Wednesday… not as planned

Wednesday… not as planned.
So the day starts relatively normally. D. is up first, I have a double espresso, she has real food. Only difference is D seems to be coming down with a cold and I woke with a weird headache. But we push on. Today the plan is Montone and Umbertide. This includes a drive over some of the prettiest mountains and through the Niccone Valley. This is where I would gush about the scenery but I won’t. Just try to imagine the prettiest green valley in the world. The thing that we weren’t expecting is the effect that the twisty, windy, curvy narrow road through the mountains would have on our, what turned out to be delicate, constitutions. Blorp. We made it to Umbertide where we stopped for some air and a lemon drink to settle our stomachs. I went to the Pharmacia to get some Travel Gum. A wonderful product. I don’t know exactly what’s in it but it works like magic for me to fight motion sickness.

Then we decided to go home.
We weave our way back through the prettiest valley in the world and over the mountain to Cortona where we settle in to fight off the Malattia del giorno.
I do go wandering in search of cough medicine for D and take-out pizza. Easy enough to find the cough syrup, take-out pizza required 3 stops to find. Who would have thought?

We watch weird movies and old American TV (The Jeffersons?!, Happy Days?!) in Italian and then a couple of ibuprofen and early to bed.
Perhaps we’re not the fierce travelers we were when we first started our Italy wanders.
Thursday, a new lease on life.
A couple of slugs of cough syrup and good long sleep did D a world of good. Breakfast and coffee and we head off to Le Celle. It’s a short drive from Cortona over the back of the hill. Yet another beautiful setting with an abbey and a church only this time there is a grand abbey with a little chapel and a room (cell) that Francis of Assisi built himself and stayed in for a period of time on a couple of occasions including when he was ailing near the end of his life. As we entered the grounds we heard the most amazing calls we thought coming from the trees… sounded like some kind of crow crossed with a jay crossed with a pig. Turns out, as we crossed the stream on the bridge leading to the abbey, it was a bunch of frisky bullfrogs in the pool below. Mysterious ways they say.

This is the second time we’ve been to Le Celle and it really does inspire one to contemplation. Things like “why does time before a vacation go so slow and time during a vacation go so fast?” or “what really would be the worst thing that would happen if I stayed in Cortona?”

We wander a little bit through the forest and then head back as the tourists begin to arrive. Time to pay a visit to Santa Margarita, patron saint of Cortona and tequila drinks. The church is familiar, quiet and cool. We bid our respects to Margarita herself, still sleeping on her glass box under the altar but now roped off at the steps. The price of her growing popularity I guess.

Around the back of the church there is a view over the city and the valley and a bench to enjoy it from… so we rest some more. We’re really getting good at resting.

Back down to Jeanette’s to freshen up before a walk in the Parterre (park) before dinner. The park is a 1 kilometer long straight gravel path lined with chestnut trees planted in memory of Cortona’s WW1 dead. Frances Mayes lives up the hill from the park. Her book ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ is the reason we came to Cortona the first time. The park is almost deserted. We are too early for passeggiata (walking time before dinner) and it is too hot to be playing in the park for fun. We rest again. We hear thunder rolling in the distance. Across the valley it begins to rain.

We decided to skip the restaurant thing and just enjoy our last evening in Cortona on the rooftop patio at Jeanette’s with a bottle of wine, some cheese and salami and a bit of left over pizza. A nice breeze and a sunset closed the curtain on Cortona 2014.