guide named Marco, and he and I exchanged suggestions for good music. I'm trying to find some Italian bands while I'm here.
Lucca is surrounded by a huge defense wall, so we walked all around the top of it and I'm pretty sure I saw most of Tuscany from that wall.
Italy is all aobut walls. There are always walls to sit on or walk on.
Or pee on if you're a dog.
Prato
My friend Leonie and I just picked up and decided to go to Prato yesterday. It's only 20 minutes by train, but it's overlooked a lot because it's so close to Florence.
What a great, great day. Our mission was first to find a bottle of wine and then find a piazza to sit and drink it in (because in Italy, public drinking ain't no thing). When we found a small store with a wall of wine in it, we went in.
The man behind the counter asked if he could help us, and I said well, we're just looking for some wine. And he said well, let me get someone to give you really good advice.
Well. This advice turned into an hour long talk about the wine labelling process in Italy, where they raise their pigs to make salami (they get to run around in a big field, I was told), which wine goes well with what, how baking bread and being a butcher are forms of art in Italy, how Americans use too many ingredients in their food, how Tuscan food is better because 3 ingredients can make a masterpiece, and so on and on and on.
I loved it. I couldn't understand everything, but I didn't want to stop them -- they were on such a roll! And so enthusiastic!
They gave us some chocolate to munch on and some salami to taste along with the rose wine we bought. I told them I'd come back so that they could teach me how to make salami. Their names are Rino and Renato.
So we sat in the piazza and we drank that whole bottle and we talked about everything. Leonie is from Germany. She was in New York for awhile living in a room above a yoga studio, working for a tour company. Then she worked in London working for a company that is trying to improve relations between Germans and Jews.
Later we bought some cookies and went on down to the church -- we were only inside for 2 minutes when this old Italian man came up and started giving us an impromptu tour.
This guy didn't even work for the church! But he told us all about the church and Prato. I learned that Prato's most prized possession is the Virgin Mary's girdle that she gave to St. Thomas before she rose to heaven. They keep Mary's girdle in a big ornamented box surrounded by frescos and a large imposing gate, and they take out Mary's girdle to show it to everyone about 5 times a year.
After that we went home. So those were 3 Italian cities. Here are some other things I did:
- Rode on a bike bar the other day. You know that bar between the bike seat and the handles? Well I sat on it because my friend Julian said we weren't walking fast enough and he peddled us both. Holy mother of God. I was screaming/laughing and I was afraid/excited and we almost crashed into a bunch of things, but I kind of almost felt a little Italian at that moment.
- Anna is doing well. Every night she warns us of the gypsies down the street, but I haven't seen any. She made us saltimbocca romana last week, which is 2 layers of thinly sliced meat (I think prosciutto) with a thin slice of cheese in the middle, grilled in olive oil. Really delicious. Sometimes I worry that she thinks I'm insincere because everything she brings out I tell her it is magnificent, incredible, very good, mmm, or "I like it very much," but it just is. Everything is.
- The other night I couldn't open an almond, so Anna took the almond from me and cracked it in the window. Just opened the window and closed the almond in it. She lost a bit of the window frame, but the almond was goooood.
- Sometimes I go to my friend Delilah's house if I have nothing else to do. Either this involves yoga or talking over tea, but a lot of times, it's cooking. She's a vegetarian, and she has a fruit/veg stand outside her house, so she'll cook us eggplant or peppers, or whatever we're in the mood for. Last week we ate an entire pot of peas. She's also addicted to chocolate. I'm not kidding.
- My Italian is getting much better, and even though I can't express myself exactly how I want, I'm learning more every day. Language is such a funny thing. You don't realize this when you are surrounded by people who speak the same one as you do, but the moment you are put into a place where you don't speak a language fluently, you realize that language is such a big part of personality. You can't express yourself and your personality exactly how you want to, and that part is frustrating. So much of who I am is what I say and how I say it, and I almost feel like I come across as a completely different person because I'm so limited.
On the other hand, I feel like I can get to know the Italians I've met on such a different level. Speaking is such a big part of their culture (like any culture), and when they know you understand them, they completely open up and can talk for hours.
I think that if I didn't know Italian, I'd be missing out on getting to know a lot of great people.
