Cortona and Perugia - Thursday cont.

It was a double header today, Cortona and Perugia, both to the southeast of Radda. Two hilltop towns, though Cortona was the hillier and Perugia offered the more intriguing edibles.

First to Cortona. There was quite a long approach to the center of town. We passed one open market that looked interesting but kept on going because we weren’t sure how far it would be to the real center of town and we didn’t have too much time available. Karin spotted a man sitting there chatting with his friends who sure looked a lot like Bruce’s Dad, so we said a quiet hello to Dad as we drove by. He certainly would have been among our most avid blog readers. And if he had been in Cortona that day, he’d probably have been out there chatting with his friends.

The center of town was indeed quite a ways away, both horizontally and vertically. Great views off the edge as we drove upwards. We finally got a slot in a parking lot just outside the city walls (which date back to pre-Roman Etruscan times) and started walking, again very much upwards. After a few rest stops along the way we found ourselves out of the built-up part of town and in the parking lot of a large church. GPS said that we had gained 400 feet in elevation from the parking lot. The hill continued a bit higher, but we were content where we were.

We didn’t get a look inside the church as the noon Mass was going on, but we surveyed the view, watched salamanders scampering in and out of a stone wall, and treated ourselves to some chocolate covered ice cream bars from a little shop next to the church. The chocolate tasted great—not at all waxy as one frequently encounters on ice cream bars back home.

Then we started down toward town by a different path. There were Stations of the Cross along side of it, wonderfully done in glass mosaic in the style we were to see more of in Ravenna. When seen at normal viewing distance the rather basic squares of color blended together so wonderfully. The detail was marvelous. Backgrounds were all full of action, and there was even a gold rim around Pontius Pilate’s hand basin. We learned later that these were done in the mid-1900s by Gino Severini, who had been a colleague of Picasso, Matisse, and other artists of the period. Sadly we failed to take any pictures, but we did get a good shot of the path. We’ll take better pictures of mosaics in Ravenna.

The bottom of the path took us onto the city streets, continuing steeply downhill. We were quickly surrounded by a mass of high school age kids with suitcases, clearly a tour group departing from the place where they had spent the night. We couldn’t pick up what language they were speaking. The road was so steep that they couldn’t decide whether to pull their suitcases behind them at an almost horizontal angle, or to let them assume a more normal angle out in front. Either way, the wheels sure made a great clattering sound on the cobblestone pavement.

Cortona appears to be quite a destination for students. We learned later that the Universities of Alberta and of Georgia both offer art-oriented programs there.

There were quite a number of nice art shops, food shops, and the like on the way in toward the center of town. Lunch for each of us was a slice of pizza, eaten while sitting on the steps overlooking the square.

GPS aimed us in the right direction toward the parking lot, though it did get a bit confused with one way streets that of course weren’t relevant to us as pedestrians. There were also times here and in many city locations where the signal just couldn’t penetrate down into the urban canyons. Our advice to anybody planning to navigate a city with GPS is to have alternate forms of directions available, keep an understanding of the big picture, and find a large open space to allow it to first gain sync before moving into areas of lesser reception.

On the way to the car we all stopped at a hole-in-the-wall loo. Literally. It was built into the city wall. It did feature real plumbing. We can recall a David Macaulay video which described earlier versions that hung over the edge and simply relied on gravity.

Then it was on to Perugia, the site of the Eurochocolate 2007 exposition! Again a hilltop city, with ever-growing modern outskirts. We don’t know too much about Eurochocolate. From what we can gather on the Web, it takes place in Perugia in the fall, in Modica in Sicily in the spring, and has also occurred in other cities in the past. It appears to be a mix of activities aimed at those in the chocolate profession and at those who just like to eat it. A lot of the latter took place in booths and tents along the main square and side streets. It was clear to all that Perugia is a landmark location in the chocolate industry; indeed, it was the source of the ice cream bars we had so enjoyed a few hours earlier in Cortona.

Our first hint that we had arrived at the scene of the action was the gigantic fussball table on our right as we neared the top of our climb up the hill. Then looking to the left were tents and booths, all selling various forms of chocolate: chocolate candy, chocolate drink, cooking chocolate, chocolate liqueur, everything chocolate! And wonderful street performers. Many of the booths were from what appeared to be established and well known manufacturers from all around Europe, while others were clearly local. Too few were offering free samples! We bought cups of what was called “hot chocolate,” which was just that. Warm, thick with the consistency of not-quite-cooked chocolate pudding, rich in taste, delicious! A cup of cocoa will never be the same again. B & SA also bought a small bottle of chocolate liqueur, which we are saving for a celebration when we sell our house.

