Friday, June 23, 2017 - Hill Towns of Tuscany

This morning was more like a vacation than traveling. We lounged around the place, reading, writing and relaxing. Last night’s late night and the joy of solitude had us feeling lazy.  Assisi was two hours away, Orvieto was one hour ten minutes away and both on our to see list. But, we just couldn’t summon the energy to make the 5 hour or 3 hour round trip.  Instead, about 1:00 pm, we headed out the door, determined to drive to a couple of hill towns and see the countryside.

Jeff was on his way to see Joel in the hospital in Mannheim, Germany.  He was scheduled to arrive about 12:30 pm, but we had not heard from him yet.  We got one short message early in the morning, an answer to my question as to the quality of the wifi that was supposed to be available on the bus . . . broken. This accounts for why we have not heard from him. 

We began driving up the valley, the same route we have been taking for the wedding, then turned of and head down the valley of the Orcia river. After about 25 minutes, we decided we had gone too far and should have made a turn. We were trying to follow a Rick Steves driving tour backwards, and missed the turn. At our turn around I did not have cell reception, so we retraced our route until we reached a likely intersection. Here I stopped, discovered I had cell service and used Google Maps to discover our route. Now we were on the right path. We stopped at a chic Tuscan Restaurant, then followed a gravel road to carry us to the town of Monticchiello. We were a bit low on gas, the light was coming on. From here, we made the short 10 Km drive to Pienza and found a gas station.  We walked through the town, buying a gift or two for friends, then headed back to our place in Bagni San Filippo. It was now about 4:30 pm.

Sally cooked a delicious dinner of green salad with spinach ravioli, then we put on our swim suits and head down over the hill to the hot springs.  A few nights ago with Andy, Jeff, Brian, Tabitha and Emily we had found a pool that was warm, but not hot. Since then, we had explored the pools and found some hotter ones.  These are the ones we headed for.  We found one that was about the same temperature as the hot tub back home, maybe a degree or two hotter. We alternated between it and the pool in the warm river flowing by.  Super hot, then cooling.  A couple of cycles and we were ready to stagger back up the hill to our home.

We had to be out early in the morning for our drive to Rome, so we spent a few minutes tidying up the place, sorting out our remaining food and packing.  We had to drive the two and one half hours to Rome, and be there by 10:30 am to turn in the rental car, but since I had scraped the passengers door against a rock and scratched the paint, we hoped to get there a little early to work out the details with the rental company “Europcar”.

We have heard no news on Joel today, other than he is still in the hospital. His surgery was cancelled yesterday due to lack of circulation in his big toe, which is not good. Jeff says he is doing good, but tired of not seeing well and being in that room.  Amen to that.

Our place in Bagni San Filippo

Our deck. 

Thursday, June 22, 2017 - Florence, Pt II

We had discovered two years ago in Paris that Jeff is not at all interested in art, particularly impressionist or new art.  In the Orangeri in Paris he mocked Monet’s Water Lilies, saying he could have done the same thing, easily. He and Jackie were so disruptive we worried the docents were going to ask them to leave.  You can imagine what I was thinking in bringing him to the Renaissance Art capital of the world to see a little art.  We only had a day, so delving into any detail would be impossible.  Good thing, because getting deep in art is not Jeff’s thing. We boiled it down to seeing David, walking through the Medici Palace, climbing to the top of the Duomo, walking to the Signoria and the outside of the Uffizi, then the Ponte Vecchio with a last stop at Santo Spirito. And that is what we did.

We got up about 7:00 am and were on the road about 8:15 am.  Sally and Jeff snoozed while I drove. We parked at Sansovino Tram Station, as we had when we picked Jeff up, and rode the tram to Santa Maria Novella train station. From there, we walked to the Duomo, then up to the Accademia where David is housed.  We arrived at the ticket booth about 11:15 am, exchanged our vouchers for reserved tickets, and got in the reserved ticket line.  Our tickets were for a noon entry. We entered the building exactly at noon.

Although there is other art in the building, we knew our client and went straight to David. Jeff was impressed, at least that is what I read into his detached countenance. We walked around the magnificent sculpture, admiring it from all angles.  We looked at “The Prisoners”, the unfinished statues of Michelangelo that line the hall leading up to David, trying to raise an appreciation in Jeff.  Jeff does have the advantage.  He went to the Carrara marble mines first, then to the sculpture garden/workshop and finally to David, so he got to see the progression from mountain to block to finished product.

