Morning in Montecarlo
©2001 Charles J. Adams III
Travel Writer, Reading Eagle-Times, Reading, Pennsylvania, USA


On my walls hang the art and on my shelves rest the relics of travels near and far.
But these mementos and the thousands of pictures in dozens of photograph albums are mere tokens when compared to the treasures locked forever within me as memories.
I take you now to a 14th century village that’s propped on a 500-foot high hill overlooking a valley that is creased by the A11 autostrade in the heart of northern Tuscany.
That village is Montecarlo.  It is so small, so insignificant when compared to larger towns nearby, that I had to search through many maps of Italy to even find its tiny dot and the one road that leads into and out of it.
The valley below is spotted with small manufacturing plants and distribution facilities that swim in a sea of olive groves, orchards, and vineyards.  The location, less than an hour’s drive from Florence to the east and Pisa and the Mediterranean coast to the west is at once a blessing and a curse for little Montecarlo.
The blessing is obvious.  Many major cultural and commercial places are close by.  That is why, after extensive research, I picked Montecarlo as a base for a stay in Tuscany last summer.  The curse is that the proximity to those places has brought widespread development around, but not in, Montecarlo in recent years.
Nearby towns such as Pescia, Altopasio, and Poracari are busy and blue-collar.  Others such as the walled wonder that is Lucca and the spectacular spa town that is Montecatini Terme are bullseyes in the tourists’ targets.
And then, there’s Montecarlo.  Sleepy, sweet little Montecarlo.
You can count the streets of town on one hand and you could walk every one of them in one hour.  There is a jewelry store, a pottery shop, a wine shop, a couple of restaurants, pizzerias, and taverns, and there’s a catchall general store.  But,    Montecarlo lacks the busy, shop-lined streets and broad ristorante-ringed piazzas of nearby storybook towns such as Montecatini Alto, Cortona, Lucca, Volterra, and Siena.
Quite honestly, Montecarlans don’t seem to mind it a bit.  And, anyone who stays there will find it quite refreshing and relaxing.  It is a medieval theme park.
Montecarlo has a storybook feeling all it’s own.  It is the factual tale of life in a workaday Tuscan hilltop town, not the fiction of others that have sought and succumbed to hordes of tourists who have made them caricatures of themselves.
Therein lies the ultimate charm of Montecarlo.  If there is a cinematic parallel in the roughest terms, it is the Bill Murray comedy, "Groundhog Day," in which every day repeated itself in every detail. Every morning during our stay in Montecarlo, I would rise early and sit on the stoop in front of Casa Satti, our in-town villa for the week.  Every morning, the village shook off the sunrise and came to life in a familiar and reassuring routine.
Two town dogs, one with a slight limp, rambled down the street at 7:04. 
A town cat dodged the dogs and skulked from one alley to another at around 7:07.  At almost precisely 7:15, a gray Fiat passed slowly by and the town cop alighted to begin his day at the police station.
A minute or so later, an older gent hobbled by, nodded, and proffered my first buongiorno of the day.  Simultaneously, pigeons fluttered as a woman flung open the shutters of her second story home across Via Roma as young Fabrizio wheeled open the gates of his tabaccheria just up the street.  A delivery truck dropped off newspapers and boxes of all sorts.  A street
cleaner rambled by.  Two leggy maidens strolled by on their way to work at the tiny town hall.
And on, and on and on, day by day by day.
Part of me thought I was not so much an observer of all of this, but an intruder.  But, as the sun rose each morning and as I sat on that stoop watching, I realized that I had become a cast member, "the stranger on the stoop" in this street theater.
I came to that realization when, on just the second morning I had done so, I wandered up to Fabrizio’s shop and was–before I could even ask for one and because I had asked for one the previous morning–a beaming Fabrizio handed me a copy of the International Herald-Tribune.  I had unwittingly, but quite willingly, taken my role in this revue of the routine.
That role was small and transitory, but I seemed to be embraced by the rest of the dramatis personae.  On the third morning, the cop nodded, the leggy maidens cast doe eyes my way, the shutter lady smiled, and even the limping dog acknowledged my presence with a nervous growl.
One evening, while enjoying bruschetta al fresca on Piazza Garibaldi, Fabrizio dropped by our table, winked, smiled, and in broken English said, "Tomorrow!  Herald-Tribune for you!"  I winked, smiled, and in broken Italian replied, "Si!  Domani!  Grazi!"
My tomorrows would run out on that stoop, in that sweet town.  We had to leave to return home.  I am certain, though, that the morning after we left, the curtain rose once more and those dogs, that cat, the old chap, the cop, and all the other players of those Montecarlo mornings continued their morning rituals.  And up at Fabrizio’s, one copy of the Herald-Tribune went unsold.
Time may end a vacation and fade a photograph.  But time can never dim my memories of my mornings in Montecarlo.

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