Pinocchio puppet street performer

Mime street performer

Other than chocolate (and the amazing self-cleaning public loo, with room for two!), we can’t really say too much about Perugia. Chocolate was the reason we went there, and chocolate we got. We expect that there were many other nice things about the town, but we just didn’t go looking for them. Like the other hilltop towns we had visited, the views were spectacular.

Back to Radda on the winding roads through the hills. Quick stop at the supermarket. Dinner at our villa. Pack for the journey that begins tomorrow.

Venice - Friday

Another quick one. We’re at a hotel near the airport in Venice. Flight tomorrow is at 7:50 AM, so we'll be getting up at the crack of dawn, or before.

Sue Anne and Bruce left Radda a bit earlier than the others because we wanted to take the slow road through Ravenna so we could see its famous mosaics. First time for Bruce, and a return visit for Sue Anne. They were worth the journey.

Wonderful mountain scenery on the way to Ravenna. Pancake flat thereafter.

Hit Venice at rush hour. Free Internet in the hotel. Dinner in our rooms. Early to bed tonight.

Come back next week and we’ll fill in the blanks.

Cortona and Perugia - Thursday

Just a quick note today. Cortona is another city on a hill. Beautiful views. Perugia is the host to the Eurochocolate 2007 Exposition. Heaven!!!

Tomorrow we head up the Adriatic coast, stopping to see the mosaics in Ravenna and then continuing to a hotel near the airport in Venice. Fly home Satuday.

We will write more and post the customary pictures and videos, but time is getting tight and we might not get Internet access again till we get home on Saturday.

Stay tuned!

Florence - Wednesday

An early start and we were off to Florence. GPS did a fine job getting us to the center of town. Then we drove through a maze of very narrow streets looking for a place to park, finally ending up in a metered area right along the Arno. Parking is pretty tight in Florence, so some find that they have to resort to extreme measures. And we thought that the Ford Ka that we rented in Germany in 2000 was tiny!


A short walk toward the Ponte Vecchio, where K&D split off from us older folk. Admired the shops on the bridge, mostly selling fine jewelry. Lots of tour groups, but not really overcrowded. Tour guides must get awfully tired arms from holding their signs up in the air all day long. Everybody in one group was equipped with an identical short-range walkie-talkie or perhaps it was a cell phone. We suspect these were for making panic calls to the guide when lost. (We learned later from Bruce’s cousin Joan that such devices are also employed on tours to permit the hearing-challenged participants to tune into the guide’s descriptions.)


Stop for Euros at an ATM. Bruce's credit union card was refused, but the one from our bank in NH worked fine, and we had made sure that there were adequate funds in both before we left. Nice lunch at a cafeteria style place on the square opposite the famous bell tower and the outdoor replica of Michaelangelo's statue of David. Lasagna, pasta, beer, wine, and delicious fruit salad.


Then to the Duomo. Huge, very ornate and colorful on the outside. They don't make lenses wide enough to capture it in one shot, but you can get the picture from the video. Scaffolding around the back as part of what we took to be a continuous process of keeping the walls cleaned. Quite plain on the inside, especially after Siena, though with very ornate paintings in the dome. Hell, fire, upside-down people in torment around the bottom, rising to much better things as one moved toward the top.

Across the square from the Duomo were the 15th century gilded bronze doors to the baptistery. During the 20 foot flood of 1966 the bronze panels became dislodged and floated away, all to be subsequently recovered from the mud a year or so later, cleaned, repaired, and reinstalled

[Breaking News! The November issue of Smithsonian just arrived, with a major update regarding the door panels. The original panels were indeed reinstalled after the 1966 flood, but it was later determined that they needed major restoration. Degradation had gone down to the molecular level. They were removed, put through various processes of conservation, and sent off for display. Some are traveling in the US at the moment, while others are apparently in museums in Italy. They are all destined to be reunited at a museum in Florence upon completion of the tour, and reassembled for display. The doors which we saw are copies, installed in 1990. Unfortunately the Smithsonian article doesn’t say much of anything about the process by which the copies were created. That would have been interesting in its own right. But the article is well worth reading. Click the link above.]


