Part 1: Getting started
We planned
to leave on 31st July 2009 at 8:30. We left at 10.30, because the night before
leaving my eldest son suddenly remembered that his mobile phone unlimited text
option had expired a month ago and needed renewal. How could he keep in touch
with his friends and girlfriend in twenty long days abroad? We had to rush to
the Vodafone shop in the morning to renew the subscription and buy a top up.
Needless to say there was a long queue. But we were not in a hurry, we were on
holiday. We had just to drive about five hundred miles, crossing England from
North West to South, face London Orbital, reach Dover, hopefully board on a
ferry, land in Calais and have a nice night sleep in a Formule 1 hotel in
Vernon (North West of Paris) before the sun rose on 1st August.
Our Ford
Galaxy was full up with our family (six people: two adults, two teenagers and
two children) and an incredible amount of luggage, from a proper black and grey
Samsonite suitcase to plastic bags for shoes and paper bags filled from last
minute shopping at Primark..
Of course
we were stuck in the London Orbital. We took two hours from Junction 23 to
Junction 3 and reached Dover when the late afternoon sun was shining on the
high white cliffs and on the grey castle, which was guarding the busy harbour
and the ticket office. I dashed in hoping to get on board in half an hour. No
way:- an hour and a half for the next ferry. All right; we’ll wait.
So I got my
time to look at the castle again. I have never visited it because I am always
in a hurry when I get to Dover. It has the shape of a proper castle, a fortress
all one with the cliff, useful in old times when enemies were visible and
predictable.
Good bye
old country, coming back soon.
Crossing
the Channel by ferry gives me time to be aware of the distance. We slouched in
the first comfortable chairs we found and snoozed, peeping out of the nearest
window from time to time expecting land. We were all settled except for my
youngest daughter Valentina, who is autistic. She was as awake as an owl at
night and as lively as a squirrel. After three minutes she signed she wanted to
go. No chocolate, candy or soft drink we promised to buy her could convince her to stay put.
She was restless and wanted to have a look around the ship with me or my
husband Luigi. She did it…for an hour and a half till we reached Calais. I and
Luigi took turns with her as usual.
A flat grey
beach and tall white ugly buildings met us at Calais. It was 8, no it was 9 pm
in Continental Europe and we had at least three hours driving till Vernon. What
about dinner? We opted for a quick McDonald’s drive in.
While duly
queuing at the drive in and waiting for
our chicken McNuggets and chips a car beeped his horn behind us. So what? Our
order was slowly passed us in warm paper bags through the narrow window. The
car beeped again. Were they cross with us? One by one we collected all our
meals and icy drinks. We moved quickly farther and the car suddenly overtook
us, engine roaring and tyres screeching. Did we do anything wrong? We shrugged
and headed to Vernon Formule 1 eating our meals on the way.
The Sat Nav
said three hours and a half and we managed to get there before 1 am. Have you
ever been in a Formule 1 hotel? It's not Formula 1. It is a two storey building
made of assembled cubicles of reinforced concrete, very hot in summer but
cheap. The rooms are provided with a sink, a window, a TV set to remind you how
rusty your French is, and beds with
clean sheets. Hot coffee, crispy baguettes, plenty of butter and jam would wait
for us at breakfast in a few hours. Enough for us. We fell in a slumber.
Part 2: Chartres
The second
day of our journey I wanted to see Chartres Cathedral again for the fifth or
sixth time in my life. This time I and Luigi had planned to attend the guided
tour with Malcolm Miller, the famous expert of the Cathedral. We knew there was
a tour at 12:00 and another one at 2:45, except on Sundays. It was Saturday and
we were confident we could do it this time. We left at 10:30 from our Formule 1
hotel and rushed to a supermarket to buy some baguettes, ham and salami for
lunch. I didn’t weigh and label the bag of apples because I thought they would
do it at the till so when I was at the till I had to go back to the scales on
the other side of the supermarket and do it, leaving a long queue waiting after
me. When I paid I got lost with euro banknotes thinking a 10 euros note was a
20 note. So I handed a 10 euro note for an amount of 18 euros and waited for
the change. The girl at the till stared at me, where did I come from? The North
Pole? I realized my mistake, blushed and apologized and swore to myself to pay
more attention next time.
