Life in Calabria pt II

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Morgan and i took six hours of trains to Rome the day before Dad and Eddie were to arrive. We arrived in the afternoon and walked to our hostel(10.90/night) hotel Lodi. it was a 20 minute walk from Termini Station. We should have taken a bus but it was a nice day. The owner, Fabrizio, greeted us and showed us around. He also made us coffee and gave us grapefruit from the hotel's garden.
We spent the afternoon and evening in the garden of hotel lodi talking to our Israeli roommate Rhan. He lives in paris with his fiancée writing books. We had a late dinner with Rhan in the middle of Rome. After visiting a few bars and getting lost we headed back to the hotel on foot. A few hours later I awoke and walked to the train station to meet dad and eddie at the airport. I went alone because the train was eleven euros each way.
Fabrizio was a great help with directions and suggestions. He went above and beyond his duty to make our stay a good one. This was my dad’s first time leaving the country since being shipped off to Vietnam at a tender age. On top of that it was a sort of pilgrimage for my dad as he is a devout Catholic having gone to seminary and having spent much of his spare time on the church’s ministries. Our first stop was the Vatican. We spent time in the museum and Sistine chapel and then explored St. Peter’s basilica. Our bus passed by the coliseum so we stopped and looked around before it got dark. We walked around the ruins of ancient rome imagining chariot races at circus maximus and senators and politicians speaking in the forum. We walked around the Tiber and ate at a pizzeria where an Indian magician entertained the customers. Dad and eddie fell in love with gelato and we stopped to try some new flavors often during the next week.
Early the next morning we went back to the coliseum and took a tour of the incredible structure. We saw where emperors and senators and plebians sat watching countless lions and gladiators and slaves and Christians were killed for sport. We took the train to the airport and picked up a rental car. I ended up doing all of the driving during our travels. We drove around Rome and made it to Siena in the early afternoon. We walked the quaint, cobbled streets of the medieval hilltop town. Dad stopped in every church we passed by during the trip and eddie and I estimated that by the end of the trip, dad had said a prayer in 40 or 50 different churches. We visited duomo and explored the streets into early evening. Then we set off for Firenze(Florence). We didn’t have a map of the city so I spent quite a while driving in the heavy weekend traffic trying to find where our hostel was from memory. We parked at the train station and walked past our hostel a few times before seeing it. Dad, eddie, and I parked the car half way across the town in free parking and had dinner as morgan was feeling a bit under the weather. We woke early the next morning and went to mass near our hostel. We walked to duomo and visited the baptistery. We walked to the Uffizi and ponte vecchio. We found our car and headed northwest to Cinque Terre.
Our hostel was in Riomaggiore. Cinque Terre is a collection of five small towns that at one time were only accessible by boat. Each small town is built into the rock of the seaside mountains. The colorful houses seem to grow out of the rock. We walked along the sea over the hills and through the vineyards covering the land. We walked through the first three towns then took the train to the last town and walked back to the fourth town just in time to catch the train back to our hostel as it became dark.
We drove down the coast and stopped in Pisa to see the tower and walk the grounds. We had dinner served to us in Cecina at our first Wwoof farm by Ursula. We stayed at podere vallari as guests this time. We met a wwoofer there that came from a city where morgan lived during part of her childhood. Ursula made us breakfast the next morning and we headed to Elba.
When we found that it would be nearly 200 euros for us to just get to elba by ferry, we decided just to head back to Rome. We found the ancient roman apian way, the main road out of ancient rome. It was paved with flagstones rutted by roman carts and dotted by turrets and collapsing guard posts. We made our way to the ancient catacombs and took a tour into its historic depths. We stopped where it was written in apochraphal writings that Jesus appeared to peter and left his holy footprint. We had a map of the center of rome but dad wanted to visit Rome’s second largest Basillica, St. Paul’s outside the walls of the city. After driving blind for two hours we saw a massive structure across the river and inched our way to what we hoped was St. Paul’s. We were in luck and in awe. It has five naves each big enough to be a large church on its own. The center nave was as wide as a soccer field and longer. Dad was brought to tears at the sight of the beautiful and giant basilica built in honor of his religion along with the effort and trouble finding it with just enough time to tour before closing time. This was my father’s dream. Everything was emotional and religious and spiritual and intense for him. He had been reading and imagining these places for most of his life and to realize a dream is beyond words.
It was very short notice but Fabrizio and staff at hotel lodi found us a cheap place to stay as Lodi was completely booked. We also asked about the next night but they were booked then too. But Fabrizio told us that he would disassemble one of his rooms and put extra beds in it to fit us for the next night. Our friends at hotel lodi came through for us again. As luck would have it the hostel where we stayed just happened to be as close as one could get to the two places that dad wanted to visit. The next morning we visited two more of Rome’s five immense Basillicas. Other than being huge structures filled with amazing artwork by the world’s and history’s greatest artists like michelangelo, Rafael, Bernini, Donatello, etc., they were also home to artifacts such as pieces of the table at the last supper, possessions of saints, weapons that had killed saints, etc. We jumped in the rental car and drove a couple hours away to Assissi. In the city of Assissi is a cathedral dedicated to st. francis. Amazing frescoes line the walls of the upper church but there is a complete other church on the level below. Beneath the lower church is st. francis’ tomb. We made our way down to the immense basilica built around St. Francis’ original church. Then we headed back to hotel lodi in rome. Morgan and I treated dad and eddie to dinner at a nice multicourse restaurant far from tourist areas.
The next morning we headed south of rome for the first time. We drove past napoli(naples) and stopped in Pompeii, the ancient city buried by ash from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We toured the preserved city in the rain and headed even further south for calabria. We all had a late dinner in briatico with Pino’s family. We stayed in a flat in briatico provided by pino. The next day we worked at San Giorgio after showing dad and eddie around. We mostly moved wood and made bundles of olive branches. After work morgan and I took dad and eddie to Potenzioni to mass and stations of the cross. Later we went to Pizzo where we introduced them to Tartufa the desert of chocolate and coffee gelato dusted in dark cocoa with rich gooey fudge in the center. We worked at the farm again the next day. We had a barbecue on the patio. In the middle of lunch Mattea appeared to drop off two puppies she found abandoned by their mother. Pino took us to Capo Vaticano, the westernmost tip of the top of the toe of italy. We watched an amazing sunset on a cliff overlooking the sea. Vittoria gave dad salami and ‘nduia to take to America. That night I turned the keys of the car over to dad for the first time. it was a very different experience having a car for a few days. Dad and eddie drove all night to make their flight the next morning. It was refreshing to see family. Dad and Eddie brought a different view of the country to morgan and i.