Impressions since our time here 40 years ago are that there were many fewer vendors now than there were back then. None were selling sweaters, which used to be a big thing. (Some of Bruce's from back then are still serviceable.) The only leather being sold on the streets was offered by Africans (as in Venice), spread out on sheets for easy transport and fast getaway if necessary, as street vending is apparently illegal and carries a €1000 fine to the buyer if the authorities choose to enforce it. A police car was parked right down the street from these guys, but nobody seemed to mind. Maybe it's like in China, where everything goes till the authorities decide that it's time for a nationwide crackdown, and then everybody makes a few token arrests. But there were indeed many fine leather shops, and we also encountered a leatherwork school, open to the public.

Wander through some back streets, window shop leather goods, gelati, pass Dante's home and the church where (according to the translation, roughly quoted) he "may have married his wife and first clapped his eyes on the [other] woman he loved." Quick stop at an Internet shop. It didn't like our flash drive and kept trying to do Microsoft things to us, but we did manage to check e-mail and say hi to Sarah and the bunch.

Yes, these are mounds of gelati.


Then to another church, the Santa Croce. While the Duomo was free, this one cost five Euros to get in. And it had lots of rules against stuff like flash photography, eating, and skimpy clothing, whereas the Duomo had none (apparent). Though smaller than the Duomo, it was still a very large structure and quite a bit more ornate inside. Many interesting chapels along the sides. Sue Anne remembered a number of facts about it from her art history classes. The paintings inside are representative of the period when artists were beginning to portray emotion on the part of the various saints and other subjects of their work rather than simply depicting them as stone-faced. Lots of famous people are buried there, including Michaelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Rossini, though we didn't know it at the time and hence didn't get to meet any of them. Here's a video of the square.

Back to meet K&D at the car. GPS got us nicely out of town and back to our villa in Radda.

Splurge dinner at a restaurant in nearby Castellina that K&D discovered the other day. B had veal with mushrooms and sauce, followed by chocolate soufflé. SA's meal was linguini with steamed fresh vegetables all cooked together in foil and artistically presented, followed by biscotti and sherry. All delicious! There were Americans seated behind us, one of whom sent her meal back twice and was still unhappy when it came back the third time. Sigh ... .

Vinci - Tuesday

Today wasn't the best day for technology. Two attempts to post the blog from our day in Siena failed this morning when Blogger ate the entire thing. We finally got it posted late in the day, but Blogger was then having problems uploading pictures. Hopefully things will be straightened out there by the time you view this, and you will be able to see both yesterday's and today's pix.

Our GPS wasn't fully charged and started giving out low battery indications well before we had arrived at our destination, let alone before we started back home. It also had a difficult time with the complicated internals of one centuries-old town. Fortunately we were able to conserve the remaining battery capacity by only turning it on at critical times. Tomorrow we bring the car charger with us!

Enough griping. Today's destination was Vinci, home of Leonardo. It was also special to us as Vinci is Cathy's maiden name, though her family came from Sicily with no known trace back up to this part of the country. But that aside, it's always a thrill to see your own name up in the signs.

Once we got past the industrial zone at the edge of town, Vinci proved to be a lovely place. Quite hilly, city walls, old church, houses with beautiful doorways, all the things you would expect. Lots of cats wandering around, asking to be patted. We had lunch at a sidewalk café on the Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, across from city hall. There was a plaque on the city hall commemorating the liberation of Vinci by the Americans and British in 1944. We guess that Il Duce hadn't quite succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the people here.

Then we wandered through a small museum and castle dedicated to Leonardo. It mostly featured contemporary models made from many of his drawings—winches, cranes, textile processing machinery, a machine for stamping out gold leaf, optical experiments, clocks, multi-barrel weapons, a battle tank with 360 degree firepower and mobility, quick-erecting military bridges, diving apparatus, flotation shoes, flying machines, and more. What a guy! If only he had had access to the right materials and construction techniques. Bruce coveted a working clock apparently constructed from his designs and sold in the gift shops, but at €75 and with finite suitcase capacity he reluctantly declined the opportunity and settled for a small book.

Beautiful views from the city walls.

Crossed the Arno River on the way to and from town. Very, very wide channel, mostly unoccupied. Saw another completely dry channel leading into it. Recalling the floods of 1966 we guess that these are safety measures which might actually fill up all the way on occasion. We will say more about the floods tomorrow when we visit Florence.

Drive back at rush hour. GPS steered us through a tricky u-turn on the Autostrada. Check e-mail. Pasta supper at our place. Chianti.

