After discovering our guide's quirk, "It's ah-O.K.," I don't think that we learned one damn thing. Had Tony heard us in the back of the group, he probably would have said, "You no want to learn anything, it's O.K. it's ah-O.K. you want to stay uncultured."
We stayed in the back of the group. It was like we were touring the movie set of Lord of the Rings. Except it wasn't New Zealand, no snow on the mountain peaks, and the land below was dotted with 1000-year-old stone architecture--with remnants of a 14th century cement stone barricade surrounding the city--NOT intentionally staged hobbit-wood fairy cabin kingdoms. Stragglers, always last to hear the full story; first to best realize the truth.
A five-foot-tall, graying, strawberry-blonde woman greeted Tony as we walked up the steps of the Il Torre Martinana (the tower). She wore a daisy-yellow button-down lab-coat dress and spoke little English. Just "Please, thank you, I'm sorry." Enough to make up for any American's lack of courtesy.
Tony stayed beside her, translating the gist of her explanations:
"Eh, how you say--"
"COAT OF ARMS!," shouts one student from the crowd.
"Ah-ah-yes, grazie," returned Yellow Lab-Coat Lady, smiling and smiling her thank you's.
The tour continued and Tony's tranlations progressively required half the time of the Lab-Coat Lady's. "This-uh stairwell, it hides, no is secret hideaway, it hides-ah pathway, yes, into le montagne," states Tony, after the Yellow-Lab-Coat Lady spoke over five minutes.
It was weird, with seven years of schooling in the Italian language, I have never heard sentences in Italian run shorter than English ones. But somehow each were intertwined with the same amount of full-teeth smiles and squinty-eyed-cheek-laughs.
The hideaway opening didn't elude to any secret hideaway route in the mountains--it looked more grid-gated and shaped like a city-sewer opening than anything else. Unlike in a city, this opening was hidden behind a tree. And for the few minutes we were from her he tried to further his horticultural knowledge friendship with us.
"A lemon tree you would ah-say in English- haha- but ah-no lemons grow on this one, but you ah-know, it's O.K."