Our stay in the Academy was 15 minutes.  We were headed to the Duomo ticket office next, to get our tickets to climb the Duomo.  We decided to walk by the Medici palace first and just peek in the courtyard.  We did, then stopped for pizza across the street for lunch.  We remembered our Duomo Dome climb to be at 2:30 pm, so we had plenty of time. After our quick lunch, we headed for the museum, thinking the office to be there, but soon realized it was next to the baptistery. I presented our laser printed vouchers to the man there and he said they were all we needed.  I pointed out that we had a dome climb reservation at 2:30 pm, but the tickets did not show that.  Luckily for us, the man was very kind and they were not busy.  After about 10 minutes of searching on my phone and talking with him, he got one of the men behind the help desk to log into the site with my name and order number and printed my dome climb reservation forms.  I thanked him profusely, then noticed the dome climb was at 1:30 pm, not 2:30 pm as I had thought.  I looked at my phone.  1:25 pm.  This is cutting it close.  Jeff and I walked briskly to the line to hold our place while Sally went to the girl’s room.  She caught up with us in the line about two minutes before we went through the gate and into the church.

Up the spiraling staircases we went, embedded in the solid rock wall of the church, around the balcony at the bottom of the dome, then up the sloping dome onto the roof and the cupola.  We had to wait about 5 minutes to make the final climb onto the roof because so many people were coming down.  

We spent about 10-15 minutes on the top, viewing the city and talking to people, then headed back down, running into a few bottlenecks of people going up and coming down, trying to squeeze past each other in the very narrow pathway.

Once down in the street, we headed for the Duomo museum to take a quick look at Ghiberti’s bronze Baptistry doors, Donatello's Mary Magdalene and Michelangelo’s Pieta. 15 minutes tops, and we were back on the street again.  Now we headed for the Senioria and the free water on the side of the building.  When we got there we found a long line. We walked to a nearby shop and bought three bottles of water, then walked past the Uffizi Museum on our way to the Ponte Vecchio.  We stopped to sit in the shade of Cosimo III’s elevated walkway between the Pitti Palace and the Signoria for a gelato, then continued across the Ponte Vecchio toward Santo Spirito.

Once is the Santo Spirito piazza, we found a bench in the shade near a restaurant I had the wifi password to and quickly checked for Vodefone outlets and a few other information items we sought.  Then it was into Santo Spirito for a look at Michelangelo's wooden carved crucifix he did at the age of 18 for the prior of the church.  Weird, but again like last time, no one was here. We paid our €3 each and entered the room where it hangs.  We were alone.  With the throngs of people clamoring to see anything with Michelangelo’s signature, it is weird to find this piece hanging in solitude.  We enjoyed the moment, then exited the building and began our way toward the Santa Maria Novella train station via the shopping district. The hours were advancing, so it was time to go to the Vodefone store and find out what happened to my 10 Gb of data.

In Venice, on the island of Lido, I visited a Vodefone store and purchased 10 Gb of data, for a month, for €25.  I was told to wait two hours, and when a text came, then turn on the cellular data.  Seems weird it takes two hours, but I followed instructions.  A text came, and I turned on the data.  Four days later, when we were conveniently long gone from Venice, my Internet stopped.  I called the salesman, Marco, in Venice from Bagni San Filippo.  He told me it was “impossible” to help me unless he had my iPad in his hands.  Bull Shit.  So for the entire time of the week of the wedding, I have had no cellular Internet.  Only wifi when in our place or at the Caldwell’s. Today, I was going to find out why and get it fixed.

It took us about 10-15 minutes of wandering through the labyrinth of stores under the train station until we found the Vodefone store.  After waiting 10 minutes for someone to help me, I presented my story.  The sales clerk asked to see my text messages from Vodefone.  After she read them she said I turned on the cellular data too soon.  I said I followed their directions and waited two hours for their text and then turned it on.  She told me it was not the right text. 

We bantered back and forth, somewhat heated at times, about what a stupid business model this was and that I wanted my 10 Gb reactivated.  She told me she couldn’t because the store in Venice sold it and she did not.  Jeff very forcefully asked her if her shirt said Vodefone on it.  I said she represented Vodefone, the same company that sold me the bogus plan and she needed to fix it. She said she could not. Jeff came back with “In America, the customer is always right.”  Why should we buy from Vodefone if this is the way they treat their customers? She had no answer, only that Vodefone would not let her give me back my 10 Gb.

Finally, I asked her who her competitors were.  She told me “Wind” and “Tre”, both with shops in this mall and she pointed me in their direction. Even if she had given me 10 Gb for €2 I would not have dealt with this company again.

We walked down the mall to the “Tre” (3) shop. Again, I waited for 10 minutes, then the clerk helped me.  30 Gb for €25. 2 minutes to activate. One month time limit. No issues.  As I write this, it has worked for 28 hours.  We will see if these guys are any more honest than Vodefone.

