Hmm. I swear we posted something the other day from Lucca, but it doesn't seem to have appeared. Anyhow. We're in Italy. First, we went to Florence. Florence is a lovely English-speaking city in Japanese-controlled Italy. It is broiling hot and a nice place to be completely overwhelmed by museums and get blisters. We did both. We also bought Leah a very nice leather jacket. Would you believe that the guys gave us a special deal on it? It's true.

So we saw the David - still very big, though under renovation. Apparently they are colorizing the statue to make it more lifelike. Then we went to the Ufizzi. Much of the art there is either religious or large scenes of battle and hunting. We prefer things like mobiles and those Aboriginal spitting paintings, but we stuck it out through all 756 rooms. We saw the lady floating on the clamshell and then went home.

Two days of that, with a new pair of sneakers thrown in for blister management, and we were off for Lucca. Since it was Friday and the weather was nice, there was a train strike. We tried to get on one of the few trains leaving Florence, but the man just yelled at us and made us feel completely unvalidated. We took the bus, and it was only searing hot, not broiling.

In Lucca, the first thing we found out was that we had a ten minute walk with our luggage to the hotel. But the second thing we found out was that we had to walk past a gelateria to get there, and that made things better. The hotel room we had booked was a discount one, which we found out meant NO AIR CONDITIONING. We had recently learned in Florence that air conditioning is a thing that we will pay extra for in Italy in the summer, and so we upgraded and immediately fell asleep in front of the Italian broadcast of the Tour de France.

Lucca is a great walled city that is only roasting hot. Also, there is nothing there that you HAVE to see except for the wall, which surrounds the city and is about 50 feet thick. You can ride a bike on top of it, which lets you see everything and provides a nice breeze. After a few days in Florence, one needs a place with little to do, and so Lucca was perfect. Two days there and we had recuperated enough to hop a long, slow, hot train to Perugia, where our friends Matt and Vieve are for the summer. Vieve can only understand Greek, Latin, German, and French, and so she desperately needed to learn Italian, and quick. Hence, she goes to school and we putter around town.

Or, we sit by the POOL. PISCINA. Yes, a pool. Not hot at all. View of mountains, Umbria. Very nice. If you are silly enough to insist on visiting Italy in the summer, I suggest going somewhere with pools. Yesterday, our first full day here, we ate two two-course meals, swam twice, and drove to Deruta. Deruta is a big center for pottery (presents for you!), and we made the potter stay late to let us browse and ask, "Cuanto costa?" about every espresso cup and sugar bowl in the place. Next, we drove around some more and stumbled upon a tiny walled town called Castelleone. Castles and lions are very big in Europe, it seems. We gawked at big gardens full of basil and peeked in windows, then got Leah to drive through a tiny archway so we could escape. Pictures (I think) when we get home.

Sorry for the lack of photos, despite my promises. It has been a busy week: we had to get out of our apartment and wrangle with the realty agency to get our deposit back, we were planning a trip to Italy, and Leah done got herself a job. Maybe soon I will get a job, too. And tomorrow, we fly to Rome for 10 days. If we don't spend the following week traveling, we'll get some pictures and stories from the journey up here in the beginning of August. This is an old one (maybe a month) that never made it up due to our technical difficulties. It is about veal.

Saturday morning, 11 a.m. Hottest weather Catalunya has seen in 30 years. Beaches are packed; the next day’s newspaper will run photos of people at the beach holding all their stuff, standing in ankle-deep water – there was literally no space to plunk down a towel. The normally pleasant breeze that filters through the apartment felt like something vented off a dryer. And I headed downstairs to Gloria’s. It was time for cooking lesson #3: fricandó. For those of you who don’t know Catalan cuisine and are trying to think of what Gloria might have in mind to accompany this lovely weather, we would be making, essentially, veal stew.

I was thinking of all the other things I would rather eat when it is 95 degrees out than veal stew - watermelon, maybe, or coleslaw, or stale bread – when the elevator stopped abruptly at the 3rd floor. This is where the pensión is, and I was greeted by Gloria, holding a piece of wood with about six holes drilled through it.

“I was just on my way down,” she said. “But now, you can help us with something. Come on, come on.” She hustled me into the empty pensión, where her daughter Sara was standing on a chair trying to screw another piece of wood into the top of a doorframe. She was essentially working upside-down, trying to get a screw about five inches long to go straight into a crookedly drilled hole, and she was not having much luck. The door, which would eventually hang from the piece of wood, leaned on the wall. “It needs another hole,” said Gloria, taking the piece from Sara. “Come on.”

