Project Runaway

It has been a busy week for me and I am not sure where to begin.
Last Friday the boys and I did a ‘Hilltop town’ road-trip and drove to Volterra, San Gimignano, and Siena. It was a beautiful day and we still had our rental car. Dwayne drives like a true Italian, and seems pretty comfortable behind the wheel. It was in Volterra that Luc had pasta with wild boar (cinghiale) sauce. It was very good. Perhaps not as adventurous as our friends who are in Peru eating roasted whole guinea pig on a stick, but we can’t all have that experience.
We finished the day with dinner in a rustic Osteria in Siena, where the tables and chairs were cleverly cut to accommodate the slant of the cobbled road.

A new angle

Through the Italian school, I had met an American woman from Texas named Diana. Last Saturday, July 4 coincidentally enough, Diana and I had made a date to go to a free beach called Marina di Vecchiano. As I had a rental car we decided I would drive there. This is the land of the rotary or roundabout and as we have them in Canada they did not pose a problem at all for me, so I got her there in one piece. The beach was miles of white sand and we rented lounge chairs and gabbed all day and watched the locals strut up and down the beach in every getup you could imagine, with every body shape you could imagine. I have never felt so comfortable at beach in my life.
On the way home we were driving through fields of sunflowers in bloom and decided to pull over for a photo op. On a dusty side road, in the middle of nowhere, sitting on a white plastic chair, was an African woman. I looked around and saw no veggie or flower stand.
Diana sweetly asks her if the fields belong to her. I mutter quietly to Diana that the woman is in fact a prostitute. I pose in the flowers for Diana to take a picture with the woman looking at us bemusedly from her chair a couple of feet away. Before Diana can take a second picture, a small group of cyclists comes over the rise on the paved road we had pulled off of, behind them is a police car who turns on his siren for a second to signal the cyclists to move over for him. Well, the woman in the chair fliesout of it like the start of an Olympic race and sprints full out down the sunflower field and then dives for cover in the dirt. Diana and I stand there looking stunned at each other. After a few moments, the woman’s head with her large black Afro pops up in amongst all the sunflowers and looks around to see if the coast is clear. Diana lets her know in her lovely Texan accent that the coast is in fact clear and that she can come back.
The second picture she takes I can not stop giggling. As we head back to the car, a vehicle slows down and the lone male in it gawks confusedly at us. I turn to Diana and comment that he must think we are ‘fresh merchandise’. Diana delicately asks if I think that the woman provides a certain type ’service’ as the primary one. I assure her that I definitely think that that ’service’ is the most requested. We laugh all the way home.

Not for Sale!

On Monday, Diana and I decide to go up to a town called Bagni di Lucca which is known for its thermal baths. The town is up in the mountains of the Garfagnana region and again I drive our little Fiat there. On the way, we stopped at the Ponte del Diavolo (Devil’s Bridge), so called as the locals felt he must of helped build it because it is built in a way that even modern architects can not explain.

Ponte del Diavolo

Once we reached the town we parked and wandered around looking for some obvious sign of the famous terme. We stop at the information both where a pretty young woman provided the least helpful information and the most useless map that we have ever encountered in Italy. After wandering around some more we opted for heading to the car. After driving up and down narrow roads, Diana finally spots the sign for the Terme. As it points up a very steep narrow road we are more than a little dubious, but we had come this far so we decided to go for it. After driving up a very narrow steep road we come to what appears to be an abandoned building with a narrow, and I mean NARROW, arched entry. There is nowhere to turn around and I am NOT backing back down that road. So, we fold the side mirrors in, hold our breathe, and I drive through. With inches to spare we get through!

We park and wonder where the heck we are. There are a couple of cars but the buildings all look derelict and abandoned. As we walk up a bit, in the midst of the decay is a shiny modern glass door. We had found the Terme. After coming all this way, we decide that we are going to get a treatment, come hell or high water. We decide on the thermal mud wrap followed by an aromatic anti-stress massage. The spa itself was very Napeolonic and elegantly decayed. We both enjoyed our treatments and quickly got over the fact that you lie nude on the table while the esthetician puts mud all over your body. The massage was the same. No careful draping of sheets or towels here, again you lie nude on the table the entire time as you are massaged from head to toe. As the showers had no soap or shampoo, we then drove back to Lucca smelling like an aromatherapy shop and glistening with oil from head to toe.

It has been great to have some girl time, and now it is time to head for some much deserved vino rosso.

And that was only the first half of my week, next installment: Cinque Terre!