Thursday, April 26, 2007

Lost in Italy and Loving it - Close Guidebooks and Just Enjoy

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Ok, It's just another report from a satisfied Italian Tourist , but I just never get tired of immersing myself in their experiences.

 

 

Lost in Italy and Loving it


Close guidebooks and just relax

By Catherine Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 29, 2007

 

Florence, Italy  The trouble with Americans, a Florentine told a friend, is that we think the best way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. For Italians, he said, the journey is the destination.

When traveling in Tuscany, it's best to adopt the Italian point of view. You'll drive yourself crazy otherwise. Outside of the highways that connect major cities, there are no straight lines. The roads curve through the hills like figure eights. What looks like a short trip on your map may well take hours. And the Cheshire cat is Tuscany's traffic engineer: You'll not infrequently get to a crossroads and discover that the signs for the town you seek point in both directions.

Once you accept that you will  get lost, and that it will take twice as long as you think to get wherever you are going, you can start to relax and, as I discovered on a recent trip in the western region of the province, you'll see and experience more than you originally intended.

In search of ceramics

Montelupo, a tiny town west of Florence, has a centuries-old reputation as a center for ceramics workshops, but when we got there, we couldn't find a one. After driving around fruitlessly for a while, my companions and I parked and walked into the town center to get help.

The streets were deserted, but the piazza, where residents gathered in the fading light of a Saturday night, was jumping. Parents spooned gelato to children in strollers. Boisterous boys careened around the open space. Elders strolled.

I felt like I was absorbing a custom that probably hasn't changed much for centuries, right down to the spirited debate in machine-gun Italian between the husband and wife whom we had asked for directions.

We finally found one studio, though only because another man we had asked for directions led us there in his car. If he hadn't actually turned onto the gravel drive and stopped at the front door, we still wouldn't have found it because there was no inkling from the street that a contemporary, two-story showroom was hidden behind a nondescript house.

In the end, we didn't buy a thing, but the laughs, the slice of life and the comforting proof that people like to help were worth the trip.

Marble and masterpieces

Tucked in the foothills of the Alpi Apuane, Carrara is an unprepossessing town except for one thing: the marble quarries that have served builders and sculptors since Roman times and the striking setting the craggy white outcroppings make. Michelangelo spent many weeks in Carrara scouting for the blocks from which he would carve such masterpieces as the Vatican Pieta and Moses.

We headed up the mountain to tour the Fantiscritti quarry, past mountains that workmen had sliced into vast terraces, with visions of the artist in our heads.

Our guide drove us through an old railway tunnel that pierced the mountain and deposited us in the middle, which had been hollowed into a dank marble cave as big as a cathedral. There we learned how workers carve out vast blocks using drills, hydraulic machines and wires studded with industrial diamonds.

All very fascinating, but we were disappointed to discover that this was industrial, not statuary, marble. That was found in a different quarry that required advance reservations.

Abiding by our journey-is-destination mantra, we decided to go there anyway. After the usual dead-ends and turning-arounds, we pulled up just as a man was closing the gate. He eyed us suspiciously.

When we explained our mission, Franco Barattini, who "owned" the quarry (he leases it from the city of Carrara) beamed with pride, and ticked off the masterpieces made of stone from his quarry. Alas, he could not let us in.

I picked up a pebble outside the fence. "Like this?" I asked. His puckish face puckered in disdain.

Barattini, 65, hopped in his marble-dusted truck and told us to follow him to the next turn-off. There, he jogged down a hill and returned with chunks of marble that sparkled in the sun. This, he said, was the marble Michelangelo used. We each left Carrara with a piece of the storied rock.

Browsing and biking

In a treasure-rich country like Italy, it's tempting to travel armed with a list of sights to see and check them off with American efficiency. I tried a different tack in Lucca, a charming medieval walled town northeast of Pisa: I didn't open the guidebook.

Serendipity helped. On Sunday morning, we walked out of the hotel lobby smack into Lucca's monthly antiques fair, which draws residents from neighboring towns in search of tables and chairs, costume jewelry, crystals for their chandeliers, silver- and tableware, old sheet music, mirrors, rugs, old tools ... you get the picture.

Though a bit weary from the corny karaoke concert  an irony here in Puccini's birthplace  that had wafted through the windows of our hotel room the night before, we perked up considerably. Thus ensued a contented morning perusing the wares on tables that snaked through the piazzas and the narrow, cobbled streets, bargaining for our finds and bemoaning the things we couldn't carry home.

Once sated with shopping, we rented bikes and spent an hour cycling on the ramparts, past the dogs scampering on the green, the lovers entwined on benches, the boys on skateboards. From that height, we could see over the red-tile rooftops into the walled gardens that are invisible at street level, and breathe in the early spring air.

It was a perfect day.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/travel/

otherdestinations/int_stories/2007/04/26/0429tuscany.html

 

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