Chapter 11

Next Time, We Take the Bus

Panzano-in-Chianti, Italy

September 26

After Rome, we headed north toward Panzano-in-Chianti, a small village in the famous wine-growing region between Florence and Siena. Devi rented an apartment in a restored fifteenth-century villa there, and this promised to be a highlight of our trip. The apartment wouldn’t be ready until late afternoon, so we decided to make a scenic loop through the rolling hills of Umbria. This proved fortuitous, because it swiftly landed us in the sublime Umbrian hill town of Spoleto.

Spoleto is best known for its superb summer arts festival, but summer had passed, and the town had resumed its quiet, off-season routine. We wandered on foot through narrow lanes overarched with flying buttresses until we found Spoleto’s small central square, its cobblestones still wet from the morning rain. The piazza was bounded by small cafés and food shops. Since it was an off-season weekend, the shops were all closed, but their windows held forth a cornucopia of mouthwatering Italian delicacies—towers of tinned truffles, fagioli and tomatoes, plump black olives in oil, red wine, pasta, and hanging salamis.

These mouthwatering displays naturally piqued our hunger so we wandered into a nearby restaurant. Inside, the walls were lined with narrow shelves holding countless grappa bottles of every conceivable shape and size. An ethereal aroma wafted from the kitchen. We ordered three luncheon specials for the six of us, a carafe of house wine, and a bottle of mineral water con gaz. Each adult shared a meal with one of the children, and there was still more than enough to go around. The osso buco, the pasta, the salad, and dessert were all superb. In fact, everything about Spoleto was a balm to the senses—its handsome stone buildings, the hilltop setting, the air crisp and clean after the rain, the hearty food and wine—even the tolling bells that marked the passing hours. As we drove out of Spoleto—past its hilltop castle and ancient aqueduct, we were reminded that you always encounter the best places by chance.

When we rejoined the superhighway heading north, a tollbooth attendant handed Devi a small pink ticket. Devi passed it to me, and I wedged it into a dashboard vent so it wouldn’t get lost. But when it came time to exit the highway in Chianti, I reached for the ticket, fumbled, and knocked it down inside the ventilation system. I didn’t tell Devi right away. There was a long line of cars at the tollbooth and I thought I might be able to reach up under the dashboard and discreetly salvage the ticket before it was our turn to pay. When we were next in line at the tollbooth, I was obliged to say, “I’m afraid we have a small problem.”

“What happened?” asked Devi.

“The ticket fell down inside the dashboard.”

“How could that possibly happen?”

I didn’t really have a good answer for that, and the car in front of us suddenly pulled forward which left Devi to explain, in her basic Italian, how her idiot husband dropped the ticket into the heating vent. The toll collector listened with a quizzical look on his face and directed Devi to the administration building. I waited in the van with Betty and the kids.

“Where’s mommy going?” asked Willie.

“She is going to explain how we lost the ticket.”

“How did we lose the ticket?” asked Kara.

“I knocked it into the vent.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.”

“Are they going to put mommy in jail?” asked Willie.

“No, honey. They’re not.”

“You’re the one who should go to jail,” said Kara. “You lost the ticket.”

“No one’s going to jail.”

“Yea, but if anyone does go to jail, it should be you.” (I made a mental note never to bring Kara along on a bank heist.)

Devi emerged half an hour later. She managed to square things with the Italian highway authorities, and we were free to go.

“Next time, please put the ticket in your wallet,” she said.

“You got it,” I replied, and we were back on the road.

After that little contretemps, we navigated a series of winding roads up into the Tuscan hills until we came to the picturesque village of Panzano-in-Chianti. We arrived late in the afternoon, and the only place open was a tiny grocery. We bought a few necessities for the morning and asked the woman behind the counter for directions to the Villa Lupinati. She said it was only about two kilometers from town and pointed us in the right direction.

