Sat, May 3rd: Train to Tuscany (Day 16)

Italy Pictures

Italy Videos

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today started with the alarm going off at 0630, way too early. We were out the door at 0715 and went to the train station office to see about reservations to Slovenia. Turns out the one train to Ljubljana that we could take was not running, we were forced to buy reservations through Villach, Austria, instead of the direct train. Oh well. 68 CHF later, we boarded the train with just a few minutes to spare. The ride down to Visp was uneventful and I could barely keep my eyes open despite the scenery. There was a tight connection in Visp, just enough time to go to the W/C and burn some leftover CHF’s in a vending machine. We found our seats with no problem, although there were some German-speaking guys in them originally. We sat next to two women from Malaysia who were on a business trip to Switzerland and were taking a day trip to Milan. We talked to them for a good part of the trip, comparing Switzerland, the US, and Malaysia. While stopped at the Italian border town of Domodosolla, a guy behind us came up and said ‘my ears perked up when I heard you were from North Carolina!’. He used to live in Mooresville after living in Raleigh for nine years, and had moved to St Niklaus, Switzerland to stay with his company. It was an interesting conversation. The next train from Milan to Florence was on the adjacent platform that made that connection brainless. The ride to Florence was very fast and uneventful, but signal problems delayed our last train to Siena for half an hour. We finally made it to Siena around 1730 or so and bought bus tickets to get up into town. Finding the bus stop there was a mess because the bus stop was two levels below the surface of the square outside of the station. During our search, we ran into two young women from Turin who were in the same boat. They asked in Italian where to catch the bus but I could only plead ‘parla englesi’. Fortunately we were able to communicate enough in English to figure it out and get a bus to the hotel. The hotel, Albergo Cannon d’Oro, was originally a palace built some time before 1260. Not much about the place was straight and our room was no different. It was interesting though, there were arches embedded in one wall, presumably from the original construction. After a short stop, we headed down to the amazing Piazza del Campo and had dinner at one of the many restaurants around the edge of the shell-shaped piazza. I had grilled chicken with prosciutto ham and tomato sauce, and B had penne pasta with bacon chunks, and a side of spinach. Afterwards we got some gelato and sat on the slope of the piazza at dusk, marveling at the history and watching other people. We both called home from the piazza to catch up. It was a nice finish to B’s birthday otherwise entirely spent on trains!

Read Full Post »

Sun, May 4th: Siena (Day 17)

Yesterday was my birthday!  Sadly, I didn’t have time to write anything.  It was a good day though.  After a long day that included waiting on a train for an hour, we ended the day with our first Italian meal and some genuine gelato.  For dinner, we sat outside overlooking the very center of the old town of Siena, the uniquely shaped Piazza Il Campo.  The piazza actually curved and sloped to resemble a shell.  For dessert, we sat in the twilight on the ancient brick of the piazza, watching the bustling evening crowd dwindle.

It’s overwhelming how many people are crowded into Siena.  We could barely move through the hoards.  On every narrow street, it’s as if we were walking against the grain in a herd.  I absolutely hate being in a crowd, but visiting Siena is well worth withstanding the torture.  There are a few outstanding Gothic and medieval attractions.  The three to absolutely not miss out of these are the Piazza (plaza/square) and Palazzo (palace), and above all, the Duomo (cathedral.)  The Piazza and Duomo are fine examples of the best in human capability in architecture, art, and engineering.  I can’t imagine how they tackled such a feat successfully back in the 13th century.  The paintings and architectural detail are so intricate, the Duomo is a gem.

The gelato alone makes the trip to Siena worth it.  It’s above and beyond all other ice cream because it’s oh-so-creamy and rich.  There are a ton of flavors and none that I’ve ever tried have had an artificial twang.  The flavors range from kiwi, cantaloupe and lemon, to chocolate, coffee, and hazelnut.  All the gelaterias have enticing displays of the choices with the actual fruits or nuts of each flavor on top of a mound of gelato.

It’s no understatement to say the Italians are obsessed with “la buena figura” (or beautiful face) and fashion.  There are countless high-end boutiques crammed into the small town of Siena.  Most of the people we pass on the street are dressed to the nines, much more so than the French.  Big sunglasses are hugely popular here – for men and women.  Image seems to be of utmost importance.

Back to yesterday: We met a few interesting people!  We were lucky to meet all of them.  First, two Malaysian women were sitting in our seats on the train from Visp, Switzerland to Milano, Italy.  Two Swiss guys were sitting next to them, so there was nowhere for us to sit!  So, we got out our seat reservations and proved after some contention that the two window seats were indeed ours.  The Swiss guys moved after the exchange, and we ended up sitting in their aisle seats.  We’re glad they were in our seats after all since it made for great conversation for a lot of our 2.5 hour ride.

They had many questions about us and our country, and they educated us about Malaysia.  The two of them can speak three different languages to each other: English, Malay, and Cantonese.  There are lots of Chinese Malaysians, so many of them speak Cantonese as well as their native tongue.  I guessed that one of the ladies was of Malay descent and the other Chinese.  They all learn English in school.  They described Malaysia as a country with a high standard of living.  They mentioned they get very little vacation (a week all at once is pushing it) and they work 10-12 hours a day!  Sounds like they are as bad as the Japanese, the only nation of workaholics that are worse than us.  In Malaysia, any vacation – if at all – is up to the discretion of their boss; they don’t have “vacation benefits” like many of our employers provide.  People rely heavily on personal cars since they lack a good public transportation system.  Hmmm, sound familiar?!  They were surprised to hear that the US has an equally poor transportation system.  The two women were reveling at the amazing train system in Switzerland (and much of Europe, for that matter.)  It’s like being chauffeured around, they said, since they’re so used to driving themselves everywhere.  We also noticed after crossing into Italy several big box stores with huge full parking lots!  A shame!

When we asked them what they did for a living, one of them answered, “At the UN,” in a quiet voice, after much hesitation.  Could they work with the Security Council?  They were in Geneva for a few weeks and it sounds like they will come back periodically.  Only a 14-hour flight from Malaysia with a stop in the Emirates.  I’d hate to have to do that too many times.  They were also marveling at the bright flowers in Switzerland and Italy as we crossed the border into Italy and passed several flower farms and ornate gardens surrounding ritzy Italian villas.  Apparently flowers are a novelty to them because there aren’t many flowers in Malaysia.  I thought there would be since it’s tropical, but it’s typically tropical in other ways – lush green forests and a hot, humid climate.  Malaysia has a short month-long rainy season but no more seasonal variation (seems typical for the tropics.)  They asked us about our state’s population and economy, what it’s known for.  They explained that Malaysia is known for rice, palm oil, and rubber exports.  When we mentioned it was my birthday, the two of them seem overly excited about it, like a birthday may be a bigger deal in their culture.  They were just riding to Milan for a weekend trip!

