travelogue: noun

• An account of one's travels: a book, article, or film recording places visited and people encountered. The literary variety is more often known simply as the travel book.

(Source: Oxford Reference)

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Edited selections from different travelogues I wrote for a course I took during my semester abroad. Travels throughout Tuscany.

Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio 
- An Arrival -

‘Nothing is new in Tuscany,’ the pioneering travel writer H.V. Morton declared, ‘we were merely the latest of those who had laughed and joked upon that hilltop under the same blue sky.’

Ted Jones, Florence and Tuscany 

Wrapped up in a warm coat and a cozy scarf after waking up early enough that the sun rises just as I do, I put my headphones in and begin my morning routine.

I start at the carousel in the center of the Piazza Massimo d’Azeglio near my home in Florence and head southwest on Via Carducci, people-watching as I go, until I eventually reach the Chiesa di Sant’Ambrogio. It is a leisurely stroll. I feel no sense of urgency on Thursday mornings at the start of my weekend with no more classes waiting for me and I take time to admire the different buildings and the open area near the church, only just beginning to bustle with people. I take pictures. I listen to music. At one point, I retrace my steps briefly to stare at some pastries in a window display and make a mental note to try something new the next time I visit that particular bakery. Eventually, I take a left just past the church on Via Andrea del Verroccio as my phone directions suggest. I check the time. Somehow, I have managed to stretch what should have been a travel time of not even ten minutes into a twenty-five-minute walk from my home.

As I get closer to the destination, the sound of my boots echoing on the uneven cobblestones are slowly but surely overwhelmed by a growing rumbling. I put my headphones away, and the sound clears into a more chaotic symphony — small children’s laughter, plastic crinkling as recycled bags fill with fruits and vegetables, and sharp voices of friendly haggling between older women intermix with the slick sounds of men cutting meat and cheese to sell to people who appear to be market regulars. Some people try to catch my attention, calling out in Italian, “Bella! Bella!” to sell me some potted flowers or overpriced, cheap-looking jewelry.

In this overwhelming setting, it is no wonder, perhaps, that my ears know I have arrived at the Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio almost before my eyes do.

Montepulciano
- The Fountain -

But there was a break in the crowd—I could see a bubble of space ahead. I pushed urgently toward it, not realizing till I bruised my shins against the bricks that there was a wide, square fountain set into the center of the plaza.

Stephanie Meyer, Twilight: New Moon

Montepulciano is considered to be a medieval treasure of Tuscany. Looking around, I can easily see why. Even with the cloudy, slightly gloomy weather, the centuries-old stone buildings and medieval facades shine brightly and come together to create quite a formidable town center. It is so wonderfully easy to feel like a small person in such a big piazza! I reach out to feel a stone on the wall of a small shop near me as I absentmindedly listen to the tour guide explain that the building itself is from the medieval century.

How unbelievably strange it feels! I will never know what to do with the fact that someone like me can get the opportunity to literally touch a history as celebrated and valued as this one which currently surrounds me so immediately and so undeniably. And I will never understand why I feel this honored by the opportunity, either. Suddenly, I remember my parents, who are likely sleeping at the moment on account of the time difference between Italy and the U.S. They immigrated to America just so I could do things like touch old stones. I feel so grateful that for a second I think I am losing my mind.

Then the tour guide mentions a fun fact that makes everyone in our group laugh, and I suddenly step into a different chapter of history – one quite important in its own right! Montepulciano, I learn, is where the Volterra scenes in Twilight: New Moon were actually filmed. This is hilarious to me.

Apparently, Montepulciano turned out to have the desired Tuscan quaintness that Stephanie Meyer initially assigned to the city of Volterra, a different Tuscan city, that was ultimately deemed too modern-looking in reality for its dreamy, literary description. I am annoyed by questions of seeing and not-seeing for a traveler. A foreigner? A tourist? A movie director? A fantasy writer with access to Google? Do the distinctions between these words mean enough to note them? What kind of person could look at Volterra and Montepulciano and write them off as interchangeable? And what kind of audience could believe them?

Significantly, I cannot help but notice the piazza is quite empty in the middle of the large, gorgeous square. Why would that be strange? Or worth noting? Well, the climax of Bella and Edward’s love affair in the second movie is almost entirely defined by a slow shot of Bella’s dramatic run through a fountain to save the love of her life. I arrive – and there is no fountain. There is no fountain! Seeing the expansive, uncrowded space just highlights all the negative, fountain-free space. The tour guide laughs at our groups’ expressions, then explains. As it turns out, the set director had a fountain temporarily added to the piazza to make it accurate for shooting this particular movie scene.

For a moment, I have double vision. I watch as Montepulciano’s medieval center dawns a masquerade mask for its Hollywood makeover. Is it not just so incredibly odd? Someone decided Volterra was not good enough to be Volterra, and then decided that Montepulciano’s potential was good enough to be Volterra, and then proceeded to edit Montepulciano’s very real historical square to help it become a “more accurate” interpretation of a different city that did not meet expectations on its own. And somehow also managed to pull a shiny Robert Pattinson into the mix?

Our tour guide moves on before I have any time to truly process that information.

Bolgheri
- My Gift -

This sunny, shadowy, breezy, wandering life, in which he seeks for beauty as his treasure, and gathers for his winter’s honey what is but a passing fragrance to all other men, is worth living for, come afterwards what may.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun

After a brief introduction to Bolgheri, we students are all set loose upon the town and instructed to meet up by the village gates we entered earlier at a certain time. While wandering, my friends and I come across a small souvenir shop near a gelateria run by an old woman. The souvenir shop overflows with gorgeous pottery, painted olive oil bottles, and all sorts of other handmade art pieces.

As I walk around the shop, I touch and pick up various olive oil bottles and salt and pepper shakers until I spot an unassuming magnet wall tucked away in the corner of the shop and eagerly begin to peruse the options. My mother collects magnets, so I try to buy her a magnet from every city I visit in Italy. While I am done picking out a small magnet for my mom and a painted ring for a friend, I stand by the cashier desk and wait for barely a second before the woman who owns the shop approaches me.

She greets me, speaking quickly. I have only just begun speaking and listening to Italian, so more than half of her words sail right over my head, just in one ear and out the other. But there is so much more to hear in a conversation than the words themselves! I track the speed at which she speaks, the shifting inflections in her tone, the eagerness behind her laugh, and the grace she seems to share with me so effortlessly. It is humbling how often life seems determined to prove to me that kindness can transcend languages and places and histories. I swear! I am not lying when I laugh along with her. For a few minutes while I make my purchase, I think I really do understand her jokes perfectly.

Before I leave, she pins an endearing little ladybug made of different fabrics to the gift bag filled with my purchases. I think she mentions she makes them herself. She smiles, then says, “Un regalo per te!”

Indeed.