We arrived
late for the midday tour. But we still trusted in the 2:45 one. We entered the
Cathedral and stopped for a few minutes. The blues, reds and yellows of the
stained glasses contrasting with the dark grey limestone walls and pillars
ravished us once more. I went to the shop and asked for the guided tour at
2:45.
“No guided
tours this afternoon,” the girl answered. “There are two weddings. Would you
like an audio guide?”
“Oh sugar,”
I mumbled. My hopes of a brilliant experience visiting my favourite Gothic
church were going to hell. I’ll be back again, I thought from the depths of my
disappointment. “All right, five audio guides, please.” Valentina didn’t care a
fig.
“It’s 20
euros. Have you got your passports?”
I handed
our passports. “Italian?” she asked. I nodded.
We hung the
audio guides to our necks and played number one. What a waste of time and
money. The comments recorded were pompous and pointless with only few real
information and in a bad Italian. Maybe the English version would be better. My
children, who were already bored by the idea of visiting a church, were now
almost angry. Only the weird pronunciation of some Italian words they had heard
from the recording kept their spirits high. I bought my third book on Chartres
to curb my frustration.
We had our
sandwiches avoiding a selection of bright pink salami, sitting on a bench
outside the church glancing the Royal portal and the two towers of the façade
still regretting the missed tour. I noticed how the eerie shapes of the zodiac
signs with dangling tongues and dragon tails and the committed figures of the
monthly labours were at ease near angels, saints, the Virgin Mary and Jesus
Christ. An attempt to represent the story of man from all its sides.
In the end I had to cope with the
fact that my children didn’t care about the fact that they could see an
abridged, effective summary of the Old and New Testament in Chartres’s
sculptures and stained glasses. But whatever they thought, I found it
incredible that finely wrought sculptures and more than a hundred fragile
stained glass windows had survived the 16th century wars of
religion, the French revolution and two World Wars.
But the
children had also fun. Crossing the old town with its expensive shops – where
my daughter caught the sight of a very high heeled pair of shoes I forbade her
to buy for the sake of her legs and feet – we reached a large square. Gigantic
shapes of yellow and blue plastic bunnies and red meerkats adorned the area
together with a fountain with water springing from the pavement in sudden
unpredictable gushes. They ran about the jets of water barefoot splashing each
other and getting soaked. Never mind, it was hot.
We went
back to our car dry and pleased. Next stop: Orléans, Jeanne d’Arc’s town. Was she a witch or a saint? You
decide.
Part 3: Les châteaux de la Loire 1
Next morning we tackled the main
reason for travelling through France: visiting the Castles of the Loire.
Following the river southbound the first castle we met was Chambord. I was
longing to see it. But the children had different ideas. The word ‘castle’
sounded boring to them. Luigi and I were sure that visiting castles was good
for them and went on with our plan.
The French buildings of the area
had already struck me with their regular cream colour shapes and dark grey
roofs. In vain I looked for brown or pink buildings:- they all stuck to the
same pattern. And the castle of Chambord had the same colours too. But what
happens on its roofs is fantastic. Like inlaid, multifaceted candles on the top
of a birthday cake its chimneys and pinnacles ornately overlay the roofs. The effect
is stunning.
Inside the salamander icon of
François I is everywhere, for after all he ordered the creation of the castle
spending large sums of money and emptying the Treasury. Crazy man.
We enjoyed the double-helix
staircase probably designed by Leonardo da Vinci, who was the king’s guest at
the Clos Lucé (a castle farther south on the Loire). People going up or down
the helixes don’t meet. We got lost. Some of us climbed up on one side, others
on the other side and we stopped at different floors. Waiting at the second
floor with Valentina I spotted my two boys racing up and down the stairs. I
stopped them before somebody else did it and sent them to look for their father
and sister.
Nothing else interested the children
so we moved on the next castle: Blois. This time it was in the centre of a
town, not in the countryside like Chambord, and in four different styles:
Gothic, late Gothic, Renaissance and Classical. Surprising that each king added
his part without destroying the previous work. The story of the murder of the
Duke of Guise intrigued us. We followed his steps in the king’s chamber and
along the corridor where his assassins were waiting for him with swords drawn.