Siena - Monday

Sue Anne and Bruce were the first up today. We started by bringing the wash racks out into the morning sunshine. Yesterday’s wash just didn't quite dry out overnight. The tiny washing machine here takes approximately forever to do just one load, and we had a few loads among us. As for drying, that’s done au naturel. So we needed to capitalize on all the sunshine we could find, and there’s more of that at our locale in the morning than there is later on. Weather very mild here. Very warm on our deck in the morning sun, and even in the shade it registers up in the high teens Celsius (high 60s Fahrenheit) during the day. Hard to believe that we're at about the latitude of our house in New Hampshire (43+ degrees) (and Venice is about the same as the Canadian border).

Then we headed in to town to the Coop supermarket. Tiny actually, but still super by local standards. Fun to wander. Got provisions for breakfast and dinner, and an official bottle of Chianti in a basket. They take Visa!

Breakfast of coffee (from our new espresso maker), eggs, pastry, cereal.

Then into the larger of our two cars (a diesel powered Fiat with standard transmission) and off to Siena via an extremely twisty road. About a half-hour drive. Road was well marked. GPS took a while to sync in, and it faded out in some of the narrow valleys, but it ended up taking us to the same place as the signs did. And it gave a wonderful preview of some of the twisties that awaited us around the bend.

Parked at the edge of town. Looked for the signs that in other countries would say Centre Ville or Innenstadt, or Centro here, but there were none. And we didn’t have a detailed city map. So we latched on to a young Asian couple who spoke English and had a map, and we agreed to take on the challenge together. Further conversation led to learning that they came from Edmonton! But no, they weren't from the university.

Walked up a very steep passageway. It looked like a pedestrian street, but we quickly learned that that’s not how they do it in Siena. Everybody shares the road, even if it doesn’t seem wide enough to be called ‘road.’ Cars, light trucks, scooters (lots of Vespas), bikes, and people. It all seemed to work out. Nobody got run over. But it was indeed pretty tight in places.

Digression: Lots seems to have changed in Italian driving habits since we were last here, 40 years ago. Nobody blows the horn. Nobody! All seem to be well behaved. No hand gestures. While we're on the subject, here are a few other things that have changed over the past 40 years. Most should be no surprise, except to those who don't realize what European travel used to be.

- ATMs. No need for travelers checks any more. No more going to the bank with passport or to the American Express office (only during business hours, of course). No forms to fill out. We thought it was great back in the 80s when we could write a check on our Barclay’s account with our Eurocheque card without needing travelers checks, but even that is now thankfully obsolete.

- Credit cards. They still aren’t accepted at the smallest of places, but they are getting ever closer to being ubiquitous. They were very handy today as we attacked the shops and restaurants of Siena. Strangely they seemed to be accepted in more places out here in the hinterlands than back in Venice.

- Euros. Adoption of the Euro must have put lots of currency exchange shops out of business. These used to be everywhere, able to scrutinize the finest detail of paper money from just about anywhere and turn it into most anything else at whatever today's rate might have been. No more. And it's still kind of hard to visualize the Euro as being almost a dollar and a half. They were just phasing it in when we were in Germany in 2000, and it was worth about a dollar then. It’s easier to still consider it as just a dollar, charge on Visa, and not worry about anything till the bill arrives after we get home.

- Internet. One café here in Radda, a few shops in Venice, lots of them in Siena. No need to go to the Post Office (during business hours) in hopes that there might be a weeks-old letter from home awaiting at General Delivery / Poste Restante / Postlagernd.

- Pizza. Pizza in Italy 40 years ago was nothing special. Rather nondescript stuff that sat in hunks in the sun in shop windows attracting flies. It was perfected in America. But it’s everywhere here now, and it's great!

OK. Back to today in Siena. Wow, what a place! Classic walled city on a hilltop. Steep, narrow roads and passageways. Giant city square, under which lie drainage systems engineered seven centuries ago. Super tall tower, in excess of 500 steps high. Karin and Dan ascended it and brought back pictures of the view.

Many shops. Most take Visa. Everything's free!!! Well, it seemed that way.

Great lunch at a small restaurant. Pasta, eggplant parmagiana, Caprese salad, Chianti, and mineral water—both natural and fizzy.

