Imagine our surprise, as the sixteen of us (fourteen travelers, our wonderful guide, Fernanda, and excellent bus driver, Antonio) sat chatting and sipping the robust Tuscan wine, when the sun suddenly disappeared. The darkness was immediately punctuated with a resounding noise. One person said, “It’s a plane.” Another answered, “No, it’s thunder.” The windows reverberated as the thunder rolled on, and then the rain came—a torrential downpour that beat against the roof with a steady drum roll. The unexpected storm disappeared almost as quickly as it came but the sun didn’t emerge again for several hours.
It was just before eight on the east coast of the United States. We didn’t know, those in the States didn’t know either, but everything was in place to make the day one the world will never forget.
After lunch, we spent several hours with a Sovana-area guide who led us through a nearby Etruscan archaeological site and the tiny Sovana museum that houses some of the Etruscan architectural remnants. Back on our bus, headed for our mountain hotel of Relais San Lorenzo near Abbadia San Salvatore, Antonio had the radio on at a low volume. We didn’t think about it—he’d never used it before. Fernanda picked up the microphone—she did that often with information to share about her beloved Tuscany—and told us she was listening to radio reports and was saddened to tell us a plane had hit the World Trade Center and it may have been highjacked. We were stunned. Joe, from Winston-Salem, said his son-in-law was in and out of the WTC on a daily basis.
The radio reports were sparse and conflicting. When we reached the hotel we found our host and staff intent on the televised reports. That’s how we learned there were two planes that hit New York and one in Washington. We immediately migrated to the TV lounge upstairs where a single set was tuned to English-speaking CNN. Joe and Linda left long enough to find telephone numbers and call home. Aaron Brown told us there was a fourth plane, down in the Pennsylvania countryside. Dorothy, from near Milwaukee, said immediately that she knew it was intended to hit elsewhere and that someone aboard had thwarted the plan. “You wait," she continued, “we’ll find out there were heroes on board.”
