Views from the Mountaintop

View east of Cortona

After the late night Friday night, Mike and I slept in.  There is a road that goes east from Cortona over the Appenine Mountains that we have been wanting to explore so that is how we started our explorations today.  We drove over the top of the mountain and turned around when the road became narrow and began going down the mountain.  This is a view from the top of the mountain looking to the east.  It is very hard to travel east and west in this area of Italy because of the mountains.  All of the major highways go north and south.

On our way back down this drive we went to the Medici fortress at the top of the hill.  The best part of this was the views from the fortress walls.

Medici Fortress

Inside the Medici Fortress

View of Santa Margherita Cathedral with Cortona below.

On our way to the fortress we noticed people waiting for a wedding couple to leave the church.  As in the US, June must be the month for weddings in Italy.  We have seen several weddings in the short time we have been in Cortona.  On our way back down by the church we saw this nun cleaning up after the wedding was over.

Nun sweeping up after wedding

After view the fortress we drove by the actual Bramasole from Frances Mayes' books.  This is not the one that is in the movie, but where she and her husband, Ed, spend part of their time each year.  This is the best shot I could get of the house from the road.  Bramasole is not in Cortona, but is about a mile up the mountain east of town.  We go within about 1/4 mile of it everytime we leave town.

Bramasole

After lunch and a rest we went to the Cortona Etruscan Museum.  This summer the museum had a display of Etruscan and Roman artifacts from the Louvre.  It was very interesting and educational.  It took over two hours to go through the entire display.  

We only have a few more days in Cortona.  Time is going by fast.  We'll try to take in some more of the area around Cortona in this short time.  Until later, ciao.

Italian Cheese and Wine

 One thing Mike and I wanted to do while in Italy is some cheese and wine tasting.  There are many places to taste wines in Umbria and Tuscany.  Some of the most famous wines in the world come from this area.  Our problem was that we would not do a wine tasting and have Mike drive and myself navigate him back to Cortona.  And as for the cheese tasting, we had not found a place that offers that alone.  So the solution was to do our own little cheese and wine tasting at our apartment.  We have become quite good at shopping at the local food market in Camucia called the Coop.  It is not a Coop as we know it in the US that is just its name. We know to take our own bags, where to find the fresh versus canned goods, how to weigh and tag our own fresh produce, and where the beverages are located.  When we shopped a couple of days ago we decided to pick out a few different cheeses to taste on our own.

What we selected was some pecorino from Pienza  (sheep milk cheese), a grotta cheese from Bontalegio (cheese aged in a cave), and a fontal (cow milk cheese).  The fontal tastes like a mild cheddar, the pecorino is a mild but tastey cheese,  and the grotta also is also mild but with a bit of aged taste.  Notice that none of the cheeses have a color other than white.  In Italy they do not add color to cheese, but let it have its original color.

We have randomly tasted some local wines until we went into a wine shop at the piazza republica in Cortona. There we found a large variety of wines from the Cortona region of Tuscany.  We also found out that this wine shop does wine tastings on Friday evenings in front of their store and also provide for a wine tasting dinner which they provide a shuttle for.  We decided that we would take advantage of that.

The first thing we did yesterday was walk to an area of Cortona that we had not visited before, the Duomo of Cortona and the Museo Dioesano.   There is a statue of Santa Maria Margherita in the piazza there as well as one of the oldest churches in town.  The museum contains many paintings by Fra Angelico, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Lucca Signorelli.  The paintings were, once again, beautiful with many colors and some gold paint in the clothing and of course the halos.  The best part was the original worship area which had frescoes on all of the walls and on the ceiling.  The paintings were dated from the mid 1300's to the 1500's.  I am amazed at how well they have been preserved.  Once again, I have no pictures because they do not allow photography on the inside.  You would think it is to protect the paintings, but the lighting inside these buildings is so harsh that I think it is just so they can sell their souvenir post cards.   And that is okay because it is their place not mine.  The inside of the Duomo had some very pretty frescoes at the back of the altar area, but otherwise was fairly sparse.