With my iPad now working again, and me a happy camper, we caught the tram back to the car to get Jeff’s pack. It was now 6:30 pm and time to get him ready to catch a bus to Mannheim to visit Joel.  We rode the tram to our car, got his pack and rode back into town. We saw a Kabab place across from the train station and had dinner.  Still one of my favorite meals! Now about 7:30 pm, we walked to the address given on the Flixbus website, but saw no evidence of bus traffic. We asked a taxi cab driver where the buses were. He sent us down the block and around the corner. Here we found the place where busses gather, including Flixbus.  We had about an hour to kill, sitting on the curb. With my renewed Internet, we cruised the web, text messaged a conversation with Mike Morgan about Joel’s accident and cancelled wedding and performed other highly important and meaningful tasks.  We also talked with a girl seated next to us.

Jeff’s bus rolled in at 8:40 pm, loaded up and just like that Jeff was gone. We walked back to and through the train station, loaded on the tram and rode back to the car. We paid the parking fee and used Google Maps to guide us back to Bagni San Filippo in the dark.  I had forgotten how nice it is to have the Internet while on the go, it had been so long since my service crapped out on me.  

We arrived back about 11:30 pm to our wonderful place, now quite empty and quiet with Andy, Tabitha and Jeff gone.  Andy and Tabitha flew to Nice, France tonight to continue their vacation. I caught up on a little Stephen Colbert on YouTube, then hit the sack. Sally did some Facebook posts, then also fell asleep.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017- The Scheduled Wedding Day

 

After last night’s late bedtime, everyone in the apartment slept in, except me.  My brain gets going about 6:00 am, and although my body is trying to calm it down and get back to sleep, it won’t listen and gets busy producing a to-do list that drives me into full wakefulness. This morning it was the pictures of the party that inspired my brain to wake my body.

Pete had taken about 100 photos and 20-30 videos of people wishing Joel and Hailey well. As I lie in bed trying to ignore the thoughts in my own head, it occurred to me that I could upload the photos to Dropbox and email a link to Joel and Hailey so they could see the people that attended the party.  The wifi in our place only accommodates 1.0Gb of data a day, between the hours of 8:00 am and midnight, so if I was to do some uploading, it had to happen before 8:00 am.  So much for getting any sleep.

I use Dropbox on my computer, but rarely on my iPhone, so it took a few minutes to conjure up the correct way of getting the photos to Dropbox. Pete took multiple exposures of the same people, so first task was to sort out the best of each scene, then send them to Dropbox.  That done, I sent a link to Hailey.  I still had about half an hour before the 1 Gb use meter started running, so I thought I might try uploading some of the videos.  Our download speed here is quite excellent-about 15-20 Mb/s, but upload is a lot slower.  I got one video uploaded before 8;00 o’clock crept up on me. I sent Joel and Hailey the link.

I figured Andy, Jeff, Tabitha and Sally would sleep most of the morning away. I wrote, watched a movie, went for a walk while waiting for them to rise.  Once up, we spent the morning and early afternoon lounging around, doing nothing.  It is not the way I would choose to spend my precious time in Tuscany, but my priority is to spend time with my kids first, Tuscany second. Jeff spent a few hours researching how to get to Mannheim in an affordable manner, settling on a Flixbus from Florence for €50. It is a 16 hour bus ride.  We played a game of pinochle, Sally and I sneaking out a close win.

I had wanted to go to the Caldwell’s and help clean up after the party.  I knew Pat and Bill must be wearing down; entertaining friends and relatives, worrying about Joel, changing their traveling plans and a million other adjustment now that the wedding was off.  Beth, Laura, Ross and Jason were up in Mannheim visiting Joel and had been since Monday.  They we slated to get home about 8:00 pm tonight.  I hoped we could go help with dishes, dinner . . . anything to give them a little time off and lessen the load. Andy and Jeff insisted the Caldwell’s had said it would be great if they came swam in the pool. We headed up the road.

When we arrived at the site, only Joel’s uncle Mike and aunt Bay were there.  Pete, the girls, Bill and Pat had gone into town for Gelato. We attacked a stack of dirty dishes.  Obviously, a few loads of laundry had be done and hung on chairs and tables in the wind and sun to dry. The wind was quite furious and clothes were scattered all over the patio.  We rehung the damp ones and folded up the dry ones. Pete soon arrived with Crystal, Anna, Harp and his girls.  Sally went up stairs to work with the kids. I continued monitoring clothing and folded it as it dried.