The three of us went into the kitchen, where an ancient Black and Decker drill, referred to as “El Black and Decker” sat on the counter. The double sink was full of sawdust. Bits and chuck keys were spread out on the tiny table. “Hold it,” said Gloria, motioning me to the end of the piece of wood that was not to be drilled. My job was to aid Sara in bracing the wood against the counter while Gloria used El Black and Decker to make some more holes. They had eyeballed the locations for these holes and marked them in ballpoint pen. She fired up the drill and the bit spun in a wild cone: it had been put in at about a 20 degree angle.

“Stop, stop, stop!” I said. “You’ll break it.”

“Don’t worry,” said Gloria, revving the drill again. “The key doesn’t work. It’s stuck; it’ll stay.” I unplugged the drill, reluctant to get shards of drill bit lodged in my eye, so soon before my fricandó lesson. “Hey,” she said. “Plug that in.” Instead, I picked up the key and loosened the bit, then replaced it straight. It went almost entirely through the wood, as they had hoped, and they finished it by smacking the screw through it with a hammer. I made a mental note to go easy on the door if I was ever staying in the pensión again.

The holes finished, Gloria announced that we were done – meaning she and I – and we left Sara to finish hanging the door on her own. I told them to let me know if they needed any more help, and they laughed, insisting that they did all the repairs themselves. In fact, about two weeks later, they did take me up on the offer, when they were having a new floor put in and had about a thousand pounds of concrete and old ceramic tile that they needed removed from their apartment.

We headed down to her apartment, where she picked a battered mop bucket up off the floor, set it on a chair and instructed me to look at its contents. At first I assumed it would be some kind of food product that we were about to cook, since I had become accustomed to finding ingredients in places other than the refrigerator and cupboard since I had begun the “lessons.”

Instead, it was a baby bird. A swallow, to be exact. Gloria took it out and sort of cuddled it a little, as much as one can with a bird, and explained that she had found it on the ground and would be taking care of it until it could fly. She played with the bird a little and then replaced it in the bucket, announcing that we were ready to beat the heat with stew.

Now, in my book, fussy though it may be, birds are like rats. They stay outside, and they are not touched, owing to their filthiness. I got a little panicky and decided that I would wash my hands, making a big fuss about it, and she would be shamed into washing hers, too. When she saw me trying to find hand soap in the kitchen sink, she shuttled me off to the bathroom, saying, “What? You want to wash your hands?” before returning to the kitchen to get the meat out of the fridge.

She was about to start cooking. I had to move fast. In a fit of inspiration, I lunged towards the dishes in the sink. “I’ll start washing these,” I said. “While you get the food set up.” It worked like a charm, since, despite numerous attempts, we have never been allowed to wash a dish after any of the numerous meals Gloria has given us. She yanked the plate out of my hand, picked up a rag, and whipped through the little stack. In the process, I decided to assume that her hands must have gotten de-birded. The fricandó could begin. In terms of ingredients, we had the following:

• 2 pounds of veal, not that weird milk-fed stuff we use, but normal veal, sliced into thin pieces across the grain.
  
• flour, enough to coat the pieces of veal
  
• an onion
  
• some white wine
  
• 2 tablespoons tomato sauce from a can, or raw tomato, diced, with seeds and skin removed
  
• about 5 carrot sticks, like you used to bring to school, and 5 celery sticks in the same style
  
• a few leaves of laurel
  
• some sprigs of fresh thyme
  
• leeks, cut into pieces the same length as the traditional school-lunch carrot stick, if you want, or bay leaves, or other herbs you like
  
• about a half-pound of mushrooms. We used plain white ones, and the snooty Catalan cookbook insists on rossinyols de pi, a kind of wild mushroom found near pine trees. Whatever you use, cut them up into quarters.
  
• two cloves of garlic
  
• salt and black pepper
  
• cinnamon
  
• a small pot full of water, ready to heat up
  
• a mortar and pestle
  

And here’s how you turn this list into a delightful summer fricandó:

So first, you wash your hands, even if you weren’t playing with a bird you found in the street, and put each piece of meat in the flour to coat it. Shake it a little to get the extra flour off. Heat some oil in a skillet, then put the floured meat in there carefully. Don’t get hot oil splashing all over yourself, for God’s sake. When the meat is brown on both sides, and feels just about done, take it out and set it aside.

Start heating the pot of water.

Next, pour the dangerously hot oil into a big stew pot. Not quite sure how you are going to handle this; personally, I let Gloria do it. In fact, the cooking lessons are not all that participatory to begin with. Gloria has such a deep fear of seeing anything bad – like, say, incorrectly cooked fricandó – happen to me or Leah, that I am not allowed to touch much of the stuff we cook. It’s more like a cooking demo followed by lunch. If you don’t have a Gloria handy, you could maybe ask your dad to help, if he’s any good in the kitchen.

