Appian Way - #5

 

 

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Appian Way - Tirrenia

I appreciated the use of the interpreter, but I told him the next morning after leaving the restaurant in Livorno that I thought that his time would be spent better helping out the younger members of our contingent.  I decided to explore the surrounding area on my own. 

I started out not real early, perhaps around 10:00 and decided to walk around Tirrenia on my own.  It was a modern little Italian village but different in a lot of ways.  The center section of the town had cobble stone streets with a lot of little shops of all kinds that seemed to specialize in different products.  Tobacco, wine, pottery, clothes, jewelry, and several quaint little cafes.  I found an ice cream shop and bought a cone of some strange flavor that I really can’t describe.  There was a festival that the local Catholic Church was having to raise money I guess for some worthy cause, so I bought some flavored coffee, which wasn’t much good, sat on a park bench and just watched the people parade around in their Sunday best. 

I went to Mass that afternoon at the local church and was able to follow the service pretty well.  I understood every part of the Mass except for the serman of course.

After leaving Mass I ran into one of the young men that was part of our group named  Terdoff.  He was a little older than the other guardsman and had grown tired of pretending he was on just another army post.  He too wanted to take advantage of seeing the local Italian scene.

We went to a place that was a combination deli, ice cream parlor, and bar and had a glass of wine.  I joked with the owner about him giving us California wine (it was a white wine from Tuscany.)

We ventured back to the festival area and ate a pastry that was creamy on the inside and fried on the out side sprinkled with sugar.

We went to a spegatteria  across the street that served different kinds of pasta but it was run by some Arabs.  After another glass of wine we decided not to eat there and walked down a side street that I had not noticed before  We stumbled across a quaint little café that reminded me of the restaurant where Michael shot the Turk and the corrupt police captain in the Godfather.

We ordered a dinner that consisted of red wine and spaghetti with white sauce that had small chunks of ham infiltrated though out.  They served some interesting flat bread sticks, a small pizza with mussels, a chocolate éclair and some of the worst coffee I ever tasted in my life.

We both went back to the spa and to bed.  I woke around 3 am, still suffering from jet lag, went down to the main lobby and started writing some letters and post cards.  The desk clerk thought I was crazy.

I noticed during my meanderings that day that the normal people, the middle class I guess, dressed a little different.  They all seemed to be just a touch more poor than our middle class, but that might have been because it was a small town and not very cosmopolitan.  Their clothes did not match it seems and their shoes were not up to our standards. Many of the women who walked around held hands and the older ladies dyed their hair a deep red, almost purple. 

I just hung around the lobby writing and “reading” magazines until breakfast and hoped that the coffee would be better in the morning.