Pat and Bill soon arrived.  I made a green salad under the direction of Crystal and Pete, then took down all the Chinese globes I had assembled the day before. I had not intended to stay for dinner, even though they were saying there were 15 pizza left and they needed to be eaten.  I especially did not want to be there when the crew from Florence returned.  Bill and Pat had not gotten a chance to see their kids and I did not want to be in the way.  Sally and I ducked out about 7:45 pm and headed home. Laura, Beth, Ross and Jay arrived shortly after we left.

I was dog tired.  Two nights in a row of little sleep had me hurting everywhere.  I showered and was in bed by 9:30 pm.  Andy, Jeff and Tabitha did not make it back until about 1:00 am, having stayed and visited with the Caldwell kids. Tomorrow, we on the road to Florence, about a two hour drive north, to show Jeff the Duomo and David, the Ponte Vecchio and Santo Spirito. Also, we had to get him on a bus at 8:45 pm to Mannheim, Germany to see Joel in the hospital. Looks like I will be the only one awake for the drive.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - The Party

The late night last night created a slow moving morning. Andy, Tabitha and Jeff did not see daylight until after 10:00 am, and then spent a slow moving and restful morning moving about the place. I wake up early, regardless of the time I go to sleep, so I puttered around the place, writing and watching a movie until things got moving. Sally and I walked down to the hot baths, touring up and down the river channel, checking out the 20 or so pools along the way.  We returned about 10:00 am. Sometime in the early afternoon we walked down to the hot baths again, this time with the kids, to review the pool we had slithered into and out of last night.  We walked further down the stream to see the other pools and sulfur deposits.

About 2:30 pm, we started getting ready to go to the “rehearsal dinner”.  Although the wedding was off, all the guests were here. The notice that the wedding was cancelled came early enough for most to cancel their trips, but everyone had extended their stay beyond the wedding to see Italy. With no wedding to attend, we all had a 3 or 4 day block of time.  Although the bride and groom are in Mannheim, Germany in the hospital, the rest of us are meeting as scheduled for the rehearsal dinner.

We arrived at the Caldwell’s house on the property about 4:30 pm and made ourselves available to help prepare for the festivities. The Wist side of the marriage had sent an email the day before stating we should all wear our “Sunday Best” clothes to the event. My best was sandals, navy zippy pants and a blue collared shirt. Sally looked beautiful in her blue dress.  I busied myself helping Bob, from Durango, hang Chinese lanterns inside one of the rooms and out on the covered patio. Sally was watching Anna and Harp in the swimming pool. Andy, Jeff, Brian, Tabitha and Emily were also in the pool playing.

The party got started about 8:00 pm when appetizers were served on the patio, under the strings of Christmas lights. Wine and beer were available as well.  The pizzas, 50 of them, arrived about 8:30 pm and were sliced and laid out for people to enjoy. I enjoyed talking with Mike Freeman, Jerry, Mike Harpole and other guests. But, I am not a good party attendee.  I am better at making myself useful, so following Sally’s lead, I began washing dishes and bussing tables to keep a supply of clean drinking glasses, forks and plates available to the 50 or so guests. 

Early on, Mike Freeman interrupted the festivities by clinking a dinner knife on a wine bottle and made an appropriate toast to Joel and Hailey. Later in the evening, Hailey’s dad also toasted the two.  It would have been nice to FaceTime the toasts to them, but it was late enough and Joel is still struggling with pain control and fatigue. (Although following a weekend of being unable to keep food or pain meds down, they are controlling the pain more locally now, relieving his stomach and the pain.) All during the evening Pete Karlin took pictures of all the guests and recorded video messages for Joel and Hailey on my iPhone. By the time he was done, there was quite a pile of photos and videos.  I thought it important to get them to the couple as soon as possible, but it would have to wait until morning.

I alternated between small talk with the kids and some of the guests, helping Pete with the filming, and bussing tables and dishwashing until at 1:00 am in the morning when the party began winding down. 

Jeff rode with Sally and I back to our amazing rental in Bagni San Filippo while Andy and Tabitha followed. Our apartment has parking inside a gate that is opened with a remote. We asked for, and received a second set of keys, but did not get a second remote for the gate. If Andy wants to park at the apartment, he has to stay close to me. We got to bed and asleep about 2:00 am.

Monday, June 19, 2017 - Copper Fertility

We had made arrangements for Brian and Emily to spend the day with us as we explored some of this beautiful Tuscan countryside and hill towns. We thought we might be slow moving in the morning, so we arranged to meet them at 11:00 am in the town they were staying in, Bagno Vignoni, just across the river from the wedding site.  I was up at 7:00 am, went for a walk to explore the “town” and the hot spring before the rest got up.  We were a bit slower getting out than we had thought we would be. We texted to say we would be late, about 11:30 am, but it was 11:45 am by the time we rolled into the parking lot for tourists outside this quaint town. Brian and Emily met us in the parking lot.

