Bagni San Filippo

Daniel is often on the hunt for bodies of water.  At home, it's rivers and lakes and ponds and swimming holes.  In Italy, it's hot springs.

I was in charge of planning spring break, so I made up a little loop on google maps that would give us some seeing new places and some hanging out.  Tarochi Garden (huge mosaic sculptures all made by one woman); Lucca; Florence (strike 3); Siena; maybe Arezzo (didn't happen); Orvieto.  Daniel added hot spring, though he hadn't determined where yet.

Bagni San Filippo.  Siena to Bagni San Filippo.  This might have been one of my favorite car rides.  Daniel gave the kids math problems for part of it, I looked out the window, and we all seemed somehow part of the same conversation -- all of us, even the kids who usually bury themselves in reading or in finding music.  I wish I could remember what else we talked about beside math problems (my contribution was a word problem about the big Esta The I bought versus the six mini Esta Thes I almost bought...how much did I save?), but I don't.  I just remember that it was the rare ride with no fighting and with everyone in sync and in one conversation.

We walked up to the springs, disappointed to find that the water was not actually hot.  It was tepid at best, even cool in spots.  While the kids and I put our feet in and sat and chatted, Daniel kept searching for a better spot.  No longer disappointed, Connor was throwing rocks to see them splash over a mini-waterfall, and then started making a dam; the others joined in, and everyone was wonderfully, beautifully occupied.  Watching them I thought, Now this is what we needed.  Playing outside.  I was reminded of one of the entrances to Prospect Hill, two blocks from us at home.  Connor and Sebastian and Hannah and their neighborhood buddies Gus and Orly can spend an hour here making a dam, building it, reinforcing it, adding new elements.  (Or at the beach in Scituate, they make a wall of sand and mud to hold up against the oncoming waves.  As the tide comes in, they try to fight it, adding dry sand and height and heft to their wall, maybe even a boogie board for support.)

Daniel returned with news that we had to come see what he'd found.  We resisted: we had just settled in and were happy.  The kids were busy with their dam, I was happy in the sun watching them, nothing could be better.  Simplicity.  I thought, It doesn't matter if we see the next better or best thing.

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After we got lunch, the kids and I went to find Daniel.  Two hundreds yards down from where we had been was a huge mountain covered in what looked like snow, but was really calcium.  Connor ran ahead to climb on the calcium-covered rock, Hannah ran to find Daniel, Mary tested out the hot spring, and Sebastian and I sat to eat our sandwiches.

It looked like a glacier, that rock, and like a set for photo shoots.  We watched and laughed as women posed in their bikinis, their heads back, their hair catching the hot spring water falling down the rock, their poses suggestive.  I lost track of Connor and Hannah.  Daniel said that they went to the top of the rock and were playing there.

Scared, I tried walking on the calcium.  I'd seen some people easily running on it, others slipping as they went down.  I had to try.  I passed the posers, got my footing, felt pretty great and brave.  Mary took Daniel's old spot, lying down on the rock where the spring dumped hot water right under her, hot hot.  She told me, You would have loved it.

Connor and Hannah returned with huge balls of calcium that would have been great in a snowball fight.

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Dams.  Calcium balls.  Snowballs.  Waltham.  Italy.  Okay, maybe we don't get hot springs and calcium-covered rocks in Waltham, but the playing feels the same.