The road to the villa ran past a ruined fortress and several vineyards. Harvest time was nigh, and fat clusters of wet black grapes hung lush and heavy on the gnarled old vines. It took a few passes, but eventually we found the well-hidden turnoff to the villa. We bumped and jolted down a rutted track for nearly a mile until we saw a charming stone-and-stucco compound covered with ivy. It was set high on a hillside, and commanded a twenty-mile view of rolling vineyards dotted with old stone farmhouses. Thin wisps of wood smoke curled up from the farmhouse chimneys and tiny lights twinkled in their windows. I’ve never been to the Tuscan hills before, but the landscape looked remarkably familiar. Eventually I realized that scenes like this were depicted in the backgrounds of countless Renaissance paintings, and that remarkably little had changed in the last four hundred years.

These aesthetic considerations were largely lost on the children, but they were equally delighted with Villa Lupinati—mostly because there was a litter of calico kittens roaming the grounds. Shortly after we arrived, the children fed scraps to these little beggars, and from that point forward, there was always a coterie of tiny felines lurking outside our door. Whenever someone tried to get in or out, one or more of these infants would sneak in for a snack or a nap by the fire. I’m wildly allergic to cats, but the kittens gave the children so much pleasure I felt compelled to suffer them gladly.

When we woke up the following morning, it was raining pretty hard, but we still drove into Panzano for the weekly farmer’s market. We expected a modest display of produce and rustic handicrafts, but instead we found the entire town square given over to dozens of vintners in burlap-covered booths. According to a handbill, it was the last day of the Manifestazione Enogastronomica di Panzano-in-Chianti, a food and wine festival that celebrated “the production of wine, oil, and food that is the envy of all the world.” It was also billed as the first public gathering of all the chianti classico wine makers in several decades.

Devi and I love full-bodied chianti classico wine, so we bought tasting glasses for 10,000 lire¹² and sipped our way around the piazza. Despite the immodest claims on the handbill, the wine we sampled was still pretty rough around the edges. The vintners were pouring new wine, and chianti takes years to mellow. Still, it was a rare experience to sample and discuss one of the world’s great wines with all the local growers.

At lunchtime, we bought a bottle of chianti classico, a whole roast chicken, and a bag of oregano-flavored patatine fritte.¹³ Then, we drove back to the villa and ate. The kids played with the kittens, and I sat by the hearth reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. As the rain beat against the windowpanes and the fire crackled, I felt satisfied that our journey, like Kerouac’s, was no longer a series of scheduled, predetermined events—as it was back in Costa Rica. After more than three months on the road, we finally seemed to be roaming the world freely, serendipitously finding adventure and quirky offbeat events such as the Panzano wine festival. I was self-satisfied that we weren’t like those pitiful hordes of bus-borne tourists crisscrossing Italy on scripted, predictable church-and-gallery tours. Those poor sods were missing the essence of Italy, while we seasoned world travelers were soaking up the real deal. This, of course, was pure hubris, and the next day, in Florence, I got my comeuppance.

Our day trip to Firenze began with great hope. Devi, Betty, and I had all toured Florence separately, but now we had the wonderful opportunity to show our children the glories of the Uffizi, the polychrome grandeur of the Duomo, Giotto’s bell tower, Ghiberti’s baptistery doors, and Michelangelo’s David. But before we did any of that good stuff, we had to find a parking space somewhere within fifty miles of the place. For more than an hour and a half, we stalked the south bank of the Arno River waiting for someone, anyone, to relinquish a spot. But our clunky van and American reticence were no match for the cunning Florentines who zipped in and snatched any open parking space in the blink of an eye. We were finally reduced to begging a kindly old parking lot attendant for help. Inspired by a substantial tip, he crawled behind the wheel of our van and squeezed it into a slot so narrow, he actually had to wriggle into the back seat and use the sliding door to get out.

