29 March 2012

Nineteenth Century Canal Hide & Seek and MadLibs


Path Along Nottolini Aqueduct

Partway through an hour long conversation class the other week my teacher asked if I’d been to the Parole d’Oro (the Golden Words). I didn’t think I had, didn’t recognize the name, and my interest was piqued. Daniela revealed that it was a tranquil, park-like setting that even many locals weren’t aware of. Knowing that we would jump at any chance to find some time in nature, and with the spring weather of late and planning on taking a walk there herself to forage for some fresh herbs for the kitchen, she thought that maybe some day our family would like to visit le Parole d’Oro.
            She was right. That Friday we made a picnic lunch and, instead of our usual two-wheeled routine, picked up the kids by car. En route, soon Niko and Ingrid recognized the Nottolini Aqueduct, below which we’d done a little bike ride back in August. The aqueduct stretches 3250 meters from Guamo to San Concordio and includes over 400 arches.


Plans began for it in the Eighteenth Century but it wasn’t started until 1823 and was finally completed in 1851, providing fresh, clean water for the whole town of Lucca. Town fountains are still active and daily dozens of people can be seen filling up sets of six 1.5 liter bottles for drinking water.


At some of the fountains there’s even a complete chemical analysis of the water for those who are curious or worried about it being safe (the former mostly Italians wondering what good mountain minerals they’re getting, the latter being mostly foreigners hoping to have their Tuscan vacation untainted by ingestion of giardia or lead).
            We drove to the end of the aqueduct and took some side roads leading to a tiny dirt and stone parking area with just one other car. This is what we saw:


            Then this:

The 'Golden Words' themselves appear, no longer golden, at the top of the bridge.

            We continued uphill past the abandoned house and past the fenced off new one which houses the caretaker of the ruins. A canal had been dug and then sided with large blocks of stone. It winded its way uphill, every now and then being fed by small side channels which Niko and Ingrid had fun hopping over. So this was the source, or almost the source. This is how they channeled the mountain water into one spot and then guided it on the long, gravity-fed journey over the aqueduct to Lucca. Pretty impressive! And fun, too. The canals, plenty of grass on each side, secondary channels, and small stone control huts proved a great playing space for a wild game of hide-and-seek for the kids (parents didn’t join this time, wanting to keep a good eye out that our five year old’s excitement didn’t lead him to accidentally back into a fifteen foot drop into the bone dry canal). 

Ingrid incredulous Niko found her so quickly!

Up at our picnic spot, after lunch, a few rounds of MadLibs were in order.


We saw one jogger heading up past us and into the mountain trails beyond and one older lady with a pitchfork headed up to search for some fresh additions for her dinner that evening.


This wonderful treasure, Le Parole d'Oro, just five kilometers or so away, left us relaxed…



...and a little silly.



I think we'll be returning.

