We ambled on and off the trail, stopped at overlooks, pushed through high grass, stands of trees, thickets of brush to peer at parts of the hill clearly marked as private property (places B. thought might be fruitful venues for exploration). The air was alight with sunshine, alive with winged critters, falling leaves, bits of milkweed-style fluff. And from here a linear description of the afternoon begins to break down because, in a vaguely Seinfeldian way, nothing much happened. We drifted. We talked. We snooped around. For a while, we sprawled on a high stretch of hillside soaking up sunlight. We sat on a small stucco bench in front of an old, weatherbeaten stucco utility building that hugged the hillside just below the hiking path, the valley stretched out below. A tiny lizard darted briefly into view, hanging on the wall not far from my head in casual, gravity-defying fashion.
You get the picture. A string of unexpectedly pleasing moments, a beautiful afternoon.
Then back to the hotel.
(Pause for near-scatological inquiry: Why is it that hotels insist on gift-wrapping toilet seats with paper ribbons? How exactly is that supposed to assure us of cleanliness? In the last two hotels I've passed through, the toilet-seat ribbons were emblazoned with red crosses -- what does that mean? Are they suitable for use as dressings on major sucking wounds when not festooning the bog? Something else I've noticed: most hotels take the trouble to fold up the ends of toilet paper rolls into a V-shape. What in God's name is that about? Is there a necktie fetish thing going on I should know about? It can't be for aesthetic reasons, because listen up: there is NOTHING ARTISTIC about folding the end of the toilet paper roll INTO A V-SHAPE. It produces less surface space to grab onto, and that's about it. Someone, somewhere, who teaches hotel folk all sorts of secrets-of-the-trade is probably laughing over a triple piña colada right now, telling friends about how they've convinced an entire industry that folding up the ends of toilet paper rolls is sophisticated and refined.)
And speaking of the near-scatological, an unexpected side-effect of the big breakfast, with its multiple cups of cappucino & glasses of juice and water, was a growing state of bladder hyperproductivity, a strange cranking up of my little body's natural functioning that sent me off into the bushes several times during the early to mid-afternoon. Given the setting, not a major disruption of life. Had more pressing impact later on, though. (Foreshadowing! No, I am not above delving into cheap literary devices now and then.)
B. retired to his room to rest up before the evening's foodfest. Restless, feeling the urge for a slice or two of the local pizza, I hiked to a nearby shopping center, wolfed down some very decent pie. Watched shoppers, listened to the music of the language. Went back outside for some fresh air where I watched the sunset, appreciated Italian women, noticed that an impressively high percentage of them had cellphones in hand, either in use or at ready.
Had a fine dinner that evening at a local joint, me once again providing a shining example of untrammeled gluttony. A high point: B.'s attempt to order ice cream -- on the face of it as simple a communication as one could undertake. Leading, in our case, to a scrum of six people -- me and B., two members of the wait staff, plus a 30ish Italian couple at an adjoining table who knew a little English, a little Spanish -- all going back and forth trying to get across an order for a scoop of gelato. Noise, arm waving, the biggest flurry happening during B.'s attempt to find out the flavor (they only had one).
"Milk," they said.
"Milk?" said B. "You mean vanilla?"
"Vanilla?" the wait people asked, perplexed.
"Vainilla," I said, ever ready to inflict Spanish on everyone, no matter how unhelpful or pretentious my contribution.
"Ah!" said the husband of the couple next to me. "Vaniglia!"
"Vaniglia?" said the wait people. "No, milk!!"
Two minutes of this, me laughing harder and harder, the husband of the neighboring couple laughing with me.
The ice cream finally arrives, one lonely white scoop in a white bowl. Vanilla.
I can't tell you how happy all that made me.
Next morning: another big breakfast, heavy on the various liquids. B. took me on a hike into Merate center, during which the bladder thing started up again. Kind of the day's first warning shot across the bow, sending me into a local establishment to use their facilities, which turned out to literally be a hole in the floor, white porcelain inlaid in the tiled surface around it (including porcelain treads for foot placement). And a support handle on either wall for those who've really been putting the coffee away and might be feeling a touch shaky.
The day's main event was to be a drive up to Lake Como, by midday we were en route, B. doing an excellent job of dealing with local highways, signage, etc. The roads heading into the heart of Como feed down from the hills around the town into a natural basin, heading directly to the lake from there, where my generally reliable parking karma lined up a space another car was abandoning. B. pulled in, fed meter, etc. -- I disappeared to recycle more of the morning's cappucino. When I reappeared, we began a saunter along the lake, the beauty of the place slowly sinking in.
We traced a long, leisurely loop, eventually moving into what might be Como's oldest section, an extensive zone of long, narrow streets, punctuated by plazas, enough people about to suggest how overrun with humans the town must get in season. A beautiful place that gradually took ahold of us, had us walking around with mouths half-open as we soaked it in. A place, it dawned on me, that I would enjoy living in.
Hmmmm.
[continued in next entry]
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 1:30 PM [+]
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