Resolutions

Begin day without a screen.
Work less at home.
Play with kids.
Get to bed earlier.
Join a gym to run on treadmill or do yoga or pilates or swim.
Find more ways to practice Italian, e.g. read a children's book in Italian. (maybe in January?)
Sit.
Make dates with Daniel.
When I start imagining life at our house on Claremont Street, go do something here in Italy. 
Put away all screens an hour before bed (harder than it sounds).
Start reading before bed again.
Be kind.  Be kind.  Be kind.

November 30 in Viterbo

On Sundays after the 11:30am mass at Sacra Famiglia we often stop by a pasticceria outside the walls to get a treat and sit.  All over Viterbo I have noticed chocolate fish wrapped up in different colors of foil.  So bakeries sell chocolate fish, okay, I think.  A little different, but that's fine.  Maybe fish are special to them.

Last Sunday we walk into the pasticerria.  The boy there, maybe 17 or 18 or if not, certainly younger, recognizes us and takes the order of Hannah and Mary, the only ones ready.  I see not only the stacks of red and green and blue fish, but people actually buying the fish.  I ask this sweet Italian teenager, What's going on with the fish?

Parents buy a fish for each child and put it in the child's room for November 30, the feast of St. Andrew.  Each color foil tells you whether the chocolate inside is white, milk, or fondente.  Aha!  Now I know why the question of latte or fondente was going around on the WhatsApp group for Hannah's class.  I answered the Hannah preferred milk chocolate, but I didn't know why I was saying so.  I just tried to answer the question.

Daniel and kids left Rome tonight to make it back for school tomorrow.  Tonight on the phone I reminded Daniel, Put out the fish for the morning!

We might have missed Halloween, but we've got the Feast of Saint Andrew in Viterbo.

Other Notes on Rome

1. Go to the Aventine Hill for a break from the city.  Green, quiet, beauty.
2. We like the bread here better than the bread in Viterbo.
3. We like the gelato in Viterbo better than the gelato here.
4. Will someone some day want to raze the Coliseum because it was the scene of so much brutality?
5. What made the good emperors so good (yes, google-able) when they were still starting battles, enslaving nations, not acting with justice?
6. Was Rome ever a force for good? (not counting art)
7. Cis = 7 day pass for bus, tram, and subway...I find it easier to go by foot.  I trust my feet more than cars and buses and trams and trains.  But I got brave today, finally taking the metro and a tram out to the apple store to get batteries for our always-dying phones.  Unsuccessful venture in getting batteries, but successful in navigating my way there.  Confession: I walked the few kilometers back.  
8. Roma versus Real Madrid this past week: Real Madrid still the world champion.
9. Sign at a grocery store: no alcohol sold november 27 and 28 because of roma versus real madrid game.
10. Don't let Connor time races on Daniel's phone or he might set alarms that wake you up at midnight and 5:10am and make you grouchy first thing in the morning.
11. Living in Rome feels calm to me.  Visiting Rome for a week feels a bit stressful, wanting to get to everything, when really, one can never exhaust Rome.  When I lived in Rome, I was able to relax, see things, relax.  Live, not just hit places to see.
12. Come back for Dream Exhibit at some Bramante museum that students raved about.
13. Next time let kids skip Friday of school, too, so they can stay in Rome as long as I do.
14. Do a little less and sit a little more.
15. Don't put down restaurants that are near touristy spots too quickly: had a great lunch a few blocks from Vatican -- meals ranging from vegetable soup to pizza margherita to spaghetti carbonara...and tiramisu and a muffin for dessert.

Art in Rome

On the street

The guy outside the Coliseum who spray paints pictures of the Coliseum.  Cardboard boxes under his padded knees, mask over his mouth, same playlist going daily (Mary says), spray spray spray.  The crowd gathers.  He works works works.  He dries the painting with a can that sprays fire.  He holds it up to the crowd.  They clap.  They walk away.  Alternate ending: Daniel gives kids money not for painting but for the show (Monday).  Alternate ending (Tuesday): a man standing with a woman buys the new painting.  Sebastian says, "He paid for all of us."

Dancers on Via Cavour.  What we called breakdancing when I was in middle school.  But this seems more gymnastics.  One guy puts his head to the pavement, his body upside down, his arms supporting him at ninety degree angles.  But then he lifts his arms and spins -- spins -- around on that head.  His shirt falls a little and you see his totally muscled core.  The next guy does his walk, walk around the area to warm up, and then does a number that is one from the Olympics on that beam, where the gymnast holds onto the handles on the beam and swings his/her entire body around and around.  He is supported by only his hands on the pavement.  Hannah watches.  Watches.