By now, you should either be on your way to the emergency room, or the oil ought to be in the stew pot. Keep the flame low. Grate or dice the onion and toss that in there. Tie the carrots, celery, and herbs together and toss that in there. For the record, that’s called a bouquet garni. Move the stuff around for about ten minutes, until the onions are translucent. Pour in a cup or so of wine. Or more. I’ve never actually seen a measuring implement in Gloria’s kitchen, so it can’t be that important.

While the wine is cooking away, add the tomato. About two minutes later, you can add the meat. Add the hot water until it covers all the meat and shake the whole thing around. Cover it and let it sit.

In the meantime, slice the garlic and throw it in the pestle/mortar with some coarse salt, black pepper, cinnamon, and a little broth from the pot. Crush it with the mortar/pestle. Pour the mixture into the pot. Wait an hour. You don’t need to stand around watching the pot during that time – very little can possibly happen, unless you have a tiger in the house. Tigers have a keen sense of smell and are attracted to bouquet garni, and so a stray tiger will most likely get into your fricandó. Barring an infestation of tigers, you are free to go watch football on television or play in the snow, since I am sincerely hoping that you are not suffering through this recipe in the summer.

After an hour passes, add the mushrooms. Cook about 15 minutes more and taste the broth. If it tastes good, it’s done. Let it cool and put it in the fridge. It will be better tomorrow, assuming it is not 97 degrees tomorrow.

The Scene: Our 4-foot by 4-foot by 7-foot elevator, a Sunday afternoon in Barcelona.

Dramatis Personae: Us, and a neighbor. The neighbor’s name is Manuel, and he is a 55-year old architect who lives one floor below our sixth floor apartment with his girlfriend and their 18-month old daughter. We see him – as in, we lay eyes on him, not spend time with him – maybe for two minutes every month, if we pass in the entryway. This is not someone we would say we “know.”

Entryway
Manuel: Hi! How was your weekend?

Us: Great! We went to Lloret del Mar.

Manuel: Oh. Why?

Lloret del Mar a beach town in the Costa Brava, Spain’s northeastern coast. It is horribly tacky, known for attracting droves of young Spaniards, as well as German, Russian, and British tourists, looking to get very drunk and fry themselves on a crowded beach,. It’s sort of like if someone from Spain was visiting the US and said he had gone away for the weekend to that South of the Border hotel with all the billboards on I-95. You’d say, “Why?” But we wanted to go to the beach for the weekend. Is this wrong?

Us: Well, we found a cheap hotel. We also went to Tossa del Mar.

Which is known as a much, much nicer beach town.

Manuel: Hmm. Did you go to Platja d’Aro?

Nicer still. The elevator arrives with its characteristic slam. We all get in. We are standing very, very near each other.


First Floor
Us: No, just Tossa.

Manuel: Ok, then. I really like Platja d’Aro. It’s gorgeous.

Us: Well, we’ll have to go sometime, eh?

Second Floor
Manuel: Yeah, for sure. I was sailing all weekend.

Us: Oh, yeah? We love sailing. Where do you sail?

Third Floor
Manuel: Oh, I keep the boat in El Masnou

Which is more of an upper-middle class suburb, but which also has a nice marina.

Us: Oh, yeah? We used to live in El Masnou.

It’s true. We rented an apartment there for a month. It was weird, you know, to arrive in Barcelona and then immediately set up camp in the burbs, with all the rich housewives and nothing to do and no one speaking Spanish.

Fourth Floor
Manuel: Yeah, I went with my son. He really is the captain.

We think for a moment. Son? We know of the daughter – 18 months old. It isn’t safe to let an 18-month old captain a sailboat, we think, even in light wind. Even with a life preserver. Hmm.

Fifth Floor
Us: Right, right. Sounds nice.

Manuel: Yes, I have two families, really. A wife in El Masnou, and…my family here. We’ve been married a long time, but I’ve had this family here a long time, too. I spend the weekends with my wife and other kids.

What the f*ck?

Manuel: Would you like to go sailing sometime?

The elevator stops on his floor with a slam and a little hop as the aging cables jerk it to a stop. He opens the doors and gets out, turning to look at us as he leaves.

Us: …

Well, wait a second here. What are we supposed to say? “How nice, another family!” “So much love! So many…um…beds, and kids and stuff.” “So, who do you like better?”

Us: Um.

He’s waiting in the doorway, maybe for a goodbye, maybe to hear if we want to go sailing. With his other family.

Us: We...um…we like sailing. Yeah. We like sailing.

Manuel smiles.

Manuel: Great, then. We’ll have to go sometime! In El Masnou.

We think: “Right, we know: with your other family. Should be great. Not awkward at all.”

Us: Yeah, great.

He nods his head, closes the door, and sends us up to our apartment.

Exeunt.