20 March 2012

Obelisks, Gelato and Catholics: Un viaggio a Roma




We’d never seen so many men without pants. Or shorts. It wasn’t what we’d expected of twenty-first century Romans, but, being our first trip to the Eternal City, we were open to anything. After our first dozen or so sightings, though, it became ever more apparent that these were not, in fact, locals. By our second day we had learned that they were Scots in town for the big Six Nations Italy-Scotland rugby match, which ended up being played before a 75,000 strong crowd, a great percentage of whom wore kilts (and, despite Lauren’s curiosity on the subject, we never did find out if it is common practice to forego any other article of clothing underneath the plaid and pleats).
    Lured into a trattoria on our first afternoon in Rome by its proximity to our apartment and our hunger, we probably paid more than we should have but enjoyed a long lunch with two enormous courses. My second featured an eye staring out blankly. Luckily, the gustatory experience proved much more interesting than the fish’s expression. The sea bass, cooked and served whole with roasted potatoes and fresh tomatoes on a bed of lettuce, qualifies among the better fish I’ve had—so tender, moist, and full of flavor. Niko is reliable when it comes to food choices at restaurants and Italy is always ready to give him his favorite dish: la pizza margherita. With the little guy still sick but on the mend and generally not favorable to cities we didn’t know how this little trip south would turn out, but thanks to the full effect of antibiotics finally kicking in, plenty of delicious pizza and gelato and, most importantly, a much-prized stroller lent to us by a British friend of Lauren’s in Lucca, when it came time to return north Niko didn’t want to leave.
    Our home base sat within a block or two of the Pantheon and not too far (a judgment made possible because of aforementioned stroller) from many other tourist sites. Besides making sure we got at least one gelato a day (and happening upon two of the best gelaterias in Rome by pure chance) Ingrid also showed some interest in these heavily touristed historical buildings, piazzas, obelisks and monuments—especially the ones with direct bearing on the gods (as with the Pantheon) in large part due to her reading of Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. 
We hadn’t intended to see many of these places given Niko’s dislike of walking and not being sure how quickly he would be rid of the worst of his illness, but we lucked out (thank you Zara, goddess of strollers!) and ended up visiting the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Coliseum, Explora (Rome’s Children’s Museum), Villa Borghese (large city park), the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Quirinale neighborhood, the Campo de’ Fiori, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and Sant’Ignazio churches, Piazza Venezia and the Altare della Patria (or “wedding cake” as some refer to it, a giant monument to unified Italy’s first king, Victor Emmanuel II), and, as if that wasn’t enough (it was for Lauren and Niko), Ingrid and I walked to the Vatican and back to visit St. Peter’s Basilica. Mamma mia, che bella!
            On Sunday we knew our sojourn would be coming to an end and we’d have to be headed back on the Frecciargento in the early afternoon. I journeyed out mid-morning to find gloriously traffic-free streets. It so happened to be the morning of the Maratona di Roma, so I positioned myself below the “wedding cake” for a fine view of the start. 
The hand-cyclers came roaring around the corner first, most practically completely on their backs, arms turning in tandem around and around to propel themselves forward. It was very inspiring to see these athletes making the best of their situation and racing despite difficulties that would make many not even consider competition (and oh, those cobblestones must’ve been rough!). The “able-bodied” marathoners came next, thousands upon thousands, roughly half of whom were foreigners. 
After they passed I was about to head back to the apartment but stuck around when I noticed the organizers hurriedly switching some road blockades and announcing that runners were coming through again. It turns out a 4k fun run started after the marathon. People from six to ninety ran and walked past me with the biggest smiles I’ve seen in a long time, some with their dogs, some with their kids or grandparents, some alone or in groups of friends. Witnessing nearly 100,000 people between both events out exercising on this beautiful spring day put me in a great mood and hopeful for city-dwellers everywhere.
            After some more sightseeing and marathon watching that morning we made our way toward the nearest metro station, some two or three kilometers away. Taxis weren’t running inside the marathon loops so we counted our blessings once more for the passeggino and also for the wheels on our suitcase. Sometimes it’s not your day but others the pizza lands right-side up and thus it was for us when, with time dwindling before our train left the station and the metro car finally showed up—packed so much noses peeked out, funhouse-like faces plastered to the windows—and we shoved our stroller and children into the sweaty mass that when the horn buzzed and the door closed on the handle to our suitcase (which was still out on the platform) Lauren managed to maintain her grip while I pried the doors back open and quickly snatched the valigia back in, we made it to the station in time, and even got an earlier regional train from Firenze back to Lucca since it was running ten minutes late. If I believed in such things, I would have to say that in the great balancing act of chance we were due for such a flip of the pizza.

            Will Ingrid and Niko remember the Pantheon or all of the obelisks we recorded? Or even the hand-made, organic gelato? Something tells me that eventually these memories will fade until they are memories constructed more from photos and their parents’ nth retelling of tales from the trip. But we had a great time and all left with smiles. Right now that’s just what we needed. Whatever they remember or don’t is just fine and, if I had to bet, I’d wager it would be the thousands of men in skirts that ends up sticking. And I’d double my bet had we personally—visually—found out to be true what Lauren suspected the Scots’ underlying sartorial choice did not include. 

13 March 2012

Racing through Oxygen, Roads, Medicine, Time



When things aren’t going well, it’s logical to think that they could only get better. The post on last Monday recognized the day’s difficulty but professed that “tomorrow would be another day.” And so it was. But that day Niko didn’t get any better either, still had a fever, and then, Wednesday night, around 11:45pm, alternated the barking cough of croup with wheezy inhalations, and it wasn’t going away. Tomorrow was another day, but not exactly in the way we were hoping. He’d had croup before, but this time was much worse than any other and our attempts to calm it at home were not working. Niko wasn’t getting enough air. 
            I’ve become a more aggressive driver over here, but at that time of night there were few other motorists to challenge my path. Suddenly very focused, we sped to the hospital in about six minutes when during the day it would take fifteen to twenty. We rushed right into the ER and the little boy was quickly given an oxygen mask with adrenaline. Of their six categories of severity he was put on the next to highest.
            I don’t want to dwell too long on that night, or on the fact that he has stayed sick for quite a few days after that, too, or that on the following Friday I got hit with the flu after a couple of weeks with a sinus infection. We set up a visit to Rome awhile ago and so it’s been a countdown to see if Niko and I can get better enough fast enough to make the trip, now two days away. I continue to be impressed with our pediatrician, who during Niko’s latest checkup to gauge the progress of his lungs also listened to my own health story and wrote me a prescription! Che bello!
             More and more tourists are visiting Lucca these days, the weather is getting sunnier and warmer, magnolias are in bloom and the pollution seems less oppressive than in the winter. So much to see and do and our time left is drawing short. We always would say, “oh, we’ve got plenty of time to do X,Y,Z”  but now, with three months to go, we realize that we can’t do everything, that our time is limited and choices must be made. In Italy for a year without visiting Rome? It would be a bit strange. So here we go, to the capital, possibly to return with plenty of stories and pictures to post. Isn’t it fascinating, as the sun sets, wondering in what ways “tomorrow will be another day?” Anything is possible.

