Saturday, 27 June 2015

Arrival in Italy



“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”  - Mark Twain





Augustine of Hippo said “the world is a book, and those who don’t travel only read one page”. As my husband, Barry, and I are such inveterate bibliophiles it seems only appropriate that travel be the reality manifestation of the many mind trips we have taken with books of all ilk. My husband and I are in our sixties. Up until last year we had not travelled anywhere, except for a few camping trips with the kids, for forty years. Our world was feeling very small. Last year a river cruise along the Danube was a first tentative venture into travel. The historical and cultural richness took our breath away (and used up more than a few brain cells trying to absorb all that information). But you are very pampered on those river cruises and the exposure to the reality of the countries visited very controlled so we wanted to try something more adventurous.

So this year, it is to be a gourmet cycle trip to Tuscany, Italy and then a venture through Norway, Denmark, and Sweden travelling predominantly by train and ferry.

We had to book these trips last year to ensure a space and take advantage of various deals. I tend not to get too excited about trips until practically the day before we leave as I am always sure that something will happen to complicate things. Call me cynical or negative or whatever but I have never been let down in that respect. As writer John Steinbeck mused: “A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it”.  I had major surgery less than 8 weeks before our departure and was not able to ‘train’ for our bike trip. I was hoping that the ‘reserves of fitness’ possessed before the surgery would be enough to still make cycling around Tuscany possible. To add to the worry, several people upon hearing about our upcoming trip made the same comments: “you do know that Tuscany is all hills, don’t you?!?”  Well, no, actually, I hadn’t known.

Nonetheless, it was too late to cancel and no refund so the trip was on, regardless. Besides, I had learned all that Italian. I wanted to be able to use it. And I am so very glad it did go on, despite some ‘complications’.

Except for arriving in Rome and leaving from Bologna, the cycling tour was situated in the province of Siena.  The itinerary was Rome to Chiusi, Montepulciano, Pienza, Castelmuzio, Petreio, Monticchiello, Montalcino, Rocca D’Orcia, Castelnuovo dell’Abate, Siena, Radda in Chianti, Castelnuovo Berardenga, Firenze (Florence) and Bologna.

We arrived a day before the cycling was to begin so as to get acclimated and to hopefully shake off any jet lag (I would suggest that two or three days for acclimation is more realistic). It was a long flight. We flew from Vancouver to Montreal, and then Montreal to Rome. We disembarked from the plane and immediately got on a train that would take us from the airport to the main train terminus in Rome. The route took us along some not very beautiful, mostly industrial places along the outskirts of Rome. It seems that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, tagging is pervasive. Just the language was different. There were a lot of run-down little houses along the track. But though the houses themselves were disheveled, each and every one of them had a lushly growing garden, full of vegetables and flowers. In a couple I even saw the occasional lemon tree. We were served water on the train (still or sparkling? – a question that was asked in every restaurant or trattoria that we ate at, or train that we rode). Water came to be all-important in Italy. The heat was already oppressive and the non-stop travel to this point had made us parched. “Si”, we answered the porter gratefully. “We’ll have ‘still’, and grazie”.

We arrived at the Roma Termini about three hours before our connection to the little town that we would meet our guides at the next day. We were lugging two large suitcase and two backpacks (having packed not just for Italy but for the colder part of the trip later on). Laden with this and not really having enough time, we knew that this was all of  Rome that we would see.  The terminal was huge (29 platforms), it was a zoo, and it was architecturally beautiful. The building is of monumental dimensions, has immense glass walls, concrete ceilings with vaults and arches (mirroring the Roman barrel vault architecture of the ancient Roman baths across the street), the train sheds go on forever, and pigeons and swallows nest in the girders. The termini supposedly services over 150 million passengers a year. I think they were all there on the day we were. The pigeons have become very skilled at walking around and through thousands of feet as they go about looking for popcorn leavings and tearing apart cigarette butts (hundreds and hundreds of cigarette butts). We checked with an official looking man that we were in the right place and that the platform noted on our tickets was indeed the right platform. He assured us that all was well, to come back to the gate in three hours, and to watch very carefully for pickpockets. This was a refrain that we were to hear over and over again – watch for the pickpockets. So we found a couple of places in the (very hot) waiting room. And people watched – and dozed. I couldn’t remember when we were last ‘not moving’. 

An Italian family next to us pulled a picnic lunch of lovely-smelling sandwiches out and sat and talked and ate as though they were on a beach. They hailed various people as they came in like it was a frequent event to meet at the terminus. An elderly gentleman in a black suit and bare feet in sandals sat and dozed with his small Dachshund dog in his lap. Three different denominations of nuns came in and out of the waiting room. One group very quiet and sedate, another garrulous and giggling, another pulling their own picnic lunch out of various baskets and containers, one offering a bun to the elderly man. The dog took it instead and the nun giggled as the man dozed on. One group in black habits, one group in brown habits, one group in blue and white.

Finally our train was called and we boarded wearily, on to the small town of Chiusi.



No comments:

Post a Comment