Distracted1

Oddly enough I wasn’t the last one up in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to be informed that when we locked the door at night to make sure we didn’t leave the key in the door because Oksana, the cleaning lady, won’t be able to get in at 8am to leave the coffee and pastries… Pinch me!

So we’re off to breakfast and a wander. Jack and Lynn leave first and the rest of us follow a bit later. We also need to find groceries. We do a lot of our own meals instead of eating out all the time. This group is full of good cooks and if you don’t eat out all the time, you spend a lot less on meals so, you can spend more on cool villas!

I don’t eat breakfast (and neither do most Italians) but Positano is a town for tourists so there is a small (everything in Positano is small) place called Casa e Bottega recommended to us by the lovely and very helpful Manuella. The person we met at the bus stop who manages the villa.

Only about a 25 minute walk along that same narrow twisty one lane two way road with no sidewalk. The menu WAS tempting and the food was excellent (I’m told.) The dopio espresso was very good I can tell you first hand.

Off for a short wander and some grocery shopping.

It started to rain so we prioritized the groceries. Supplies for breakfasts and two dinners… and wine. The grocery was quite small but remarkably well stocked. We were able to get most everything we needed there. The best part? They deliver!! 3 hours later we get our box…

With a short stop at the butcher for a pork roast and some more wine we are good to go.

We make a leisurely stroll the 25 minutes home in the rain and find Oksana there cleaning the place when we arrive. I could get used to this.

Gigi and Alberta did dinner and it was amazing. Roast pork loin, pasta with oil, broccolini sauteed with lemon and garlic. Desert was lemon almond cake. Oh… and there was wine.

Tomorrow we get back on the fun road at 8:30am as we’re off to Pompeii where Darryl has arranged a private guided tour.

Well, we made it! Thirty hours without sleep. (Can anyone sleep on an airplane anymore?) The last 6 hours or so included the 4-1/2 hour drive through the mountains… Finding the villa was the expected adventure, meeting a person we have never met at a bus stop we’ve never seen on the side of a winding one lane, two way road. Yes… Exciting… that’s the word… sure.

The villa is everything advertised, which is always nice when you’ve booked on line a place you’ve never seen and no one you know has ever heard of. 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, a commercial grade kitchen and views you would only think existed in a painter’s imagination. And, there’s cats! Double bonus!

We ordered pizza delivered and crashed at 9:30pm. zZZZZzzzzz

Headed back to the homeland to recharge the batteries and restore the soul. And because Donna had a case of trip planning amnesia last year, it’s just us and 8 of our closest co-conspirators.

8 of us leave together from Grand Rapids and the last two will meet us in Rome via the Canary Islands.

As usual, even though I have TSA pre check (for once), I am the lucky random passenger who “quota’d” the system and so get to have the additional body scan AND have my personal bagt searched. Feelin’ like a winner.

1^st leg is the flight to Atlanta and it was all the cramped joy that flying is anymore. When did Cheez-its become the snack of choice on planes?

Curmudgeon alert…what is it that makes some people seem to find everything hysterically funny when they get on an airplane? You just got locked into a giant tin can with 292 strangers and only 4 tiny toilets, for the next 9-1/2 hours. There is nothing funny right now.

We left Atlanta about ½ an hour late but the pilot seemed to think we can make it up on the way… the “service” cart comes by with the first round of beverages. Red wine for me and it’s a GENEROUS pour! I think they want to knock as many of us out as they can as fast as they can. Works for me…

And Cheeze-it’s again? Really?

October 18/19

Gonna party like it’s 1348…

Well, after traipsing around and through the best of the medieval villages and towns of our favorite part of Italy it seems that perhaps I touched something I shouldn’t have or maybe the holy water at Santa Croce was tainted (something is going on in that place) because unfortunately I seem to have contracted plague.

Donna and Jack and Lynn keep telling me it’s just a nasty cold… but I’m pretty sure it’s plague.

As such, posts in the up coming days will probably be mostly pictures… as right now my head has little room left in it for words or ruminations … 

October 18, Wednesday is Boboli day.

