From Vicki: A curse on the asshole who used our credit card number and a curse on Citibank. I don’t even want to know how much the cell charges will be for the multiple phone calls to try to get this resolved. So late in the evening of 5/10, having been up since pre-dawn on 5/9, we get the fraud alert and contact Citibank. Here’s the first thing I’m going to do next time we get one of those: I’m gonna ignore it, because you know what they do, right? They close your account. But say you’re in Europe on vacation, and that card is one of two cards that you have, and they close your account. If you’re like me, and you’ve had a super-shitty week (starting with being told that my contract at UofM was not being renewed for budgetary reasons), you start to obsess about what happened if the other card gets swiped. Not a good head space to be in.
However, not thinking about that, I call Citibank and try to explain to the nice young thing on the other end that we are in Zurich headed for Italy and will be traveling around for a while. No, we don’t want you to FedEx a card to our house because WE ARE NOT THERE. Finally, she seems to understand, and our hosts, Bryan and Sara, text us an address in Camaiore (at the bottom of the mountain) where they will accept a package. But they are not opened on Sunday, so it will have to be deliver by Saturday, I tell the nice young thing, because we will be leaving the area on Monday. No problem, she says, if FedEx runs Saturday delivery here.
The next thing I know, I have two alerts: one from FedEx for a Saturday delivery and one from dhl for Wednesday delivery to Camiore. Sonofabitch. Today was spent trying to clear that up (today’s helper had no record of a FedEx shipment) and said that they can lock the card but cannot send another card until after four days past the time of said locking. So now, I’m hoping that Shitty Week started on Sunday, so that perhaps tomorrow will begin a better week.
On Friday morning, we left Zurich on a sold-out train for Pisa. The ride was OK - crowded - and we ended up in the same car (for both legs of the journey) as a Swiss team of high-school volley ballers. Need I say that they were not quiet? Still we made it to Pisa, got to the airport and rented a VW Polo - a stick shift, which Vicki loves.
From Vicki: Buy reserved seats for the trains. We watched a lot of people play musical seats because they had tickets but not reservations. I don’t know about you, but once I plant my butt and open my iPad, I don’t want to have to move.
So we hit the road for Metato. Metato is not a large metropolis. Its population is less than 85, and it is on top of a mountain. Our friend bought a place here some 30 years ago and has been working on it since. Bryan has multiple acres, most of which are olive trees, and he and anyone that he can persuade to assist (he says) harvest those olives in the fall.
Before I go further, I should tell you that the road up the mountain to Metato is winding and narrow. There are cyclists and pedestrians in the way. There are hairpin turns. Then you get to Metato, and there are maybe 20 regular parking places; others are completely made up. From the parking lot, you either walk or ride in the trailer hooked to Bryan’s tractor. Walking is faster, but tiresome. So upon our initial arrival, Bryan came down to get us (and Sara, his partner, who has just arrived also!) and we hopped in the back and stood, holding onto what I guess is a roll-bar for those times that the tractor flips on a steep hill. And most of the hills are steep. We putt-putted our way for a good 20 minutes, hanging on but loving the view and the tour given by both Sara and Bryan.
The house is wonderful. We had two floors to ourselves. When we arrived and settled in, Bryan and Sara had groceries for us, including wine and a prosecco before dinner, and they prepared a pizza dinner in the pizza oven off the house. I know... you are thinking a pizza or two to feed four people? Nope, we first had focaccia, with rosemary from this solid wall of rosemary lining the walkway:
After that, we followed a prescribed order of pizzas, each with homemade dough, and moving from less pronounced flavors to the the most pronounced, a total of five incredible pizzas. Five. We did our best.
Finally, we crashed hard and slept very, very well.
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