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| Poggio alla Croce |
We have spent several days resting and taking in the
ambience of a small Italian village. It
starts with the crowing of roosters and the sound of a few cars on the road
below our apartment. Soon birds begin to
sing, which you hear all day long.
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| Madonna Shrine on a village house |
We open our floor-to-ceiling shutters to the sight of a
magnificent valley with Florence in the far distance and the Italian sun
reflecting off green hills, tall straight cedars, a few villas on the hillsides
and olive tree leaves shimmering silver in the light. Such beauty is hard to describe.
You begin to hear a few “Ciaos” and “Buon Giornos” being
exchanged in the street outside our front door and soon “beep, beep”—the bread
van’s signal. A man with a “tiny white
van” (for those of you who read Alexander McCall Smith) comes each day. He stops as the senoras come out and gather
to buy the day’s bread, all chattering, smiling and reminding us of a gaggle of
geese. Greetings and news seems to be exchanged
for a few minutes; then everyone goes back inside with their precious loaf
(including us).
A little while later come the young mothers with toddlers in
strollers. Seemingly on signal,
they gather at the end of the street at a tiny park where there is a swing,
slide and a small play area. From our
apartment you can hear distant chatter:
the squeals of the kids and voices of mamas talking to the kids or each
other.
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| Becattini's Restaurant |
If it is a weekend day, around 1:00 pm many people (us
included) go to the center of town (less than a block away) to Becatini’s
restaurant (our landlord) for some of their excellent fare. Danilo’s ravioli is just a tad better than
Anita and Sue’s (Hah ! Danilo’s melt in
your mouth; theirs was dense and “chewy”).
The family (Danilo, Giancarla, Lorenzo, Nonno and Nonna) sit for a while
with us at the table, offer us Danilo’s latest dulce (desert), talk, laugh and
jump up to help others. Fortunately for us, we have become "familia" with them. We eat
leisurely, have some espresso and amble back to our apartment full of good food
and good company.
Before or after lunch, a walk into the countryside for a
little wild flower picking is a delight, even with the steep hills at either
end of the village. You have to walk on
the one lane road and watch out for cars that beep before the curves to warn
you that they will be rushing past. And
rush past they do. Italian drivers are a
little crazy to our way of thinking.
The church bell chimes the hour, birds continue to sing, the
sun to shine, a gentle wind blows and the surrounding area is glorious.
Towards the end of the day, small boys come rushing down the
street to the fenced-in tiny soccer field (about 1/4th the size of a
real field). Without the fence, they
would be chasing balls down the cliffs.
You can hear them shouting and playing while roosters continue to crow
and several town dogs bark. They seem to
love the boys running around town. |
| Mustard fields in the countryside |
As twilight approaches, we sit on our balcony or in the
little loggia Danilo has built below with a glass of wine and a good book. Before long either Nonno or Nonna (we haven’t
learned any other name for them) comes along to chat in Italian. We understand very little, but they chat
away, we nod in seeming understanding, and then quiz each other after they have
left about what we each think that they might have said.
Dinner is homemade and light, unless we decide to drive down
to Figline Valdarno for some excellent pizza.
We have TV, but as we said earlier, can’t understand it so we seldom
turn it on. We did find a wonderful
mezzo soprano, Elina Garanca, to listen to on YouTube. Check her out; she is gorgeous with a
fabulous voice. So, we listen to Elina,
read, talk about plans for the next day, week or even months and crawl into bed
when we get sleepy.
Quiet, peaceful, serene, tranquil…pretty nice life. We feel
very lucky!
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