At the Vatican

"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?
"This must be the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Nope."
Sebastian: Who decides what's famous and the best?  I mean, all these painting are good.  I could never do any of them.  But then we walk around looking for which painting is the DaVinci or the Caravaggio, when maybe that's not the one we actually liked the best ourselves, but now we know what to look for and what we're supposed to like.

Sebastian: It's funny that humans collect things other humans made and then put them in a place for humans to look at.  Like a little obsessed with ourselves.

Mary: You're going too fast.  I just want to look and take my time.  (Yesterday she said that she has been looking forward to so many things that she finds herself not enjoying the present but instead thinking about what's next, and she doesn't like that she's doing this.  Oh, honey, you're more self-aware than most of us.  Today she took at least thirty more minutes in the pinacoteca of the Vatican than the rest of us.  No rush, Mary girl.  Way to go.

What I noticed this time: the beauty and space of the building itself; the glorious rooms; the high ceilings; a red wall; the courtyards; the elegance of the rooms and of the buildings; the stairs as artwork and not just tough ascension to the museum.
Did I really not appreciate these before?  I was likely bee-lining it to get to Stanze di Rafael and the Sistine Chapel and Laocoon.  Or is it that I pay more attention to houses now?

What else I noticed: so many scenes are of struggle, violence, murder, death.  Perhaps I noticed this more this time around because I had little people with me, and I wondered how they were processing the martyrdom of St. Someone or the Crucifixion of St. Someone or the bodies in agony on the Last Judgement.  Sure, Laocoon and his sons are getting strangled by snakes sent by Minerva, but at least they know this story as a myth and we've talked about it so many times before.

At Santa Maria del Populo

me: Connor, which Caravaggio do you like better?
Connor: The one in the middle.
me: Huh.  That one's not a Caravaggio.  His are the ones on the sides.
Connor: I like the middle one.  I like the other ones, but I like the middle one best.  It's bright, and I like the colors.
me: I'll see who painted it.  Annibale Carraci.  (Really, Maureen, who cares who made it?)
Sebastian: See...people think they have to see the Caravaggio, but maybe that's not what they would like the most on their own.

Lush

After Villa Borghese races (Connor got the record) and go-carts and lunch by the Pantheon, Mary wants to go to a store she spotted earlier in the day: bath bombs galore.  I don't want to go.  My feet are tired, and I'm grumpy.  Hannah comes, too.  They endure my tired, grumpy mood.  We walk far, far down Via Cavour, almost all the way to Piazza del Populo.  Basins of water are just beyond the door.  An exhibit is starting.  "Parla l'Italiano? l'inglese? espanol?"  The artist will speak whatever language you need.  She runs the water and swirls a ball of what looks like colored chalk.  The water swirls, changes color.  The audience watches, mesmerized.  They put their hands in the purple tinted bubbly water.  Scents of lavender.

It's not spraypaints of the Coliseum this time.  It's bathbombs at Lush.  An attraction, a show, a sale.

Aventine Hill

Mary insisted on getting up this morning and going to the keyhole on the Aventine Hill.  I didn't want to go.  In June 2004 I rented an apartment on the Aventine Hill for a month while I took a Latin course with Reginald Foster.  Mornings I walked or ran and then sat on the veranda after watering the flowers.  Afternoons I went to class.  One morning on a walk, I noticed folks looking through a door, so, once they walked away, I walked up to the door, too.  Put my eye up to the hole there: magical gardens, green, and then, St. Peter's dome in the distance.  Magical.  Precious.

This year we saw the keyhole described in a guidebook.  Mary wanted to go.  Hannah, too.  6:45am we're up and navigating the roads from our hotel to the Aventine.  No phone.  I'm tired of my phone and of looking down instead of looking up and of getting lost even when I use my phone.  We snag a paper map from the hotel lobby and Mary finds our way.

Mary looks.  Mary lifts up Hannah so Hannah can see through the keyhole.  I look.

It's even more magical this time around.

Any time we see St. Peter's dome later on -- from a park, from the Vatican -- Mary says, But I liked it most when it was framed all by itself in the keyhole.