We met another person going to Milan from Switzerland for a weekend trip on the same train.  He came up to us, speaking American English with a thick southern accent.  He had heard us say we were from NC and had to say hi to us, being another NC native from Mooresville.  He had lived in Raleigh for many years, most recently in Greenville.  He had worked at a jigsaw blade factory that closed down in Greenville, so he took a transfer to a 2000-person town in the Swiss Alps!  Very near Zermatt!  His wife and toddler daughter had been with him in Switzerland for 6 months.  He explained how Zermatt was such a ritzy, impractical, overpriced place.  Well, it is a very old world-famous resort, and for good reason.  He said he went shopping for a blender there once and the cheapest he could find was 300 Swiss Franks – about $300!  It truly is a small world – he met a woman in St. Niklaus (a nearby town) who had managed a pool hall for years on Hillsborough St. in Raleigh, NC!

A couple young Italian women approached us near the Siena train/bus station, asking us in Italian if we knew how to get to the bus headed for the center of town.  They spoke a little bit of English, so we were able to get across that we weren’t sure how to get to it either.  I mentioned I had seen a sign upstairs that pointed to the bus, but we thought it must leave from the lower level since that was street level.  Corey and I were ready to hike back upstairs when one of the girls asked someone for help.  They pointed us in the direction of the parking deck, still on the lower level.  We walked out to the deck and it was still a parking area on all sides.  The girl asked someone else, and after much to-do, got us nowhere.

Finally the leading girl insisted the bus stop must be around the parking deck somehow.  We followed her since she was the Italian and we were the foreigners, after all.  She led us out of the deck and onto a one-way bus ramp coming up and away from the bus stop.  One bus passed us with a very narrow margin as we walked down the ramp in the wrong direction, especially treacherous with all our luggage.  The next bus was about to leave and the girl insisted we follow her.  That was the bus we wanted.  We already knew that all the buses went to the center, it was just a matter of catching one.  We ran down the ramp as the two girls were already climbing onto the bus (they had the benefit of no luggage.)  When we reached the bus steps, there were people crammed all the way to the edge, but we managed to barely fit ourselves and our bags after some shuffling.  Off we went with no idea where to get off the bus since it wasn’t the line we were expecting.

The girls chatted with us during the bus ride.  They were also surprised we were American.  Not sure why so many people have trouble believing that.  They were quite curious about us, and we returned the favor with many questions about them.  They seemed very interested in the fact that we were married and when we got married.  They noticed right away that we were married and thought we were honeymooning.  Those two girls weren’t the only ones to be hung up on that; the Malaysians asked the very same thing.  The girl that I talked to the most (don’t know her name) was a secretary to a notary (maybe the equivalent of a paralegal or attorney?)  The two of them were taking advantage of the four-day weekend due to International Labor Day on May 1st for a holiday in Siena from their native Turin.  They were joined by many, many other Italian tourists.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today started off slowly with a lot of uncertainty about how things would go, but it worked out in the end. I woke up at 0700 to the sound of clanging plates but didn’t get out of bed until 0830…always a mistake. Anyway, we had a nice breakfast in their ‘breakfast room’ including my first taste of Nutella on this trip. We checked out at about 1030 and put our luggage in the luggage room so we could wander around for a while. Not but 5 minutes later, while inspecting a taxi fare sign, a bird (or birds) pooped directly onto both of us, we had to go back to the hotel and clean up a bit. Back on the street, we investigated the bus schedules at Piazza Gramsci and discovered that the bus does run to Rosia on Sunday, great! We bought two tickets for 3 EUR each (much better than the expected 25 EUR taxi fare) then looked for a place to eat lunch. We had no idea how the food situation was going to work out at Il Colombaio since they didn’t have food there and it is 1 km away from Rosia, which is a fairly small town. We found a cool pizzeria and sat on their 3^rd floor. The kitchen was just off of the stairs on the 2^nd floor and we could see all the cooks at work. I had a very interesting pizza with egg and spinach on it, and B had a white pizza with sparse asparagus and shrimp. Next, we found a rather impressive grocery store tucked away in the basement of an old building and bought some vegetables and snacks for whatever lies ahead. The bus left Piazza Gramsci at 1450 and it was a beautiful 15-minute ride through narrow streets and open fields to Rosia. The walk from Rosia to Il Colombaio was less peaceful, as we had to drag our luggage through town then down the narrow road to the south. The cryptic directions telling us to turn at the cypress tree in the middle of the road made sense when we saw it, as well as the Torri sign. The B&B is actually in the village of Torri. After a total of 30 minutes or so of walking, we strolled into the courtyard of Il Colombaio and were immediately greeted by Barbara, the owner. She said she was expecting us, because the lady who was on the same bus and walked to Torri ahead of us when to Il Colombaio too, and told her we were following. She showed us to our room, the ‘Lover’s Room’. Later, we sat outside under an amazing canopy of hanging flowers, watching the two black cats (one was playing with half eaten lizards) and Snoopy, the biggest dog I have ever seen, lounge under the Tuscan sun. We talked with a couple downstairs from Australia, who invited us to come to dinner with them when I told them we had no car. We ate at a nice restaurant in Brenna, not far from here. It was a lively conversation for more than two hours, and our dinner of fresh veggies and veal strips for me, and gnocchi and beans for B, was good, but not as interesting. Danielle and Nigel were particularly interested in our elections and how similar/dissimilar Australia and the US are in terms of social behavior. Overall, we are very similar as a whole. Anyway, we got back late around 2230, and crashed shortly after.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Mon, May 5th: Siena (Day 18)

I’m writing about Sun., May 4th first since I wrote about May 3rd yesterday.  Our hostess in the B&B in Torri, a little village near Rosia, was reasonably friendly when we arrived.  She was surprised that we were walking in rather than driving.  We followed a woman who had ridden our bus and walked to the B&B from Rosia.  Looks like most people rent cars and drive to somewhat remote accommodation like this in the Tuscan region.  A large group of guests were sitting under a vine/flower canopy when we walked in.  Most of them sounded Italian; we learned later that they were all Italians enjoying their long Labor Day weekend except for one Australian couple.  The Italians left before dinnertime, and we ended up visiting with the Aussie couple before dinner.  They offered us a ride to dinner, wherever that would be, and we ended up at a nice local restaurant in Brenna, just a few km away.