With that, we broke out our umbrellas and hiked a mile or so to the Ponte Vecchio, the renowned fourteenth-century bridge now lined with dozens of tiny jewelry shops. Since we wasted half the morning parking the van, I was anxious to get to the Uffizi galleries as soon as possible. But this proved an unreasonable expectation, because Kara and Betty weren’t about to breeze past all those jewelry shops on the Ponte Vecchio without a thorough inspection. It took us another hour just to cross the Arno.

When we did finally get to the Uffizi, we were shocked to find hundreds, if not thousands, of our fellow art lovers waiting patiently to get inside. The line, two or three abreast, stretched from one end of the building to the other, and it didn’t seem to be moving at all. That, we soon learned, was because entire busloads of organized tourists—those same poor wretches I had regarded with pity the day before—were being systematically shunted to the front of the line. Apparently, the tour operators had a cozy deal with all of Firenze’s art galleries, and we freelancers were left out in the cold.

After Devi and I bemoaned the rank inequity of this system, she strode to the front of the line and interrogated the guard about when we might get in. He said it could be two hours or more. There was no way on earth, short of knocking them unconscious, that our children were going to wait two hours in the rain to see an art gallery, so we had to abandon our fond plan to see Italy’s greatest Renaissance art collection, and reluctantly move on.

Our next stop was the thirteenth-century Palazzo Vecchio—ancient home of the Medici. It was a reasonably successful visit, but when we stepped outside and tried to make our way across the Piazza della ignoria, we ran into a problem. That’s because a) the Piazza, like every other tourist attraction in Florence, was packed with rain-soaked mobs, and b) Kara and Willie tend to hold their umbrellas at the average adult’s eye level. Despite my best efforts, you could pretty well track our progress across the piazza by listening to the indignant cries of “Eh!” “Aye!” “Ow!” and “Ach” in four different languages. I figured it would be better for Kara and Willie to get wet than to put someone’s eye out, so I made them holster their weapons.

Once we made it across the piazza, we walked a kilometer or so through the rain to a particular trattoria recommended by our less-than-trusty Frommer’s Guide as a “family-friendly restaurant.” I don’t know whose family they were thinking of—perhaps it was the Agnellis—but when we got to the restaurant in our soaked windbreakers and muddy sneakers, we found ourselves in the sort of spot where Armani-clad executives might enjoy an elegant business lunch. The children stared through the window at the dessert cart like starving street urchins, but Devi and I decided we’d better drag them off to someplace less refined.

We must have headed in the wrong direction because the only restaurant we found was a second-story cafeteria with a sign in the window that said something like “Cheap Food” in fourteen languages. The cafeteria’s bare fluorescent bulbs and green Formica tables contributed to an ambience that was only slightly less charming than your average bus station. But to our surprise, the decor actually proved superior to the food. The servers at the steam counter ladled out soggy portions of what was, arguably, the worst food in northern Italy. Worse yet, the cafeteria seemed to operate under a complex set of rules, and inadvertently, we kept breaking them.

The moment we sat down at the table and spread out all our dishes, the manager ran over and said in English, “Eh! You can’t sit here. This area is closed.”

Devi started to gather up her things, but I was too beaten down to move.

“Listen, signor,” I said, “as you can see, we have three small, very wet children here. It was difficult enough to get six trays to this table in the first place. Could you possibly give us a break and let us sit here, just this time?”

“Not possible,” he replied. “This area is closed. You must move.”

“We really can’t put all the plates back on trays and move everyone now.”

“You must move.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not going.”

At that point, the manager abruptly backed off muttering, “Okay, okay, okay.”

He returned a few minutes later when we committed an even more heinous offence—putting our empty trays on the table behind us.

“Eh!” he yelled. “You cannot use two tables.”

“Look,” I said, “we have six people crammed around a table meant for four so we don’t have room for the trays. Besides, you already told us this section is closed, so obviously no one’s going to use that table.”

“You must move the trays!”

“May I do it when we’re done eating?”

“No. Now.”

“Sorry, signor. Can’t do it.”

Again, he backed down abruptly, and hurried away muttering, “Okay, okay, okay.”