Christmas and Culture

I have on my list of things to do to find out about Christmas here.  This sounds silly perhaps: it's Christmas.  We all know what that is.  But I feel like we'll be figuring out the culture all year, and still we'll have so much to learn.  I mean, at home we do teacher gifts -- will that be okay here or just strange? do kids here believe in Santa Claus?  There are signs for Black Friday and Black Friday week here.  In fact, today is Black Friday.  But we're not sure that the Italian stores actually know the origin of Black Friday.  Mary said that one of her teachers asked her this week to explain what Black Friday actually is.  Her description: the day after Thanksgiving when there are huge sales.  Yep, that's about it.

Black Friday for us as kids meant driving into Boston and meeting my aunt and grandmother at Downtown Crossing early.  It was the girls: my two sisters, my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, and I.  Our mission: find our Christmas dresses.  Actually, this meant find the dresses that we would be gifted for Christmas that would then not be worn until Easter.  So we spent the day after Thanksgiving trying on dresses that we would get for Christmas and that we wouldn't wear until Easter.  After Easter, you could wear your Easter dress all you wanted.  I have fond memories of being in Filene's and the adults' bringing me dresses, but I also remember a lot of being lethargic, the way shopping felt weeks later when my dad would take us out on a Saturday to go Christmas shopping for my mom.  We went to Burlington Mall, store to store, waiting for the Brigham's break.  Cathy would try on some clothes to estimate how they would fit my mom; he'd request the outfit that was on the mannequin; we little kids would find a place to sit every chance we got.

But Christmas.  I'm wondering about Santa Claus.  We have only one who still believes, but she believes entirely, and so her belief might carry us all.  And this reminds me: it's the Friday after Thanksgiving -- Elf on the Shelf arrives today!  Once I figure out where I hid that elf when I unpacked, I can hide him again.  It's possible that this year Daniel and I will have three other elves to help hide the elf with their now knowledge of Santa Claus.

In Viterbo, apparently, people get Christmas trees, but only artificial because there aren't enough real trees.  Daniel spouted me some millions of people population in a place the size of New Mexico yesterday, but I don't remember the number of millions.

[One student just said (students are writing about yesterday's Thanksgiving in Italy...today, a 15 minute writing after days of 10...we are gearing up for next week in Rome = five 15 minute entries on blog), "Are you allowed to comment on our blogs?"  I laughed.  No no no! I wanted to shout.  I want to read their blogs because I like them.  I like seeing this other side of them, reading their ideas and stories and things that they might never say in class...though surprisingly and wonderfully, they share themselves in the most raw way at times in sharing their writing...But I need to call some limits for myself.  If I comment on one student's blog, I will feel the need to be fair and comment on every student's blog.  And it's true, I don't have 66 students the way SYA Spain does, but still, 44 blogs a day to read and comment on is too much if I want a life outside SYA.  A friend at Branson once said to me, as I daydreamed about teaching more than one English class, "Stick with the Latin if you want a life."  O, muse of teaching, grant me the sanity not to read every blog entry and the wisdom not to comment even once.  And make the students see that there is so much value in their writing writing writing even if their teacher is not reading and commenting on it.]

We left our stockings at home.  We're hoping/suggesting that Mary make us all stockings for Christmas with her newfound skills in sewing.  With the boys' birthdays in November and December, I never get to Christmas shopping early.

I want to know for whom we buy gifts so the kids have what they need at school, so Daniel and I have what we need for work.  I live carefully, never wanting to offend.  Early on, at lunch with colleagues, one Italian colleague joked, "We think of the stereotypical American treating the meal, coming in and taking care of everything, you know, rich Americans."  I adore this colleague, who is kind and generous and thoughtful and inclusive.  But since then I have not once treated even coffee for my colleagues, careful.

A friend here had her sister visiting.  The third night she was here I asked her how she was doing with jet lag and adjustment.  She said, "Good.  The culture shock has been tough, but it's getting better."  Culture shock.  I asked her what was the shock.  She said, "The language."

Culture shock is the language.  And culture is so much more, too.  I've seen videos and heard from Italians that Italians do not drink cappuccino in the afternoon; it's for breakfast and for morning.  So for a while I stopped ordering cappuccino in the afternoon and/or felt self-conscious when I did order it in the afternoon.  Eventually I thought, Well, I'm clearly not Italian even when (especially when?) I'm speaking Italian, so I'm going to order cappuccino after noon and let go the cultural norm.  Yesterday between soccer and swim pick-ups, Mary and Sebastian and I sat down for ten minutes at a bar: they got their cappuccino decaffeinato, and I got my tea.  When I went to pay afterwards (always afterwards here), I thanked the woman at the cafe for making cappuccino even though (nanostante -- I looked it up before I went to pay) it was afternoon.  She told me that no, it was fine, cappuccino is for any time of day.  She was kind, convincing, lovely.