Jack and Lynn took off early… headed for adventures which probably require a lot of stairs. D and I prepare for a more … moderately paced day. I didn’t even get up for coffee in the apartment. I’ll just grab an espresso dopio at the first cafe/bar I see on our way to, the Galileo Museum! Checking off another holy sight on my lifetime Dork Pilgrimage.

We wade through the throngs waiting to get into the Uffizi and turn left at the river Arno. The museum is not fancy on the outside… fairly easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. The place houses an astounding collection of scientific tools and apparatuses. .Of course the telescopes and the devices for grinding lenses are there but there are also very cool giant static electricity generators and leyden jars and surveying tools. There were tools to make the tools with… so cool.

Next a leisurely walk across the Ponte Vecchio to the Oltrano section of the city. Well as leisurely as it can be with about 5 thousand other people doing the same thing. It’s mind boggling to me how the Ponte Vecchio exists. Not because of floods and wars and such but because there are some 30 jewelry shops selling merchandise of questionable provenance at seriously inflated tourist trap prices… Who must pay fairly significant rent or taxes for their space… and I didn’t say anyone buying anything. How does that work?

Across the Arno we duck into a little side street pizza place and order paninis and a beer. The sandwiches were pretty good but the patate fritte were really tasty.

Off to meet Jack and Lynn for a leisurely stroll through Boboli Garden. We skip the Pitti Palace and the costume collection and the dishes and the silver… just the garden thanks.

We love the garden and have visited every time we’ve been to Florence. Somehow the manicured hedges and the statuary and the fountains just don’t seem as stuffy as most formal gardens. Maybe it’s the hillside location over looking the city or the asymmetry of it but we can never seem to form a memory map of the place.

For dinner, back to Boca Poldo. The best waiters ever. Their funny, smart, helpful and genuine. I’ve traveled a fair amount and especially in a new city in a country known for it’s cuisine, I am reluctant to go th the same restaurant more than once. Boca Poldo is an exception in every way.

The one thing about Florence that I have my issues with and may be cause for me to reconsider returning, is the dearth of cats. A city in Italy just doesn’t seem right without cats. I was able to find this little guy and ask him to do a cat impression for me … for my blog … the people are expecting it…. he didn’t seem impressed. So to speak.

October 17… loose in the city of art…

Kind of a lazy morning. That drive yesterday may have been a little more taxing than we were willing to admit yesterday. Everyone is up and at the table by about 9:30… we have good coffee and a French press … but it sure ain’t Jeanette’s espresso dopio. The rest have Muslix as well. Bleah. Twigs and mulch…

After “breakfast” Jack and Lynn head off to purchase a Firenze Card… basically a 72 hour pass to all the sights. D and I are thinking on a rather more low key approach. We gather our wits and head off to the Basillica di Santa Croce. I think we spent at least two hours there.

Santa Croce hosts the tombs of  Michaelangelo (and some 6o of his family), Dante Alighieri, Niccolo Machiavelli, Galileo, Rossini, Julie Clary, Charlotte Bonaparte, Giovanni Gentile and about 100 others… it raises goose bumps standing in one spot with the tombs of so many historical figures in a single line of sight.

There was a flood in 1966 and the marker’s on the wall show where the past great floods of the Arno river reached… the little white plaque about 3 times as high as D’s head is the flood of 66. There was a lot of damage to the artwork but most of it has been restored over the last 50 years… amazing.

Santa Croce is now probably one of my favorite spots in Italy. The church itself is beautiful, the art it houses is astounding… but the cloisters take it to another realm. There is a chapel with a small dome by Brunelleschi as well as a cloister designed by him. It is a place where no matter what your philosophy or state of mind at the moment is, you will breathe a little slower and your mind will be a little calmer and if you are a little like me you’ll stay longer than you thought you were going to.

After Santa Croce, we take a little lunch at one of the bazillion cafe bar places in the city center. I think the waiter was distracted by the voices from his home planet whispering in his head but the food was pretty good. Nothing to write about but nothing to complain about.