Statue of Santa Margherita

Museo Diocesano

Duomo - simple but still pretty on the inside

Later in the evening we came back to the Piazza Republica for the wine tasting.  There were many other tourists, of course, many from the United States and some from Australia.  We spent about an hour tasting about five different wines from the region and learning about them.  And they had several different cheeses to taste. So this fulfilled both types of tastings we wanted to do.  Our favorite was an aged pecorino.  I think the one we bought is a fresh pecorino.  One of the things we learned about the wines was that one of the wines Mike picked out and really likes is a Syrah from the Cortona area which is very famous.   About 8:00 pm the shuttle arrived to take us to the restaurant.  The restaurant was a surprise because it looks like it belongs in Texas and is run by a real Italian cowboy.  However, the food was true Italian.  We sat at a table with a couple from the US that have lived in the Cortona for about six years.  They make their living renting a renovated farmhouse to tourists.  The other couple at our table was a retired couple from Australia who have stayed in Cortona for a year and are about finished with their stay.  Both couples had interesting insights about what we should do with the remainder of our stay.   This was the second time that we felt like we were in an episode of "Anthony Bourdain" where he is around a lot of foreigners, eating a lot of local food, and drinking their local beverage.  The first time was at the wheat harvest festival.  This only will make sense to those who watch his show on The Travel Channel.   It was a late but very interesting evening.

We have five more days to spend in this area.  We have some specific things planned, but those may change daily.  That is the beauty of being in one place so long and not being on a tour.  Until next time, Ciao.

Saturday, June 25, 2011; 10:07 am

A Day of Rest and Relaxation

View of Castiglione del Lago from lake side.

Italy has been great, with all the churches, art, architecture, and other historical structures.  But, after a while, it all starts running together and a person needs a break from it.  Today we decided to go back to Lago Trasemino to hike and enjoy a picnic.  Not really much going on, so this will be short.  We went back to the same general area we went to the second day here, but instead of going into the town we stayed by the lake.  There is a side walk that goes for about a mile on this section of the lake.  We walked about half of it then had a picnic by the lake.

Trail next to Lago Trasimino

View of lake from our picnic spot

Something I have noticed about Italians is that they don't seem to enjoy water sports like Americans.  This is an extremely large lake without any obstructions in it .  In a lake like this in the United States you would see a large number of boats pulling skiers and a lot of jet skies.  I haven't even seen any boats for sports like that in a dock.  There are sailboats.  The first day here we saw a lot of sailboats in the water.  Today we didn't see any.  There were a couple of fishermen on the water and that was it.  Not to say that Italians don't like the lake.  There are always a large number of people laying out in the sun.  Italians of all ages seem to enjoy laying in the sun.  Everywhere we have been where there is a patch of grass in the sun, we have seen someone laying  out.  One group we saw today consisted of two older women and an older man.  When I say older, I mean my age or maybe a few years older than me.  They were spending the morning soaking up the sun.  When lunch time arrived, they pulled out a picnic lunch with some type of dish that required a bowl and a spoon, some cheese, and a bottle of red wine.  They even had a table cloth to throw over the rock they used for a table.  That's what I call a real picnic.
Later in the day, we sat and watched the sunset and the valley below Cortona.  These are sunsets like no other I have ever seen.  Pictures cannot capture the beauty of them.

Sunset from wall next to apartment

C

Cemetery just outside of town

Above is a view of a cemetery in the valley below Cortona.  From what I understand, there are tombs above ground, crypts, and mausoleums,  It is very intriguing to look at and is unlike any cemetery I have seen in the United States.  

Bells on church just outside our apartment

That is all for yesterday.  It looks like another beautiful day in Cortona, Italy.  So for now, Ciao.

Friday, June 24, 2011; 8:30 am

Florence - Art, Architecture, and Crowds

Santa Maria del Fiori

Florence, the city of the ruling Medicis, patrons of the arts and bankers.  Here is the location where the renaissance really began.  We rode the train from Camucia to Florence.  It was a ride that took about 2 hours.  We arrived at the Santa Maria Novella Church station which is in the middle of the old part of town. The first thing we planned was climbing the stairs to the top of the Campinile (bell tower) of the Santa Maria del Fiori which has the main Duomo of town.

It was quite a feat for a claustrophobic, acrophobic, klutz to climb 413 steps to the top of a 270 foot tower without slipping once.  I really had to work on conquering my irrational fears to make the climb up, then had to be really careful on the way down so that I did no slip.