So I am still working through so many cultural norms.  It's not that I have to fit in or that the kids need to fit in (I don't think Daniel ever worries about fitting in -- he went to a parent meeting for Sebastian's class last night, understood maybe half of what was said, and felt just fine), but I do want to be appropriate, respectful, not offend.  The kids are on their own in some ways here: they have to lead us regarding school as much as we lead them at home.  They need tissues for the bathroom at school because there is usually no toilet paper.  For birthdays, you invite the whole class or your parents bring in merenda (snack) for everyone.  I haven't given in to Nutella bars every day for snack, but we have enough in the house for once per week.

Time to get Elf on the Shelf out.

And time to get an artificial tree for our apartment.

Thanksgiving

I had planned apple pie and vanilla gelato for breakfast.  Sliced turkey and french fries for lunch while we streamed the Macy's Day Parade.  Dinner with our visiting friends at a restaurant we've seen before but not eaten at.

Alas.  Without the pressure of actual Thanksgiving and with Connor's heading to his friend Manuel's house this afternoon to play, I failed on the first two, but we will get to our 7:30pm dinner reservation with the McVeighs.  And I did pick up sugar and cinnamon this morning to make apple pie this weekend at some point.

Today I'm grateful for being here in Viterbo

for our friends who will be here by dinner time

for a job that allows me to read and work with kids

for family back home

for my run this morning around the Viterbo walls

for walking the kids to school today

for Daniel's making dinner almost all the time here

for the kids

for their flexibility and sense of adventure and adaptability

for laughing on the phone with Chrissie last night

for new colleagues who feel familiar already

for mom who made every holiday special and 

still reminds me that special can be simple

in fact, often, is the most special

for tea with daniel, with friends, with the kids

for Mr. Wiggin and Justin and Gram and Mom, whom I thought of today

for heat in our apartment

for Thayer for letting me come to Italy this year

for the TA students who email me this year

for the SYA students who make classes good and fun

for Bar 103 

whose owners put out a cappuccino decaffeinato before I even order sometimes

for Mary's sewing my smartwool sock this morning

for Connor's reading and enjoying his new Roman Mystery books

for Hannah's waking up happy nearly every morning

and cuddling in our bed for a few minutes

for Sebastian's being excited because I'll walk him to soccer today

for friends -- research shows that you live longer if you have good friends -- I am too blessed in this regard, so perhaps I'll get a long life

for Camilla, who picked up the kids from school today

for music: Castle on the Hill (Latin 2H last year!) and Honey, I'm Good to wake us up this morning 

and Italian pop that Sebastian has on his phone and Mary knows all the words to

for the frizzante water Hannah snagged for me this afternoon from the mensa

for health

for love

for people

for today.

Today.

Via Appia Antica

"Have you been to Rome before?  People who have already been to Rome do the Via Appia Antica, but if they haven't been to Rome before, then they bike the route through the city," the bike tour guy told us.

We'd been in Rome about fourteen hours, eight of which were sleeping, and I was torn between taking the kids through Rome -- the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza del Populo, St. Peter's, the Tiber, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona -- and out of the city, along the Via Appia that used to lead out of Rome and to, I think, Brundisium.  I'd already been to the sites within the city, but they feel like old friends to me, like favorite books, so I was eager to get to them again and to show them to the kids.  Daniel had more reason to favor the Appia Antica route out of the city: 1. the city is crazy with people; 2. the city is crazy with cars; 3. you don't need to see and do everything -- you just pick one thing or two things and enjoy them; 4. two adults and five kids (a friend from home was with us, too) on bikes in Rome -- too many to track and keep safe through the city.

One of the reasons that I don't care for skiing (in addition to the cold, the speed, the potential injury) is the amount of time it takes for gearing oneself up -- getting measured, getting boots, poles, skis, lift ticket.  The bike shop felt like this.  The kids biked around in the back of the shop while Federico outfitted us all.  Then over to the Tabacchi to recharge Daniel's phone, over to the Cornetteria to grab some version of breakfast-lunch, and then we headed out --  lined up, single file to get to the Coliseum and around the crowds, through the traffic, across a few major intersections, and then, finally, to the Via Appia.

