After a whirlwind month of travel, we're settling back into our routine here in Switzerland and one of my new goals is to post some stories about our travels. As much as we LOVE the traveling we are doing while we are here, in some ways I feel like we are frantically trying to fit in all the places we want to visit before our time here is over. I feel like Tammy Travel Agent researching places to stay and routes to get there. For most people planning a vacation would take a few days, but because my OCD flares up when making travel plans, I need a solid month of comparing accommodations, prices and the amount of time I am required to spend in the car with the kids before nervously committing to a location. After our recent trip to Tuscany, I'll be further restricting the amount of driving time required to arrive at a destination. We're still recovering.
We originally planned on a 10 hour drive to Rome to spend 2 days dragging the kids around to see really old stuff, before heading to Tuscany. It is my belief that God intervened in our plans, because the apartment we had booked in July suddenly became unavailable 4 days before we were supposed to arrive in Rome. I think God took pity on the kids, and as a way of making amends for giving them stupid parents, He spared them an additional 4 hours in the car. So we were able to book 2 extra nights in Tuscany and buckled down for a 6 1/2 hour drive.
Our drive to Tuscany was beautiful. We didn't have an exact address for the villa we were staying in, but their website gave some directions, so I figured we'd have no problem finding it. We plugged the name of the town into our GPS and we were off. When we got to the town, I pulled out the directions and realized they weren't exactly the kind of directions we were used to. There were no street names to follow, just directions like, "Follow the ancient town wall" and "Follow the signs that lead to Greve". They failed to mention that the signs to Greve were on a post with about 30 other signs, and unless you were going to stop in the middle of a traffic circle and take a few minutes to read all the signs, you were screwed. We managed to find our way to a hospital that was mentioned in the directions, and then were directed to follow the signs to "IL GAVILLACCIO". From this point on, the only sign we saw for "IL GAVILLACCIO" was the one hanging on the outside of our villa. Somehow Bryan took directions from a kind gentleman who spoke only Italian and we somehow managed to stumble upon it.
The villa was in an old stone building that was an annex to a castle that used to stand on the property. The inside was like being in an old Tuscan farmhouse and the outside had a beautiful patio with an olive tree growing in the corner. It had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, and wine for sale in the reception area. Tammy Travel Agent did good.
Our place in Tuscany was in an area called Chianti. The nice thing about Chianti is you are out in the middle of vineyard country. The problem with Chianti is you have to drive at least 45 minutes to get to any sites. There were a few things we knew we wanted to see. We wanted to see the leaning tower of Pisa, we wanted to go to Siena, and we wanted to go to Florence. We also hoped to visit some of the smaller medieval towns like San Gimignano and Lucca. With 3 full days in Tuscany, it shouldn't be a problem to fit it all in, right?
On day one, we headed to Siena. It is a beautiful old Medieval town with a beautiful Duomo (fancy Italian word for church) and a unique Piazza (fancy Italian name for town square) that is shaped like a shell. After eating an Italian lunch and enjoying a glass of Chianti, we let the kids run around the square terrorizing the pigeons and then lured them away with the promise of Gelati (fancy Italian name for ice cream.) All was well, until E started showing the signs of distress that a 2 year old shows when she's been forced to walk well over a mile and is about 45 minutes late for nap time. We quickly headed to the Duomo, but by the time we got there, it became clear that, although God would forgive us for bringing our melting down children into His house, the elderly sightseeers making their way off the tour busses would not. We skipped the duomo and started the half hour trek back to our car. So much for seeing the sites of Siena.
