Adventures in Europe Trip Report Day one and two

Jacqui’s Adventures in Europe: Part Un, Italy

(note- I'll be posting these a few days at a time, and right now I can't download my photos off my camera. My card reader makes my laptop crash... I guess I should have checked that out before I left. Anyhoo- no photos right now. I'll try to add some later. Just wanted to let everyone know what a good time I'm having in Europe!)

Day One
Saturday-Sunday: June 24/25, 2006
The longest day ev-vah.

I left the house at 11:00 am this morning, or was that yesterday…. I guess technically it was yesterday. I’ve not had much sleep as I start out this dream trip to Europe.

I checked in for my flight to Italy two hours early, as recommended for international flights. Fortunately, or unfortunately (however you look at it) Huntsville is not known for its long check in lines, or long security checks. I was next in line to check in, handed them my drivers’ license for id, and then was told they needed to see my passport. Yippee! It hit me then, this is not a normal trip. It’s an INTERNATIONAL TRIP!!! No problems checking in, my one checked bag was well under the 50 pound limit. It’s the other bag that I was worried about.

I bought a cool new backpack, so I could take my heavy laptop, and not shout out “hey I’m carrying a laptop” with my bag. I really like it, but its benefits are its downfall. There is way too much storage room, which means lots of space to put lots of things, thus making it cumbersome and heavy. I had to carry my flute and piccolo, etc. in it, too. But it worked. I had to take the flute gig bag out to make it fit in the overhead compartment or under the seat.

The flight from Huntsville to Atlanta was uneventful. Still, the excitement was building! I was really going to Italy! In Atlanta I met up with the rest of the Twickenham Winds. It was interesting traveling by plane with a group, a new experience for me. We had a block of seats mid plane. It was funny to see other passengers watch us being friendly with each other. They probably wondered how we knew so many people… or were we just a gregarious bunch of people, carrying strangely shaped carry-on bags. (bass clarinet, clarinets, saxes, flutes, oboes—the rest were checked.)

The person seated next to me wanted to sit by her husband, so we did a little moving around. We were able to have our little group of four sit two and two, behind the other. Theo sat next to me, and Kim and Sandra in front of us. It was nice to sit next to someone I knew well.

Our flight was a normal long overseas flight. I tried to sleep and drifted in and out. The food was okay, I think I had some sort of chicken with sauce. I listened to some of Theo’s jazz music on his mp3/phone/pda/translator. (That thing really came in handy!) We arrived on time in Milan, 
but had to wait awhile for our oversized and odd shaped luggage (instruments) to make it to the terminal.

And then we got on the bus, our home away from home for the next nine days. The seats were comfortable, but did not have very much legroom. Theo became my travel buddy/bus buddy. I’m sure glad I get along with Theo, because we spent a lot of time together on that bus!

We departed for Florence and to the Uffizi Museum. Along the way we stopped at a roadside stop called the Autogrill.  
It’s kind of like a cross between a food court and a 7eleven. I had my first Italian pasta with white sauce and it was very good! At that point I didn’t have any Euros so I checked to see if they took Visa. They did. I picked up some prepackage gelato too. Everything was great, especially for roadside food. Or maybe I was just hungry.

I was excited about going to the Uffizi, but I have to say, it wasn’t what I expected. Maybe it was the jetlag or the fact that we had to walk a couple of kilometers from the bus to the museum, or maybe it was the 6 sets of stairs we had to climb at the museum entrance, but I sure dragged through the Uffizi. I wanted to see Michelangelo’s David statue, but we found out it was at another location. We did see Botticelli’s Venus, and Primavera paintings. They were huge! And darker than I recalled from those reports I did about Botticelli in elementary school. At the end of the museum tour they had a cool exhibit on Da Vinci, but like I said before, I just wasn’t into it and wanted to sit down.

  

The architecture in Florence was something else. Theo and I had to find a farmacia to buy bandaids because we were both developing blisters. Yes, already. On the first day. I think it was a combination of the heat and the swelling feet, because I had worn my shoes a lot and never gotten blisters. I also needed a bancomat (atm) to get some cash. So we wandered around the museum area a bit, found both the atm and the farmacia, and the lifesize copy of “David”. Cool. I could spend some time in that town.  
But alas, we had no more time in Florence.