Dinner was a lot fun with the two Aussies.  We had not had the opportunity to communicate with anyone for that long on our trip thus far, and it was especially nice with native English-speakers.  They were down-to-earth and open, making for good conversation.  A lot of the dinner was spent discussing travels and comparing Australia to the US (surprise, surprise.)  It sounds like the US and Australia have similar cultures in many ways.  They are equally “uptight” about nudity/the body compared to Europeans; they like their space, spreading out with houses rather than apartments and a yard when they have the opportunity.  They commented that they didn’t understand why Europeans lived so close together, often without yards and sometimes in apartments in the countryside where they have room to spread out.  Though we came to the conclusion that a closer living situation is often what they are familiar and comfortable with; they may not want to or be able to spend money on an individual house.  Aussies have the same societal trends like an affinity for large shopping centers, big box stores, personal vehicles instead of public transportation, and lots of fast food.  They aren’t as affectionate as the Italians or French – like for us, girls holding hands and guys greeting with kisses are not generally accepted behaviors.

Of course there are differences between our cultures too.  The Aussie guy was the first non-American to ever tell me he liked American pride in our country; all other foreigners have told me that they view our pride as unnecessary arrogance.  He thought that Americans were more politically aware and more likely to speak a foreign language than the average Aussie (both scary thoughts!)  Australia has less chain restaurants with more reasonable portions, though they said the portions seem to be growing, and they don’t tip in restaurants.  They don’t tip in Australia because the restaurants pay their employees a full-time wage.  The Australian guy commended a few things about the US, but he did not like our tipping system at all!  I agree that it’s ridiculous.  He pointed out that the customers are making up the balance of what the restaurant owners don’t pay their employees in tips.  The customers shouldn’t have to pay the restaurant owner’s employees for him.  Unfortunately though, Australia is generally following American trends of excess.  Big box stores are prolific – though not as big as Wal-Mart –  and fast food is popular, as well as over-development and cities of pavement.

The Aussie couple pointed out that the safety standards here in Italy on a personal level seem to be on par with Australian standards, but they are lacking in protection from other people.  They gave the example of roadwork.  Road workers have vests and hard hats, etc., for personal protection, but nothing marking the work zone for drivers – no fence, cones, arrows, etc.  They’re exposed on the road and at the mercy of drivers.  The Italians are assuming a lot more responsibility on the part of the driver/individual than in the Australia or the US.  Even the Aussies are more lax than Americans regarding motorcycles (or “scooters”) though.  Also, motorcycles in Europe are allowed to weave through traffic.  Another Australian we met was surprised that American motorcycles can’t weave around traffic and can’t just park anywhere.  She couldn’t see the point in having one then!  I don’t know if they do this in Australia, but in Europe people park their motorcycles and cars in all kinds of precarious spots that you rarely see in US barring an overcrowded event.

I’ve noticed many other safety standard contrasts in Europe.  There was no do-not-cross line where people were para-skiing (jumping off a cliff with skis and a parachute) at a French ski resort we skied at a few years ago.  Ski boundaries are notoriously poorly marked in Europe.  French and Italian drivers get dangerously close to pedestrians on the side of the road.  Europeans don’t budge when they are blocking the walkways or product shelves in stores.  High speed trains don’t stop or use horns at stations and sometimes don’t slow down much either!

There were construction guys later in Volterra dumping construction debris into a truck and they were wearing hard hats, at least.  However, as I walked by a renovation site on a main street today, a man threw scrap metal into a truck right as I walked by – almost hitting me.  There were no fences/barricades blocking the site or signifying the presence of a “construction zone” – the “zone” just blended in with the street.

To their defense, it’s got to be hard to comply with some of these American-made rules when they have such narrow streets, small spaces, and buildings that are hundreds of years old.  Today a car was passing another car as our bus was in the oncoming lane – where there was no passing lane!  In the US that wouldn’t even be possible, but here the cars are so small they can maneuver.  That car would get pulled in the US for reckless driving!

Part of this different attitude toward safety is probably a result of Europe not having the same lawsuit problem as the US.  Officially, if you burn your hand on McDonald’s coffee in the US, it’s their fault, not the individual.  We think it’s ridiculous, yet lawsuits continue.  C has a good hypothesis: One reason for so many US lawsuits is people using it as a last resort when they hurt themselves and can’t pay the massive medical bills!

Another Aussie we met the next morning reiterated a lot of what we had heard from the couple at dinner.  Rachel’s accent was actually hard to place at first, it seemed to be mixture of British and Australian, probably since her parents were British and she was currently living in England even though she was born in Australia.  Rachel was a free-spirit who had tried many professions and paths in life, the most recent being training as some kind of holistic psychotherapist.  It sounded interesting, but I never got a chance to discuss it with her.  She had traveled extensively, including several months in South America, and volunteered at numerous spots in her travels.  The most recent of these stints was at an eco-village in northern Italy.  It was fascinating to hear her take on things.

According to Rachel, the British aren’t far behind the Australians in following American trends.  I heard they are starting to use larger size appliances in Britain for one thing.  Not good news!  Rachel said she felt embarrassed for us whenever she heard Bush speak.  She also put her two cents in about Hillary Clinton: she thought it so unnecessary for Hillary to lie and exaggerate to win over voters.  I saw a little graffiti on the inside of a public bathroom door in Siena that read, “F*** Bush”; another read something like: “Bush is the worst thing to happen in my country – [signed] Britain;” and in response: “I’m ashamed of my prime minister for following Bush around – [signed] Australia.”  The three Aussies had mentioned their former prime minister being buddy-buddy with Bush.

One of the Australians explained to us briefly how the Australian election process works.  It’s roughly like our senators being elected by the people, then the party who wins majority gets to choose the prime minister within that party.  Therefore the whole government is controlled by one party, and the prime minister is not directly elected by the people.  However, the prime minister is mainly just a figurehead without the veto power that the American president has.  Plus no one contributes money to candidates and millions of dollars aren’t spent on many primary and general election campaigns.

