Paula's Italian Trip Report

I like hearing about other people's trip reports, so I'm giving my report of our trip to Italy (well, our trip to one little hilltown in Italy) today. I'm not going to edit this much or spellcheck it because it would take too long and feel like work and I'm not quite out of the vacation mood... We were there for two weeks and arrived back home on Sunday.

We stayed in Barga which is a romantic small town perched on the top of a hill in the Appennine mountains in Tuscany. There are mountains and valleys everywhere there, with little villages nestled in the mountains or sitting on top of the mountains (makes you wonder why people chose those spots to live given that it's so hard to get to them, though they are definitely postcard perfect).

My father was born in the nearby town called Fornaci di Barga in the valley. It means "furnaces of Barga" named such because it used to be the factory town, though now it has expanded to other businesses including many shops. The Euro was first made there though I don't know if it's still made there. We have many relatives there still, including my aunt, several cousins from age 13 - 80 something. We visited them all, and much of our time was spent with family (they were all so welcoming and warm) and sometimes with a few old friends (also welcoming and warm). Our daughters hung out quite a bit with their cousin who is their age and they got along beautifully, even though their cousin spoke very little English and our girls spoke even less Italian. We were there at the same time as about 20 of our other relatives for the US (including my sister and her husband who coordinated a wild family reunion at a local restaurant which included both our U.S. relatives and our Italian relatives).

We were all immensely happy and thankful that our parents and grandparents kept us connected to the "old country" and never forgot where they came from or let us forget where they/we came from (and taught us how to speak Italian). And now our two daughters feel very much connected to the old country as well. It was wonderful to watch them connect with their family and this beautiful place, knowing that they, too, will come back again and again and someday bring their children as well. They could see the family resemblences (traces of the dimpled chin, slight overbite which we all find very attractive especially when we smile though an orthodonist would likely fix the overbite now as our orthodontist did with my daughter's), men with thick wavy hair, women with attitude). They heard much about the family history (and they were interested!) including the fact that the town was 7 months on the front during World War 2 and our family's house in which my aunt still lives was the Red Cross station. Sadly the war bombed much of the area as well, including some of the oldest buildings.). It was quite the moving experience.

The town: Barga Vecchia (Old Barga) is surrounded by a medieval wall, with Il Duomo (church with tower, Patron Saint is St. Christopher), with narrow winding streets (with little food markets, restaurants, artist studios (the town is proud of it's art and music -- it also has Opera Barga, a centuries old theatre, and jazz is becoming increasingly popular), coffee shops, and stores scattered throughout), steep stairs going up and down the hill, stucco and stone homes attached to each other, geraniums cascading out of window boxes, and people's laundry (including mutandi) drying between buildings. My cousin lives in a cavernous old apartment that used to be a convent and she said it was built in the 11th or 12th century and that she has nicely restored. It still has the small doors because people were so much smaller then (fortunately, she's not very tall herself).

We stayed in new Barga that is the newer part of town that surrounds Barga Vecchio outside the wall because we felt it was more convenient, yet we'd still be within a 5 minute stroll to Old Barga and a 2 minute stroll to Il Giardino, the town center. New Barga is also very nice, with tree lined streets, larger homes with gardens, more restaurants/markets/bars/stores, our favorite jewelry store (our family has been buying jewelry from the Notini family jewelry stores for over 50 years now -- my sister and I took photos of the girls buying their first Notini jewelry and we got misty eyed as we passed this family tradition on to the youngest generation). It is the most Scottish town in Italy (we went to the fish and chips festival -- pesce and patate -- one night) because many people from Barga left Barga and moved to Scotland yet kept up the Italan connection).

Every morning, I would wake up early while everyone else was sleeping, grab my book ("Bel Canto" which was recommended on SoWal.com and was a wonderful and wise book to read on vacation), walk down the street, through the old path with the acquaduct, up the hill to the middle of Old Barga to Cafe Capretz and have my capuccino and pastry while sitting on the terrace overlooking the mountains and the roofs of New Barga (where I would do my awe-robics). Then I'd walk back to the apartment after about an hour and pick up bread at one store, fruit at another, prosciutto and cheese at another along the way.

