Monticiello.

Make a day trip to nearby Monticiello, a smaller but equally groomed hilltop town.  We arrive at pausa, and have pranzo at the only eatery we can find open, a place at the main city gate.  At least hall the guests seem to be speaking English, and it's a bit pricey, but the food is excellent.  Back in Pienza by evening, and Nancy and Jeanne take in another restaurant meal.  I go f or a nap and am content with a warmed panino from the bar, and late gelato.  The evening passegiata provides another opportunity for photos.  I'm getting better at shooting from the waist, and other contrivances, and few exposures turn out to have people looking into my lens with a frown.

Leaving Lucca, for now. Pienza.

We turn in our "grandma" bikes, pack up and are on our way to Pienza by 11am.  About 3 hours later we are there, returning to the same hotel as on our first visit to the area several years ago.  It's still a charming place, making a bit of money off tourism, but discreetly.  In the evening all the souvenirs and small signs in English are behind heavy wooden doors, and the town becomes again a fairly normal hill-town, albeit an extraordinarily tidy one.

Preparing to leave, Dinner with Franchesca.

Some last errands around town, as we will give up our apartment tomorrow.  Our flat had been reserved for the coming weekend far in advance, on account of the comic book convention coming to town.  Event tents have been erected everywhere: in fields surrounding the walls, on top of the walls, in the courtyards of the government buildings, and in the main piazzas -- Napoleone, San Michele, even in front of the Duomo.  I should be upset that so many landmarks were obscured for the purposes of photography, but in all cases I had covered them in previous visits.

In the afternoon Nancy and I go for a last visit at Luanna's house, stay a hour and half chatting and saying goodbyes.  Jeanne goes to Pisa with Vivienne and sees --- oh, you know.  Giacomo goes along to keep a doctor's appointment in the area, there's a little wait, and they're don't get back until after dark.

In the evening --they're becoming quite cool now -- we walk around the block for dinner at Franchesca's house.  It's a wonderful evening, Gianni's cooking is in top form, and Nancy and I are following the conversation nicely and contributing significantly.


Photos: Nancy and I with Franchesca and Gianni at their house; young Giacomo comes by our apartment to say goodbye; Jeanne in Piazza Anfiteatro with some new purchases.

Shopping, Dinner with Marco, Letizia and families.

Jeanne and Nancy are up early to spend most of the day in Pietrasanta with Vivienne, shopping.  I'm out later in the morning on one of the rented "grandma" bikes, taking photos around town, then later out on the good road bike for one last outing before returning it to the shop -- at 25 euro per day, I can't keep it forever.

 In the evening we meet cousin Marco and family, and cousin Letizia and family, at a restaurant outside the walls.  The food is typical dishes of the area, but comes very slowly to the table and we're there until 11:30 or so, much later than anyone had planned.  Marco insists on picking up the check, saying with a wink that's it to make up for our having to eat in the presence of such bad paintings.  It's a weekday, and our hosts are doing this after a full day of work... everyone leaves looking tired, but it was a nice visit.

The Run, and the Family Lunch.

Amazing everyone, Jeanne is up early to participate in a 5K run this Sunday, and we walk her to the start.  Many streets in town are blocked for the concurrent marathon run, and we see the elite runners go by with their motorcycle escort.  Jeanne is leery of setting off on the course alone, among strangers, without a knowledge of Italian, but we give her an Italian cellphone and send her off.  It rains, sometimes hard, while we wait for her to finish. She's very glad to have done it.

Back to the apartment for a changes of clothes before heading off to the family reunion lunch.  We pick up cousin Luanna on the way, and everyone meets up at small restaurant in a nearby town.  Three of my mother's first cousins are present, and several of my second cousins and various spouses.  We enjoy a multi-course meal of local recipes, and talk -- mostly in Italian -- about work, new grandkids, children off to college, aches and pains, language study itself.  By the end of it all everyone seems very happy to have come, and Nancy and I have two more dates for smaller get-togethers.
Photos: Jeanne finishing;  Cousins Franchesca and Manuela; the table; Cousins Vivianna and Gabriella.

Jeanne arrives, clothes shopping.

I got in a terrific ride in the morning, crossing the river and making a loop into the nearby hills, into the forest and past old stone churches on the ridges.  As always, traffic is quite differential to cyclists, especially as I am in full racing kit and moving along at a decent pace; off the main roads, though, I see more fellow cyclists than cars.  I's heaven.

Around noon we pick up our friend Jeanne at the Pisa airport, just arriving from the east coast.  She's relatively perky after her flight.