Off to the Duomo after lunch. Of course we went to the Duomo. Can you visit Florence without going to the Duomo? I’m not sure that’s even legal. Much to our surprise there was no charge to go in. You need a ticket to go up in the dome but they were sold out until sometime tomorrow. Darn… I was so looking forward to those 463 steps… and the view of course. Maybe tomorrow.

The Duomo itself is always surprising in it’s plain-ness… supposedly influenced by Girolamo Savonarola and meant to reflect the austerity of a proper religious life. Hmmm… I think it could use another painting or two myself.

Time for a gelato!! Yay! So far we have come across really good gelato and great gelato… and gelato as big as your head…

Planning on Cafe Vivoli tomorrow. We’ve been told it’s ‘mind blowing’ gelato… the best in the world. We’ll see… stay tuned.

The Chiesa Orsamichele is the last stop before heading back to the apartment for a rest.

A small church that was originally a granary. The layout is obviously odd. There is a bizarre super ornate alter on one side and a statue of two female figures and a child on the other that I can’t find any information about. Puzzling.

A light dinner again… the usual bread and cheese and grapes and apples and WINE.

If I’m not careful, I’m going to go home healthier than when I got here.

A short walk after dinner to scope out the Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza della Republica after dark. Lots going on! Street vendors, hordes of people wandering aimlessly, musicians and a chef opera singer? Very cool.

Oh… and random Italian cat number 5… suspicious cat…

October 16… bumpkins headed for the big city…

So generally we stick to the smaller towns and villages when we visit Italy. Cortona has been our home base since 1999. We relish the quiet countryside lifestyle and pace of things. The fresh simple food, the friendly shop keepers, the fields of sunflowers and olive trees and poppies and grapes. It is basic and restorative to our spirits and our souls. Every once in a while though a person just needs to kick it into high gear and do the big city thing… the big museums, the big sights, the big time. This year we decide to head into Florence for more than a couple of hours. We have rented an apartment right between the Duomo and the Uffizi. You couldn’t be more “in the middle of it all”.

After another of the worlds most wonderful breakfasts at Casa Chilenne (and a little left over birthday cake), we pack it up and head out of town. They say that all roads lead to Rome. In actuality all roads lead somehow to the A1 Autostrada which leads to Rome… or Florence if you turn left. We may not have taken the most direct rout to the A1 but inevitably we did get to it. About an hour and a half later we are taking the exit into the heart of Florence. This has some folks in the car a little anxious. We are scheduled to meet someone at Piaza Mazzanana who will then guide us to a parking garage where we will stash the car for the time we are in Florence.

Now this city isn’t like driving around the Val de Chiana or into some little village that no one has heard of so you can see a church that everyone has forgotten with a painting of a saint who’s identity would puzzle the Pope. Nope… this is wall to wall scooters, taxis, pedestrians and delivery vehicles and when I say wall to wall… there are a lot of walls. Tourists in cars… uh… not so much.

One minor missed turn and a circle back maneuver and we actually find our way to the piazza. Hey, this isn’t so crazy… he thought.

We are met by the lovely Grazia who was somehow able to pick us out of the crowd right away. I can’t imagine what it was about us that tipped her off that we weren’t locals. Grazia has pretty good English with just a few funny words for things… she jumps in the passenger seat and we are off to the “parking house”.

Now… the streets of Florence are beautiful for sure, but they are a bit narrow. We’ve got a thing called a Ford C-Max which is about the size of a Subaru Forester which when navigating the side streets near the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi, feels HUGE! Somehow we find our way to the parking house after a couple of detours due to construction and cars parked where they shouldn’t be (sheesh). Grazia walks us the couple of blocks to our apartment and gets us set up with keys and internet and tells us that we need to call the parking house before we go pick up the car on Thursday… which is when it dawns on me that I’m going to have to find my own way out of the city. Guess I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.

The apartment is amazing. My first reaction is, Ok, I’m staying here now… forever. Then I take a couple of steps toward the kitchen and my legs gently remind me of the 102 steps I just walked up from the street to the amazing apartment carrying two suitcases.

You can see Brunelleschi’s dome from at least 3 of the windows and the Palazzo Vecchio in the other direction. Inspiring! I think I could get used to those steps?

