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.

Le tre amiche

As I mentioned in my last post, we had two of our friends visit us in our Rome home recently. Rachel and Lo spent just over a week in Italy, spending time with us during both weekends and traveling together to other cities in between. It was so lovely having them here, and Indigo was beyond ecstatic that Auntie Rachel and Cantaloupe (her attempt at saying Auntie Lo) had come to see her.

Lo and Rachel, with the Eternal City stretched out behind them

The day after our adventures at the Vatican, the three of us decided to do one of Rick Steve's (forever altered in my mind now to Stevie Nicks, as he was called by some obnoxious American tourists) walking tours of Rome. We set off down the hill and through Trastevere, crossing the Tiber River into the heart of Rome.

Our first stop was supposed to be Campo de Fiori, home to Rome's largest outdoor market. But the thing about the city is, it's filled with hundreds of tiny, twisting, cobblestone roads that seem more like secret passages than honest-to-goodness roads. So it's quite easy to end up someplace entirely unexpected (although probably delightful).

We ended up, unexpectedly and delightfully, at an excavation site, and peered in. I think it was Rachel that noticed the first cat, then the second and third - and then we realized that there were at least a dozen cats lounging amongst the overgrown grass and broken columns and stairs. We had happened upon a cat sanctuary. There was a little office down inside the site, with instructions to ring the bell if interested in adopting a cat. The Italian government, by the way, pays people to feed the cats in their neighborhoods. It's actually a real job, and it's brilliant. Rome does not have a rat problem; the people take care of the cats, and the cats take care of the rats. Why don't we do that in the States?

Another gem we found was this tiny church seemingly squished amongst the buildings in the piazza. There must be hundreds of these little churches scattered about the neighborhoods of Rome. I find them utterly charming.

We finally made it to Campo de Fiori, and were aggressively propositioned to by several Italian men trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. One sang "Born in the USA" and tried to give us kisses. Another danced for our favor. Rachel, being the most immune to this kind of persuasion, steered us to a little place where no one was pressuring us, and we discovered the eighth wonder of the world: zucchini fritters. Honestly, they're really hush puppies with an almost token amount of green in them, but who cares? They count as vegetables, right? So. Good.

Onward, then, to Piazza Navona, which I immediately fell in love with. Possibly because of the trio of Baroque fountains there. Possibly because of the two amazing toy stores there. Possibly because it is the site of the annual Christmas Market, which I am so excited to take Indigo to. Maybe I just really like this guy to the right. Can you blame me?

We lost ourselves again, but eventually found our way to the Pantheon. I admit to being incredibly naive here, but I had thought, illogically, that it would still house the original pantheon of Roman gods. No, of course it doesn't; it was silly to think that it wouldn't have been converted to Christianity long ago, with the original heathen statues and art destroyed (sob). But I was disappointed nonetheless. The structure is breathtaking, of course - completely unbelievable, really. But disappointingly Christian. Ah, well.

The outside of the Pantheon

We saw the Trevi Fountain, of course. And the Spanish Steps. And a million breathtaking buildings, ruins, obelisks, architectural elements, fountains.



Santa Maria Novella

The age and history of Rome is amazing, but Florence - Florence is simply gorgeous. I took the high-speed train (we really need to get that mode of travel in the US!) there to meet Rachel and Lo, who had been visiting Venice, and the three of us spent the day "swanning" around (as Lo likes to say), looking at art and architecture, and having a lovely time.
There were so many beautiful buildings and artistic touches, everywhere. The Basilica of Santa Maria Novella is covered in stripes, but it's not painted - the builders actually used different white and green stone to achieve that look. I found myself wishing that I knew more about art history, so that I could identify all the things that I was seeing. We also went and toured the Uffizi Gallery, which houses a huge collection of amazing art, but probably most famously Botticelli's Birth of Venus. It was a thoroughly enjoyable museum experience, because the gallery limits the number of guests who can enter at one time, so it does not get overcrowded.

We walked through the city, and personally I loved the smaller, more intimate feel of the place, as compared to Rome. I love Rome as well, but Florence feels so much more manageable. And I felt like I had a good sense of the place, even after just 9 or 10 hours there. I still don't feel as though I have a full grasp of Rome, even after being here a month, but I suppose that's because it seems so vast.

We walked over the Ponte Vecchio, and did some shopping. Florence is famous for its leather, and we found several shops to peruse. One in particular was quite nice, and we had a nice repore with the shopkeep - and I ended up haggling a little bit to get a better price on a leather bag (not for me, sadly). But still! I haggled. Then we had a delicious dinner as night fell, and a beautiful walk back to the train station to catch a train back to Rome.

The Arno River

Then alas, came Lo and Rachel's last day with us in Rome. They went to Ostia for the day, which I regret missing, but Josh and Indigo were both sick at home. I went out for one final dinner with my ladies, and had some of the best pasta I've ever had in my life. (Some day I will write a separate post devoted to the food I've had here in Italy, I promise). A last walk around the heart of downtown, then we caught separate cabs and went our separate ways, me to my new home and they to their old. I look forward to catching up with them again next June.

Arrividerci!