One of the images I had conjured up of our trip to Tuscany was of stopping at vineyards, enjoying a wine tasting, and buying a couple bottles of wine to take back to Switzerland with us. Then I remembered that the kids would be with us. And leaving the kids unattended in the car while we hang out at a winery would be only slightly less horrible than the moms you hear about in the news who leave their kids in the car while they hit the casino. But a friend of mine who has visited Tuscany with her kids, told me her daughters LOVED going to wine tastings. Something about running around in the cellar with the wine casks while they tasted wine. So I thought, "What the hell, let's give it a try!" and it took me about 3 seconds to convince Bryan that this was a good idea. So we stopped at a very industrial looking wine store, dragged the kids out of the car and took them inside with the strict instructions not to touch ANYTHING! They did, in fact, not touch anything, but immediately started in with their favorite game they like to call, "Come and get me, E!" It's a simple game, really, that involves Z and C getting right in E's face and yelling, "COME AND GET ME, E!". E then shrieks with delight and begins chasing her brothers around while they taunt her. The thing about E is that she has some sort of malfunction that inexplicably causes her to shriek when she runs. She seriously never runs without an ear-piercing shriek coming out of her mouth. It's cute at the park, but not so much at a wine tasting. So Bryan quickly whisked them out of the store while I became the family wine taster. When I met him out in the parking lot with my bottles clinking, I knew by the look on his face that our day of family wine tasting was over.
As we continued our ride home, Bryan suggested he stop at some wineries and he would stay in the car with the kids while I went in, sampled some wine, and purchased more wine for our collection. Wine tasting by myself seemed a bit pathetic, but not as pathetic as coming home from Tuscany without a hefty supply of vino. So we saw a sign pointing us towards a winery, and Bryan turned in and headed down a winding driveway. There were several cars in the gravel driveway, so I figured it would be plenty busy. I walked around the side of the house where I heard voices and opened what I thought was the door to the wine store. I walked in the front door to find a table of old Italien men smoking ciggies. They briefly glanced at me, and then went on with their conversation. I was just getting ready to bolt when a girl came walking down the stairs with a basket of laundry and said, "Vino?" I have 3 words in my Italian vocabulary, and not surprisingly, Vino is one of them. I nodded and she put here laundry basket down, grabbed some keys, and led me back out the door. Around the back of the house, she unlocked a door that led to a dark room with a big metal vat and a small Italian man wearing a lab coat. I was relieved to see another door that led into the house, alleviating my concerns that the little lab coated man was kept locked in the little wine room. The two exchanged a few words in Italian while the girl searched for the bottle of wine I would taste. She grabbed a bottle opened it and was about to pour some in my glass, when the little Italian man abruptly said something to her. She grabbed the cork, walked over to the step ladder the man was perched on next to the wine vat and he took a sniff. I imagined he would sniff the cork and say something like, "Magnifico!!!" However, he crumped his nose, and said, "Eh." He then said something in Italian that I am guessing meant, "This wine is practically vinegar, but feed it to the stupid American. Anyone ignorant enough to stumble upon our lame excuse for a winery will probably be willing to buy it." She poured me a glass, I smelled it, (cuz that's what they do in the movies) and then took a swig. It tasted like a combination of grape juice and battery acid. She then told me, in English, that she would be right back. She needed to get some bread so I could also taste their olive oil that they make. At this point, I again considered bolting. I knew my options were limited. I either had to buy a bottle of their nasty wine with the homemade looking label, or run like hell past the little Italian man still perched on the stepladder. It kinda felt like I was sitting in this family's living room, and since I was raised not to hurt people's feelings (probably to a fault) there was no way I could leave without making a purchase. So she came back with bread, poured a big pool of olive oil on it, and poured me another taste of wine. This wine was slightly better than the first bottle. The olive oil tasted like, well, olive oil. So I kindly complimented her on her wine, told her I needed go, and handed her 10 euros for a crappy bottle of wine. This was the end of my solo wine tasting career.
The next day, we headed to Pisa to see the famous Leaning Tower. We decided to first stop in the town of Lucca that is famous for the well preserved walls that encircle the town. You can actually walk all the way around the town atop the town walls and we were told you can even rent a family bike there. We enticed the kids with the promise that mommy and daddy would pedal them around the town on top of a wall. This peaked their interest since it sounded kind of like we would be performing a circus act. However, we hadn't anticipated the torrential downpour that would overtake us 30minutes into our visit. Our stay in Lucca ended soon after it began, with us buying a 15 Euro used umbrella from a man who took advantage of the fact that we were huddled underneath a covered entryway. A family of 5 plus 1 overpriced umbrella equals 1 dry mommy and 4 wet family members. In my defense, I was wearing a pair of suede boots. Who can blame me.