The rest of the day would go something like this -- visit family, walk around, go shopping, eat lunch out somewhere, Paula takes her nap while kids go to pool with their dad or play with their uncle, walk down the street to the Alpino bar/restaurant for a late afternoon drink and panini and join our relatives hanging out at the tables, do more visiting/walking/shopping, eat dinner with relatives/friends very late, go back to Alpino or Oneste (another bar/restaurant across the street) and have a little drink of limoncello and/or gelato, and then go back to the apartment to read in bed. It was a very fine routine that I could easy get used to.

We left Barga and the nearby towns for 3 day trips only. We took a ferry for a little tour of Cinqueterra, 5 little coastal towns that had the most interesting and colorful tall stucco buildings, each surrounding a stony beach nestled in the mountains. We also spent a morning at Lucca, a city surrounded by a medieval wall that is also a shopping center. We also spent a day with our 3 cousins and families at a beautiful park that was high, high, high in the moutains in an area called the Garfagnana. We also went to the cemetary nearby in Loppia where my grandfather, uncles, aunt and other relatives are buried. It was bittersweet to watch the kids look for the grave of my father's twin brother who died when he was around 7 years old (probably of appendicitis, though we don't know).

Other than our families/friends/reunion/absolutely stunning natural beauty of the area, the memories we'll take back are:

- The Italian world cup song
- Limoncello and Limoncello cream (I have the recipes for making your own Limoncello cream from our cousin Lorena who also gave me the panna cotta dessert recipe about 12 year ago -- both are very easy to make)
- Strawberry grape wine
- The food -- I'll post some new recipes on the recipe thread soon. We loved cold veal with tuna sauce, beef with creamy green pepper sauce, stuffed zucchini flowers, fried polenta appetizers, and other things I can't remember now.
- Dancing outside at the festivals (and seeing the kids dance and play games at the same place where I used to dance) - the town loves its festivals
- Heat wave -- we had a heat wave the first week and I can't imagine what it would be like in the cities where it's even hotter than in the mountains.
- Tracking down the women who were in a photo I had of myself and 7 other young women in bikinis lined up by a stream in the mountains when we were late teens/early 20s because the kids were interested in meeting them (we have copies of the bikini photo framed in our cottages in SoWal)
- The hair-raising, spine-chilling drives up and down the mountains because the roads are narrow and guard rails aren't as common so the sides of the road are often just cliffs (yikes)
- The Murano glass -- we bought a lot of Murano glass jewelry and some dishes -- beautiful to look at though not too expensive in Italy (though I think it would be in the U.S.)
- "Pancia dentro, petto fuori" which means "tummy in, chest out" which is what my cousin would jokingly say before all photos and is now somewhat of a family saying

I asked my daughter what she told her friends when she got home and she said she told them that it was interesting that (1) there is no drinking age in Italy (their 13 year old cousin -- a devoted classical ballet dancer -- had half a glass of wine at one dinner and commented on the quality of beer at another dinner; (2) women aren?t as covered up there ? the 85 year old landlady answered the door with her shirt open and black bra showing and there were bra straps and cleavage showing everywhere we went (so we happily joined in).

Anyway, it was a beautiful and heartwarming trip. Throughout the trip, I felt as though I had walked into a painting of Tuscany and then walked out of it again when I left. It seemed that we'd encounter something magical (as my brother-in-law would say) at every corner -- family, friends, goodwill from kind people, food and the smells that go with good food, or something beautiful to look at.

I'll post photos at some point. We hope to go back more often now, ideally every two years, but we'll see. My hope is to spend part of the summers in Barga someday and part of the winters in SoWal. Life doesn't get better than that...

Here's a link with a good description of the town and area if you want to know more: http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/notes/central/kb_barga.htm

Here's a link to Barga News, the local know-everything website created by locals (similar to Graytonbeach.com): http://www.barganews.com/index.html

Here's a guide to Barga Vecchia if you want to learn about the town and see some photos. Imagine that it's even more beautiful to see in person!:
http://www.barganews.com/information/index.html