Siena is divided into 17 well-defined contradi (neighborhoods). Not as many as Baltimore (300 or more there), but even tighter in their social structure and lifetime allegiances. Each has its own flag and seal of course, tracing back many centuries, but what was surprising was that each of these bears the figure of an animal, many of which aren't at all native to the area. Rhinoceros, giraffe, elephant, panther, along with the more mundane snail, turtle, hedgehog, and the like. Bruce identified with the neighborhood of Bruco, whose symbol is a caterpillar! These symbols appeared on pottery, postcards, dish towels, and similar items at all the shops, and on the street signs in their neighborhood areas.

The neighborhood rivalries come to a head in July and August at Il Palio, the two annual horse races around the city square. Special blessings in the neighborhood churches, with extra good luck if the horse should deposit manure in front of the altar. Crowds in the center of the square, crowds around the edge, jockeys (generally from out of town) and horses chosen by lot, everything goes! No fatalities in over 700 years. The winning contrade gets a flag (locally called ‘the rag’) and the associated bragging rights.

Pinocchio somehow figures strongly in the legend of the place. Lots of Pinocchio objects everywhere. We bought a couple of small Christmas tree ornaments. The Pinocchio keychains struck us as particularly impractical, considering the length of the nose and its likely impact on one’s pocket. Here’s one of our little guys, alongside of a cousin whom we bought in Bavaria many years ago. The Bavarian one doesn’t have a long nose, but he will stick his tongue out at you if you press down on the top of his hat.

St. Catherine is big here too. She’s the co-patron saint of Italy, along with St. Francis of Assisi. Cathy bought a small ceramic figure of her namesake. Romulus and Remus are also favorites, Remus’s son believed to have been a founder of the city.

The other big architectural highlight of Siena, beyond the main square with its tower, is the Duomo (cathedral). The €6 admission fee was well spent. Stunning floor tile throughout, covered from November through July to help preserve it, and the most significant portions roped off completely all the time. Massive black and white striped columns, apparently a North African influence. Paintings everywhere. Enormous pulpit that Sue Anne recognized from art history classes.

More wandering. K&D both came away happy from the Bata shoe store. Other treasures of the day included ceramic house numbers for B&SA's house in NH, a Pashmina scarf for SA, postcards, art books, liqueurs, and similar mementos.

Drive back to Radda through the twisties. Dinner at our villa of cutlet, pasta, and salad, accompanied by the Chianti in a basket that we purchased this morning.

[Note 10-21: In reviewing our blog after we got home we discovered that we had posted some pictures of Radda here by mistake. That has now been fixed.]

Radda - Sunday

A quiet day in Radda. Everybody slept late, finally awaking to bright, warm sunshine. Breakfast here, start a load through the washer, drive downtown, about a mile. Tiny parking space along the ancient city walls, but the tiny car fit just fine. Parking lot quite full but not that many tourists in sight. Radda is built on a ridge, so there are views in all directions. It was hard to refrain from taking pictures all the time.

Wander the main street, which winds snail-like to the top. Stop in a few shops, like the hand made shoe shop. (Karin bought hand made boots in Venice.) Buy the espresso maker (small coffee pot) we'd been looking for. Nice lunch in a sidewalk café...canneloni for three and sandwich for one, and bean soup for one. Uno liter Chianti della casa, acqua minerale too. For desert: panna cotta (like a flan but less eggy), choc. souffle, and for Sue Anne, una torte della nonna (which translates to grandma's cake...a lemony custardy thing. Delish.) We try to have some local specialty foods. On the way into the restaurant K&D bumped into the couple from Massachusetts whom they had met in Venice. Though they knew we were all coming to Radda, it was still a surprise to find them so quickly.

Note three languages on the sign below. Very common here.

There are a lots of guidebooks here at the villa, which is actually a rebuilt farm house. We'll take more pictures tomorrow. Huge beams on the ceilings, quality built tile floors etc. The pool is closed for the season. Three bedrooms and three bathrooms like in Venice. Quite the luxury.

Karin, Dan, and Cathy set off for nearby Castellina, while Bruce and Sue Anne stayed in Radda. Sue Anne did a few sketches and Bruce headed off to the Internet café to post yesterday's blog and check mail. They have wireless service there, so he spent his time at a table out on the patio with his tablet PC. Not a bad way to communicate. Finished up with gelato.

Saw a sign for a mushroom festival (festa di funghi) in a nearby town, but by then it would have been to late to go. Spent a bit of time in the little town park, then back to our villa. Shower, check the state of the wash, relax. K&D&C back from their jaunt. We learned the word for non-alcoholic beer which Dan bought by mistake.

The TV channels here are almost all in German, even if originally in Italian.