All three Aussies said that Australians have a romantic view of the US.  They have this idea that it’s like a fairytale land with endless affluence.  I would too if all I knew of it were Hollywood movies shot in SoCal and NYC!  They had all been to the US and know it’s not at all a utopia, but it’s funny to hear our image in the eyes of their society.  Reminds me a lot of the Irish dream of America in the 50’s and 60’s.  We talked about Monte Carlo – that is my most romantic idea of excessive wealth.  They had all been there – said it’s worth a day trip 🙂

We discussed voice pitch with the Aussies among food and other random topics.  We all noticed that people tend to speak in higher voices when they speak in a foreign language, probably because they aren’t as confident.  I know my voice is deeper in English than it is in Spanish.

We agreed that sometimes you need something familiar when you are traveling in a foreign setting for a while.  Their example was craving McDonald’s.  We sought out the familiar by seeing an American movie in Sete (though we barely understood any of it since it was dubbed over in French.)

C and I were impressed that the Australian couple had a rain water collection and recycling system installed on their 10-acre property.  The rain is collected in large cisterns, purified, and provides all the household water.  The used water – I think all of it, not just gray water?? – then goes through the recycler and is used for garden irrigation.  They live outside of Melbourne, Australia, where they’ve had a water shortage and ensuing water restrictions (like no outside watering) for years.  Most Australians are probably not as aware of the problem or as willing to pay good money for such a recycling system.  They had visited the US a few times between the two of them.  On a trip to the CO River last year, they were flabbergasted that the river is drained so much by Las Vegas lawns.  They invited us to visit them someday.  I hope we can – we’d love to visit with them more and we’d love to see their home!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This morning we got up around 0830 and had breakfast downstairs with a coupe that sounded German and another Australian woman, Rachel, who was traveling alone. She is who we followed in yesterday. I had taken a picture of the bus schedule at the bottom of the hill, so I showed her the schedule she asked about getting to Siena. Since we were going there today too, we all walked down to Rosia at about 1000. It started to drizzle along the way. We got to Rosia plenty early so we explored around for a while and then bought bus tickets at the Tobacchi shop on the main road. The bus showed up a bit late at 1210, but it came! We got off the bus near the city walls and Rachel soon parted ways with us to go into a shoe store. We pretty much made a beeline to the Duomo and got in line outside, dodging raindrops the whole time. The wait was only about 15 minutes and tickets cost a total of 20 EUR. It was money well spent because the inside of the cathedral was just as beautiful as the outside. The unusual striped columns were fascinating, and every square inch was covered in some sort of decoration, floor included. It actually held my attention for 45 minutes or so, before I was ready to move on. Next we went to the facade of the Nuovo Duomo, which was an interesting arch that you could walk across. There was going to be a whole new cathedral here but the project was canned in the 14^th century and only the front facade was built. The view of Siena and environs were very impressive from up there, it looked to be the 3^rd highest point in town. We could also see a line of rain coming from the west, so we retreated back to street level through the Duccia museum. Once the rain hit, we decided to hang out in a gelatoria, like many other people. This time we were smart, sharing one cup of three different flavors; walnut, kiwi, and berry mix. It was a great way to hang out, although we were crammed into the tiny store like sardines. Next, we went into an Internet lounge, which was a small circular room with a vaulted ceiling and 7 computers. It was only 3.28 EUR for 4 minutes of online time, not bad! It was about 1630 now, and the bus back was leaving at 1745, so we headed back towards Piazza Gramsci to look for some sandwiches to take back for dinner. We found some decent looking meat/cheese/tomato sandwiches right on the square after a long search of nearby streets in the rain. It was too late to go to the market too, so we just found the bus and got on. This time, the bus was going to Brenna and dropped us off right in Torri instead of Rosia but we were the last ones to get off. The three Australians were in the central room talking when we walked in, so we joined them for a while, and then broke out our food for dinner. It is wonderful to actually be able to communicate effectively with other people, it’s not something we have had much of as of late. Rachel was leaving in the morning so we said goodbye to her, and also talked briefly with a new couple from the Ukraine.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Tues, May 6th: Rosia (Day 19)

We had a relaxing day that began with sitting in the sun and ended with sitting in the shade as the sun dove beyond sight.  In between we meandered from our B&B to the village of Torri, then to Stigliano.  Great views abound except for the factory that we walked by on our way from Stigliano, past our B&B to the next town in the other direction, Rosia.  It’s wonderful to be able to walk from town to town (or village to village) like we did in Zermatt and the Pyrenees.  In Tuscany, each village is a treat since there are strict laws restricting new construction and encouraging renovation of existing historic buildings so that the exterior is appropriate to the architecture of the original building.

The two cats and one very large dog here have a funny friendship with one another.  The male – who is not neutered – is hyper-active, expressive, and aggressive.  He relentlessly begged for food when we tried to eat outside. He was very vocal and wouldn’t shy away no matter how loud we were;  we had to go inside since he wouldn’t stop threatening to attack for our food.  He also likes to run around chasing lizards – we’ve seen him toying with and slowly eating three tail-less lizards already – and stalk the poor female cat whom we think is his sister.  He has an odd relationship with the dog, often brushing or leaning against him.  Yesterday he was playing with a lizard under the dog’s tail.  The dog was obviously bothered but didn’t do anything about it.

Yesterday we met a Ukrainian couple on their way in to the B&B.  We intentionally went downstairs when we heard new guests arriving.  We chatted for several minutes.  Most of the time they were describing their trip thus far in other Tuscan towns.  They guy (don’t know either of their names) had spent some time in DC and Columbia, MD, so he spoke decent but heavily-accented English.  His girlfriend/wife didn’t speak as much English and constantly looked to him for help.  Neither of them seemed too confident with speaking English.  We tried to include them in our breakfast conversation with Australians this morning, but they said very little, seemed uncomfortable like they were having trouble following the conversation, and left the breakfast table very quickly.  It’s interesting that almost all the non-Italian speakers use English with their hosts to communicate.  It was the same in Switzerland and France.  I keep forgetting that people in the hospitality business speak English to talk to most foreigners – not just to accommodate native English-speakers.  This makes me feel very fortunate to be a native English-speaker and not have to struggle to communicate like the Ukrainian woman.

Tonight we have the B&B to ourselves.  I’ll miss the interaction with international travelers and the comparison of cultures and sharing our traveling stories.  I’m sure we’ll meet more travelers on our trip, but it’s a little lonely for now.  We did finally get our host to open up a little last night.  She told us she goes to Egypt a lot for vacation.  According to her, Italians get a month and a half of total vacation each year!!  She must be including holidays, which Americans don’t include in their vacation count, but that’s still incredible!  She thought it was “sad” that Americans work so much.  I have to agree…after hearing that and staying in France where people are sent home early if business is slow so they don’t exceed their mandatory 35-hr. Maximum work time per week!  If they think the US is bad, I wonder what the French and Italians would think of the long Malaysian work week and slim vacation time!