06 March 2012

Monday


My dream faded as I became aware of the morning. Had I been punched in the face? Had too much to drink the night before? I risked a quick glance from under my eyelids and saw that the crack of light that usually escaped from our otherwise room-darkening internal wooden shutters wasn’t yet present. A yawn and slight body stretch. No, nothing broken. I turned onto my back. A heavy head, but I then remembered that no, no alcohol was consumed the night before. I reached over to push the button that backlit my watch. Five o’clock. For the next couple of hours I lay there, awake, and aware of the slow start to my Monday.
            If you’ve ever lived in a foreign country, chances are good that at a few points along the way you experienced some resistance to your new culture, some sense of, say. . . exasperation. But even if you haven’t, I would venture a guess that all of us have had those days where, although there are no catastrophes or seriously life-changing events, everything seems to go wrong. Like Monday.
            Nikolai had been home sick for three days with a high fever and we were starting to feel the effects of worrying about our little guy and caring for him. Once more Monday morning the thermometer read 40.2 C, and again he was listless and clingy and didn’t have an appetite. We kept trying to call the doctor but apparently she was going to be on the evening shift. She was our third pediatrician since October and this was something like Nikolai’s eleventh health issue that had kept him home from school. All told he’s missed half of school since mid-September and on Monday it was immediately apparent that another home day it would be.
            At various other times this year I’ve had my moments of perversely enjoying the necessity of waiting in endless lines only to then have to wait in another endless line, realizing in that and other situations such as getting jostled repeatedly in a crowd or getting cut time after time in less formal lines (and what was a line, anyway?) that that’s just how things happen here, that I was experiencing but a couple of the so-called cultural differences and somehow getting a first-hand view into a different way of perceiving and acting in situations which I, as an American, had a different way of perceiving and acting in. It was all quite fascinating.
            On Monday, however, I had no such perspective, and it’s probably a good thing I waited to write this until Tuesday.
            Italy is expensive. Lucca, at least, is no cheap place to live, as we were finding out more and more. I’d learned to avoid translating euros to dollars after a couple months of incredulity, but even in euros our costs looked sky high. Monday morning, after we got back from a trip to the post office to pick up a package and were charged sixty-five euros just to take the package (which bore its own hefty postage from the US), I happened to notice a slip of paper in the entry way with the letterhead of Niko’s school. Another notice of payment due for his lunch, and of course it was in euros but for some reason I quickly reverted to my currency translation ways and calculated that his barely eaten meals had amounted to one-hundred twenty five dollars this month besides the enormous sum we’d already paid for his year at this institution when all of the public schools said they were full back in August. Oh, and we were late to pay again. I found a line in the letter that seemed to refer to us, in bold and underlined, saying that parents need to get in the fee on time.
            That Monday wasn’t just about Niko being sick, either. I was feeling draggy and hyper at the same time, and directionless, so many plans and projects to work on but unable to start any, my various knee and hip problems bothering me more than usual, the incessant pounding and rumbling of motors from the construction site next door driving me insane. Finally, in mid-afternoon, I decided I needed a break and told Lauren I was going to head for a jaunt on my bike down by the river.
            Before leaving I decided to check my e-mail. I should’ve known better. Another notice from Niko’s school! This time they were also requiring payment, but now above and beyond what I had dreamed of. This time it would be one-hundred fifty dollars because the heating company determined that they went above their allotted amount for the winter and per Article X Number 123 they were passing on the cost to the parents. Another bill I hadn’t looked at peaked out from under the computer. It was our very own energy bill for just over two months. After looking at the figure, I knew that at all costs I had to get out of the house for some exercise. While we don’t keep the house baking hot we admittedly haven’t gone the Italian way of suffering as long as possible before starting to heat the house, of using hot water bottles at night to allow house temperatures in the low 50s F, of wearing three sweaters during the day. So now we would pay for keeping this high-ceilinged house warm enough so we didn’t shiver to the tune of twenty-five hundred dollars. Yes, you read that correctly.
            I had about an hour before the pediatrician would start her office hours at four, when we would bring Niko in to see if he had something more serious than a bout of the flu. Out on the bike, weaving around traffic, I eventually made my way to the Serchio. Go to the right and follow a paved path (which it turns out is actually a very narrow road with no shoulder) or go to the left on the dirt/crushed stone path. Yes, you guessed correctly, I went left. Sure, it was a bit bumpy, but there were no cars. Although my hip still hurt to turn the pedals, and my knee wasn’t much better, I think I started to feel my forehead relax, started momentarily to forget about Niko being sick, to stop wondering if this time it was something worse than the Scarlet Fever, Strep Throat, several day Diarrhea,Vomiting episodes, or Asthma complications he’s already had here. I was inching—rolling—towards relaxation. But boy, it sure was bumpy, and especially from the rear. After a few more seconds I looked back at the tire. Sure enough, I had a flat. After removing the rear wheel, unseating the tire and removing the tube, I began searching for the puncture and eventually found it, the result of a thorn from a bush that was still sticking through the tire casing. I patched the hole and attempted to inflate the tire once more but my frame pump from twenty years ago just wasn’t cooperating. A man passed on the trail with his little dog, nodding to me and smiling, saying something about getting stranded himself. A couple of kids walking with their grandparents and dog glanced in my direction and headed away. I tried this and that before remembering about Niko and seeing that I would already be late. After forty or so minutes in an operation I normally could take care of in ten I had the wheel back on and the tire pumped up and ready to go. The man with the dog walked back past me and said I should stick to the road, that this path had lots of thorns. I thanked him for the advice, readied to mount my bike, and saw that the tire had become flat again. Out of cement and patches now and without a decent pump, I was stuck.
            When I eventually made it home, it turned out that Lauren had gotten in touch with the doctor, who said to come by at 7:30pm. We got Niko in his footy-pajamas, brushed teeth, and headed out. There were several people ahead of us at the Pediatricians, but when we came in our doctor indicated for us to sit right outside her office. Maybe since we’d called we would get to go right in at 7:30pm, going in front of the others who were already waiting? We heard snatches of conversation from inside, several times increasing volume in the way that would make you think they were wrapping things up, here’s the prescription, take the drops two times a day for five days… Finally, when the door did open, the doctor ushered in another family, and so on. One hour later we were finally admitted to her office.