We strolled through this picturesque town. The town square is a gigantic hot spring pool about 50 yards by 20 yards. All the buildings are made of stone with tile roofs, as are all the homes in the Tuscany area. We walked the streets for a few minutes, then walked to the southern part of town that overlooks the river valley that separates this town from the wedding site about 1/4 mile further south.  We took a couple pictures, then headed to the cars to drive to a couple of Tuscan towns. Brian and Emily rode with Sally and I, Andy, Tabitha and Jeff road together in Andy’s rental. Our destination was Montepolciano, about a half hour away. But first, we wanted to visit the hill town directly above the wedding venue, Castelione D’orcia. 

We drove up the steep and switchbacking road to town, drove through town and parked on the street. We spent the next half hour walking up and down stairs and roads, exploring this town perched on a very tall and steeply sided hill.  We stopped at a COOP grocery store and bought supplies for lunch, arriving about 12:55 pm, just minutes before they closed for the afternoon break, until 3:30 pm. With lunch making hanging from our hands in bags, we walked back to the cars and headed for Montepolciano.

The drive was beautiful, winding through sloping open fields in this hilly area. Each hill top was crowned with either a villa or a town. When we reached Montepolciano, we parked in two parking places we found, then grabbed our lunches and ate on the steps of a school nearby.  With full bellies and bladder beginning to test the elastic limit of tissues, we followed Rick Steve’s map of the town to a WC, a free one, and took care of business. Andy suggested Gelato, and everyone voice approval, but the shop he had spotted across the parking lot was lacking in flavor and site appeal. We began walking up hill through the towns outer defensive wall and into the city. It was not too long before we passed a Gelatoria and were each licking our way through a cone.

Sally had read in the guide book about a wine tasting room at the top of town near the Duomo. We continued our slow meander up the hill, looking in shops and enjoying the area. Eventually, we reached the Duomo. It had not been faced on the outside, so the jumble of brick and stone that was cemented together to construct its outer walls was exposed for all to see.  We took a quick walk through the interior, then exited and headed for the wine shop. Here we found gigantic kegs of wine, 8 feet in diameters, scattered about in an ancient brick labyrinth of a building. Of course, the walk through the wine kegs ended in a tasting room, and soon Tabitha, Emily and Sally were tasting, buying and shipping their favorites home.  The three tea toters, Andy, Jeff and I sat on the nearby steps. Our next visit on this afternoon would turn out to be the highlight of the trip.

Sally had read about a copper smith in this town that did amazing work. It was only a little distance from the wine shop and we quickly located it. Actually, there was two parts to this copper smith business, a workshop and a sales shop.  We found the workshop.  Sally and I were in front, and we walked into the this workshop, cluttered with tools, copper and what looked like a lifetime of accumulated “stuff”. An elderly man was puttering around about midway back in this 30’ deep space. As we looked at a few copper articles, Sally asked if we could step further back into the shop. The proprietor seemed a little grumpy at the suggestion, then his face brightened a bit as the kids came through the door.  Soon he was asking, in Italian, if the kids were married. We told him Andy and Tabitha were engaged, and his face lit up. He made them stand in front of him, together, then rustled around behind them on the workbench, gathering some tools and a 3 inch disc of copper. He began hamming on punches, creating a design on the copper disc, and asking questions of Andy and Tabitha. His eyes twinkled and he would smile and laugh between telling the rest of us, “SILENCIO” and asking if the women were all “generals” and if we men were “soldiers”. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to start videoing right from the start as I had a feeling this was going to be special.  I will put the video up on YouTube soon.  Rather than me explain the hilarity and sweetness of this scene, you will be able to watch it.

When he was done with Andy and Tabitha, he gathered Brian and Emily and did the same thing, creating a decorated copper disc for them, predicting, as he did Andy and Tabitha, that they would have four kids and telling the girls to get “frisky, frisky” to start making those babies and to put the copper disc under their pillow each night to speed the process along.

When he finished with Andy and Tabitha, he grabbed a letter he had received from a previous recipient of his “fertility discs”, showing a picture of him with them and their disc, and then a picture of their baby, born 10-14 months after their visit with him. He truly enjoyed this process!

After about an hour, we left his shop. We all felt it was the best hour we had spent in Italy. We giggled and laughed, repeating his lines all the way back through town to our cars. On the way out of town we spied a grocery store and bought food for dinner that night and hopefully enough for the next few days as there are no grocery stores near us.