We made the long trek back to the bus and to the much appreciated air conditioning! It’s hot outside! We saw some beautiful scenic views of Florence (quick look outside the right window and see Florence!). It was much more mountainous than I thought it would be. Absolutely beautiful scenery, olive trees, and vineyards. I like Tuscany. I need to go back there!

We got to the Casa Frassi villa that evening. What service, and a great room. We barely had time to freshen up (remember, we’ve been wearing the same thing for 30 hours) before we had to report to dinner. This ain’t no autogrill!

Dinner was in a beautiful setting overlooking the hills of Tuscany out on a patio surrounded by lots of flowers and a very loud cicada.

We were served a four or five course meal (I don’t know if you count the bread at the beginning a course). 1st-Bread, 2nd-plate of fat, (well that’s what we called it. It had five different thinly sliced meats and one of them looked like pure fat from a slab of bacon. I passed on that one, tried all the rest.) 3rd- pasta (which is way different than the Prego sauce I serve at home. Mainly meat, not much sauce, noodles cooked perfectly al dente.) 4th- The real meat (I was told these were different parts of wild boar) with a rucula (I think?) salad, and finally 5th- dessert. The dessert was divine. I wish I remember what it was called. Was it called Tiramisu? Dinner was definitely heavy on meats, but that is typical for this part of the country.

I was so tired so we went straight to bed. Susan (horn player) was my roommate, and I really enjoy her company. And she let me borrow her electricity converter thing-a-ma-jig since I couldn’t get mine to work.

Tomorrow: Siena

Day Two: Monday, June 25, 2006

I woke off at 6:30 am and went over to our window at Hotel Casa Frassi, and I think I actually screamed out loud: “We have a terrace overlooking the Tuscan hills!!!!” I was awestruck. I know I looked out the windows the night before, but somehow I overlooked the minor detail that our window was actually doors out to this beautiful terrace.   I have died and gone to heaven. This is one of the most beautiful areas of the world I have ever been too. I know there is that “under the Tuscan Sun” tourist idea-attitude, but this place really is magical. And it’s not the touristy cool building, place or attraction magic, but a quiet, calm, peaceful magic. It’s the attitude of the locals, the company of good friends, mixed in with some gorgeous views of rolling hills covered with vineyards and tall lonely cedar trees. I hated to leave there. But luckily, we had another night there. Today, Siena.

First, though, breakfast. Breakfast at the Casa Frassi consists of a charming room set up with fully set tables with tablecloths and several tables full of various food and drink items. They call it an “American Breakfast” on the sign, but there was stuff there you only find in Europe.  Croissants, cake (yes, I had a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast, but it was different, it was thin, made with bittersweet chocolate, and hey, this is Italy!), soft boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt, hard crusted bread, cheese (a very mild white cheese, similar to swiss cheese made from sheep’s milk), some other various food items, and fresh squeezed juices. I have to say the highlight is the fresh squeezed blood orange juice. Yes, it sounds gross, but it is delicious! It’s just red orange juice, sweet nectar orange juice!!! I grabbed an orange to eat, but was full so I kept it in case I got hungry later on. Off to Siena.

It’s become a joke that everywhere we go, we ask Claudio how long it will take, and he replies: about 30 minutes, only in a lovely Italian accent: “Tir-ty minutes”. (make sure you roll your R’s and put the emphasis on the first syllable.) So, supposedly Siena was about a thirty minute ride, but it turned out to be much longer. We finally drove into this very old medieval town. Actually, we couldn’t drive into the old town, we had to park outside of the enormous city wall. It had to be 50 or 60 feet high and about 10 feet thick at the top, more at the bottom. We strolled around to one of the entrances and found a breathtaking view of this town. A huge duomo (main cathedral) highlighted the landscape. We stopped first at the church of San Dominico. It’s the home of Siena’s patron saint, St. Catherine. In fact, there is a decapitated head in a glass covered box that is said to be St. Catherine’s. The inside of the chapel was beautiful: stained glass, candles burning and paintings. I was a little grossed out by the head, though.

We were lead by a cute Italian tour guide named Maria Elena. She was very knowledgeable about all things Siena, but had a hard time keeping our group together and close enough together to hear her, despite her mini mike and amp system hanging around her neck. As we strolled up and down centuries old cobblestone road we learned of the history of the various Cantor Districts. I took some great photos of cool old things, like the iron circles you tied your horse up to.   After the walking tour which ended at the Duomo, we passed on going inside because of the extremely long line.