Catacombs of someone whose name I can't recall said the sign, so we took a right up a hill.  Joy because it was a paved road.  Dismay because it couldn't be that authentic Via Appia from two thousand years ago if it was freshly paved, nice for the bike, nice for me, a welcome change from the sidewalks and cobbled streets of Rome.  But it was sunny and there was pavement underneath me.  A bike ride from home but in Italy -- yes!

Seven minutes later, we're out of the black paved road, crossing another busy intersection (which, of course, abound in Rome.  The kids got so tired of my stopping them over the weekend as they jostled each other precariously by the side of the road, pushed or kicked each other, played tag on the sidewalk, stepped into intersections before we adults approved, ran ahead.  The tired of hearing me  say, "You are in one of the biggest cities in the world, one of the busiest cities in the world.  You need to be careful."  My favorite admonition was on the way back from the Via Appia, back on the modern Roman roads to return our bikes.  I was the caboose and two people behind Sebastian.  He crossed an intersection, impressed with his balance, no-hands on bike, doing a little hand gesture shimmy shimmy to some Italian song he was singing to himself.  The car trying to take the right he was interrupting stopped short, made a face of surprise and frustration, and waited for him to cross.), and then onto what must have been the Via Appia in all its wonderful, bumpy, old stone-paved road.  I enjoyed it for about five minutes, now wishing back the paved road with the cypress trees around me, the sun overhead.  I'd have taken the lack of authenticity again if that means I get a comfortable ride.  But the only way to get that was to turn around.

The kids went faster and faster though I couldn't understand how.  I was just trying to find the most gentle spots to bike.  Sometimes on the actual road, sometimes on the dirt path on the side.  Sometimes following a jogger, who I imagined was Italian and knew the smoothest path.  So this was the road that led out of Rome.  Or into Rome.  Here were the catacombs of saints.  Here was the tomb of Caecilius Mettus, from one of the wealthiest Roman families.  Here were more ruins.  But mostly, mostly here was this cobblestone road and sometimes big stones paved road, and trees lining the road, and little dirt paths along the side of the road.  And a blue sky.  And sun.

Daniel wanted to stop some, but the kids were too far ahead.  They were on bikes, and it had been months since they were on bikes, much less good solid bikes with suspension to take off the jarring of every stone or rock.  Eventually we let them go, and we biked a bit together.  He wanted to explore.  I felt a bit like the kids, not wanting to stop and look at things too much, just wanting to bike, feel the road even as I groaned inwardly with every bump.  I thought, Do tourists really do this and enjoy it?  I had read reviews of this bike ride, and the ancient history teacher at SYA was offering this ride as an optional excursion next week when the school moves to Rome.  I feel pretty healthy, and I felt a bit pathetic and slow.  Folks were walking, pushing strollers, jogging, biking like us.

We heard chimes.  Bells.  I imagined that there must be a church nearby.  Daniel said, "Want to check it out?"  He hopped off his bike and went over to the stone wall from where the bells were sounding.  I acquiesced, put my bike to the side of the road, and did the same.

Goats!  Goats with bells around their necks.  Maybe a hundred, maybe two, I don't know.  But the chimes were magical.  (On our return trip they crossed the road right in front of us.  Mary jumped off her bike and ran ten feet away, afeared of a goat that looked like it was headed right for her.)

We caught up with the kids.  Daniel invited all of them to get closer to the aqueduct.  Mary alone joined him, while the others went ahead.  While Daniel and Mary explored the aqueduct, I biked up to the others.

Gathered around a stone that looked like a table there for just this purpose, four kids and Julie (friend and mom of child also visiting) were playing a card game (Sushi, they told me).  Today they didn't care about the aqueduct or Caecilius Mettus' rich family and huge tomb or the catacombs.  They cared about their game, playing with their friends.  I put down my bike and walked over, faced the sun, sat criss-cross apple sauce, put my hands on my knees palms up, and closed my eyes.  Meditating.

The sun.  The kids playing.  The folks going by.  The goat bells now too far away to hear.