We’ve been walking along the side of the road (really on the white line) from the B&B to town, Rosia, every day.  I thought the bus incident in Siena was bad, but this walk more than rivals that.  Cars whiz by us, sometimes giving us inches of clearance.  On our first walk from Rosia to the B&B, a car passed us while another car passed that one!  I wish the trail from town to town didn’t dump us onto the main road into the biggest town around.

While grocery shopping in Rosia today, we saw people getting (and staying) in each others’ way.  It’s very rude to us as Americans, but Europeans seem used to it.  I’ve noticed it elsewhere also.  A few elderly ladies were blocking the entrance to the store and wouldn’t budge for the life of them.  A lady reached in line for an item on the shelf beside another customer and had to contort herself to reach it since the other customer was blocking her way and didn’t even flinch!  Europeans’ concept of space is not at all the same as ours; I guess we need much more personal space.  Even getting on crowded trains and buses, people are reluctant to yield the way, and in crowded streets, people walk straight into you.

Many farmers and gardeners till their land by hand.  We’ve seen people using manual tools in vineyards, olive groves, and large personal garden plots.  You never see that in the US!  Though a few days later, we would see plenty of motorized machinery and tractors on larger vineyards and farms.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

We didn’t have anything planned for today since we did Siena yesterday. We had breakfast with the Australian couple and the Ukrainian couple at 0930 and we talked with the Aussies till they had to leave around 1030. They gave us their e-mail address and we plan on contacting them when we got home. Afterwards, we went outside and replaced in the lawn chairs in the sun until sometime after the church bells in Torri rang noon. It felt great to have literally no worries and no responsibilities, and just feel the warm sun and hear the birds. We finally did something productive by walking up and into the town of Torri and checking out its very narrow streets and monastery originally built in 1075. Just outside of the north ‘gate’ there was a sign and a map for a trail linking the small towns along the main road. We decided to hike over to the next town, Stigliano, and back. We didn’t get very far before we took a ‘lunch’ break; a cobbled mix of apple, green pepper, nuts, raisins, and bread. The hike to Stigliano wasn’t too long, maybe 30-45 minutes, and with only a little up and down. It was a good hike for a day like today. The town was interesting because it had a lot of elevation change from one end to the other and had a few old towers in it, even a nice restaurant that was closed. We went to the far end of the town before turning around and going all the way back to Rosia to get some groceries for dinner. I think it was a better option than eating at a restaurant in Rosia and trying to walk back along that road at night. We got to the grocery store a few minutes before it reopened from the midday break at 1630. There was a mad dash to get inside and a couple of old people were blocking the entrance checking out the deals just inside the door. We bought some vegetables and sandwich fixins’ and barely made it out of the small grocery store with our sanity. Hopefully for the last time, we braved the side of the road back to Il Colombaio being narrowly missed by our favorite bus, #33. We had an early dinner, pretty much right we got back at 1730. We tried to eat outside but the two cats descended on us like flies, wanting a piece of the action. After cleaning up, we had dessert outside while writing in our journals and watching the sun set across the valley.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Wed, May 7th: Bus to San Gimignano (Day 20)

We talked to a couple from Quebec City in our new B&B, I Coppi, after a short walk.  Their names are Ivan and Danielle.  They seem to be pretty international, have good friends or family by marriage in France and from Japan.  We just started chatting with them at the end of their meal on the patio overlooking the beautiful Tuscan countryside, covered in almost alternating olive groves and vineyards bathed in evening sunlight.  We talked about picking up accents and language as well as cultural behaviors – rude and polite.  Ivan agreed with us that Italian is a hard language, sometimes similar to French (his native tongue) or Spanish, but definitely its own language with a plethora of words that aren’t in the least bit similar to the other Romance languages.  They showed us on their map where they’ve been and where they plan to go.  Like others we’ve met, they are on a very long trip, at least a month.  They have been around Tuscany and some major cities as well as the tourist hot spots Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast.  They were both a pleasure to talk to, laid-back and cheerful.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today started off very relaxed since we didn’t have to catch the bus to Siena until noon. We had breakfast by ourselves and said goodbye to Barbara because she was going to a nearby town to buy something for the farm. To chew up some time, we went on a 1-hour walk up to the top of the mountain behind the village of Torri along what was basically an access road for the electric company. The bus picked us up at the Torri bus stop about 15 minutes late, but I was happy to not have to walk to Rosia with our bags! Once in Siena, we bought bus tickets to San Gimignano then found a nearby restaurant to have lunch called Restaurant Vitti. We sat outside under a canopy and I had true minestrone (vegetable) soup and rice with meat sauce while B had a radish-laden salad with tortellini in a cream sauce, not bad! Next, we strolled across the street into a specialty grocery store and bought some veggies for dinner, including zucchini shaped like a ball! They had a huge, tempting piece of Norwegian Salmon in there, not that we had any way of carrying it. Anyway, our next stop was that same Internet cafe to check on the NC and IN democratic primary results. We were pleased to see that Obama won NC by 14 points, and Clinton barely won by 2 points in Indiana. Our bus left Piazza Gramsci at 1520 on the dot. We almost missed it because we were standing next to a bus that said San Gimignano on it but had no driver. With about 5 minutes later, I noticed a second bus down the line with the same destination that people were getting on to. Close call. The bus ride was very scenic, passing through the towns of Colle and Poggibonsi along the way. It dropped us off on the north side of town right in front of I Coppi. We met the owner who showed us to our apartment pronto! Not much for formalities. The view from here was absolutely incredible, but the apartment basically has no windows, oh well. We went for a quick walk around the immediate area, finding a small market and an Internet cafe right across the street! When we got back, we met a couple from Quebec sitting at a table in front of their room. We talked to them for almost an hour, talking about language and word usages until the sun was barely still visible. Dinner was tiny pasta called Tempeste with the round zucchini and tomato mixed in complete with a local rose wine. Nice and cheap! The rest of the evening was spent writing and watching CNN stories about Myanmar cyclone and oil prices.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Thurs, May 8th: San Gimignano (Day 21)

We talked to Ivan and Danielle again today after dinner.  They invited us to dessert of almonds, butter cookies, and the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever had.  Danielle doesn’t speak much English but understands a lot more than she speaks.  She left after a while to take shower/ “retire for the evening.”  It turns out the couple is retired (though they look a little young for it.)  Ivan stayed on the patio with us for another lengthy but engaging conversation about language (etymology some too) and accents; Ivan seems to share my (and often C’s) fascination with relationships between languages: foreign words taken from other languages, how hard it is for a French-speaker to pronounce Swedish vs. English-speakers, recognizing foreign accents like Australian and Ukrainian in English, and of course root words that language families have in common.  I’m sure he’d get a kick out of my list of French words used in English.  We discussed the words that are commonly used in each language, basically catch-all words like “OK” and “yeah” and “sure”: “d’accord” (OK) and “alle” (let’s go/sure) in French; “prego” (OK/here ya go) and “vale” (go?) and “ciao” (hi/bye) in Italian; “vale” (OK) in Spanish.

