Rome to Home

Our last week in Italy was spent in Rome.  Once again we used AIRBNB to book a place to stay—this time with Gianpiero, who lives in a Roman suburb called Labaro—an ancient settlement in its own right, but now a bedroom community for the big city.  Gianpiero, a divorced father of two grown sons, lives by himself in a two car garage that he has made over into a small two bedroom house—and the operative word is small.  Still our bedroom and bed were quite comfortable, and Gianpiero was a good host and a super Rome booster.

With Gianpiero as our guide, we saw some wonderful things in Rome, like Ostia Antica, which we had never heard of before.  It is the old port and is about as well preserved as Pompey without all the lava and tourists.  It was very, very interesting and we managed to spend all day there.

Oh the crowds in Rome!

On another day we went back to the Borghese Gallery that we had visited on previous trips to Italy and drooled over a couple Bernini sculptures and tried to take in the gazillion pieces of fine art.  The collection belongs to the state now, but was created by a greedy Cardinal who was not very nice about how he got the paintings and sculptures he craved.  Even had some people killed so he could get his hands on their stuff.  Nice guy.

The last gelato

Our final day we took a nostalgic walk thru Rome—revisited some of the "not to be missed sights, like the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, and had our very last gelato—now, that was a sad milestone! Our Italian sojourn lasted from March 1 through May 30—91 days. We overstayed our tourist visa by one day, and that can get you barred from traveling to Italy for as much as five years, but fortunately, nobody seemed to notice or mind.

Our plane trip home was long—about 18 hours door to door, Rome to Atlanta, with a change in London.  British Airways treated us fairly well, but are a little schizophrenic about carry-on baggage, with the size limit smaller than we are used to on domestic flights.  We got into a little tussle with a woman at the London airport about a bag we had carried on in Rome and wanted to continue with it as carry on luggage.  She said we had to check it; we flatly refused and told her we just alighted from a BA plane and were boarding another and it fit in the overhead.  We won!  “Next time, I won’t allow it”, she says.  Next time?  How often do we fly through London?

Larry, his Mom, Carlie & his sisters Glenda & Sandy

We flew to Atlanta to give us the opportunity to visit with Larry’s family, most of whom live in North Georgia these days.  His Mom, who will be 85 this July, is fortunately very healthy and lives by herself.  We got to see each of his siblings and many of our nieces and nephews. A big treat for us both was seeing 10 months old Art (Glenn & Garland Ryder’s son and Larry’s sister Sandy’s grandson); he is such a Zen baby and a delight to hold and cuddle.

After a four-day visit, we started on a three-day, 1600-mile driving trek to Denver.  On our first day, June 2^nd, we stopped for a quick lunch and visit with Rob Roschy, Sue’s nephew, who manages a Mangionne’s Little Italy Restaurant in Nashville. We spent our first night in Eastern Missouri and the second in central Kansas.  The American countryside can be every bit as beautiful and interesting as the Italian, although the billboards can be quite ugly and distracting. We were surprised at the lovely rolling hills in both Missouri and Kansas. 

Late in the afternoon of our second day, we stopped for a short visit to the Kansas State History Museum in Topeka—and regret that we had only one hour or so to look around before closing. Since neither of us knew anything about Kansas or its history, it was really lots of fun and educational—we highly recommend it. For a small local museum, it was incredibly well organized and very interactive.

Kansas Wind Farm

In central Kansas, we marveled as we drove through huge wind farms; giant wind turbines relief from the franchises found all along the interstate that seemed to march across the plains for many, many miles. Another recommendation that we might make for cross country travelers—get off the interstate for a few minutes and explore some of the little towns—we found a couple of really great local restaurants.

Still jetlagged and pretty road weary after three days driving, we arrived in Denver on May 5^th, hoping to settle into the apartment we had booked on AIRBNB.  Shock!!! Not only was the place difficult to access through an on-going remodeling and reconstruction of the front yard and path to the house, it was really quite dirty.  In addition, there was no dresser in the bedroom, and dollar store plastic plates, cups, etc., a popcorn popper and one small sauce pan were the entire kitchen.  Worse yet, the owner lived downstairs and was totally crazy. We got what we thought was her entire life story in 15 minutes as she babbled to us upon arrival; then got more and more for the two days we stayed there as she brought up for us several totally useless items from her kitchen to stock ours. 