On the ride out I had been thinking about Horace, this Roman poet from the first century B. C., who loves Rome and writes poems not just about Rome (the ship of state!), but also about being away from Rome, being out in the country away from the hustle and bustle of Rome.  In the morning I had felt a little frenetic, wanting to get the kids to all the sites, but once I was on the Via Appia, surrounded by trees and blue sky and the bumpy road that I found tough to bike on, what we weren't seeing in Rome fell away.  What we were missing was nothing.  We were here, headed out on the Via Appia, and there was no need for anything else.  (I'm reminded now of Scituate, where, for me, the busyness of home fades, and I feel present, not tempted by the to-do list.)

My phone rang: Mary was on top of the aqueduct and couldn't get down.

She gave the phone to Daniel. "She's fine.  We're fine," he said.

Just another day on the Via Appia Antica.

Freewrite

I have the students writing and so I feel guilty if I don't write.  I need to take the advice I give to them: Just write.  Don't edit yourself.  Don't worry about where your writing takes you.  Just keep going.  Having finished Othello essays last week, this week is Rome preparation week: readings on writing and on Rome to get inspired to be writing fifteen minutes per day next week in their blogs.  Yesterday in class their prompt was to write for ten minutes on sei giorni, the six days that they spent in Italian school last week.  (Italian students go to school from 8am-1pm six days per week.  Luckily, Paradiso does not have those same hours.  Phew.)  The few posts I read last night mentioned ongoing chatter in classes; kids who were kind and eager to hear about American life; making lists to pass the time; feeling scared; feeling excited; making Italian friends.  I need to not read all their posts.  If I do, I'll feel the need to respond to every story, and I'll our Rome school week in the hotel reading student blogs rather than going out and about.

The students are homesick.  Thanksgiving is this week.  I never liked missing holidays -- not when I was in college and in Rome for junior fall and not when I was thirty-years-old and spending Christmas with Daniel's family in New Mexico.  It's not that the traditions were any more special than anyone else's, but they were ours and they were home.  So I'm aware of this as Thanksgiving looms just two days from now.  The SYA students are bummed and stressed about preparing Thanksgiving dinner for their host families.  If I don't mention Thanksgiving, I'm wondering whether our kids will feel the pang of not being at home with extended family.  I'm thinking apple pie and vanilla gelato for breakfast; sliced turkey (yes, cold cuts) and french fries for lunch with the Macy's Day Parade streaming in the background; dinner with our visiting friends at a restaurant by the beech woods.

But for now, my ten minutes of writing is up, so I'll go check on invocations and write later.

We're working on writing this week in English class and preparing for next week when we move teh school to Rome for the week.  Last night's assignment was to read some poems on Rome and an interview with Billy Collins.  This  morning's 10 minute freewrite is to write an invocation to a muse...an imitation of Hardy's poem... no editing...just get it down...)

Invocation to a Muse (an exercise for English class inspired by Thomas Hardy's poem "The Vatican -- Sala Delle Muse")

O Muse of Good Cheer, inspire in me 

laughter when there is no heat or hot water for two days in a row.

Make me compassionate when students worry about grades more than about learning.

Grant me calm and humor and understanding 

in the face of children's squabbles.

Let me enjoy a cappuccino in Viterbo

rather than being grouchy all day because I got only six hours of sleep, no heat, and no hot water.

Let me appreciate Roberta and Dave and Pat for their humor and efforts in getting said heat and hot water.

Let me remember that image of the map of Italy with my feet on it as I walk the one block, past Fontana Grande, to get to work.

Let me revel in Renzo's loud greeting across Via Cavour this morning, as I stewed over late assignments, and he yelled over, "Buon lavoro, bella!"

I could only smile once I heard his booming voice, saw his happy face, translated his Italian in my head.

Let me be open to those moments day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

This is a day in Viterbo after all.

Capri

Sometimes I feel like any excursions I write about are not so much about the place we went to see as much as about the errors we made and obstacles we encountered in getting to said place.  I've often wondered whether travel goes this way for everyone, or if we just don't plan enough or motivate enough or get organized enough.  Likely all of the above.  Vesuvius was our exception, and that was on our last morning in Naples, Sunday.  So by then we'd had enough of our own nonsense.