Ivan was curious what we both “do for a living,” a phrase we taught him.  I told him my job sounded a lot more complex than it really was, and he replied with an understanding look.  He explained that most job descriptions are far off from what the person actually does – maybe companies have to make it that way so that they can legitimize paying their employees.  He read his son’s job description and joked that there was no way he could do that job – he was under-qualified.  You never know from the job description – don’t let that discourage you, he said.  Ivan joins the ranks of people C and I have talked to who ended up in a completely different field from the one he studied in college.  He studied sociology and ended up in management due to a job fair he attended.  He enjoyed it for a while, then went into consulting, all the while staying in the same field that he loved (not sure of any specifics.)  Danielle did a similar thing, working her first two years out of college as a criminologist, then moved up to management, which was an entirely different job.  She stayed in management (in Quebec government) her whole career.

Ivan mentioned he was trying to pick up Italian as much as he could while traveling until he put more thought into it.  Italian is only worthwhile in Italy except maybe a small part of Switzerland, but for argument’s sake, nowhere else.  It’s therefore not as useful as French, which is spoken in Quebec, Canada; France; and many African countries.  Spanish is useful in the large part of two whole continents which include the US, though the international language is still, without a doubt, English.  Currently.  That’s a big caveat, as we discussed with Ivan.  Right now, you can travel in Europe as a Ukrainian and use English as the common language almost anywhere you go.  Chinese will probably supersede English in the next 50 years as the international language.  The Aussie couple said that Australia has even instated (mandatory?) Chinese classes in their schools!  That’s a step we don’t think the US is ready for yet, if a smart one.  However, China’s environment may be irreversibly polluted, and they won’t rise as a world power unless they are able to fix a lot of their massively disastrous environmental problems.

I asked Ivan about building construction in Canada.  It’s the same as mainstream American construction: wood frames with dry wall, plywood on the outside walls, and basements.  There is amazing variation in the US though.  Sanford, FL was a good example of that – stucco, Latin American style, beach style, and regular-old ranches.  We were guessing at what most buildings in Europe are made of – probably cinder blocks or prefab. concrete walls with plaster, sometimes fairly smooth (just light texture) and sometimes semi-circle patterns.

Ivan and Danielle told us a story from their trip to the Amalfi Coast.  A Costa Rican woman they met invited them to her fancy 5-star hotel.  She was an extremely wealthy daughter of a successful coffee plantation owner.  Also a widow, she was envious of Danielle and Ivan being able to travel together.  She had several children and 14 grandchildren, but traveled alone.  She had all the money she could ever want – she spends most of her time traveling all over the world – but she’s empty, always alone as she travels.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

This morning started around 0900, tending to our laundry hanging in the bathroom, and then walking across the street to the small grocery store. We got some stuff for breakfast (which is not included at I Coppi despite it being a B&B, 7 EUR extra) and for lunch the next day. Next, we made the 10-minute walk up to the interesting town of San Gimignano. At first it seems a lot like other Tuscan towns, with the 13^th century stone buildings crowding the narrow, steep streets, but it is the towers that make this place unusual. There was a large marking happening in the two piazzas that are right next to each other, so we browed a bit and B bought a scarf for 8 EUR, not a bad deal. After some more wandering, our stomachs directed us into a beautiful restaurant that had an area for seating in a garden upstairs. The view was great from there, but the food was ok, especially for the price. I had a mixed plate of meat/cheese with bruschetta, and B had a roasted rabbit dish with peppers on the side. The restroom was weird, but normal for the region. The sinks were in a unisex area with separate toilets for men and women behind doors, so you end up washing your hands with the opposite sex, strange. Anyway, we ended up going into Torre Gross, the tallest of the family-feud inspired stone towers in town. The view of the Tuscan countryside was unbelievable, and the sound of live harp/flute music coming up from below made the scene even more surreal. We browsed the museum briefly before heading out of the city walls and walking around to the south end when the bike rental place was. Turns out the rental prices were too much (about 80 EUR for two bikes for two days), so we just bought a nice map of the area for hiking and bailed out. We walked back through town to the tourist office to see what they had in there but we came out empty handed. Next, we headed back to I Coppi in the very warm late afternoon sun. We had dinner, leftovers from last night, out on the driveway while the Canadian couple ate over by the building. Later, they came over to our table and brought some dessert to share with us, strawberries and cookies. We had another long but very interesting conversation with them until 2030 or so, mainly again about language and jobs.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Fri, May 9th: San Gimignano (Day 22)

The Tuscan landscape is like the ideal countryside to me.  It has attractive farms, alternating olive groves and vineyards, on gently inclining hillsides.  There is a significant amount of forested areas between farms.  They have beautiful forests, a mixture of evergreens and deciduous, many wildflowers, and the strange thin cypresses scattered around.  The climate is generally dry, rendering the soil dusty, but can’t be too dry due to the lush forests.  It’s certainly not as dry as the Pyrenees.  There are tons of lizards that dart across the road/path and away from moving feet.  As we walk, we hear almost constant rustling in the leaves and plants next to us.  We’ve seen a couple of snakes also.

