Si! Molto Bene! Bicicletta!

After last weekend's fiasco one would think that I'd be a little nervous to travel again. However, I refuse to let one bad travel experience scar my love of exploration so, when my friends Bre and Mackenzie invited me to join in on their day trip to the medieval-walled city of Lucca, I jumped at the chance.

What really sparked my interest wasn't the chance to fail at mastering the train system, but Mackenzie's reason for going. Before leaving the States, Mackenzie's grandmother gave her the name of an extended family member (who owns a bakery) to find while in Florence. Absolutely adoring stories and situations like this, I knew I had to experience this with her. So, yesterday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and met the girls at the train station. Encountering my usual travel debacles, we jumped on the wrong train, got stuck in Pisa for a little bit (I am so tired of Pisa), and Bre and I got a little bit motion sick.

We arrived in Lucca not knowing the right way to go, without a map, and - to top it off - in the rain with suede ankle boots. Nevertheless, we laughed it off and managed to find a map just as the rain stopped. We entered the old city walls and made our way through the beautifully, quaint town sans SWARMS of tourists. This was a fantastic change from Firenze. About a half hour in, we find our destination and nervously Mackenzie marches right into the bakery with her script in hand.

She approaches the girl behind the register and asks the name of her relative. She's told in Italian that he was in the back and someone went to go get him. While we're waiting, the girl introduced us to his wife, by far the nicest and sweetest little Italian lady we'd ever met. She only spoke Italian and, as we only spoke English, communicating was going to get interesting. She offered us pastries and coffee, so as not to be rude, we stuffed our bellies with the BEST cappuccino any of us have ever had and the most delicious sugary treats. I have never had a pastry like the one I had that morning. It was out-of-this-world phenomenal. We stood at the bar with the rest of the Italian locals and exclaimed (quite loudly) at the delectable pastries. We took pictures, took a bite, screamed "AMAZING!", took a picture, took a bite, screamed "TRY THIS!", and shoved it in one another's face. So it went for about 10 minutes while Mackenzie's long lost cousin/aunt/something-or-other spoke slowly and clearly in Italian to us about school, where we're from, what our names were, and why her husband was taking so long. With my minimal linguistic skills, I was amazingly able to translate for the girls and respond to our hostess - in Italian! While it was only elementary Italian, I was still over-the-moon impressed with how far I've come.

Renata, our hostess, informed us that her husband had to go somewhere but he would be back after noon. She took down Mackenzie's number and our names and offered to call us when he returned. We said thank you over and over and made our way out of the bakery. Ecstatic with the situation, we left all smiling ear-to-ear. Since Mackenzie had actually been to Lucca some years prior, she was dying to go back to the places that gave her such magnificent memories. We pulled out the map, located the piazza she was so very much in love with, and we started off in that direction. We stopped every so often to go into a store, take a picture of something, gawk at a vendor and his/her produce, or just merely appreciate our surroundings. We had an extraordinary time just meandering through the town. We finally found the enclosed piazza, walked around to do a little window shopping and people creeping, and eventually sat down to split a pizza at the pizzeria Mackenzie had eaten at last time in town. After lunch, we headed back out into the rest of the medieval city.

As we started walking, Mackenzie's phone started to ring and we all physically jumped and squealed with delight. Fumbling Mackenzie answers the phone, "Hello!?!... Ciao?!.... Pronto?" Somehow, in our excitement we didn't quite think through the fact that we barely communicate in person - how would we ever communicate by phone? We hung up and power walked back to the bakery.

We reached the bakery, ran inside, and were fed again once more. This time, unbeknownst to me, I picked out a rum baba. When I say rum, I mean the ENTIRE bottle of rum was poured on top of this small handful of pastry dough. This little thing had enough kick to make an elephant intoxicated, but with a cherry on top it doesn't look quite that menacing. Renata took the pastries outside and sat us at a little table under the columns and arches. She had us sit down and eat, and let us know that her husband would be out in a few minutes. After a bite or two of my baba, I decided, for my liver's sake that I would not be finishing the pastry, but I continued to pick at it very, very slowly to be polite. While I pushed the baba around with my fork, Ademaro made his way over to us and sat down to talk.

Communicating with Renata proved to be deceivingly simple once Ademaro began his conversation with us. Even so, I was able to understand and translate most of it for Mackenzie and Bre. Eager to communicate and contribute, they peppered the chat with "Molto bene!", "Si!", and most humorously, in her attempts to prove her Italian skills, at one point Bre points across the street and exclaims "BICICLETTA!"

Despite the evident language barrier, we managed to have a great talk with Ademaro, learning all about Mackenzie's other family members and their locations in Italia. Renata came out and sat with us for a while which made conversing much easier with her patience and use of simple words. We talked for a bit longer and made plans to come back in late October. They left us to finish our pastries and the coffee we were force fed mid-snack. We finished up, I put my wrapped up babas in a few napkins so I could dispose of my cirrhosis-of-the-liver-inducing pastry, and brought our dishes inside. Renata handed us a HEAVY bag of pastries, cookies, and sweet bread for our breakfast the next morning. The only payment we were allowed was to simply remember them! Mackenzie, Bre, and I melted. We said our goodbyes and made our way back to the train station.

We had a delicious day made up of truly the best ingredients: friends, family, and food. We can't wait for the second serving in October.