Apparently he was a big, strong man and
king Henri III had chosen twenty men, who succeeded in killing him. A
few months later the king himself was murdered. What a good example.
It was Sunday and all the shops
were closed in Blois as well as the Tourist Office. Don’t they expect tourists
in August?
Well we headed to our Bed &
Breakfast in Chinon, where we would spend four nights. But the children didn’t
know yet.
The rooms were cosy, too cosy and
full of delicate craft items from Thailand and Japan set on tables, cupboards,
shelves and hanging from screens and pegs. Too much for Valentina, our autistic
daughter, who would tear them to pieces or throw them to us in a tantrum. We
apologized with the kind landlord but we had to hide everything as quickly as
possible before she caught sight of them and decided that that was her playing
room.
We had dinner late in a sort of
Italian restaurant full of tourists and local people. A good sign, we thought.
Fifteen minutes after ordering Valentina had already drunk all her lemonade and
played with the cutlery. She pointed at the exit and uttered a scream, a cross
expression on her face. What could we do? The waitresses were busy with other
customers (in fact we waited more than an hour for our order). I picked up a
red and a blue pen from the supply in my bag (I always have from five to ten
pens in my bag in case I got lost in a desert without a stationery shop at
hand). She was pleased and started to scribble and draw circles on her paper
place mat. This lasted for five minutes. Then she started to draw lines on her
hands and arms, which attracted the attention of some people around us. We
ignored them. But she used up all available space and then got bored. She stood
up and pointed at the door again. My husband Luigi saved the day. He took the
pens and drew boys’ and girls’ figures on her arms and calves using the blue
pen and coloured them with the red one. This took some time and she was
absorbed in it. A girl about nine years old, Valentina’s age, sitting behind
us, turned around and followed the whole thing with wide open eyes. She must
have thought we were sort of upside down kind of parents.
Unfortunately the long wait
wasn’t worth it. The tagliatelle carbonara and pizzas were full of onions and
we could eat only part of them. My children were horrified, the carbonara had
an uncooked egg in the middle. Where did they find such a recipe? But Valentina
had a shower back at the B&B.
Part 4: Les
châteaux de la Loire 2
Chenonceau was my favourite
castle. And my teenage daughter agreed with it. The castle was created by
women, Queen Caterina de Medici, her rival King Henri II’s mistress, Diane de
Poitiers and Louise de Lorraine, wife and widow of Henri III ( the one who
ordered the murder of the Duke of Guise). It lies across the river Cher like a
bridge, smaller than the previous castles, impressive and fragile like its
reflection on the waters. Luscious gardens outside, tidy bedrooms inside.
I wonder if
these important women really slept in the uncomfortable four-poster beds
surrounded by heavy tapestries and allegorical pictures. I would have
nightmares every night and wake up looking for my chamber pot. Did they keep it
in their bedrooms? Nice smell.
The
children had a quick tour, almost running from one room to another.
“Do you
think they are starting to like the castles?” I asked to my husband.
“No,” he
said.
But we
didn’t give up. Talking with the landlord he recommended us some unmissable
castles: Amboise, Le Clos Lucé, Azay-le-Rideau and Villandry. How could we
convince our children to follow us? Bribing them!
We found a
go-kart track near one of the castles and booked two places for the boys.
Valentina jumped on a kart but it was for over twelves. I went shopping with my
teenage daughter at Gallerie Lafayette in Tours. The prices froze me. She soon
headed for stylish jumpers for next Autumn, the cheapest item one hundred and
fifty euros (two dinners at a restaurant for all six of us). Looking around I
spotted a stock on sale where she found a cotton jacket with a frilly collar
that fitted her to perfection, reduced to less than half its original price. I
sighed.
Previously
Valentina had already collected a pale pink and a bright pink winter coat, her
favourite item of clothing in all seasons.
So Luigi
and I didn’t feel guilty when we made them follow us in a tour of four more
castles. They enjoyed Le Clos Lucé, though, because of Leonardo da Vinci’s
machines scattered in the park around the castle and also the gorgeous gardens
of Villandry.