After arriving at our car completely drenched, we crossed our fingers that the weather would clear and headed towards Pisa. There was no way we were coming to Italy and not catching a glimpse of the leaning tower. We caught a break and the rain stopped as we entered the town of Pisa. We all oohed and aahed as we caught glimpses of the tower on our way into town and to the cathedral square where the tower is located. I really expected the Leaning Tower to be all hype, and was fully prepared to find it overrated. Not that I'm a Debbie Downer or anything, (Waaah, Waaahhh, Waaaaahhhhhh....) but how impressive can a leaning tower really be? Well, let me tell you, I couldn't have been more wrong. It is really a beautiful sight and it's pretty amazing how much it leans. It IS a total tourist trap and I saw more than my fair share of cheesy tourists doing the "Hey look! I'm holding up the tower of Pisa!" pictures. Can you believe people actually do that? Seriously. The Mjaanes family is much too sophisticated for such low brow shenanigans.
We walked around and admired the tower and visited it's Cathedral before heading back to the car. Upon entering the car, we began to notice a less than pleasant smell. Perhaps the smell of 3 young children who have been caught in the rain? Or maybe just the funky smell of a family car that has been on one too many road trips? We didn't think much of it as we cracked the window and headed back to the villa.
Our last day in Tuscany, we headed to the town of San Gimignano. The smell in the car had gotten considerably more potent overnight, and we now clearly identified it as the not easily mistaken stench of urine. We figured E must have had a little accident in the car after we were all rain soaked in Lucca, and decided we would wash her car seat cover as soon as we returned. So off we headed to the quaint medeival town of San Gimignano in what we began referring to as the Urinemobile. We cranked down the windows and enjoyed a brisk drive through Tuscany with the wind blowing our hair. When one of the kids got too cold, the windows would go up, until someone (usually Bryan) couldn't handle the stench anymore and we'd go back to freezing our asses off. Not quite how I'd imagined our drive through the vineyards of Tuscany. After a brief visit to San Gimignano, the sun through the car windows had created a nice little oven out of our Urinemobile, and the smell was beyond potent. So we again opened the windows and began our trip home. This is when Bryan began to crack us all up with his hysterical Italian accent. "Eeet smelllls liika PEEEEEE pee!" He must have said those words 100 times on the way home, and I laughed until I cried each time he said it. Maybe I was delirious from having the freezing cold wind whipping in my face, or perhaps I'm just easily amused, but I can't even think about him saying it without laughing.
When we got back to the villa, the first order of business was getting the car seat cleaned out. As I headed towards our place with the kids, Bryan stayed behind to investigate the source of the Urinemobiles new scent. I suddenly heard him holler and turned around to see him doing a strange dance with an "I'm about to dry heave" look on his face. As it turns out, E must have been graced with an extra large bladder, and when Bryan began pulling the car seat out of the car, a stream of pee began draining from the bottom of her car seat all over him. Only the Mjaanes family would travel through tuscany with a pool of urine in the bottom of our daughters car seat. It's hard to believe the volume of pee could have resulted from one accident, but it's hard to retrieve honest information from a 2 1/2 year old.
That pretty much sums up our trip to Tuscany. We realized we needed to lower our expectations when traveling with the kids and never made it to Florence. Sad but true. But Bryan and I enjoyed making dinner together after the kids went to bed each night and enjoyed more than our fair share of wine. And although we might not have experienced the romantic side of Tuscany, we had a lot of laughs and made a lot of memories. And whenever I smell the unmistakable smell of urine, I'll fondly remember our family trip to Tuscany.
Our next stop, Venice! What better place to take a 2 year old than a city with lots of canals...
