Tales of Tuscany

I have had so little time to write, that I'm afraid I'll have to give more of a summary than I have been before. So I believe it was to the Basilica di Santa Croce that we went on Friday. This old monastery and museum held all sorts of fascinating things, such as an old choir book, huge and heavy, with very basic musical notation which even Caleb couldn't fully decipher. Pietro led us through, showing us the most important displays and telling us about the history of the building. I love how much everything here has been through. The architects and masons who raised these buildings had such a vision for the future. Pietro's tour led us through this room with an incredible echo. A whispered word would rebound loudly for several seconds. When we finished the tour, we asked one of the guards if we could sing in the room. He nodded and stipulated “no pop music”. We gathered into our groups and sang four part harmony in the echoing chamber, in front of a quickly swelling audience. We left laughing and singing again, everyone very glad we had seized the opportunity.

Of all the days we've had here, I would claim Friday as one of the best. Instead of bussing into the city, we walked up the hill, farther and farther, until we came to this grand gate leading to a private house. We were there to visit the garden. Words and pictures don't do it justice. This long-standing garden has inspired people for centuries. The designer of the famous Longwood Gardens of Pennsylvania drew heavily on this old mountaintop sanctuary. I've been to both, and while Longwoods was fantastic, vast, and beautiful, there was something about this garden, this garden which seemed to go on forever yet sat very compactly on its land and which bled history from every crack in its faded walls, there was something which was overwhelmingly more rich than the gardens in Pennsylvania. I think the best example of this was the giant shrine at the back of the garden, a tall old tiled fountain, set in a wall and crumbling at the corners. The bottom was surrounded by a low wall inset with benches, all much newer than the wall they faced. This old giant stood when Pennsylvania was being roamed in buckskin, and there is no reason why it could not stand for centuries more. We ate lunch overlooking another incredible view of the city and its valley, and spent most of the afternoon lounging there.

That evening, we dressed in our finest and attended the opera! It was fantastic and great fun to watch. The conductor was so invested in the music that he was a joy to watch. Honestly, he kind of stole the stage. We had some trouble getting home, and some of us didn't arrive until two in the morning.

If Friday was one of the best, Saturday was the best. Honestly, I don't remember what we did in the morning, but that afternoon, we visited wine country. The trip out of Florence was pretty. The ride there was beautiful. The views in Chianti were gorgeous. I've never seen such a lovely place in all my life. We met the owner of the vineyard we were visiting, and he brought us around the town to his farm. The grapes hung in great bunches on a hillside overlooking an incredible valley. We sat together around a big table, and he brought out wine after wine, five in all, and so much bread, biscotti and who knows what else, that we were completely and pleasantly filled. One course had bread with meat, and when he heard that one of our party was a vegetarian, he disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a plate of cheese for her, I believe from his own personal larder. When Leigh asked about how to properly taste wine, he laughed and told her to “drink it like water”. I could have stayed there forever, laughing with my friends, tasting wines, eating delicious food, and looking out over the most fantastic countryside I've ever seen.

On Sunday, our adventures took another jump. Leigh and Pietro took most of the others to a museum and a huge garden in Florence. All went well, and there isn't a whole lot to tell, except maybe that they tried to feed the pigeons and found themselves utterly swarmed, covered in a mass of white and flapping. It was a fairly normal visit, I gather. Now, while all that went on, Caleb led a smaller expedition into the city, and we tried to figure out a changed bus schedule. Originally, we were going to split into two groups and find our way to two different churches. After a series of wrong stops, wrong turns, and wrong decisions, we ended at the very “rightest” church we could have, so of course how wrong could the choices have actually been? Instead of the grand churches we wanted to go to, we stumbled into a tiny Italian church just before their sermon. The ten members of the congregation turned to look at us, and we greeted them awkwardly: the Korean family, and their Jewish father, the college student from Florida, who looked more Italian that anyone there, two local women, an old man with a cane, and a few others. 

They quickly realized we were Americans. God was watching out for us, and of course there was a woman there who used to live in America, and who spoke both languages fluently. While the pastor read from Romans, the tiny congregation whispered and schemed, trying to best accommodate us. Soon enough, the jolly old pastor was speaking, and Judy, the American, was taking detailed notes. Every so often, he would step down and hand her a page of his, and then go back to preaching. When he finished, she stood up and spoke in English, speaking about Jacob's dream of the stairs to heaven, and how Freud's analysis of it was correct but on far too small a scale. The sermon concluded, they passed a plate and then we sang, oh yes we sang, in Italian hymnals, with no idea. We made what can only be described as a joyful noise to the Lord. 

But I'm not finished. No, and neither were they. Afterwards, they announced that the next week was a communion Sunday, and that they wanted us to join them again. The old man in the congregation stood up and told us a few things about the church— how it was over 900 years old, and that the inventor of the piano was buried under its walls. At this juncture, the pastor pressed a few keys and accidentally shut his fingers in the unused piano in the corner of the room, letting out quite a cacophonous clang. So the church gathered round us, and we talked with them for a while. The woman who translated was not a regular member, but had happened to be there that day, and she agreed to come back the next week to help the rest of us. As we talked, the pastor clambered onto a pew to look at Seth eye to eye, and with a heavy accent asked, “Basketball?” We practically died laughing. It was an amazing experience. 

So, to cut a long story short, we got lost, stumbled into a church, and found ourselves exactly where we needed to be. Oh, and did I forget to say that Caleb is going to play the piano there next week? I believe I did.