FAMILY MATTERS by Jude Dobson

Good enough to eat
From France to Italy. I have a smattering of rusty old school cert French, which surprised me pleasantly by helping me recognise all sorts of words I thought I'd forgotten, but I possess absolutely no Italian. I have attempted to add an "o" at the end of the odd word and occasionally been correct (buon giorno, fantastico), but mostly I am completely at sea.
There is something strangely freeing and at the same time intimidating about being unable to communicate with the world around you. It made ordering food from the menu, then seeing what arrived, a complete surprise for the first three nights. Thereafter, we went to a supermarket to sort out cooking for ourselves. It only took two hours to shop for the basics! Still, you know you must be in Italy when entire aisles are dedicated to pasta and a big bottle of pasta sauce costs only 50 cents.
We've rented a villa in the hills above Florence. You're out of the city rush but close enough to be part of it any time you want. The narrow, winding hilltop roads are interesting to walk along, hairier to drive. I saw quite a bit of it on horseback the other day - quite an experience to climb up steep, rocky trails, through olive trees and cypress woods.
Pinocchio's author, Carlo Collodi, who lived down the road here in Castello, based all his story's characters on villagers of the era.
Also within walking distance of us is Villa Petraia. Started in 1364 and added to in the 1500s, it has been home to the powerful Medici family through the centuries. Sitting atop beautiful, formal  gardens, it is where, in the 1800s, the King preferred to spend his summers and where he eventually ensconced his mistress, rather than at the Pitti Palace in Florence. Our small person loved the buxus hedge "baby mazes".
The venerable age of everything in Europe is what Kiwi children can't fathom initially. Well, it stuns them, then it horrifyingly can become ho hum to them. Surely not another castle, painting, building, road, church, etc, that is 500 years old? There's only so much culture and history absorption in a kid, when you're trying to absorb it in a short visit, so it has to be mixed in with swimming in the pool, feeding the donkeys and playing in the backyard with the four Newfoundland dogs who live on site.
However, I have taken enough photos and gathered enough brochures and books so that, long after we get home, the history and artistic significance will come to light even if lost on them at the time.
Being there is irreplaceable. To experience walking inside the King's court and imagining what it might have been like to live all those years ago is truly tangible. Easy to do when you see the grandeur and scale of it. Walking past all those paintings and frescoes made me feel guilty as they really deserved more than a cursory glance, but the flipside is you learn to appreciate things from a child's perspective. Like seeing in the King's games room the 1865 version of a pinball machine I might otherwise have passed by, or counting the many stag heads on the walls, or wondering, as the small person did out loud, just how many paintings of Jesus did they need to do in those days? Or indeed, why did so many people not wear clothes?
We had intended to see Michelangelo's statue of David today, but as it is with kids we got sidetracked by the markets, stopping to buy T-shirts, toy Pinocchios and sunglasses, and to eat gelato and pizza. Hey, there's tomorrow or the next day. David will still be there. We did walk around the magnificent Duomo here in Florence, which at 6pm, tired and hungry, even the kids thought was amazing, especially those gold doors.
Last time my husband and I were here, 19 years ago, we were not even mentioning words like husband or wife. We were young and carefree. We took another pilgrimage back in the form of a book on Florence's artistic treasures, owned by my daughter's godmother who also came here about 25 years ago. She stood on this very spot with that book given to her 30 years ago as the art history prize at school, absorbing all it had to say about the place. We took a photo with her god-daughter in the same spot, again, utilising knowledge found in the book.
I like those "wheel turning" moments that remind you of your place in the world and the connections you have within it.
Ah, Italy. It's beautiful. Slightly mad in parts. Siena's Running of the Horses is testament to that, but the joys of a hot Tuscan summer in the Florence hills is anything but mad. It is fantastico. Ciao.