We dropped Brian and Emily off in Bagno Vignoni. They were going to freshen up, then join us for dinner at our place.  We returned home, showered, relaxed for a few minutes, then began preparing dinner.  I checked my B&B messages and found a replay from Mauro. Yes, there was a 1 Gb a day limit to the data and his wife had dropped a second set of keys off. Brian and Emily arrived about 8:00 pm and we had a wonderful dinner of pesto salad and a green salad with bread and wine out on the deck.

After dinner, we put on our bathing suits. In the dwindling light, we worked our way down the steep trail right across the road from our place to the hot springs I had scouted on a walk earlier this morning. We found one big enough to accommodate all 7 of us. It was not hot, but warm. We soaked for about 45 minutes, creating enough noise with talking and laughter to certainly annoy those Italian soaking nearby that were hoping for a peaceful experience. We crawled back up the trail in the dark, thankful that Sally and I had brought our headlamps.  It was now near 11:00 pm.

Brian and Emily headed for their place. We showered, then all jumped on the Internet. We exceeded our 1 Gb of data about 11:50 pm, then waited for the stroke of midnight.  As advertised, the Internet came alive again exactly at 12:00 am.  By 1:00pm, Jeff had research his travel options for going to see Joel later in the week, Sally had cruised Facebook and the rest of us caught up on the news and emails. We had not been here n contact with the Caldwells all day, so we had no new news about Joel's condition. I dropped off first at about 1:10 am.  The rest followed in the next half hour.  What a great day.

Sunday, June 18, 2017 - Celebrating Joel and Hailey

Today was mostly a travel day, but ended in a party at the wedding site.  A party without the two for whom the party was being thrown.  More on that further down the page.

We got up this morning about 6:45 am with the aim of being on the road by about 8:00 am. Even though we had managed to strew our stuff all over this apartment, we were breakfasted, packed and out the door by 8:05 am.  Our first goal was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We had passed through Pisa three times on this trip and not stopped to see this iconic landmark to engineering ineptitude.  Somehow, it just seemed like a tourist trap.  But, we felt the call to visit. It was right on our way, and who knows, maybe it is more interesting than we thought. 

It was an hour drive to the parking lot, then a 15 minute walk to get inside the walled enclosure. We entered from the north. Admittedly, it was very cool to see it. With its exterior columns, it is a very dainty looking structure.  Yes, it is tilted.  But really makes you realize the tilt is when you see the base of the building.  The south side is indented into the ground about 6 feet.  Somehow the tilt of the base into the ground is as dramatic as tilt of the whole building.

This does bring up a philosophical point. Why is it that a building that was poorly engineered, a mistake, a screw up gets all the attention? There are three other ornate, wonderful buildings right next to the tower, yet the misfit gets all the attention. Is this reflection on the human race? We give  attention to the one who makes the most noise, the squeaky wheel, even of the wheel is substandard, while the stalwart get ignored?  hmmmm . . . . 

We walked back to the car, found a free toilet before we climbed in, then started our southward journey again. We had wanted to drive along the coast, but we found the coast road was a limited access highway, a freeway and a toll road. Finding no alternative, we stayed on it. The toll part of the road ended but the highway continued south, so we paid our toll and continued on.  We stopped in a small beach side town and had sandwiches and fruit for lunch, seated on a picnic bench with the car parked with two wheels up on the sidewalk, mimicking the other cars seeking a resting spot.  The temperature is the shade was perfect. Sunny, warm, slight breeze. We walked to use a bathroom in the park across the street, then on our way again, heading east an inland, aiming for the wedding venue.

I am glad that I had used Google Earth’s street view to cruise the area around the wedding venue. The roads are small and curvy, and the turnoff to the site is a small gravel road that heads downhill steeply.  We found it with no problem and were driving down this road very reminiscent of our or the Caldwell’s driveway when who should we spot walking up the drive but Bill and Pat.  Talk about feeling like we were home.  All that was missing was mud and rain.  Bill and Pat were marking the driveway with blue ribbons to help others find their way. 

At the venue there are two houses, each with a swimming pool.  The first one is occupied by Hailey’s family.  The second one is where the Caldwell family is staying. We continued on to the second house and park in front.  We could only stay about 45 minutes. We had to get to our B&B and meet the owners, get the keys and be shown the place. We found Ross and Crystal in the house. They were in the middle of a FaceTime call to Joel and Hailey.  We had a few minutes to say hi to those two.  Joel looked good, tired but good. He still has double vision and was wearing an eye patch to help. Other than the obvious pain he was working hard to manage, he looked good.  We joked a bit with him, then Hailey thought it best to let him rest.  We signed off.  Bill and Pat soon returned and we got to chat with them for a few minutes, getting the update on Joel. His foot has had some return of feeling, but its prognosis is still not good. The talk of partial amputation is still in the air.  It is a matter of time, waiting to see how much regeneration occurs. The decision of what to do is still quite a few days away.