Campinile

Below is the best picture I could get of the dimly lit, narrow, steep passageway.  Luckily,  at every landing there was a small window which let in fresh air and let us see out.  Also, there were two large open areas on the way up where we could catch our breaths and I could work on convincing myself that I could keep going.

Stairs up Campinile

Mary at halfway point

Mike with Duomo in background

View of  city from the top

View of Duomo from the top

The upper right photo shows people on the Duomo.  It was 50 steps higher and did not have a very high rail around it .  I enjoyed the view from the bell tower.

 After this climb we went to the Duomo museum.  It contained many of the original paintings, frescoes, and sculptures from the Cathedral.  Many were made in the 1400's and were very striking to look at.  The two things I enjoyed the most were the Pieta by Michelangelo and the Mary Magdalene by Donatello.  Both are pictured below.

Mary Magdelene

Pieta

 Next we walked to the Ponte Vechhio which is the oldest bridge over the Arno River.  It contains jewelry, gold, and silver shops.  This is where the crowd part of Florence really set in.

Replica of Statue of David

Mary in front of Ponte Vecchio

   Above, I am standing in front of the Ponte Vecchio.  Below are three more pictures of the bridge.  Mike is standing at the center section of the bridge.  Notice how green the river is. Yuch!   Mike and I have noticed that most of the streams we have seen are this color which means they are polluted with some type of organic matter (probably sewage).        
                                                 

Notice the green colored river

Mike on the bridge

  After leaving the Ponte Vecchio we had our first store bought gelato.  It was great both because it tasted so good and because it had gotten very hot out.

Doors of the Baptistry

Mary in front of Baptistry

After leaving this area, we walked back to the Cathedral to have one last look.  It is truly amazing and worth the trip to Florence in and of itself. On the doors of the Baptistry of the Cathedral are Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" copies.  The originals are in the museum we visited, but were not available for viewing because they were being restored.  Very disappointing. These two pictures show the copies.  They are amazing.  Oh yeah, and the crowds!

Santa Maria Novella Church

Finally, we made our way back toward the train, stopping on the way to tour the Santa Maria Novella Church.  We didn't go in many of the most popular places like the Accademia or the Uffizi because of the long lines.  None of the places we visited had lines or crowds inside and still had some remarkable art.  A couple of art novices like us can only take in so much in one day anyway.  Inside Santa Maria Novella were frescoes by Lippi and Ghirlandaio that were truly inspiring.  These took many years to complete and were very large.  There also was a painting by Masaccio the "Trinity" that was the first painting to appear 3-D due to perspective.  I have no pictures of these because no photography was allowed inside.  After this we headed home on the crowded train full of tourists and commuters.   Long, but very worthwhile day.  Mike and I have had enough of large cities.  We enjoyed the art, architecture, and history, but hate crowds.  We will keep to the Tuscan countryside until we have to head to Rome for our flight home next week.  Until next time.  Buon Giorno (Good Day)!

Aromas of Italy

Everywhere we go the aromas of Italy are very striking.  I won't talk about the few that are not so pleasant, but of the ones that remind us of something pleasant.  

First flowers, fruits, and herbs.  Patrizia has a garden with herbs and flowers that are very pleasant to smell.  Unlike most people in the town of Cortona, Patrizia has about 2 acres of garden that she keeps well groomed.  She grows herbs such as rosemary and basil that she shares with her guests as well as the fruit from her fruit trees.  The other night she gave us a plate full of cherries that she had just picked from her cherry tree. She uses the cherries to make cherry syrup by putting sugar in a jar full of cherries, sealing them with a lid, and putting in it the sun for a couple of days.  We just ate our cherries with our breakfast for a few days and they were delicious.

The flowers of Cortona are also very aromatic.  There is a vine that grows on the Etruscan walls that contains tiny white flowers.  When we arrive back in Cortona each evening after our daily excursions, we can tell we are back just by the smell of these flowers that fill the air of the town.  It is a light but very distinct odor.

When we were traveling to Orvieto yesterday, we stopped by the road for a bit and noticed another smell.  When we looked around we noticed many bushes of a yellow flower that almost looks like an orchid.  As we continued driving over the mountain we kept smelling these flowers.  