But Saturday was Capri.  Sunny.  Warm.  We drove to find the always unfindable metano for the Fiat -- no matter how many directions we got, the metano eluded us on that Naples trip.  Sunday afternoon, what should have been a two and a half hour drive back to Viterbo was a six hour drive because of the holiday weekend (All Saints' Day) traffic.  We stopped for gas along the highway -- I guess it's autostrada here; highway in Massachusetts; freeway in New Mexico -- and when we finally found a station with metano, the line for metano was ten cars long, so we opted for benzina.  Then we got back on the autostrada, or rather, Daniel continued to drive us, per usual.  Sunday night, once we were home, Daniel said to me, "I think I forgot to pay for our gas when we stopped."  Surprised that he pumped the gas before he had to pay, he pumped, got in the car, drove away.  An honest mistake.  Perhaps at home we would hunt down the gas station on whitepages.com, make a phone call, send a check or give a credit card number, or wait for a note/ticket/bill in the mail, explain what happened, and pay.  But here in Italy we couldn't take such a risk: fines are normal and high; the car isn't ours; we've already had sent to owners of car the seventy euro ticket for driving into Pisa and the forty euro ticket for going into an intersection when the light was turning red.  Cameras are everywhere.  When Daniel contacted the owners of the car, Pat (he and his wife Linda own the car) texted, "We all know it was an error...but it could be construed as theft...I don't think I will get arrested but it could create a mountain of bureaucracy."

Six hours driving home on Sunday.  Six hours driving the autostrada looking for, finding, and paying (yes, they were waiting for him -- "Fiat?  Arancia?") for the gas on Monday.

But really, I was going to write about Capri.

We headed to the port -- no gas, but ATM, and then croissants and coffee by the bay on a gorgeous morning.  I thought, Should we just stay here and skip Capri?

Riding down winding steep roads with my eyes closed (I am losing motivation to learn to drive here -- pathetic, I know, but it feels daunting at the moment), we make it to the port sent on WhatsApp by our airbandb host.  No more ferries today: last one left two hours ago.

Daniel: Which port did you look up directions to?
me: The one on the WhatsApp message.
Daniel: Oh, no.  I knew there were no more boats for today; the host told me.  We need to go to Naples or Sorrento.

We drive some more.

By 1:30pm we are on a ferry to Capri, where we want to see the Blue Grotto, hike up to Tiberius' imperial villa, and get my favorite perfume.  Twice I got a bottle for me a bottle for my mom.  Hers lasted years because she wore it only on special occasions.  I still have the little pamphlet from the store from over twenty years ago, and we are finding the perfume this trip.

We take a boat ride around the island, listening to the history and myths, e.g. if you kiss the one you love when we go through this upcoming arch of rocks, you will stay together forever; Tiberius threw people into the sea from his villa up high, and then he would go to that promontory half way down the cliff to see whether they were dead yet; there is a statue of Mary.  (Sebastian takes photos and videos going through the arch, just when Daniel kisses me.  Mary, oblivious to the camera/phone, and scared about making it through this small opening, frets visibly.  I'll try to attach video.)

The waves are too big, so the Blue Grotto is closed.

When we get back to land, we start walking uphill fast: it's 3:20, and Tiberius' villa closes at 4pm.  Connor really wants to see the villa.  I want the walk up the hill because I remember it as so pretty.  We walk, run, lose each other, find each other.  The path is on the most narrow, sweet road.  There are little stores, restaurants, and flowers.  Flowers.  It's so quaint.  The path is prettier than Tiberius' opulent villa ever could have been.

The villa is closed.

But we go in anyway and wander around, debating which rooms were for servants, which for guests, which for the emperor himself.  It's not a mansion: it's a mansion of mansions.  How could one person have a place this big?  We decide that he likely had a huge entourage, so he had to have space for them all.  We are in awe, amazed at the size.  (That night I skim some Suetonius to learn a bit more about Tiberius.  Gracious.  My awe turns into disgust as I read what he did to folks.  Paranoid and tyrannical, he tortured many both in Rome and out on Capri.)

We walk more slowly back down the path.  As we near the center of town, near the bottom of the path, Daniel asks a woman about my favorite perfume shop.  She points over his shoulder, across the mini-road.  It's there, she tells him, but closed now until March.

It's only in writing this now that I see how my three points of interest on Capri were closed.  In the end, it didn't really matter.  I guess, even in the moment, it didn't really matter: we still took the boat ride and explored Tiberius' villa (treating it as not closed), and I (happily) caught Daniel ordering my favorite perfume that night online (price was four times what it was back in 1996, the last time I bought it...ahhh, well).

Capri.

Mount Vesuvius

What was supposed to be the beginning of the Naples trip became the end of the trip.  What looked like a hike in the rain became a hike in the wind.  Vesuvius didn't care: it wasn't going anywhere, and, lucky for us, it wasn't erupting.