After the pausa, Cousin Roland and son Giacomo swing by to take me clothes-shopping.  Our mission: to buy me a respectable Italian outfit. They advise me on current fashion, I hold veto over things like yellow or red pants that are common here but wouldn't see the light of day (or night)  at home in rural California.  Shopping like men, in short order we have found a handsome black coat, 2 pairs of skinny-leg pants, and pair of somewhat-pointy brown wingtips.  Not cheap, but everyone approves of the new look.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Jeanne are getting oriented to the local shops.  After dinner, we conspire to keep Jeanne awake until 10pm.

Buon Compleanno a me.

Had a super birthday.  Drove a little out of town to find a high-end bike shop -- it was recommended to us by Mario Cipollino's wife, who happens to be cousin Vivienne water-aerobics instructor -- and rented a very nice road bike.  A VERY nice road bike.  It wasn't clear to us if we got special treatment, or a reduced rate, on account of this little name-dropping or because the owners were impressed by the artwork they saw on my website.
Anyway, I got in a little ride before sundown, and in the evening we met up with Vivienne and her son Giacomo for a pizza in town.  In all a very nice day.

Camaiore.

We went for a drive to visit our old haunts around Camaiore, where we rented a farmhouse on three previous trips. The house looks much the same, but the neighbor's property and the fields nearby have been "yuppified" with new fences, walls, gardens and a playground -- in short, it's all looking less like farmland.

It was always very peaceful there, although we remember also the marginal kitchen and bathroom,  the uncomfortable furniture, and the daily battle with spiders and mosquitos - not to mention the 25-minute drive to Lucca, which got old after awhile.  The magical times, really, were the family reunion picnics under the big pine tree.

Had lunch in the village, which is mostly unchanged, apart from a sense that more of the residents are wealthy foreigners (new Lamborghini in the piazza today, young Giacomo tells us it belongs to an "old" 70's-era British rock star who has a villa nearby).

Mercato, ancora.

It's mercato day again in Via Bacchettoni.  I went out early to take photos, came home for a sandwich, then out again with Nancy . We ran into mother-daughter cousins Luanna and Isabella, who were out shopping themselves, and enjoyed a little chat.

Photo:  Each vendor has their own spot - within painted marks on the street - and arrives before sunrise.  Most of the vans are almost identical, and have hydraulically powered awnings that emerge from rooftop boxes.  The carefully packed contents are put out in the morning and loaded back in around 2 p.m., and then they're off to a street market in another town tomorrow.

Bikes.

Nancy went with Vivienne to go shopping in Pietrasanta, came back with a convincing Italiana outfit; I went out on another photo expedition around town.

Our landlady had made us a bargain with a local bike rental shop, and in the afternoon we went to pick them up.  They're the kind of clunky city bikes that everyone uses around here, and I think they're going to improve our range among town.  On the first outing we went halfway around the walls and cut back through town, stopping at a farmacia and picking up some groceries.  Here's a little iPhone film of Nancy going native.

 

If you hear words spoken, it's me saying "Excuse me, Madam," to a lady who came out her front door to find me standing in her path.

Dealing with a few obstacles.

It was one of those days.  We did some chores around the house in the morning, and then finally decided to take a drive out into the countryside. First little problem: the car was not where we left it.

Our first theory proved correct -- the street where we had been parking for free had become a tow-away zone for Sunday's big calcio match (Pisa vs. Lucca).
The rental office, a short walk away, phoned around and found where it had been taken, and called us a taxi. A couple of stops later and 90 euro lighter, we were back in our BayerischeMotorenWerke cocoon.

Back at our apartment, the second little problem: I had left my camera case behind somewhere during the adventure.  The rental office? The pizzeria? The taxi?
Nancy called the rental office, they had it, we could pick it when they re-opened after pausa.

Then we're off again for dinner at Cousin Luanna's house.  Good food (my idiosyncratic preferences have been remembered) looking at Luciano's travel photos of Umbria, showing my painting portfolio, meeting 16-year-old Claudia's boyfriend...  Cousin Franchesca calls me on the house phone to say that she has lost the note I slipped under her door, could I give her our Italian cell numbers again, is the family lunch still on for Sunday? The kids go to bed, the adults stay up commiserating about their aches and pains, we're learning the words for "dog's paw," "gout," and "train engineer."  It's almost midnight when we leave, and everyone looks dead on their feet.

The victory: we got through all of this almost entirely speaking Italian - okay, more listening than speaking - and it was only late in the evening that our brains began pleading for mercy.

Photo session.

