The Dream

I woke up this morning, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and looked around at my familiar bedroom and out the window to my familiar street in my familiar home town.  I had a dream last night.  It was an amazing and incredible dream, so vivid that it still seems real.  I dreamt that we had moved to a faraway land and we stayed there for a long time, long enough to experience all four seasons.

I dreamt that this land was an ancient land and that we saw the remains of places where people had lived before Jesus walked the earth.  We saw the ruins of ancient civilizations.  Many towns in this land were built in medieval times, sometimes on hilltops to better defend themselves.  

The streets were so narrow that cars could barely squeeze by each other, and so small cars were an advantage.  I dreamt that we had a cute little car that was fun to drive, and it was called a “Panda”.  We regularly loaded our bikes on the Panda and drove to a nearby town to ride through a long park along a big river.  

I dreamt that the land was covered with vineyards and olive groves.  There were many castles in this land, and lots of big country homes they called villas.  In the dream, we lived in an apartment in a villa made of stone that was built in the sixteenth century.  It was outside a tiny village and way up a hillside on a steep single-lane road.  Despite being so isolated, we made many close friends, and were never lonely because so many friends from the U.S. visited.

I dreamt that all the local people spoke a beautiful and melodious language that we tried to learn, but did not get very far because most of them also spoke English better than we spoke their language.  In trying to speak in the native tongue, we made some hilarious gaffes.  The worst was the time I said, “I would like to shit telephones.”

And the local people loved to talk.  It was common to see someone in the street having a conversation with another in a second-story window.  Groups of women had the talent of all speaking at once while still getting what everyone else was saying.  Old folks sat in piazzas and gossiped.  In the evening, strolling around the piazza and chatting was the social event, with all generations represented.

I dreamt that the villages around us would have a street market on a different day of the week, where a street or piazza would be blocked off with vendors’ trucks, selling vegetables, meat, fish, plants, and clothes.  We would always go to the one on Thursday and get extremely fresh vegetables and fruit.  Then we would top off shopping with an espresso or cappuccino in a caffe bar.

In the land of my dreams, the seasons were more pronounced.  I dreamt that it snowed once in the winter, and that we had to haul wood up to our apartment and heat it with a wood burning stove.   It was hot in summer and we picked berries and cherries along the side of our road.  In the fall, the persimmon tree in our garden dropped all of its leaves but was still covered with ripe persimmons so that it looked like it was decorated with bright orange Christmas ornaments.  It would often get windy in the afternoon, and we had some tremendous rainstorms with thunder and lightning, but more often it was sunny with blue skies and white puffy clouds.

Hoopoe (photo by Rajiv Lather, www.birdforum.net)

In the spring, there were all kinds of birds around our place, and we learned their names:  magpies, redstarts, blue tits (they were so funny the way they would pop a few feet into the air and land again).  There was a hoopoe, a spectacular bird that would be a rare surprise to see.  There was a big flock of noisy starlings that roosted and had babies in the roofs of our buildings.  By the time summer arrived, most of the birds had moved on.

I dreamt that there were flowers everywhere, and they were Carmen’s favorite photography subject.

All of the old buildings had window and balcony planter boxes bursting with color.  She was jealous of the giant hydrangeas that seemed to grow effortlessly there.  Even weeds growing out of old stone walls became beautiful photo subjects.

And I dreamt we lived near a magical city, one famous as the center of the flowering of the arts in the Renaissance.  We would take the train into the city, walk its ancient streets to spectacular churches and palaces, cross the river on a bridge lined with jewelry shops, see some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world, stop for coffee or gelato, or have dinner at a small trattoria on a tiny side street where the food was always wonderful.  

It was just a dream.  But it seemed so real!

The Last Road Trip

We had to be out of our apartment by the end of the month and were not flying back to the U.S. until the 3rd, so we turned our last days in Italy into a road trip.  Based on our desire to be close to Milano Malpensa airport, our friend Sandy Swanton recommended the beautiful little town of Orta San Giulio on Lago d'Orta.  She did not steer us wrong.

One kilometer out in the lake from the town is Isola San Giulio.  It is a beautiful sight at night from the restaurants on the waterfront next to the main piazza.

There are many fancy hotels in Orta San Giulio (but ours was not one of them;-).  The architecture reminds that this region of Italy, Piedmont, is close to France.

A small chapel in the piazza has faded frescoes.  Narrow medieval streets lead to little piazzas.

A main attraction in Orta San Giulio is the Sacro Monte di San Francesco, a UNESCO world heritage site.  Within a park on the hilltop over the town are a major church and twenty chapels, each chapel devoted to major events in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  

A convenient guide map (as well as hand symbols pointing to the next chapel)  routed us through the park to the chapels in the chronological order of his life.  

The early chapels told their story through frescoes on the walls and ceiling, but for later chapels, sculptors were brought in to create dioramas.

We were especially taken by this chapel that had a cylindrical tower capped by a dome.  Looking up inside, the geometry creates the illusion of infinite depth, and the fresco on the side and dome uncannily translates the illusion into an ascent to heaven.

Next on the agenda was a quick boat trip to the island.  Isola di San Giulio is dominated by a formidible Benedictine monastary and the Basilica di San Giulio.  Here are a few scenes:

An interesting coat of arms.  I am not sure what trade or guild the family was associated with.  Any ideas?

After two nice days in Orta, it was finally time to head for the airport and the trip back to the U.S.  We did not refer to it as the "trip home" because Italy has truly been our home the past year.  But we also had "home" waiting for us in Encinitas and were looking forward to seeing family and friends, especially those that had not been able to visit us.