Gombitelli & Lucca

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Today was slated for our dreaded "driving in Italy" experience, as we headed west to try to find the town where my grandfather was born. The night before we panicked a bit, as we "map-quested" the route from Florence to the tiny town of Gombitelli, perched on a mountainside, northwest of Lucca. We could only get the Italian version and found there were 35 lines of complicated directions--despite the fact that most of the drive was a straight shot on the Autostrada!! But Chris was excited about searching out his roots and strongly encouraged us to bite the bullet, so we headed over the a car rental office a few blocks from the train station. In return he navigated, hand-held and generally kept us positive and out of panic mode, as we frantically negotiated the rented Mini-Cooper (with a standard transmission, naturally) in the rain (naturally) for the 20 minute or so drive just getting out of Florence and onto the Autostrada towards Lucca. The car did not have GPS, and after checking the map-quest directions again on Dave's blackberry, we decided to chuck it and search out the tourist information office in Lucca. Fortunately, we stumbled onto it by accident, and there was actually someone behind the desk who had heard of Gombitelli and had a detailed map we could follow.

Feeling a bit more confident, and with the rain letting up, we headed through some lovely countryside towards Gombitelli. When we arrived at the turn-off, we were only momentarily deterred by the "road closed" sign on the road up the mountainside to Gombitelli. Since neither Chris' nor my Italian was good enough to read the fine print & road construction terminology on the sign, we decided to chance it and see what happened. We certainly weren't going to abandon our quest after coming all this way!

After a scary drive up the narrow road of blind hairpin turns, with no way of knowing what was around each curve, we were relieved to find the "road construction" was actually at the entrance to Gombitelli, which is pretty much car-free anyway. We parked along the side of the road, and walked up to the town, visible through the post rain fog, clinging to the side of the hill. It seemed almost abandoned, until one older woman opened a door, curious about the tourists walking around. Chris and I were able to communicate with her about our quest, but neither she, nor her much older sister, remembered the name "Biagi" or "Titta" (great grandmother's maiden name). Since my grandfather and his parents immigrated to America when he was a boy, and all his siblings were born in the US, this didn't surprise us. My dad had made a similar journey here 37 years ago, and although at that time he found an elderly man who was able to lead him to what had once been the "Biagi homestead", there was no longer anyone named Biagi living there even at that time.

We wandered on, thinking about my grandfather as a young boy running through these same narrow cobblestone lanes, and ended up at the church, where we discovered a plaque on the wall, noting the names of those Gombitelli residents who had died in World War I. The first name on the list was Misaele Biagi--a cousin perhaps?? Clearly some genealogy research is in order!

After an hour or so, we headed back down the hill--this time coasting in the wake of one of the road construction vehicles ahead of us--and back to Lucca, where we spent the afternoon. What a lovely town--much less frenetic than Florence, but with a bit of similar ambiance on a smaller scale. And I loved the Roman ruins and prehistory apparent everywhere. We decided any future trips to Tuscany would include some time spent staying here.

Back to Florence--the challenge in reverse and in waning light--and Chris managed to get us back through the traffic filled streets of the outer neighborhoods and back to the "Centro" in one piece. As a reward, we took him out to dinner at a wonderful restaurant he'd been wanting to try called La Giostra. Although all reports are that the food was the best so far on the trip, I couldn't tell, as the dreaded cold had finally infected me and I couldn't taste a thing...

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