The weather stabilized late yesterday and despite having the sniffles I went out to take photos - the light was too good to pass up.  After a while I sat down in the middle of the lawn just inside one of the city gates (Porta San Donato).  A few boys came over from the nearby playground to check me out and were pleased to have me take pictures of their comic-book fighting poses -- knowing, of course, they could view the results immediately on the camera's LCD.
After a while, my speech (or slow comprehension) gave me away.
"Are you Italian?," one asked, in Italian.
"No, I'm an American," I say.
"How can you speak Italian?"
"Well, my grandfather was born here in Lucca."
"Ah. America, is it beautiful (bella)?"
"Yes, sure."
"Are you married?"
"Yes, I'm waiting here for my wife."
"What's your name?"
"James.  It's the same as 'Giacomo.'"
"James! Like James Bond!"
The posing and mock fighting resumes.

An interval.

We've put Jan and Eldridge on the plane after a very nice visit.  E. was dealing with a cold so we moved at a slower pace, but we think we were able to give a good presentation of Lucca and that they were suitably charmed by the place.  It's not a tough sale.
Cousin Rolando is home from Roma for the weekend, and he and Vivienne came and took us out for dinner at a wonderful restaurant up the valley (in the direction of the Garfagnana).
A storm front is moving through today, and I think I may have picked up E's head cold, so I will hang out in the apartment today.  Nancy may go out to the Casali's for Sunday lunch.

Photo: View opposite our 3rd floor apartment, the promenade atop the city walls (we are just inside the walls).

Pisa.

We're having a Taft HS mini-reunion here in Italy, as our friends Eldridge and Jan are visiting us here in Lucca. We made the short drive over to Pisa to see the "Torre Pendente," as well as the arguably more impressive Baptistry and Cathedral. Then back to Lucca for an early dinner.
There's a little mp4 on facebook.

Market day.

It's market day in Via Bacchettoni. Every Wednesday and Saturday, traveling vendors set up in the street where our apartment is - shoes, clothing, dry goods, food. Relatives imply that that there's not much good stuff sold here anymore, and most of the shoes and clothing are from China now. Nevertheless, Jan found a blouse she liked and Nancy bought some bread and roasted chicken.

Visitors.

Drove to Florence/Firenze to pick up our friends Eldridge and Jan, who are in Italy for a couple of weeks. Made a brief foray into the Chianti region for lunch (photo), then back on the autostrada for Lucca. They'll stay overnight at our apartment and then move to a small hotel here in Lucca for the new few days (we would have been happy to have them stay with us, but they couldn't cancel their reservations).

Settling in.

We are managing to get ourselves up before 10am now. Had a productive day. We picked up our rental car (having no Alfas on hand, they were obliged to give us a free upgrade to a BMW320-diesel). We swung by cousin Luana's house and stayed for a couple of hours as the family came home from school/work for the afternoon meal. Isabella figured out our cell phone issues for us -- we had entered incorrect numbers for each other. Doh!
The weather turned gray today but the predicted rain has still not happened, as of 4:30pm. We've been to the Esselunga supermarket and provisioned ourselves with a week's worth of groceries and sundries.
Our Italian skills seems to be resurrecting nicely, our comprehension seems as good as before. Surely embarrassing linguistic errors are in our future, but we are trying not to anticipate them.

Photo: living room of our apartment (3rd floor walk-up). The front windows face the earthern berm of the inside of the city walls, with a street in between.

A beginning.

At the end of the first few days. We've moved into our apartment in Lucca, been briefed by the landlady; stocked up on some groceries; activated our Italian cell phones (with a few hitches) and walked around town a bit to see a few changes since our last visit.
We met cousin Isabella in Via Fillungo on our first day out, and despite the jet-lag and our absence of nearly 3 years, we were pleased at our level of Italian comprehension -- and she does not speak slowly.
We're been in touch with our friends Eldridge and Jan, who are our their own tour and have been to Venice and are now in Florence. We'll go to pick them up on Tuesday; it sounds as though they're a bit tired of seeing "must-sees" and are ready for some quieter, smaller-town Italian life.

Photo: walking on the city walls on our way to some Sunday errands.

In transit.

Sacramento to Dallas, Dallas to London. The crossing was pleasant enough, in business class America Airlines. Doing that flight in coach would be rough, given the weaknesses of our advancing years. I think we got about 3-4 hours sleep, and now begin the process of pretending to be on local time. Not sure what the total elapsed time of this time will be. Best not to think about it.

The British Airways lounge at Heathrow is nice, plenty of free food and drink, free WiFi. The airport is, as always, a mind-warping maze of corridors, escalators, tram rides, and retail bombardment.

Only the relatively short flight to Pisa remains.