The entire meal became a comedy routine. The manager watched us like a hawk. Inevitably, we’d do something wrong, like spill some milk or use too many napkins. Then he’d run over, scold us, and scurry away.

We finally gave up and stumbled back into the rain to resume our star-crossed tour of Florence. We stopped at the Duomo and gazed at Giotto’s campanile without too much difficulty, but despite the foul weather, we couldn’t get anywhere near Ghiberti’s famous baptistery doors. German and English tourists were massed thirty deep around the entire perimeter of baptistery, and again, only organized groups were getting inside. Eventually, the whole exercise began to feel somewhat futile. I mean what’s the use of shoving children through huge crowds to get a brief glimpse of art that doesn’t particularly interest them in the first place? We withdrew from Firenze, wet and tired, with our tails between our legs.

I know that Florence is everyone’s favorite Italian city, so I’m sure this all sounds whiny and heretical. But between the rain, huge crowds, long lines, bad food, high prices, and rampant commercialism, our particular experience in this flower of the Renaissance was slightly worse than a bad day at Disney World. Of course, if we ever come back, we’re going to do things completely differently. First of all, I’m going to book us onto one of those church-and-gallery tours I felt so snotty about. That way, we’ll at least see something. And we won’t spend two hours trying to find a parking space or get soaked to the bone walking around. If we’re really lucky, we might even get to eat someplace where the food is edible and the manager doesn’t scream at you every five minutes. All aboard the bus, fellow tourists. I’m right behind you.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the day, Devi suggested we drive sixty kilometers down the Arno Valley to the town of Pisa. It was getting late, but I was all for it. I’d never seen the famous Leaning Tower before, and I wanted to take the kids to see something they’d really enjoy.

We got to Pisa an hour before dusk. All the tour buses were gone, and there were only a few straggling sightseers around. Like almost every other structure of historical significance in Italy, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was being restored for Italy’s upcoming millennium celebrations. This time, though, it looked serious. There were high wire-mesh fences all around the tower, huge concrete weights secured to its base, and the whole center section was girded with steel cables.

There was a good reason for these precautions. Every year since its construction in the late twelfth century, the renowned Leaning Tower has leaned just a little bit further. When the bell chamber was added in the fourteenth century, the architect had to correct the vertical by several degrees. By the late sixteenth century, when Galileo demonstrated the nature of gravity by dropping balls from the tower, the problem was very noticeable. Now the Leaning Tower is about to snap in two. Italian engineers are frantically exploring ways to stabilize the structure using hydraulics and other exotic techniques, but apparently the prognosis isn’t good. There is, of course, one easy way to save the tower—namely, to jack it straight up. But, of course, that would kill the leaning goose that lays the golden eggs. Millions of tourists aren’t likely to flock each year to the Straight Up and Down Tower of Pisa.

So there it stands—one of the most famous buildings in the Western world—propped up, lashed together, and poised to snap in half. I’m rooting hard for the Italian engineers, because in a world where every other tower stands perfectly straight, there’s a palpable need for at least one that’s off-kilter.

Anyway, the kids loved the tower, and so did the adults. After oohing and ahhing and cocking our heads, we took the usual tourist pictures where it looks like you are holding up the tower. Then Betty and the kids hit the souvenir stalls to buy Leaning Tower thermometers and pencil sharpeners. We were so taken by the cockeyed tower we practically ignored the renowned Romanesque cathedral and wedding cake baptistery that stand right next door.

When the sun set, we drove back toward the villa on winding roads through the misty grey-and olive-tinted Tuscan hills. At one point, I devised a shortcut that got us so thoroughly lost that we actually ended up on an unlit, one-lane dirt road in the middle of the woods. It was one of the darkest places I’ve ever been, and I was afraid a bear might jump out and attack us at any moment.

Willie looked up and said, “Where the heck are we?”

“Lost again,” Kara said, very nonchalantly as if it were just a routine occurrence.

¹² About five euros

¹³ fried potatoes