We left the wedding site and headed 20 minutes south to our B&B.  But, as has happened before on this trip, we had a problem with Internet Service. If you remember reading from last Wednesday, I had visited yet another Vodefone store and got my service working again. Well, it is not working again. This is a major problem. To use Air B&B, you need to be able to contact the host when you arrive so they can meet with you to get you into the place. When with Bill and Pat I had connected via the wifi at the house and let our host know we would be there in 30 minutes. He answered back to contact him when I had reach the contact point, a large cypress tree at the top of the hill above the hot springs. We got to the cypress tree, but without service I had no way to contact him.

We parked, hoping the half hour warning would bring the host to the tree. Nope. Our location was akin to the turn off to Salmon Creek Road from 505 in Toledo, a country spot with occasional traffic.  The one thing we had going for us was the nearby hot springs and that it was Sunday afternoon.  There was quite a few people on foot going to or coming from the hot pools. We exited the car and began asking people if they could make a phone call for us. The first, through broken Italian and English let us know they had no signal. The second, a man on a tractor who had driven up to dump some recycling in a nearby dumpster had signal and happily dialed the number. I spoke to Mauro. He said his wife was on her way. While we waited we chatted with the man on the tractor. He lived nearby and worked indoors at a computer all day, but cherished his weekends when he tended his new olive orchard and worked outdoors. A woman drove up in a Mercedes. I said I wondered if that was Mauro’s wife. He immediately said, “I know Mauro. Yes, that’s his wife. And that horse across the street is Mauro’s horse.  The horse was excited to see the wife, prancing and neighing in the enclosure.  It was apparent she must feed and care for the horse at times. 

This woman in her early 70s drove us down the hill and through a remote controlled gate to a large apartment house on the side of the hill. She led us to the top floor where we found a spacious 3 bedroom, two bath fully functioning apartment.  It is exquisite. She showed us how to operate everything, all in Italian with me doing my best to interpret, then left.  We were stunned. At about 1200 square feet, this tiled and tastefully decorated home was way beyond our expectations.  And for $77 a night?  Wow.  The views out the windows and from the three decks was of the rolling Tuscan landscape. It was beautiful.

We took a break for a few minutes, showered and ate a bit, then drove back to the wedding site for an evening get together. We drove to the Caldwell’s house and met Mary and Bob, friends of Joel and Hailey from Colorado along with members of Hailey’s family. After a while, about 8:00 pm, we walked to the other villa and joined in a dinner party, a meet and greet. 

Andy and Tabitha were driving up from Rome, delayed by a few hours when the place they were to rent their car from closed before they arrived. They made for the airport via train to rent a car there instead. I was keeping in touch with them as they approached and was happy to see them rolling down the dusty gravel drive about 9:00 pm. Brian and Emily Bakotich were also there. Beth and Jay, along with Anna and Harp were also there, but they had flown in that morning and the jet lag had drug them to bed a few hours earlier.

We stayed at the party until 10 or 11, then drove back to the B&B with Andy it tow to show him where we were staying. We all jumped on the web.  After a few minutes we found we could not access any sites, but were presented with a page, in Italian, that stated our data limit had been reached and if we wanted more, we would have to buy it.  Huh? I vowed to send an email to Mauro in the morning asking about this and to get a second set of keys.

Saturday, June 17, 2017 - Marble Mines

When Sally and I passed through Carrara a few weeks ago, going to and from Cinque Terre, we regretted not having the time to go up into the mountains to see how the marble was mined. We were on a schedule, and on a train that did not extend its tracks up the mountainside.  But, now, with a car and an extra day, we were in a position to go see the marble extraction operations.

We did not rush out of our accommodations this morning.  We took our time, had breakfast, packed a lunch and retreated to the car about 9:00 am.  It was only about a 20 minute drive to Carrara, then an additional 10 minutes out of town to the beginning of the mine tours. Sally had done the research the night before and had found a couple of inexpensive tours that would give us a look at the 2000+ year old mining project. We drove up a steep and switchbacking road to a place where tours were assembling, but discovered the tour we had read about was down another fork in the road we had passed.  We drove back down a switchback or two, took the other fork, and were soon confronted with a one lane road that entered a tunnel. With Sally cringing in the back, hoping we did not meet an oncoming car, we drove through the dark tunnel for 3/4 of a mile and emerged in the adjacent valley. Heading up it, we soon arrived at the tour we had read about.