We decided to stroll through the town, pick up a light lunch and some souvenirs. Lunch consisted solely of my first real gelato in Italy. Ahh, the not-too-sweet, creamery gelato. I had three flavors: ciacolatto, strattiatella, like a chocolate chip, and caramel. Believe it or not, I got hooked on the caramel. One of the best “lunches” to be had in Italy! Postcards were purchased, and trinkets overlooked… except I did buy a Siena magnet.   There was some beautiful painted ceramics, but I didn’t even consider them, considering how they would probably not make it home in one piece. I did buy a small watercolor print of a typical Tuscan view. I’d like to have it framed and put it up in my house.

So far, Siena is my favorite town of the trip. That night we went to another little unknown, at least to me, Italian town called Colle val d’Elsa. We had trouble pronouncing that one. We just called it the “Elsa” town. We had a few hours to kill there before our concert, so we brought our instruments and uniforms to change into later. You see, we needed to get there by 5 pm so Claudio, our guide, could catch the Italy-Australia soccer game on tv in some bar. He said most Italians would be watching it so this quaint little town with some great *views* would be all ours. He wasn’t kidding. We saw maybe 10 or 15 people on the streets. We headed to where we were performing (in the town square in front of the duomo) so we could know where to head to later. Then we searched for food. This town was dead, I tell ya. Where were all the people? Even finding an open restaurant proved tricky. We finally found a good prospect with tables out front. I ordered a panini ham and cheese sandwich and bruschetta. I’m sorry, Italy, but I still like the bruschetta from Olive Garden better. They used canned tomatoes here and no shaved parmesan cheese topping it. The panini was good, but I can’t get used to the hard crust on the bread. I mean, after eating this sandwich I had cuts on the inside of my mouth. Not kidding. But it was delicious! Oh, and at the restaurant, we ordered bottled water and they actually gave us ICE!!  That is an extremely rare sight. Of course, I took a photo of it! Dinner was topped off with, what else, Gelato!

After a long, leisurely, probably two hour dinner, we took a short stroll of the city. From the old center section up on a hill where we were, you could see views of the new part of the city. It was fun because cars were driving around honking and people were on the streets yelling. We figured out that Italy had won the soccer, oops, I mean football, match. Yay Italy!

Time to change into our lovely “uniforms” consisting of, depending on the day, either khaki pants or black pants and our wine-colored Twickenham Winds polo shirt. The concert was to be perfomed up on a set up stage in the square. I had to sit right on the edge of the dropoff. Kinda scary. But scarier was just performing in Italy for the first time. I was nervous and it showed. Especially right before the last piece, David Spencer, our director, says, “pull out Stars and Stripes for the encore.” Aahhh!

The concert was a great hit. I cannot believe how much the Italians, and I’m sure most Europeans are so supportive of the arts. I’ve never had an audience quite like that in the states. They were photographing us, videotaping us, singing and clapping along, and generally really enjoying our performance. Total strangers! In the states, most of the people that come to our concerts are friends and relatives, not just strangers from the city come to listen to some music. Maybe it’s the attitude towards time that the Italians have. Life is just a little simpler and slower than ours. People in America are too busy to take time for an amateur music concert. We received a standing ovation and lots of authentic Italian “BRAVO’s” from the audience. Stars and Stripes went fine, even though I completely forget what I thought I had memorized and had to rely on the music. This trip is giving me such a broader view of music appreciation. The locals had a reception for us with homemade Italian desserts and sangria, a local sweet wine. (Side note: it hasn’t been hard to be one of the only non-drinkers on the trip… everyone is supportive and goes out of their way to make sure I have something. I am drinking an awful lot of bottled water!) After the concert we loaded our “schtuff” and ourselves for our trip back to the Casa Frassi in Castellina.

When we arrived to the hotel I wanted to show off our room and terrace to a couple of people, and when we were out on the terrace we looked up to the most amazing site. Out here in the middle of Tuscany, the stars were so bright, and so many of them. You could see the milky way. What a sight! I wanted to stay out there and stargaze, but I was tired and headed to bed. Another busy day tomorrow… off to see Roma!