And, of course, the food smells delicious.  When we were at the festival Saturday night we knew, without speaking the language, that the next course was arriving because of the aromas and the gestures of the Italians showing that they were also smelling the next course.  I even tried my own Italian cooking tonight.  I made a pasta dish with chicken breasts cubed up, fresh tomatoes cooked in olive oil and garlic, mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil from Patrizia's garden.  When it was cooking the aroma was just like what we had smelled at the festival when the pasta dish was being served.  And it was delicious.  So, I can cook Italian.

And, I cannot forget all of the local wines we have been trying.  We have tested some from Chianti, Orvieto, and the local Cortona region.

So, in the future, when I smell some flower, pasta dish, or a particular wine, I will remember this time I have had in Tuscany with Mike.

Tomorrow we continue the adventure by taking the train to Florence for a day of architecture and art.  Until next time, buonasera (Good Evening)!






Tuesday, June 21, 2001; 8:08 pm

Orvieto - Sanctuary of Popes

In our travels in Tuscany and Umbria, Mike and I have seen many churches.  I believe there are more churches in this area than there are in a small town in the bible belt USA.  Of course, the churches here are Catholic and most are centuries old.  When Mike and I come upon one that is open, we go in to look around and usually have a seat to just enjoy the peace and atmosphere of the chapel.  Most tourists just look at the outside, or walk quickly through the chapel, so it is usually very quiet inside.  It is also cooler inside because all the buildings have thick walls of some type of stone.  Every church we have been inside have been different from any other.  Some are very ornate with painted walls and ceilings, while others are very plain.   Even the plain ones are enjoyable to look at because they have old frescoes on some of the walls and bare wooden beam ceilings.  And the altars are always highly decorated.

In Orvieto we saw many churches.  But first, our journey there.  We decided to drive SS71 from Camucia to Orvieto.  It is a two lane highway that goes through many small towns, past Lago Trasimeno and over the Apennine mountains before arriving in Orvieto.  It was a beautiful drive, but slow.  We decided to go a different way back.  When arriving in Orvieto, most tourists park at either the train station or stadium.  We chose the train station because it was on the side of town we arrived from.  There is a tram that you can ride to the town from the station that we took. 

The tram we rode up to Orvieto

The hilltop town of Orvieto

From below and in the town, it is easy to see why Popes came there for refuge and safety.  Some tourists drove up this road and we even saw an older woman with a shopping cart walking down this road.

Curvy, narrow road up to the town

Once up at the top, Orvieto is pretty much like any other Roman town in Tuscany and Umbria.  Piazzas with churches and government buildings, narrow streets with shops and trattoria (small local cafes), and narrower streets with houses for residents.  

The inside of the only church that didn't have a sign saying no pictures. 

 Looks like they even have Razorback hogs here!

The main tower in Orvieto.

Small church building

The small church was not listed on the tourist map, but was very pretty inside.  The walls and ceiling were painted a rose color with patterns on the walls and cherubs on the ceiling.  At the very peak of the ceiling was a stained glass with a dove on it.  

An old government building. 

Front of Duomo

Duomo of Orvieto

The Duomo of Orvieto took 300 years to be completed.  The front is very ornate with paintings and sculptures.  The columns were twisting and carved with black and white showing through.  And looking from the side you can see the different layers of stone, white travertine and black basalt.

When everything closed for the afternoon, we headed back to Cortona by way of the autostrada A1, the largest highway in Italy.  It is the primary road running between Rome and Florence.  It was pretty much like driving an interstate in the USA with lots of large trucks and some crazy, fast drivers.  The part we were on today was a toll road, but it was easy to pay with a credit card.  Much easier to figure out than most US toll booths.  Mike has become comfortable driving on Italian roads, he even will whip out to pass slower traffic then whip back into the right lane before the people going 170 km/hr catch up to him.  He only drove 120 km/hr (about 75 miles/hr).

Mike showing his driving skills

On the Autostrada

So that was our day yesterday.  We had a simple supper in our apartment.  We can only handle so much rich Italian food.  We are not doing much today because we are planning on taking the train to Florence tomorrow and that will be a long, tiring day.  Until next time, thanks for reading.

Tuesday, June 21,2001, 10:13 am