Sitting on
a bench in the shade near the garden of water I read them all the information
about the seven different gardens of Villandry. In a typical French style
garden number one symbolized four different kinds of love: tender, passionate,
unstable and tragic love. L’amour…
Somebody
said, “What about dirty love?” We chuckled.
Our trip
around the castles of the Loire had ended. That night we felt chuffed and
relaxed in our room at the Bed & Breakfast. Valentina felt hyper instead. I
had the bad idea of buying her some wax pastels and her artistic temperament
triumphed over the rule of drawing only on paper. While the rest of the family
was trying hard to make out the plot of a French detective film on TV she drew
a huge long armed and long legged human figure with spiky hair on the wall
behind us. I spent the following two hours cleaning it. Wax pastels are
particularly nasty to wipe away.
Next
morning we packed and had our last breakfast in Chinon: hot coffee or hot
chocolate, tasty brown bread with candied fruit inside, butter and a wide
variety of home made jams. More than ten jars with different confitures were on display each morning
with tiny spoons to scoop them up and tiny bowls to pour them into. I tasted
all of them: pear, apricot, tomato, grapes, plum, peach, cherry, blackcurrant,
redcurrant, raspberry and aubergine, all delicious.
We paid
cash, no card please, bought some jars and warmly thanked the landlord and the
landlady.
“Il
fait chaud ici, mais il sera encore plus chaud en Italie.”
It will be hotter in Italy,
he said. Yes, it will be scorching.
Part 5: Reaching the seaside
Back to our
car we had two days travel to reach the seaside resort in the centre of Italy
on the Adriatic coast where we had booked a three room apartment for a week.
For hours
and hours we drove on motorways crossing wheat fields and vineyards, confirming my firm belief about the richness
of the French land.
The second
day of our journey we crossed the Swiss border and the landscape changed
completely: narrow valleys bordered by steep mountains with high harsh peaks
spotted with snow. We passed the Great St. Bernard tunnel and arrived in Val
d’Aosta (Italy) by lunch time. The temperature was already boiling.
Our
stop was in Pianura Padana, the Po Valley, a sort of tropical hothouse in
summer. But our room had air conditioning. My aim was to visit the nearby
Busseto and Roncole Verdi, the homeland of Giuseppe Verdi, one of my favourite
opera composers. What about Aida, Rigoletto, Otello? Total masterpieces.
Do you know the popular aria the Duke of Mantua sings about
the fickleness of women in Rigoletto?
La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento
muta d’accento e di pensiero….etcetera. And he outdid them.
The big news in Italy was the
unbelievable Lotto prize: one hundred and forty seven million euros. Mamma mia! People came from Germany and
Switzerland to bet the six numbers. The day we left to start our journey back
the radio said that someone from the area of Massa Carrara guessed the six
numbers right: ten, eleven, twenty seven, forty five, seventy nine, eighty
eight. Lucky guy. I hope he is still alive. So much money can be tempting,
people go missing for less.
We arrived at the seaside on a
Saturday afternoon. My parents, mother(seventy nine) and father(seventy seven), and my sister’s
family, two adults and two children, were already waiting for us there. The
beach was just across the street and our apartment hotel had three swimming
pools. What a place for a holiday!
Another member had joined our
family, my teenage daughter’s friend Giulia, same age, same passions for glossy
magazines and make up.
My eldest sixteen year old son
had the right idea. He had a friend nearby, on holiday at a camping site five
hundred yards from where we lived so he would spend his time with him. Would he
come home for dinner? Yes, sometimes for lunch too. And what about night
curfew? We negotiated. Half past eleven? Midnight? Too old-fashioned
Cinderella-style. What about half past twelve? Still too early. By one pm?
Gone! He would come home by one except for the eve of the departure when we had
to negotiate it again.
So my eldest son was busy, my
fourteen year old daughter had a friend, my second son had his cousins, my
sister’s children, to play with, and
Luigi and I….could we totally relax for a week? Of course not, we had
Valentina.
