March 26, 2004
Lucca, Siena, Cortona, Farneta, Roma...
Still no pictures to post, but I've got my fingers crossed that it will happen soon. Rachel and I finished out our time with Sigrid and Roberto improving our Italian and seeing the countryside of northern Tuscany (and eating really, really well) before pushing further south.
We moved on to Farneta to a future bed & breakfast owned by the parents of a former co-worker of Rachel's. We didn't really know what to expect except that they probably wouldn't speak English. Yes that prospect sounded as awkward to me as it does to you. Fortunately they were very sweet and welcoming. I've never seen anyone burn calories as fast as Senore Taffa did trying to speak English. He actually was quite understandable and did not hesitate to make use of his English-Italian dictionary. Senora Taffa spoke basically no English, but was kind enough to speak Italian very slowly to Rachel and myself so we could make an attempt to understand it as Spanish and French respectively. Hopefully we didn't get too spoiled in our week+ of staying for free and eating piles and piles of authentic Tuscan cuisine. We also managed to see the less-touristy-but-just-as-beautiful-as-Florence towns of Lucca, Siena, and Cortona before parting ways.
My whirlwind tour of Italy is wrapping up in Rome tonight as I'll fly to Athens tomorrow. I toured the Vatican today with Omar, who is from the Phillipines but works for Proctor and Gamble in London and sounds like a Canadian, and Juliana, a journalist from Brazil who speaks some sort of a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian well enough that the Italians we ran into could understand her surprisingly well. The various Vatican monuments and sights were quite impressive, but it struck us as odd that the church had so many riches on display while there were homeless mothers of multiple children outside begging for change. Fortunately, the Italian strikes managed not to affect us at all because we walked to the Vatican and caught one of the few running buses back. There are a few bottles of Peroni chilling in the hostel fridge for me and Omar (Juliana is on her way home to Brazil), but I think it will be an early night so I can leave tomorrow at 8AM for the airport.