Tuscany!

Just spent a week in Italy in a little town called Panzano. It will likely take me more than one post to write about it, since there's a TON of photographs. You've been warned.

We left on Friday the 13th and drove to JFK.

Now I want you to think about how little, and how much, a sentence can say about an experience. That sentence is 100% true, and yet it completely lies. We did not just "drive to JFK" what we did was careen madly down side streets, barrel heedlessly along major highways and, at least once, we came within a gnat's whisker of dying in a flaming ball of twisted metal that was, once upon a time, a perfectly serviceable Suburban. The story is as follows: my Aunt by marriage arranged the trip to Tuscany for the entire family. Since there's something like 50 cousins, that's saying a LOT. The trip was broken into two or three weeks, with a different group arriving and leaving each week. The first week was composed of Aunt Maureen, and 10 of the "older" cousins - myself, Nora, Meredith, Joel, Kara, Sam, Lauren, Mike, Jesse and Diana. Sandy had to stay home and work/watch the menagerie. Pity him.

Aunt Maureen had also called a car service, of a sort. Basically they drive your car to the airport, and then back home again for you so you don't have to pay for parking. Very handy. Nora, Maureen, Jesse, Diana, and I were all in the car with the driver, who was - and I say this with the utmost of confidence - completely ass over teakettle when it comes to driving. He couldn't even drive his wife crazy. And this man, who was responsible for getting us safely to the airport, was very nearly responsible for my death.

Somewhere on the highway, about a half-hour away from the airport, he turned to look to the right, past Aunt Maureen in the passenger seat, and gestured to her to look as well while he told her what it was. Meanwhile, directly in front of us and maybe 100 feet ahead, traffic had stopped. Stopped. Completely. He was barreling along, not paying any attention to what was in front of him, playing tour guide. Meanwhile, my brain - kicking into self-preservation mode - opened my mouth and forced my vocal chords to scream "brake! brake! brake! brake! brake!" about 30 times in 4 seconds, while the rest of me attempted to climb up the side of the passenger door. Strangest moment of my life. I've seen the word "scrabbled" used for situations like this, but never thought I'd DO it. Like a small furry mammal spotting a dog in the open, I scrabbled with my fingers wildly at the window and seam of the door. He snapped his gaze forward and slammed on the brakes, and we coasted to a stop about 3 mm from the bumper of the car in front of us.

The human mind is a funny thing. When you come that close to disaster and walk away from it unscratched, your initial reaction is not to break down into a quivering ball of grateful tears. What you do is go, "Huh," and then make some small comment about the relative danger of the event like, "that could have been messy..." and then, and this is important, YOU ALL PRETEND IT NEVER HAPPENED.

As I was saying, we drove to JFK. We got there, we checked in, Jesse had to pack some of his stuff spontaneously into my bag because his bag was overweight, we got our boarding passes and passed through security which is, thanks to my frequent traveling lately, no longer a shock despite having to walk around on a very public floor barefoot, (which gives me the heeblie jeeblies), just so they could make certain that my flipflops did not contain a shoe bomb.

We all passed muster and none of us had to strip down to pass the metal detector, which is always nice. Then we insinuated ourselves into the club lounge thanks to Aunt Maureen's incredible people skills and her long service as a member of a flight crew, and we enthusiastically hit the complimentary buffet. The cheese and fruit platter was especially appreciated.

Here's Aunt Maureen in da club, (the buffet is featured in the background):

So after reading a significant portion of "The Sparrow" we'd wasted enough time - we moseyed to the gate and boarded the plane. The rest of the flight was a melange of me finishing "The Sparrow" and some broken sleeping. There is nothing worse than sleeping on an airplane. Well, okay, sleeping on an airplane and being on fire might be worse - or for that matter sleeping on an airplane with hives, on a transatlantic flight to Norway. (Don't...ask). Anyway - the following pictures of Diana I think pretty much say it all.

Before:

And after:

What else can you say about air travel? I LOVE to fly - I adore the moment of heaviness when the plane first catches the air beneath its wings and lifts off. It's like gravity makes one last grab at you before giving up and letting you go. I'll close my eyes so I can feel it better. But for the rest of the time, I think we're all just trying to survive as best we can.

We landed in Pisa 11 hours later. We had a bit of an adventure picking up the rental cars - you have to catch a shuttle to the car rental parking lot. You have to stand in line to get onto the shuttle, and the line was wound around and out of sight. And then, while we were standing along the side of the road, all queued up, it started to absolutely pour. Tuscany said, "Benvenuto!"

We got onto the shuttle. It proceeded to take us to the car rental parking lot to pick up our cars. The parking lot was roughly 50 feet away from where we'd been waiting in line. It was RIDICULOUS. This little kid behind us said, "Wouldn't it have been faster to walk?" and I burst out laughing. Out of the mouths of babes.

We got the cars, after wandering around the wrong parking lot for a bit, and then we were off. We were headed towards northern Pisa to see the Tower. There began one of the most exciting interludes of our stay in Italy. Within about 20 minutes we'd broken probably every major traffic law in the country. We drove the wrong way on one way streets. We drove in the bus lanes, and the taxi lanes, and on streets that were restricted to authorized personnel. We cut straight across traffic circles, and managed to circle the same few blocks 6 times. We asked for directions from multiple Italians on the street, including a group of school girls, and a flower seller. They were all very very kind with their advice. And eventually we found our way to the Duomo and the Tower.

Diana insisted that we all take the traditional "propping up the tower" picture:

And then there was this:

Amen, my Italian brother or sister.

From the Tower we drove to Panzano - I'll be writing about that later!