We’ve made an effort to eat local food in Tuscany like we did on the French coast.  We’ve tried a few baked goods that we have only seen in Italy and didn’t see in French bakeries.  Italians and French both seem to like almonds a lot in their sweets, but their bakeries are pretty different.  We had a local Sienese pastry that is oblong with large cracks in it, slightly yellow and covered with white flour.  It’s eggy and chewy on the inside with a slight lemon-twinge.  It was okay.  We tried more flavors of gelato; it’s amazing that they can make ice cream have genuine flavors.  The yogurt really tastes like natural plain yogurt, and the mango is like mango puree with a very sticky, gooey ice cream consistency.  I bought passion fruit tic-tacs, very good.  We have yet to try lasagna!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today started off pretty slowly again, we had breakfast outside and got ready for a hike by 1100. We decided to go on a hike listed on the new map that went out the south end of town and made a loop around a valley of about 8 km. Down on a road that offered a great view of San Gimignano, we turned right on what we thought was the trail but ended up in the middle of an olive grove after 15-20 minutes. We back tracked to the road, went a little further, and found the real trail we were looking for, which was basically a gravel road. The road went down to the bottom of the valley where it turned into a regular trail just before crossing a stream. Down there it was very cool and moist, a far cry from the rest of the area. There was a large rock conveniently laced on the trail that we sat on for lunch. I didn’t want to leave because the cool temperature combined with the fuzzy stuff floating in the air (it is apparently the seed of a tree) and the cuckoo bird signing made it a very peaceful place. Eventually we hauled it up the other side of the valley to a castle converted to an agritourismo business. It was a very pleasant walk up a gravel road that ran through vineyard after vineyard. After the castle, the trail followed a one lane road back down into the valley floor, across the stream, and through some fallow fields filled with the most wonderful, soft looking grass. There were also many great views of San Gimignano along the way. Back in town, we went to the tourist office to ask about the Co-Op grocery store, which turned out to be 100’ off of the road we walked on into town. We found it and stuffed the backpack and a plastic bag with about 30 EUR worth of food for the next few days and then went home. We made dinner of rice with some strip beef and asparagus as quickly as possible! We said goodbye to our Canadian friends because they are leaving tomorrow.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Sat, May 10th: Lucca (Day 23)

Recycling is prolific in Tuscany.  I don’t know if it is in all of Italy.  We saw a news story about garbage piling up for months in the streets of Naples.  They have nowhere to put the trash and they don’t recycle!  Apparently the locals have resisted a landfill for years.  It’s getting to the point that the U.N. might sue Italy to force them to put a waste management system in place.  After the trip, we talked to a guy who had lived outside of Naples for three years working for NATO.  The trash from his country house was never taken to a landfill; it was dumped in a nearby field!

In Tuscany, there are four types of bins: containers (all kinds – plastic, glass, metal); cardboard, paperboard and paper; organic (like a compost pile for the whole city!!); and undifferentiated (everything else – like a regular trash can.)  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the organic material bin!  They almost always have the different types of bins together – not just the “everything else” trash bin by itself.  The “undifferentiated” one was the best find of all – it clearly says on it: no containers, paper/cardboard or organic material!  That’s the mindset we need to promote in the US – dumpsters aren’t catch-all’s, they are a last resort and nothing that is recyclable should be put in them.

We took the train to Lucca, and it took forever!  The trains sat for way too long at some stations.  Travel by Italian rail is not as good as it is in France and Switzerland.  The train cars are dirtier and can be slow or delayed more often.  Our introduction to this country was getting stuck on a train for an extra hour.

The churches in Lucca are even older than in Siena.  We actually went inside a church that was started in the 8th century!  Another in the same town was from the 10th century, and another from as long ago as the 12th century.  These churches had been changed around and added onto many times over the centuries, and now a lot of renovation work is underway.  Most of what you can see now is not the original, but various bits and pieces remain of the original structures and artwork.  I can’t imagine how those large churches were built back then – especially as long ago as the 8th century?! – the 700s!?  That church was made of what looked like concrete blocks with a stone flooring (very crude, not like the 13th century Siena church with very deliberate, neat flooring.)  I wonder how they made their building blocks, what raw material specifically was used.  Also what they used to keep their stone walls intact and the stones from crumbling, and what they used for plaster on their buildings/where they found the material.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

We got up early this morning so we could go visit another Tuscan walled down, Lucca. The trip was going to involve a total of 4 trains and 2 buses! We were out of the door at 0840 and caught the bus to Poggibonsi with no problems. When we got to the train station, there were about 25 minutes left before the next train to Firenze, so we just hung out on the platform until then. The train ended up being a set of three direct drive DMU’s that actually shifted gears while accelerating, like a bus. We arrived in Florence at about 1050 but the next train to Lucca wasn’t until 1140. First, we tried to make train reservations for getting to Slovenia to no avail, and then bought a sandwich from a shop to hold us over till lunch in Lucca. Well, it was a good thing we got a snack because it was a slow, local train that didn’t get to Lucca until 1320! By this time, we were starving and straight into town looking for food, not paying much attention to the immense brick wall of fancy Duomo along the way. After a long search for a restaurant, we sat down at a bar/restaurant, but moved to another nearby one when it was obvious it would be a slow ordeal there. The meal happened very quickly, we barely started on the Caprese salad before my tortellini and her lasagna came out. It was an excellent meal for cheap, with a nice view of an old cathedral on the central square. Despite this, we still only had about an hour to look around before we had to be back on a train at 1632. We packed as much as we could into that time, seeing the inside of three churches, a government palazzo, and several piazzas. It was particularly interesting to see the varying complexity and completeness of the churches. The train back to Firenze pulled just when we got up on the platform…perfect. The connection in Florence was only 12 minutes, and the connection to bus in Poggibonsi was about 20 minutes, (despite some confusion about which bus was ours) so we were back in San Gimignano by 2000. It was already time for dinner so we looked high and low for a decent restaurant that didn’t require reservations. We settled for an outside table in the shadow of the Torre Grosse that was steeply tilted (like everything else in this town). The food was great though, I had a prosciutto brushetta (the real deal!) and excellent vegetarian lasagna, and B had an interesting salad with bread in it, and spinach ravioli. It was getting dark, and chilly, so we went home at about 2100 (only after B got some much awaited tiramisu and cinnamon flavored gelato for dessert!)

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Sun, May 11th: San Gimignano (Day 24)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today we planned on going for another hike on the north side of town, but we had no real plans. We headed out on Via Dante towards Strada at 1130, looking at the massive roses on the side of the busy road. The loop we were following fortunately took a right off the main road and went down a narrow one-lane paved road along a ridge that we could see from I Coppi. A growing thunderstorm filled our view for quite a while, until we stopped for lunch in a small clearing down by a stream. There were no rocks, just high grass, so we threw down the poncho and had lunch picnic style. We then followed another major road for about a mile, the clouds and breeze keeping things comfortable. We saw a bike race go down the road just an hour earlier but it was long gone by the time we got there. The trail then took us on another narrow paved road, downhill to a winery, then back uphill to San Gimignano. In some places along the road, the white fluffy seeds had accumulated on the side of the road like snow. We got back to I Coppi at about 1530, so we had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever. We got our fix of US politics on CNN (looks like Obama now all but has the nomination) and spent a lot of time on the phone talking to our mom’s. Thank you CNN for reminding us it is Mother’s Day! Dinner tonight was tortellini and peas. We also briefly met a new couple from Canada who are staying at I Coppi for a week. Berry and Sharon are from Calgary and he does something related to Canadian railroads. I’m not sure what, but I’ll try to find out later. Bed late.