           
          Thankfully on off days there is always the next day to look forward to, and sometimes it’s even possible to admit to oneself that absolutely everything on that off day wasn’t so horrible after all. I couldn’t, for example, close without saying that those grandparents, out for a walk with their grandchildren and dog, had returned from their journey and saw me walking my bike down the nearest road. The grandpa was also a cyclist, he explained, though he said he didn’t do it too much anymore. I explained what had happened, that I’d already patched it once but that apparently the tube had more holes and that my pump was nearly shot. He told me to relax, that he lived just down the road. It would be okay. The eight year old boy and five year old girl were extremely interested in this man who spoke in a funny accent that their grandpa was helping, the girl stealing glances now and then, the boy asking his grandpa about the bike I was wheeling and recounting his own experiences with bikes. When we got to their house and I’d taken off the wheel and extracted the tube again the grandpa offered me one of his own, first checking it for holes in a tub of water. In the ensuing re-mounting and pumping up of the tire he literally pushed me out of the way at times so he could try his own methods. By that point in my turn of fortune, though, I’d recovered enough to recognize it just as his way of action, gestures completely normal that would probably go unnoticed by any Italian. When I profusely thanked him he brushed it off and laughed, saying that of course he would do that, that it was completely normal, that I must be joking to offer him so much thanks. I also couldn’t go without saying that this Pediatrician, this third one, is a great doctor and spends enough time with each of her patients, which does mean longer wait times but much-needed attention once you do get in her office. Niko has seen her a few times now and says, “I like that Doctor!” And, somehow, she has refused payment for her services every time we’ve gone. By the time we got in to see her Niko’s fever had gone down and he was joking around, bouncing on and off my lap. She checked lungs, ears, throat, and concluded it was just a bout of the flu and that he should be better by tomorrow and if not to bring him right back. 
       It had been one of those days and I looked forward to resting my head on the pillow and pulling the covers up, looked forward to a solid night of sleep and the dawn of a new day but by that point, I had to admit, things weren’t so bad after all here in Lucca. Bills would eventually get paid, Niko would eventually recover, and we still had three months of new days, each one holding its own set of situations—not ones we always planned or hoped for, but ones from which we would surely continue to learn.