travel day to Rome

On Wednesday, we left Lucca and drove to Firenze, where we returned our rental car and hopped on a high-speed train to Roma. The train ride was so smooth and speedy - up to 200 km per hour - and we were jealous of Italy’s transportation network yet again.

We arrived in Rome, and then had a minor fiasco in getting to our apartment. My directions were from the airport, not the train station, and I didn't realize in time, and then we somehow forgot about Google Maps and resorted to triangulating it using posted transit maps. It took us over an hour to reach the place, using the subway, express train, and then tram. We should have taken a bus and it would have been 12 minutes. Oh well! It took us back to our younger days, before cellphone technology and maps.

We unpacked and then went out to explore the neighborhood; our place is in the hip and very walkable Trastevere neighborhood, on San Cosimato Piazza. We had gelato, of course, looked at the shops and restaurants, saw the beautiful Basilica di Santa Maria and its fountain, and then walked up Gianicolo Hill to look out over Rome.

Our apartment is on the fifth floor but has this very old-fashioned elevator, with the double doors that you manually open. Sebastian loves it.

 A pigeon-topped statue of Garibaldi overlooking Rome.

We thought about going to a restaurant, but everyone was tired, hot, and grouchy, so we decided to pick up groceries and eat at home. As we were gathering supplies, a huge thunderstorm rolled in directly overhead and a particularly loud clap terrified the children; we had to scamper home in the pouring rain with thunder and lightning in the near distance, which was not a popular decision. The storm continued until late into the night, but we were cozy with our pasta, chicken, and veggies.

Since there was not as much to write about today, some other, more random observations from our trip:

Our children are both avid readers, making their way through two dozen books a week, each. It’s what they do to relax, it’s what they do to pass the time in the car, it’s what we tell them to do when they’re making us crazy. We clearly couldn’t cart hundreds of books around Italy, but we did bring both an iPad and a Kindle, and our Portland library has a really extensive collection of e-books for children. So we checked out and downloaded 25 or so books to start, and we keep returning and checking out more at our various VRBOs. It’s been perfect, actually - lightweight electronic devices, one for each, and so many books to choose from. I'm not sure if we could have made this happen without books to read.

We have started becoming more comfortable with basic Italian phrases and food descriptions. Steve and I have backgrounds in French and Spanish and so we can often guess at the meaning of printed material. The children have started to say ciao, and grazie, and to ask for their gelato in Italian flavors (frutti di bosco, fragola, cioccolato, limone). But we are clearly not Italian-speaking, and most people have been kind and gracious and almost entirely able to speak English in at least some form. Still, I like that the kids have had to watch us struggling through various interactions, and pantomiming or pointing occasionally, just to give them a sense of how it’s done.

The emptiness of the landscape in Tuscany really struck both me and Steve. It has clearly been sculpted and shaped to look beautiful and scenic for centuries -- perfect rows of trees, perfect squares of plowed earth. But there doesn’t seem to be anything growing, or any animals grazing, and we aren’t sure if it’s just August (and too hot for grain) or if it’s all just basically a landscape show - the art of being the Tuscan countryside - but not productive agricultural land. And I guess that's fine, as it's clearly both beautiful and income-generating, yet it still feels somehow fake to me, which isn't entirely fair.

There are road signs leaving every a town or comune - white signs with the town’s name and then a red strike going through it. I am so amused by it - I don’t know why but it tickles my funny bone immensely, and I like to read it out loud every time as “Firenze…. NO!", while slashing my hand through the air.

While wandering the streets of Lucca, we saw a woman weaving fabric - probably wool - on a very old, very large loom. We stopped to watch her for a bit and to admire the handiwork, the time, the craftsmanship involved in weaving fabric and creating clothes by hand. It was fun to show the children and to admire the work.

I have been trying to not use my phone in Italy since it costs $10 a day for cellphone access. We have Steve’s phone connected for directions and maps and restaurant searches, and in our VRBOs we have wifi (sort of - it’s very slow), but I don’t have my cellphone connected for large parts of the day. When I’m out and about on my own, I have to rely on paper maps and memory (and luck), and I can’t reflexively/lazily check my email or look at Facebook or read news articles. It was really hard the first few days - I missed it and felt a little tic of compulsion to pull my phone out - but it’s gotten easier and easier as time has gone on. And interestingly, the kids have noticed and they LOVE it. Sebastian said it was “very un-grownup” of me to not have the phone. Liesl asked if I could entirely stay off the phone all day long, even back in the apartment. I clearly need to do a better job of controlling my iPhone/internet addiction when we return home.