Italia Julia & Nicole Style: Part Sei: When in Doubt, Push in the Clutch & You Will Never Stall

It was hard to believe that it had already been almost 2 weeks. Although the time flew by, it seemed like Julia and Nicole had been in Tuscany for months. This was serious bonding time that’s for sure. Like the rest of my adventures in Italy, my most precious memories with Julia and Nicole are not about what city or monument we visited, but rather what we experienced together.

My favorite memories with Julia and Nicole, the memories that make me smile and laugh when I replay them in my mind, are the every day, simple encounters we shared. Every night, after returning from our day trips, we drove back to Tocchi and made a delicious Italian dinner together. And I think every night we surprised ourselves by what we were able to make – every night we had wine, bread and cheese. One night we had pesto pasta, another night pasta with wild boar…always having pasta and we ate fresh salads with olive oil. And we had the BEST conversations…many of which are sworn to secrecy… at the dinner table. These conversations made us laugh, ponder…one night Julia and I actually got pretty tipsy and just laughed and laughed.

In the morning we always made strong, hot espresso in the little Italian pot and dipped our favorite Italian breakfast cookies in each cup…they are so delicious! Then we would walk outside to Blu, but always be greeted by Mose the clumsy, adorable dog.

A few little, but lovely memories I think about…one morning we were on our way and just driving out of Tocchi. We drove slowly by a house in the village where an old, old woman was standing by her gate; she had no expression on her face and just stood there waiting for us to pass. We took a chance and waived and smiled to her and all of a sudden her face lit up…I mean lit up…and her eyes smiled so sweetly back to us and her toothless mouth smiled back and she waived as we passed. We loved this moment.

Another funny memory… we were also leaving the house, driving down the dirt road and passed by a chicken coop…well, Julia noticed a very odd looking chicken…one like she had never seen before. Her reaction was a sudden, but perplexed “Wow, that is one freaky lookin’ chicken!” So now…that is our phrase whenever we want to describe something that is odd or strange, we say “That is one freaky lookin’ chicken.” I think we will copyright it.

Oh…and teaching Ms. Hulia how to drive a stick shift! If only, if only, you could have been there for these teaching moments!!! Imagine this…here we are in Blu, in the countryside of Tuscany (thank God there is no traffic) and I am first showing and explaining the whole clutch, brake, gas concept. There were times that Nicole, sitting in the back seat, was afraid for her life I’m pretty sure of it. After a handful of stalls, grinding gears and almost backing into a stone wall, Julia was handling the stick pretty well. We practiced only in Tocchi, where there were no cars or people really and with the bit of advice being “When in doubt, push in the clutch and then you will never stall”, Julia conquered the stick. I think Julia needs to master the stick. I think now, all three of us sort of live by this philosophy… push in the clutch…we won’t stall, but…as we figured out, stalling, getting lost and hitting bumps in the road is a hell of a lot more fun.