At this point we knew nothing about how they mine marble, so anything we learned was new.  We found the tour was €10 each and lasted about an hour.  As it turned out, the tour we were on was one of the only subterranean marble mine in the area.  We loaded into 7 passenger vans. We noticed that the floor inside the van was thick with white rock powder, as was the entire outside of the van. We immediately entered a tunnel very similar to the one we had driven through 45 minutes earlier.  Soon, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. However, this cavern was not natural, as could be seen by the absolutely straight, flat and vertical walls and the perfectly flat floor and ceiling. This cavern was formed from cutting blocks of marble from the walls, floor and ceiling and removing them to market. 

We got an explanation from the tour guide about the mining operation. Only three people work at this. We learned about diamond rope saws, expanding pillows to move the blocks and the price of €7,000 a ton for this very pure white marble that was found in this man made cave. As it was Saturday, mining operations were not occurring, but the equipment was all sitting right where the workers had left it Friday night.  One of the advantages of this underground mine is the constant temperature, 55º, summer, fall, winter and spring.  And due to the moisture in the cave, there is no marble dust floating around.

When done with the tour, they drove us back to the entrance. We turned in our reflective vests and turned our attention to the outside tour about 40 yards away.  This tour was also €10 each. We signed up. In this tour your load into a Land Rover and drive the steep and narrow mining road to the top of the mountain and see the mining operation to remove the marble.

About noon, we loaded into the vehicles and bumped and crawled up the rough switchbacks to about 3500’ above sea level to the top of the mountain.  From here we could see the extent of the mining operations and also close up the adjacent mines.  Our tour guide gave us the details of marble extraction, not too different from what we had learned in the underground tour. Here, it was the scale of the operations and the composition of the mountains that were amazing. It is hard to conceive, but the entire ridge we were on, which included three parallel valleys was made entirely of solid marble. The miners were simply slicing off slabs of the mountain, loading them on trucks and bumping them down the very steep and switchbacking roads to market. Although the equipment used today speeds the process up considerably from 200 years ago, the process has been going on here for over 2000 years. If not regulated, these mountains would soon disappear and be spread across the world as kitchen countertops, roadside curbs, paving stones, bathroom walls and statues. But, someone with a little foresight saw that if the mountains were removed, it would change the weather patterns in the area and perhaps the entire region. Companies are allowed to remove the sides of the mountains to a point, but the top of the mountain must remain intact, to act as moisture and weather catchers. All of the highest peaks still poke up into the sky, but there flanks are now near vertical walls of shining marble newly exposed to the elements after the outer layers had been sliced off.

We bumped back down the road to finish the tour, then drove toward Carrara and a store to buy some lunch making materials.  We found a Conad open on this Saturday afternoon. We piled back into the car with our meats, cheeses, breads, sodas and fruits and headed back toward our room. 

Sally had wanted to see the marble being carved, and was looking for a studio or workshop as we slowly drove through town.  As we were leaving Carrara, she spotted what looked like some marble carvings through an open gate.  We did a u-turn at the roundabout and entered the yard.  Here we found exactly what she was looking for.  It was a “sculpture garden” similar to what we imagined Lorenzo the Magnificent’s to be back in the 1470-1490s at the birth of the renaissance. We learned that an older man in his 70’s owned the property, about an acre and encouraged artists to work in this open area, under tarps and hastily constructed buildings to keep the rain off. There were about 5 artists at work in various corners of the yard. One man was chiseling on a life sized statue of a hiker, carved from absolutely pure white Carrara marble (the €7000/ton variety). In another corner a woman in her early 30s was creating velociraptor dinosaurs in fiberglass from a series of molds she had created from her plaster model. A Korean man in his early 30’s was in a side shed sculpting a piece of pure white marble into a modern piece of art.  We talked with each, and they were happy to share their work and ideas with us. Sally videoed the man chiseling on the hiker statue. It was fun to see how the marble is worked, especially with modern tools, an pneumatic impact hammer and attached chisel.

After 45 minutes of touring the grounds and talking with the artists, we drove back to our room, ate lunch, relaxed a bit, then headed for the beach for a swim. Although Jeff did not accompany Sally and I last night, he was with us today as we returned to the same sliver of public beach, much more crowded on this Saturday late afternoon than last evening, and swam in the Mediterranean for half an hour with us.  

Back to the room, a repeat of last night’s dinner, plus some variations, and another day had passed us by.

We had received a text from Bill and Pat after our return from the marble mines telling us Joel was doing better.  They were on their way to the wedding site in Tuscany, driving from Frankfurt. They said they would return to Frankfurt for the next surgery on Joel’s foot.  That date and time is up in the air, depending on how well his foot and health are progressing. We will learn more tomorrow evening when we see Bill, Pat and the rest of the Caldwell family at the wedding site in Tuscany. 

Jeff outside the interior mountain mine