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Photos

Cinque Terre
Dad, Eddie and Morgan stand at the edge of the sea with colorful houses stacked ontop of each other behind them.

Rome Forum Ruins at Dusk
At one time the known world's major decisions were made here.

The Colloseum in Rome
In its day the seats were marble and there was sailcloth providing shade. The reconstructed wood floor at the far end covered the entire area hiding the holding cells for animals, slaves, christians, and gladiators below.

Four Travelers in Siena
This large square in the hilltop town of Siena is turned into a horse track once a year.

The Baptistery Ceiling in Florence
Glittering mosaic Covers the dome of the baptistery facing Duomo in Firenze. Saints to Jesus' right hand in heaven and souls, to Jesus' left hand being gobbled by satan.

Florence Market
The market has gone on this way for hundreds and hundreds of years. Eddie rubs the nose of a bronze wild boar. Many superstitious visitors place coins in the boar's open mouth for good luck in finances.

Vernazza
Morgan poses at a clearing overlooking one of Cinque Terre's five small seaside villages. The tower to the right was used by the romans to watch for invaders.

Pisa
The tower is still leaning.

Pompei
The structures of the buildings survived being buried in ash for hundreds of years. Among other buildings, we walked through an old brothel with suggestive paintings above the doors to each room. If you watched the rutted streets around the town closely you could find directions to the brothel pointed out with male sexual organs.

Working at San Giorgio
Our last stop was in Calabria where Dad and Eddie helped out on the farm for a couple days. Here we are bundling olive branches for the furnace.

Comments

[michelle willms]

I miss Morgan!
I MISS MORGAN!!!!!