Things

In my Halloween post, I mentioned that it was not easy to Buy Things in Italy. Let me elaborate.

We take for granted the conveniences we enjoy in the US. There are so many more things in the US - I mean material things. But it is so easy to buy things. All sorts of things. Things you don't even think of as essential things, because it's so easy to obtain them. Here? There's no Target, or similar place where you can go and buy all the various things you need. Instead you must shop in 15 different tiny little shops, and try to talk to the shopkeeps about what you need (because shops are so small, merchandise is stacked up or shoved under tables or in secret drawers or hanging from the ceiling). It is hard to explain what you need when you speak baby-talk Italian. Miming can be helpful, albeit embarrassing.

There's this hardware store near Indigo's school, where I went to look for a fan in September. It's actually two stores, but the store with all the things is locked. And packed, from floor to ceiling, with an endless assortment of things in no order whatsoever. To get something from that store, I had to go next door to an entirely separate space (which is taken up by a huge counter and lots of counter-to-ceiling drawers presumably filled with yet more things), explained to the man behind the counter what I was looking for, then I followed him over to the locked store, which he opened. I followed him through a tiny little path winding through the mounds of things, and he kind of dove into the morass, pulling out a fan, then another. There was no fan "section". He literally reached into a pile in one area, waded deeper into the store, and pulled out another. I chose one, then followed him back to the other store to purchase it.

Not only are things harder to obtain, there's less choice. I think it was Lo who said, when visiting, that product choice was really what the US is famous for the world over: you can basically name your price, and buy nearly anything at the the price point you want. There's less choice here. It often seems like there's a Walmart-quality version, or a designer-version of any given thing, and very little in-between.

 

But it is immensely enjoyable shopping in the outdoor markets. I do shop at the local grocery store for many items, but I get all my fruits and veggies (and sometimes cheese and bread) at the markets. And the flip side to not having convenience here, is that Italy boasts so many gorgeous artisan boutiques - the like of which you'd rarely see in the US. Like this glass lamp shop in the heart of Rome:

Not only does it have a spectacular storefront, it has this huge basement filled with glass wares. It's really like a huge, magical, hidden-treasure grotto down there. I've taken to referring to it as the glass grotto.

Then of course, there are lovely little shops down gorgeous, winding roads that have made-in-Rome wares that you won't find anywhere else. I found a little kids' clothes shop - the woman tailor was inside, sewing away as I entered. Turns out she's Swedish, but has lived and worked in Rome for the last 30 years. Her clothes are bright, cheerful, and utterly adorable.

The paper stores in Florence are exquisite. Here's a tiny sample of what you might see:

Don't they look like textiles?  Amazing.

I've got to get more pictures of the toy shops soon (Christmas is coming, so I'm sure I'll have the opportunity soon). I did go into this one shop in Orvieto that had this wonderful little - mobiles? Models? I'm not really sure what they were. But I want to cover a ceiling of my home in tiny little hot-air balloons, now.

And here, of course, is one of the open-air markets, at Campo de' Fiori:

A Day in the Country, Part 2: Olive Picking

This past weekend we had the opportunity to see some more of the Italian countryside. A friend here at the Academy owns a house in Giove, Umbria, which has roughly 40 olive trees on the land (also a number of grapevines). It's olive harvest time, and so she invited the community up to her house for olive picking, a chance to see the olives pressed, and general food and merriment.

It's an easy trip by train - about an hour. I was pleased to see that about 25 people came, some of whom I don't see that often, outside of mealtimes. A number of children came as well, so I knew that Indigo would have plenty to entertain her if she tired of picking olives.

So, the house. Well. The view was okay. ;)

 Yeah, yeah - I was utterly entranced. Of course. And the smell - the air was both fresh and clean, yet also smelled rich - of earth and heat and olives. Lovely.

I thought that olive picking would be about the same as apple picking, but there are a few differences. For one, olives are a lot smaller, so there's some fear that any that fall from the trees could easily be squashed (and potentially ruined) underfoot. Or lost. So they spread large nets under the trees, then gently use small mini-rakes to comb through the branches, or even a sort of electric rake that agitates the branches. People may also climb the trees to get the olives higher-up. Basically the idea is to unload all the olives into the waiting net below, then gently move/pour the olives from the net into the baskets/crates. The children were especially good at this final task.

Indigo is at that age where she loves to put little things into bigger containers, so she actually really loved finding the olives that had dropped into the nets, and transferring them into the crates. Of course, she loved sitting on mommy and daddy's shoulders and picking olives straight from the trees, too.

After we were done picking olives, we had a lovely lunch together on the porch, overlooking what seemed to be all of Umbria. Some of our company had stopped picking olives earlier and had made some pasta and this wonderful cheese-sauce that was amazing slathered on bread...mmm. The children played, and we all relaxed, and then a number of people went to watch the olives get pressed. Josh and I decided to take Indigo home, as it was growing late, and I had the rare pleasure of holding my sleeping child for the duration of the train ride home. It used to be that I held her every day as she napped, but now that she's so big, it doesn't happen all that often. It was the perfect end to a really amazingly lovely day.

A Day in the Country, Part 1: Orvieto

Last week three dear friends from college came to town, and we were fortunate to spend several days in their company. We've been friends with Iggy, Maggie and Anandamayi for years, but haven't seen them since 2009, or as it's affectionately called in our circle, The Year of Many Weddings (including our own). We met them for dinner a couple nights while they were in town, and we went on a day trip together to Orvieto last weekend.

I didn't really know anything about Orvieto when we set out, except that it's in Umbria, and reportedly beautiful. It's an easy trip from Rome by train - about an hour and ten minutes. It was also Indigo's first train ride, and she was excited to be on a "choo-choo". We ate bread and excellent cheese and salami on the ride, and very soon we were there.

At first I was confused - where was the town? And then my friends told me that we had to take a funicular up the mountainside, because Orvieto was essentially about 52 stories up. I'd never been on a funicular before (it's essentially a tram with two cars that counterbalance one another; while one goes up, the other comes down), and was a little worried about how Indigo would react to the ride, but she was fine.

And then - we were in the town. We decided to first explore the Etruscan ruins. Indigo had a blast running around, and managed to find the one muddy puddle in the whole city - and jumped in. Of course. The view of the countryside from the ruins was breathtaking.

We then walked down the street into the city proper, and it was just gorgeous. I fell in love immediately. It really reminded me of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, in feel. It was yet another isolated city/fortress built atop a bunch of rocks - Orvieto isn't an island, of course, but it is on top of a mountain, so the feel is very similar. And it has similar narrow, curving streets and tiny shops filled with both artisanal wares and tourist kitsch.

We walked through the town, meandering slowly towards the Duomo, which was "striped" with different colors of stone (I'm told this style is famous in Siena, but there's also a church in Florence that uses the same technique). On the steps of the cathedral, Indigo befriended a small Italian boy, and the two of them ran around together for a while, until I finally coaxed her away with the promise of gelato. Which was quite tasty.

The piazza that surrounds the cathedral is quite large, and happily (mostly) car-free, so Indigo was free to run around quite a bit. Most of the small, winding roads were car-free, actually, so it's a great town for little kids. I could let her run without worrying too much, except when she spied a ceramics store (of which there were many), and then we were in trouble! She kept saying that she wanted "a teapot", and would head into the store to try to grab the first pitcher or bowl that she saw. She gave us a few heart attacks.

After a quick dinner it was sadly, time to leave. I am actually happy that we didn't see everything that we had wanted to, because it means that we have a good excuse to take a trip back to the town some time.  Maybe around Christmastime, or in the Spring.