The book I read on the flight to Europe titled, "The Reluctant Tuscan", was fascinating because as we have traveled through Tuscany we have encountered almost every stereotypical Italian person, personality and habit he described in their moving to Tuscany a few years ago. I say every except one. That is the myths, legends and stories of the region passed on as absolute truth through the generations. Until now that is.

Giorgio Harold Stuart, our landlord Giacomo’s father, of Scots heritage, wrote a book about the house where we are living. It is haunted, haunted by the ghost of Nicola Cerbara, born in 1796 and died in this house June 18, 1869. He lived in Rome but after Garibaldi began unification of Italy in the 1860s Nicola backed the wrong side. That side being Pope Gregory XVI and the Vatican, and needed to exit Rome fast as did the Pope. Moving to Montepulciano for safety, Nicola resided here and is still present, in spirit, in our apartment. I don’t believe it but I am watching for unexplained noises, you know things that go bump in the night as James Thurber penned, or the sounds of dragged chains or unexplained crashes or bone chilling gusts of wind on a calm, warm day. As I said I don’t believe all of this at all. (But if he wants to be here and we are in the way, hey, we are only renting and will be out this week, OK, Nicola?)

Sundays are difficult days while on vacation. Unless you are at Disneyland, most shops are closed leaving the cities appearing like ghost towns of the Wild West – especially if there are no tourists around. Today we decided to take a Sunday drive. We ventured west into an area of little tourist interest and few towns. One of the isolated places we wished to hit was San Galgano Monastery. It is in partial ruin with no roof and non functional but lonely, beautiful and serene. It is also far enough off the main tourist track to make it interesting to us. After driving on very winding narrow mountainous roads we needed gas desperately before getting to the monastery 4 km down the road. Up pops a huge, modern Shell gas station along this two lane rural road so we stopped in to get some diesel. The young lady pumping gas with baseball cap on backwards and dark glasses recognized us as Americans immediately asked in a natural East Coast accent where we are from in America. The two cars traveling together just leaving as we arrived were from her home town of Wallingford, Connecticut. They had never met before. Here we were seemingly miles from the nearest American and one pumps our gas and eight are getting gas. That makes eleven Americans total on a lonely road in the hills of Western Tuscany in October. What are the odds?

San Galgano was isolated but not unknown to tourists like we thought it would be. There were many tourists mainly of the Sunday drive Italian kind. Nothing like the summer months, though. We saw the parking lots for the full house times. Only a few English talkers were evident. The weather was amazing. This is the first “feel” of October where the sun is shining brightly but the temperatures are cooler, in the 70s, and the breezes give just a hint of the cold to come.

Lesson for Day 34: It is really cool living with a ghost.