 We knew quickly that we could not stay there for a month; said we were leaving and fought with her over giving us our money back.  We had stayed two days and had prepayed for the entire month.  Probably the worst experience of our entire trip.  Only “Freddie, everyone knows me” in the Galapagos could match it. Oh, well all trips must have their ups and downs.  The good news for us was that with threatening to write a scathing review of her “furnished apartment” on AIRBNB, she caved and refunded us for the remaining 28 days.

The part we want to remember is what she brought upstairs to stock our severely understocked kitchen. Here goes:  One filthy sandwich grill; two dirty cookie sheets encrusted, possibly for weeks, with bacon grease; two dirty cake pans; a basket put together like a “gift” (fake grass inside) containing such useful things as a hand potato masher, a rolling pin, rubber cupcake baking liners, a meat thermometer, a grapefruit cutter, a garlic press, four, count them, four sets of measuring cups and measuring spoons, an ice cream scoop and several unidentifiable objects that might have been useful to serve cheese.

Erin & Bryn

Fortunately for us, Grant’s parents had rented an apartment starting June 1^st, but will not arrive in Denver until June 28^th.  Their goods and chattle preceded them by professional movers.  They offered to let us stay for free, since we would have to sort through a lot of moving boxes, unpack what we needed to use and it has no TV or Internet. We are here; we have kitchen things; we have a comfortable bed.  Bought a couple towels and sheets so we wouldn’t have to keep unpacking.  We are good to go now with no crazy lady downstairs with total access to our apartment.

Sue, Bryn, Charlie &Larry

The lovely, bright spot in all this, of course is Charlie, along with Bryn, Grant and Erin (who is here on home leave for the month of June.)  It is a joy to be with them and a luxury to see them almost every day. We were all together at Bryn and Grant’s to celebrate Father’s Day—along with many from Grant’s family.  We are settling in nicely here in Denver.  We will be here through July 4^th and then we head off to DC for the month of July.  We will return to Denver for a longer stay in August. But we are already planning and thinking about the next places we want to visit.

Leaving Sovicille and the Siena Countryside

Casabella

It was hard to say goodbye to Casabella  but as we knew would happen, our time in Italy had to end. We so enjoyed out stay at Casabella--so much so that we could not muster up the energy for trips to towns and sites we had earmarked for touring.

With Renzo & Marzia in Casabella

Still, knowing that we want to return to Italy soon, we decided to just relax and enjoy our time in Sovicille and the Siena countryside.  We formed friendships with our hosts, Marzia & Renzo, and we definitely will plan another stay in one of their properties.

We have skipped a couple weeks between our trips to Todi, Poggio with the cooking lesson a la Danilo, and our visit to Certaldo with Cynthia and Nancy.

Cynthia & Nancy picnicking at Ricasoli

Not having written until now, those memories are getting foggy.  We spent the last few days of their stay in Casabella--our only regret being that it was too cool to get into the pool, which Renzo so graciously prepared early in the season at our request.  We did, however, spend time in Siena, revisited Ricasoli castle and winery for the third time, and generally had loads of fun with "the girls".

At our favorite restaurant in Piensa, La Buca della Fate

After they left, we relaxed in our beautiful villa, visited with Renzo and Marzia and had a wonderful evening with Norah White, whom we met at Ricasoli.  She served us all three times at our wine tastings and we grew to like her very much.  She and her husband, Giuseppi, came one night for dinner and we hope to have formed a lasting friendship.

Alas, our bucolic sojourn in the Siena countryside ended on May 25, and we had to head to Rome for a few days before our flight back to the U.S.

Piera, Sue & Nilo

On our way to Rome we made a short but important detour to Parana, a small Umbrian town, to visit with Nilo and Piera Leonardi. When we were last in Siena, in 2000, we stayed with the Leonardis for two months.  They were wonderful hosts then, and Piera is a superb cook, and nothing has changed except their location

Our reunion was delightful; they have a lovely home and they seemed happy to see us.  To aid the students who lived with them to learn Italian, they purposely chose not to learn English. Yet, they are both quite intuitive and seem to have little trouble understanding our halting Italian and making us understand their Italian.  

As we said, Piera is a wonderful "cuoca," and the feast she prepared, which included soup, pici (homemade thick Tuscan pasta), spinach soufle, salad, roasted por in carrot sauce, and a torta, was just incredible. Accompanied by their homemade olive oil, the two hour visit and feast were a delight. It was so nice to renew our bonds of friendship, and we of course promised not to wait another 12 years to return again. But of course, we had to say goodbye as we needed to get onto Rome.

We will write again about Rome and our return, but for now...our best to all and especially to all those who physically shared our journey.  Our virtual companions we love, too, so buon fortunal a tutti !