She loved the sea. She splashed
about in the water the whole time we spent at the beach, one, two or three
hours didn’t matter to her. We moved to a more isolated side of the beach away
from the crowd after she had tried to get on a small rubber boat full of children,
risking capsizing it, and had grabbed some strangers' swimming suits almost
stripping them naked. They smiled and said it didn’t matter but the second day
everybody knew her name…and my name too.
The weather was fine most of the
time. A mild breeze from the sea kept the temperature cool. The sky was blue
and the sea was calm, even clear sometimes. Stout palm trees and rhododendron
bushes bordered the beach along the road. Summer music, mainly Latin dances,
was pounding the air all the time. But I managed to relax for a few minutes.
My mother cooked for all of us
for the whole week, which gave me a rest. And we had dinner all together in the
terrace of their apartment. My father had dinner a bit earlier or we would have
been thirteen at table. As the old saying goes: ‘Non è vero ma ci credo’, it isn’t true but I still believe it.
We had a good time at the
seaside, but a week was enough.
Part 6: At the grandparents’ little village
On Saturday
15th August we moved to a little village in the mountains at the
border between Lazio and Abbruzzi in the centre of Italy. My parents-in-law
were born there during World War II and since retirement they spend three of
four months a year there.
Years ago
they spent some money having an old shed converted into a three storey house.
So there is enough space for all of us, six plus one, including my daughter’s
friend.
It sounds
idyllic. But it isn’t for me. I relax and have a rest for the first day and a
half then I get bored and restless. My skin itches and everything irritates me:
the old scratched houses, some of them wretched, the dog’s droppings, the steep
alleys I climb panting, the fact that there are no shops, no bars, no parks,
nothing worth seeing. Less than ten people live there in winter and only in August
you can say there is someone. Most of them are old people who were born there
and their grandchildren, whose parents work in the city, Rome or Tivoli. The
village is sunk among thick forests of chestnut trees, a place to hide like
Luigi’s grandfather did during the war or to grow your own vegetable garden
like my parents-in-law are doing now. Not a place for walks or camping
especially in summer when horseflies devour you as soon as you get out of the
village.
Not much to
do for me except eating, sleeping and reading, when I am not dizzy from too
much eating and sleeping. These are the habits of the place. Eating is the
solution to every problem. Are you nervous? Eat. Are you bored? Eat. Are you
ill? Eat, for Heaven’s sake. Maybe it is because they didn’t have so much to
eat in the past, as it was a poor village.
After a few
days I felt sick so I ate less and felt better. Luigi had hay fever so we made
up our minds to have an excursion: one day trip to Rome, my birth place.
We had some
books and CDs to buy so we took our time in a three storey bookshop with air
conditioning. For a few hours we didn’t need to worry if the children were
having fun or not or if they were hungry, thirsty, their mobiles didn’t work,
the iPod had run down or they had any other urgent need. And we could stop
being in the look-out about how to head off Valentina’s tantrums. It was life,
normal life.
When we went back to the little
village in the evening Valentina, who had stuck to the grandparents since we
had arrived, clung to us instead like a little monkey to a banana tree, afraid
we would leave again without her. And my eldest son asked us, “Why on earth did
you go to Rome?”
Did they
miss us? We should do it more often, I thought.
To be
honest the children had fun because they had friends there. And the
grandparents were happy to have them.
So what?
All right, I am the only one who hates that little, narrow, stinky village. But
I can’t help it.
On Saturday
22nd August we finally left. Grandparents inquired about the reason
why we were leaving after only a week. We had already explained two months ago,
and we told them again that the children were starting school the first week of
September and we needed time to reach England and get everything ready. We had
a narrow escape.
On the way
back we didn’t plan to see much. We stopped in Milan to see the Cathedral
square, which I had never seen before. I thought the Gothic Cathedral was grey
but instead it is covered with white and pink slabs of marble. What a surprise!
And we also had an evening walk in the busy, old, fascinating centre of Colmar,
a characteristic Alsatian town with half-timbered houses overlooking the
canals. All the shops were closed of course.
I was
looking forward to being back to England to my house, my life and my space.
Valentina was happy to be back with us as well. After all she is our defence
against the Bogeyman. He is so scared of her that he leaves us alone.
We arrived
safe and sound in Lancaster on a sunny evening, the day before the heavy rains
started.
And this is what really happened.
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