Last time I hiked Vesuvius I was twenty-three, it was summer, and my friend Racquel annoyed the heck out of me.  It was hot, and I came prepared with my liter of water.  Racquel, an ardent lover of animals, felt bad for the thirsty dogs on the path.  She, with her tiny bottle of water, had drunk and shared hers already with them.  Now she badgered me.  I wanted my water for myself: that's why I brought it.  (I like to think I've evolved over time, or perhaps it's having kids -- I'm happy now to actually be the one to have something to share.  So often we were the ones without a diaper or a snack or a water, and people rescued us, and I admire these always prepared people, a person I am not as I was in my twenties.  Now I'm grateful whenever I have something I am in a position to share, thrilled to seem organized and to feel on top of things for a minute.  Still, I confess that I would drink my water now rather than sharing it with the dog.)  Eventually I gave in -- peer pressure -- and Racquel and I have laughed about it, both completely aware of the frustration of the other: I thought she was unreasonable and nagging; she thought I was selfish.

Alas.

We brought plenty of water.

For the first time on our Naples trip, we were at an entrance two minutes early.  We parked behind the one other car there, got tickets for the shuttle, and got in.  At the next stop, we bought our tickets to hike up to the crater.  It's not a far walk, maybe half a mile (I should be saying how many kilometers, but I'm not there yet), but it is uphill, severely at times.  We looked out over Naples, the reverse view we had had for four days: from our apartment, from Pompeii, from the ferry ride to Capri -- we were always looking at Vesuvius, finding it every chance we could.  Now we were on it, our feet on the dirt, looking out toward all the rest.

We looked into that massive crater, finding it hard to imagine it full of liquids, so dry did it look.  We extended our arms to feel the wind (try to) blow us on the path.  We drank hot chocolate at the top, where Daniel asked a man whether it was always this windy, and he said, No, just today.  When I got back to the bottom, Hannah and Connor were playing some game that reminded me Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack all dressed in black black black with silver buttons buttons buttons...except that the game is to count and skip a number every ten.  They counted in Italian and laughed.

No dogs to feed.

No struggles over water.

I wonder what they'll remember. 

Pompeii

I think I've been to Pompeii three times before this year.  Twice I was the student, and once I was the teacher.  I had a clipboard, pen, and map when I was a student; a pink backpack instead of a flag when I was a teacher/chaperone (so as not to lose my six charges, freshmen girls who trusted me more than they should have as I dragged them all over Rome until they insisted that they needed a proper sit-down lunch...fair enough).

This time I was the parent.

Connor is fascinated by volcanoes.  One Christmas he got a Magic Tree House book on Pompeii and the craft supplies -- clay, baking soda, food coloring, cardboard box, white vinegar, empty water bottle  -- to make his own volcano.  Last spring we sat in the living room and watched the BBC documentary/story Pompeii: The Last Day.  The night before we headed to Pompeii we watched the documentary again in our air b and b in Naples: Stefano's fullery, pyroclastic flow, magma, lava, Elder Pliny, Younger Pliny, Pompeii, Herculaneum, three breath death.

The rain kept going.  We were soaked.  Pompeii was out of maps.  This would not be the experience I had had as a student or as a teacher -- no map, no notes, no agenda.

We started in the big theatre, testing the acoustics by having one person down low saying hello and seeing if we could hear the voice.  We hopped from stone to stone in the old pedestrian crosswalks, avoiding imaginary horse poop and real puddles.  Mary took gelato orders in a bar, scooping out stratiatella and taking my euro (I didn't tell her about denarii...didn't even think about it).  Mary and I imagined that perhaps there was grain in the large containers.  We walked in and out of houses, debating which ones had wealthy owners and which didn't.  We checked out what I thought was the hypocaust system (another documentary from Latin class) in the Stabian Baths.  Mary and Hannah climbed into what we imagined was an oven and then back out again.  Daniel and Sebastian made it to the forum.  For the first time, I didn't.  We walked under the amphitheatre where there was a Pink Floyd in Pompeii exhibit.

No map, no notes, no plan.

No Forum, no Villa of the Mysteries, no Street of Tombs.

Walking, running, climbing, imagining, pretending.

Looking around.  Checking things out.  Touching the ruins with our hands and feet.

Connor said to me afterwards, "Next time I come to Naples, I want to see Herculaneum and the museum that has all the Pompeii stuff."

Mission accomplished.