Tuscany and Beyond

Summertime in Tuscany, and the livin' is easy. We are taking it easy as well. No sense in pushing things. In fact, we are pushing nothing. One day in fact, we spend in and around the hotel. It's not exactly a torture. Our hotel is, after all, a former palace. It's the Palazzo of Cardinale Rovere who went on to become a pope. So, while merely a cardinal, he had this magnificent stone mansion, outbuildings and grounds. We are staying in what might have been a former granary, now carved into two beautiful stone-floored rooms. Throughout the place, the ancient features pop out of the modern. In the lobby, a spiral fluted marble column rises between the sofas and the bar. In the main hallway, the plaster wall disappears here and there to give you a shot of the original stone. It's a magnificent restoration. Even the marble swimming pool looks as though it might have been part of the cardinal's original setup.

From the hotel's lower level, looking across an ancient stone wall, the medieval town hangs in the distance. Cypresses frame the view from the hotel grounds, and more cypresses march across the hills. It's Italy. It's a Renaissance painting. It's our hotel. In the evening, armed with the name of a country restaurant recommended by one of the hotel staff, we set out in the general direction of San Gimignano. The restaurant is closed, so we drive on. We fly past a small sign, weathered and almost amateurly modest, that points uphill to what might be a restaurant. Marlou heads up a rutted gravel road, parks and we stare at an empty stone building with a deserted terrace. It may not be a restaurant, and certainly it isn't open, but we are here, and Marlou wanders out to have a look. The owner wanders out to greet her. I crutch down some stone steps and into an expensive bastion of Italian haute cuisine, everything served on expensive linen and ceramics, French tourists gradually drifting in as the evening advances. I am stunned, but stunned into excess. How many meals of a lifetime can one have in a few days?

It's a perfect holiday. Which means it has to end. Besides, Tuscany is getting hot. We are beginning to drive around with the air conditioning on. At night, the fireflies are out in force. They appear in the darkness behind the hotel, blinking and flashing in a way that makes you wonder if the 1960s aren't resurfacing in some chemically overstimulated part of your brain. Not that this matters, for what is really stimulated in Italy is the heart. There is so much of it. Our hotel almost feels like a family-run operation. It isn't. But everyone seems to know everyone in some indefinable way. The Italian hotel business is a family business, just as there is no such thing as an impersonal Italian restaurant. In fact, there are also no chain restaurants. On the outskirts of Arezzo we saw small signs for McDonald's, but the arrows all pointed out of town. So, somewhere by the freeway on the outskirts of the city one can apparently find the golden arches. If the marble arches and the stone arches don't suffice, check out the yellow American ones. They are something of an artifact in their own right. The only chain restaurant in this part of Tuscany.

Drained of ambition, almost overdosed on warmth and perfection, what is there to do with the final day but hit a final hill town? Volterra. It's beautiful. And the Roman theater, seen in an aerial view of the town itself, fascinates me. We lunch on bruschetta and then, essentially, give up. Back to the hotel. But not before we have a final look at the town's ramparts. That means going up on the high cliff by the city walls, another steep climb up a medieval street, paving stones polished slick by centuries of feet and donkey carts. It feels as if I'm going to tip backwards or slip downhill. On the way back it feels even worse. Marlou and I try to find another way down, but it's hopeless. There's only one way, and there's no way I'm doing this on our own. Marlou goes off in search of help. It arrives in the form of another Paul, actually Paulo, who holds the handles on my wheelchair while we descend the impossible grade. Enough. We are out of here. The car is where we left it, in a prime disabled parking space by the city walls. It's been perfect. It's been enough.

Things are similarly perfect the next day. The waitress gives Marlou a parting hug. The front desk gives her two bottles of wine. And we are off for Florence Airport. Things have been so perfect, that the minor imperfection -- the cancellation of our flight -- seems like a detail. I'll be getting into London late, but my cousin's husband is driving down from Gloucestershire to meet me at Heathrow. Not to worry. I don't take much notice when seated aboard the plane, moments before departure, one of the ground crew comes on board to ask how my wheelchair can be taken apart. It can't, I say, smiling indulgently. We sit on the ground. The pilot informs everyone that there will be a short delay while a wheelchair is secured in the hold. But that's it. True, there is a white-knuckle moment at Charles De Gaulle Airport, changing planes. It takes no less than four separate handlers to move me between planes, and there is an awkward gap in the transfers, probably less than 15 minutes, while I sit alone in a wheelchair I can't move. But never mind. The attendant arrives at last, and this has all been worth it. I've checked my electric wheelchair directly through to London, certainly the wisest, most sensible course.

I am a little dazed by the time I'm pushed into the customs hall at Heathrow. My electric wheelchair arrives five minutes later, but oddly perched on a baggage cart. I can see why. One of the wheels has been bashed in. The entire wheelchair tilts so badly that it cannot roll. One of the baggage handlers manages to get the wheel back in position, but the wheelchair control light flashes on and off, a sure sign of electronic trouble. A guy from Air France walks over. He eyeballs the chair, pronounces his sincere regret and assures me that the airline will pay for everything. He has seen it all before. At Florence, no one had ever seen a wheelchair before. Somehow, between these two experiences, there is a sort of madness. I and my wheelchair and my trip to London, all of this is now on hold, uncertain, and may not even occur.

Stepping out of Alistair's van hours later, the Gloucestershire rain hits me cold and hard. It is June. I don't go to bed until 2 a.m. It's exciting to be here. Even more exciting, the next day, the rain stops and the cold winds take over. But it's clear. Nothing can be more lush and green than England in the summer. So what is there to do but have tea? Someone in a country home is serving tea to raise money for the Red Cross. So what the hell? That's where we go, some place near the village of Lower Slaughter. Upper Slaughter lies beyond, of course. Somehow, even in 2008, English aristocrats hang on to houses like this. My cousin Caroline tells me that this home is owned by a British banking family. Tea in the conservatory is splendid, but the driveway is even better. Acres of rolling lawns and magnificent trees, including a couple of copper beeches, undulating through the Cotswolds, then across a gravel courtyard to the teas.

Would we like another way out? The lady of the house shows us through the downstairs, vaguely in the direction of the front door. But we never make it there. She decides to show us her Venetian room. After her husband died, she says, she wanted to cheer up her dining room with something Italianate. There are scenes of Venice on the walls, scenes of Venice on the rolling window shades. She's right, the room is fun. She seems to be on a roll, so out we go on a half-hour guided tour of her grounds. She has lost her husband, but not her love of people. Passing her vegetable garden, I tell her about my raised beds in California. We speak the same language. More garden. When Alistair turns my wheelchair around, a manual one purchased from the British Red Cross, I get a sense of the setting. The home and its hundreds of acres occupy one side of a valley. The Cotswolds are full of such vales. And this family has been in this vale for a long time. There's even a haha, a perspective altering drop-off in the 18th century garden to the west. I am crippled, my electric wheelchair is broken, my wife has cancer, my prospects are uncertain, and this English lady aristocrat is urging me to come back next year, give her a ring, and we will see the roses in season. What else?