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »

Mon, May 12th: Volterra (Day 25)

Italian bathrooms tend to be different from other European bathrooms I’ve seen.  Many have an old-fashioned tank on the wall above your head with a string to pull or a metal rod to push up for flushing.  Public and restaurant bathrooms have foot pedals for controlling the sink water.  That’s a smarter way to do it since it’s hands-free and you keep your hands clean!

We met another Canadian couple staying at our B&B last night.  Barry and Sharon are from Calgary on a three-week trip to the Tuscan region (based out of here, San Gimignano, with day trips from here) and Umbria (next region over from Tuscany.)  It’s truly a small world (again) because I can count on one hand the number of rail engineers I’ve ever met because it’s such a small field in the US, and Barry is a rail engineer!  He works for a contracting company, the Canadian branch of AE Comm.  We only got a chance to chat briefly but naturally C wants to get to know him a little better.  They’re here for a week too but tomorrow is our last day.  We know this much – he’s like a lot of other engineering contractors because his wife said each day in Tuscany was slowly weening him off of his Crackberry.

We had nothing but local specialties when we ate out for lunch in Volterra!  I think we’ve finally fulfilled our duty of eating local food somewhere in Italy.  I had risotto al “Pozzo degli Etruschi” (well of the Etruscans, the restaurant namesake), an exotic and tasty concoction of rice (risotto) with some kind of meat bits, maybe ham, eggplant, some unidentified vegetable, and spicy olive oil coating.  My appetizer was Zuppa alla Volerrana (Volterran soup), which was kind of like [real Italian] minestrone soup, something C had already tried and loved in Siena.  This veggie soup was thicker than the minestrone and had bread pieces in it.  A salad I had the other night at dinner had bread pieces in it too.  I noticed the bread accompanying meals in Italy tends to be very bland with little salt unlike the tasty French bread.  The Italian bread is softer and more moist thought, so you give and take :-p  C had a dish called penne all’ etrusca at lunch, which was basically penne pasta with that omnipresent bolognese sauce on it.  To top off our last meal out in Italy, we finally tried real tiramisu, not the imitation gelato flavor.  It was worth the wait.  Even C who hates everything coffee loved and devoured it.  I don’t think it lasted much longer than a couple minutes on our table!  It was the best tiramisu I’ve ever had – creamy but not too heavy, an ever subtle coffee flavor, and the mildest liqueur I’ve tasted in a tiramisu.  A perfect balance.  I have to learn how to make that!

Restaurants here serve reasonable portions.  Sometimes the meal can be large simply because you order too many courses, but the individual courses are well-portioned.  C and I eat most or all of our main dishes routinely without getting overly full.  If we tried to eat out frequently in the US and eat entire portions every time, we would be miserable people.  We Americans need to stop serving – and eating – these outrageous restaurant meals.  We’re all guilty for wasting the food whether we throw it away or eat a couple servings too many and feed an unhealthy lifestyle.

Volterra is known for alabaster carvings, art, plates, etc.  The stone is uniquely beautiful and soft-translucent white.  The most incredible part is that Volterrans have been carving and selling alabaster for hundreds of years since before Medieval times.  The town is much more lively than Lucca and San Gimignano since it has a sizable local population, not just day trippers.  With more locals and a lot less tourists, there were many more practical shops and restaurants that didn’t just cater to tourists.  What a breath of fresh air!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today, we went on another day trip to a famous Tuscan town, Volterra. Like the name suggest, this place is perched high on a tall hill with a commanding view of everything around it. We left the apartment at 0800 and walked through the nearly deserted streets of San Gimignano to but bus tickets at a Tabacchi shop. We tried the tourist office too but they were closed. The bus showed up at 0850 and we got off at another town past Poggibonsi called Colle Val d’Else to transfer to another bus. During the layover, we bought tickets for the 2^nd bus at a magazine shop beside the bus stop. This service ran under the province of Pisa instead of Siena, like all the other buses we have been on, so we couldn’t but tickets with the rest. The road to Volterra was incredibly curvy and after a long steep ascent, we were dropped off at the edge of town. We stopped by the tourist office to get a map, and then went over to see the ruins of the roman theater on the north side of town, which was very interesting from the high viewing area. The shops selling Alabaster art were everywhere, so we checked out a few of these while wandering about. Eventually, we ended up in the public park and then back over to the main piazza looking for food. Restaurants were plentiful, unlike Lucca, so it was more of an issue of finding one we liked. We sat down at a two-person table in a narrow alley, part of a restaurant called Pozzi dalle Etrusci (something like that). We probably should have sat inside because of the cool, drizzly weather, but the food made it interesting. I had some grilled vegetables with Penne all’Etrusci and B had a veggie soup and risotto with some interesting stuff in it. We splurged and finished the meal with an awesome tiramisu. Back to wandering, we went out the west gage and meandered around the ‘real’ Volterra in the rain for about 45 minutes. We went as far as the 17^th century church then turned around. Next, we checked out the absolutely opulent Palazzo Viti, a palace still occupied by the Viti family but with one floor open to visitors. It amounted to a museum of rare paintings and furniture, but was fascinating nonetheless, and worth the 5 EUR/person entry cost. We then found our way to the fountain at the wall on the north side of town, which was about a million steps down from the main street. By 1700, we were back at the bus stop and got on the bus at 1720. We sat in the first row behind the driver, and it was fun to watch all the peds and cars scurrying to get out of the way. The layover in Colle was about 40 minutes, and the bus dropped us off at the south end of San Gimignano by surprise. ‘St Lucia’ the bus driver said was his next destination, opposite of ours, oh well. We walked home in the rain, getting some veggies from the market along the way. Dinner was in the apartment, that tiny pasta again with pepper, tomato, and some luncheon meat on top to round it off. It’s supposed to rain more tomorrow, so I’m not sure what we will do!

Italy Pictures

Read Full Post »