After a Friday spent alternately packing and shopping in town, and a Saturday spent climbing again at Les Gaillands -- with a brief detour for me and the younger kids to McDonalds because they wanted to see what that was like -- and Mass on Saturday evening in Les Houches --
Sunday morning we headed out of town. It was raining in Chamonix as we waved goodbye to France; cloudy, but not raining, as we emerged from the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy.
Mark drove and I navigated. It was not difficult navigation. We followed Google Maps on a smooth highway to Genoa, hugged the coast almost all the way to Livorno, then swung around Florence to stop and spend the night outside a small city called Arezzo, so we could come into Rome fresh in the morning instead of exhausted by several hours' drive.
+ + +
The countryside is really beautiful. When you come out of the tunnel you are in the Valle d'Aosta, in which despite the lack of large cities, you could easily stay busy in for two weeks or more. Aosta itself is worth a couple of days, and then there are castles, and the St. Bernard pass with the hostel/hospital at the top -- you know, the one with the dogs -- and lovely hiking and climbing and skiing if you are into that kind of thing.
Once out of the valleys you enter a plain -- Mark was impressed by a sharp, high, and long ridgeline that marked the end of the Alpine landscape -- but it is not long before you come to hills again, green hills with lusher vegetation, palm trees, and steep bluffs. And where those hills plunge down to the Mediterranean Sea is nestled the city of Genoa.
All we did was drive through it on the highway, but Genoa amazed me. It looks as if a giant tossed it by the handful onto the steep green hillsides, where it rolled like so many marbles and settled thickly into the crevices and cracks, leaving some especially forbidding hilltops green, encrusting others with dwellings; but all of them, all of them, story upon story, craning to look toward the sea. And the surface of the sea a mess of wharves and boats and shipping cranes, and beyond that, sparkling, with the shadow of some great vessel just visible through a foggy mist.
If you had asked me before yesterday what I knew about Genoa, I could have talked about city-states and Christopher Columbus, and rattled off a few recipes maybe. I did not know it had such a striking landscape. No wonder they became a maritime power; I marveled at those hills. How else could they have gone anywhere at all?
If we were having a See All The Things kind of trip, I would have taken us to the new maritime museum in Genoa, but we are not, so we drove on.
Lunch and snack were in two gas stations along the toll road. I split a sandwich with Mark in one, and ate an Italian species of Lunchables in the other.
My oldest, who was seated behind me, was disappointed that we weren't stopping in Florence. "You mean we're just going to drive around the outside of it?" he said incredulously. "Why aren't we going there?"
"Because your mom and I decided to keep this trip simple," said Mark, eyeing his side mirror for speeding Ferraris before changing lanes.
"Will I at least be able to see the big dome when we go past?"
"I don't know," I said. "We will be swinging pretty wide of the city center."
He leaned forward in his seat and watched as Mark and I turned our attention to not missing the highway exit. Suddenly he shouted in my ear: "I see it! There it is!"
"Ow! Not so loud!"
"No shouting in the car!"
"Sorry."
"Where?"
He pointed and described where to look. I hunted, among the outlines of the industrial buildings hurtling by, and I caught a glimpse of it too, just for a second,. I had forgotten how very large and impressive that great red cathedral dome is. Even though we were quite a ways outside the city, it rose above, unmistakable. The 14yo sat back satisfied.
+ + +
Arezzo is a smaller city south of Florence. Mark had booked us one cheap night in an agriturismo "camping" resort that mainly serves locals who want to get out of town for a week. It is two kilometers up a winding road at the top of a hill overlooking the town. The lodgings are in little individual cabins lined up in rows in the middle of a grove of --
"Olive trees!" exclaimed my 14yo, who had a look on his face that said "I can't believe my crazy dad found the cheapest place possible and it's an agriturismo embedded in a Tuscan olive grove."
The sun was setting and the city lights below us were twinkling. I remembered flashlights; the kids dug a couple out of the van, and we walked up the dirt path to the resort buildings. The 4yo picked two poppies for me from the side of the path, and I admired them. The children asked to taste an olive from the trees; we acquiesced, and they picked, bit, spat (and spat and spat). "Not ripe yet!" said Mark.
The center of the resort had a patio and a pool. There was a foosball table that took half-euro coins, so the kids played for while. Only two other families -- actually, couples, no other kids -- were staying here on this Sunday night in late September; the staff was standing around, and enthusiastically began exclaiming over our baby. Bellissimo!
I need to learn how to say "No, it scares him," because strangers in Italy keep wanting to take him out of my arms.
The restaurant did not open for dinner till 7:30 so the kids ran around until then, and then we went in and sat down -- there were high chairs for the baby! "Non ci sono in Francia," I said to the waitress, pointing at the high chair -- she laughed and said, "But in Italy, yes!" -- and we ate pizza. One of the cooks came out, made a show of counting the children, then went away and came back with five lollipops. The 4yo got to keep the one for the baby. We turned on our flashlights and made our way back to cabin number six, in the dark, the lights of Arezzo now brightly twinkling below us, and the baby reaching his arms up into the night to grab hold of the stars.
Posted with Blogsy
Comments