Bagno Vignoni

When we get out of the car at Bagno Vignoni, Sebastian is teary.  I think he's just hungry.  We're going for another 3pm lunch; one of these trips we'll master the art of planning and finding restaurants open for meals at the right times.  Finally he tells me, "I had planned for us to hike, then have lunch, then go to the hot water spring, and now it's 3:30, and we don't know what of those we're even going to do."

He's right.  Entirely right.  Last night Daniel and I flipped through Italy guidebooks looking for a spot for a day visit.  When the kids were antsy, we said that they could participate in the planning.  The two of us had been going back and forth, indecisive, open to too many options and not enough at the same time.  Ten minutes later Sebastian told me, "I found a place.  We're going to Bagno Vignoni tomorrow.  We're doing an 8 mile loop trail hike, then lunch, then going to a hot spring."

Daniel and I were thrilled.  An hour and a half ride, a hike, food, a terme.  We were in.

The next morning we grab colazione at Happiness Cafe two blocks over, feeling like normal, relaxed folks on an Italy Saturday morning.  When Daniel goes to get the car, some of us pop into the cartoleria (stationary store) to get school supplies.  We text Daniel, and he decides to go get some of the kids' books laminated/covered (per school policy).  We buy more pens at another store, meet up with Daniel, then head to Upim (department store) to get school clothes for Connor.  When Upim doesn't have all the clothes we need, we head to OVS (another department store).  When Upim and OVS don't have the pencil cases all the second and third graders have (who knew?), we stop at Ipercoop.  Then.  Then we leave the environs of Viterbo and head to Tuscany.

So, yes, Sebastian's right: he made a super plan, and we are not executing it.  Or we are executing it six stops and four hours later than planned.   We can't even find lunch.

--------------------------------------------------------

Hannah and I find the red and white trail signs while we await cold sandwiches (post gelato) at a bar good enough to serve us at Bagno Vignoni.  We meet a man who advises our calling a friend of his in Viterbo ("the richest man in Viterbo," he tells us.  "Call him!  He'll have you over!"...this fact, that this man is indeed the wealthiest landowner is confirmed the next day by a Viterbese at the SYA picnic).

We hike the eight miles with the Tuscan hills around us and the river nearby.  Hannah gets soaked in the river as we all jump from rock to rock.  The kids play some bodyguard game in which we often hear Connor jumping out of the bush to scare someone.  We chat.  We admire the country.  We take breaks.  Talk.  Sit.  Walk some more.  We wonder, Can we do that peace walk from Perugia to Asissi in a few weeks?  Is it double this?  We know we have more walking to do.  Our feet hurt (no, we're not experienced hikers).  We're so proud of ourselves (okay, likely all of us except for Daniel, who knows that this is not a very long hike in real hiking terms).

-----------------------------------------------

We find our accommodations when we are about half an hour from finishing the trail.  Alto Vignoni. Daniel contacts the apartment owner, who has not actually received our reservation.  No matter: within moments of the phone call, the owner's wife and son and daughter have made up beds and welcomed us and are ready to drive us to a nearby restaurant for dinner for a 9pm reservation.  It's 8:30 now.

But Sebastian wants to finish the loop back down to Bagno Vignoni.  We don't want to offend the owner, but we respect Sebastian's wish.  He's 12, and he's planned a simple, good, doable family trip.  In halting Italian I explain some to the owner, and Daniel explains some more to the owner, and his wife expresses her opinion that we're crazy to walk in the dark, and the son offers us his flashlight, and off we go to finish our loop to and find dinner in Bagno Vignoni.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Sunday morning.  The final part of the outing is the terme: the hot springs.  Preferably free.  We are almost ready to leave, grab breakfast, and find a terme.  And I slow everyone down.  I feel pain that I have never experienced (other than childbirth) before.  I can move only slowly.  I am reminded of having small kids with diapers and cleaning up after them, but there is no one to clean up after me except myself.  I can't believe it.  I am entirely incapacitated.  I will forever have more compassion for those with constipation and diarreah (don't we always think we will?), and especially for those with both at the same time.  I cannot fathom how this has happened.

Luckily, I have extra shorts and Sebastian's long shorts fit me, too.  A Dutch woman and her twenty-something daughter see me sitting in pain in the piazza and overhear my talking with Daniel trying to figure out what to do, how to move, what's next.  When it's just me and one kid again, the woman turns to me and says, "You're not feeling well?  Your stomach?"  I nod yes.  She says, "Here.  Take four of these with a lot of water.  They'll settle your stomach.  They take care of bacteria."  I don't know this woman.  Likely I'll never see her again.  And yet she is so kind, generous with no agenda.  I trust her entirely.  I take her pills (which have the town Amersfort written on the back...and this, to me, is a sign, a good omen, since Daniel's brother and family used to live in Amersfort, and we visited there four years ago).  A friend from home sent me a short video this summer on reasons it's good to travel.  One of the reasons was something along the lines of, You learn to have faith in people, to trust others.  Here's this random woman and her daughter and their pills.  People in the world are really this kind, this generous.

We see cars at a bath, but there's no parking space, and we keep driving.  When we finally park, we cross the road and check out some waterfall-esque steps where the spring comes down.  The kids immediately climb up.  I think the sulfur might cure me.  I walk in gently, climbing slowly.  It's warm, but not hot this low.   The kids climb and climb, laughing laughing, slipping, laughing, screaming.  I hang on to long blades of grass, the clay-ish ground beneath, using hands and feet to move, afeared of more internal accidents.   (And I'm thinking that even though I really hate the spot I'm in physically, I'm still pretty sure that it's easier that it's me rather than one of the kids.  There's so little to do for them when they're in this position.)

-------------------------------------------------

On the way home, we go to the SYA family picnic -- for students, host families, faculty, staff, families -- at Lake Bolsena.  The kids swim and play chicken fights.

It feels like summer again.

And the pills work.