We settled in and start a load of laundry. Laundry in Italy takes about twice as long as washing machines in the US and there are rarely dryers. And, in the US there seems to be about 3 settings; cold, warm, hot. If you have a deluxe washer you might also get to choose between delicate and welding aprons. In Italy they apparently have settings for every contingency… silk scarves, cotton pants, left socks, right socks… hats… Sheesh. So with drying racks set out in the hallway we hope things will be dry before we leave at the end of the week.

After a little rest and freshening up we head out for dinner. Grazia has recommended a place a few blocks away called Buca Poldo. Oh my… what a find. It was down stairs from the street… basically in a basement, it was a little worn but in a comfortable and welcoming way. Our waiter was an enthusiastic fellow quick to make jokes and be a bit silly. Perfect for this group of goofs.

The food was simply phenomenal. I had the duck breast with sauteed onions, celery and hazel nuts and baked spinach with olive oil and garlic. It was melt in the mouth, eye rolling delicious. D. and Jack had the baked sea bass and Lynn had the ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese. The house wine was a San Giovese blend that paired with the duck like … a duck to water.

One of the best meals in years.

Tomorrow I don’t know… maybe Boboli Garden and a gelato tour…

Random Italian Cat number 4. Don Gatto, head of the Gatto family. Olive oil exporters … yah… sure…

Today is a day to celebrate a little bit Donna’s birthday! Being in Italy with good friends and wandering around some of the most beautiful and inspiring places in the world is a pretty good way to do it. 

Today we revisit one of our favorite towns that no one goes to, Panicale. We first hit Passignano sul Trasimeno. It’s a little town on the north east part of Lago Trasimeno built up against and into the hillside. A lot of charm, a very pretty lakefront area with a view of Isola Maggiore where you can see the old Guglielmi Castle which was built on an old Franciscan monastery in the 1880s and at one time was a school for lace making… It’s for sale now if anyone needs a birthday idea for me….

There was a kind of flea market going on down by the water front. Lot’s of random stuff that nobody actually needs but apparently want. It was fairly busy.

We had a nice Donna’s birthday lunch sitting outside on one of the little back streets of the village. Wild boar for me and Jack, Donna and Lynn had the perch and chips. For all of you who know me and are wondering where the food pictures are… yup, I forgot again. The boar was really good.

Back to Cortona for a little freshening up and resting up before dinner. At 6pm, as D is getting ready to settle in for a bit of reading, I very cleverly get her to go downstairs with me for a minute. I say “wait a minute, come with me…” she says, “do I need my shoes?” I say “If you want” She says “do I need my jacket?” I say, “if you want.” She says, “I’ll take my jacket.”

We go downstairs to the breakfast room and… ta da!! Amazing birthday cake by Jeanette Wong… sort of a tiramisu / diplomatica / magic cake with chocolate sponge, puff pastry, a little rum… absolutely delicious. A little prosecco and it’s a party!

So It’s OK to have desert first right?

Dinner at Dardano. Lamb for me and grilled veggies. D and Lynn get scallopini al limone and Jack gets the scallopini al barolo. Salads and baked spinach… and the house red. No one knows what it was but it was pretty darned good for 6 euros/litre! ;P

We all waddle home with smiles and happy tummies.

Tomorrow off to Florence!

Random Italian Cat number 3

I think this cat had a little too much wine last night…

Oct 14

Ahh Cortona…

Everyone seems to be getting the hang of sleeping in a little. La dolce vita is taking hold. We finish breakfast around 9… something. Well, they finish breakfast, I finish my third espresso. Happiness in a cup.

D and Lynn start off with a little shopping. Nothing extravagant, just the shops and boutiques on Via Nazzionale.

Then the fun stuff. It’s market day in Cortona! Everything you could possibly need or want shows up on these crazy go go gadget unfolding trucks that fill the piazza. You can get your cheese and meat and fruits and vegies, you got your candy and your underwear, you can pick up a new broom and some bed sheets. You can get yourself a dish rack and some new pajamas. Socks? Of course, just a couple of trucks south of the basil and oregano. Everyone should experience market day at least once… We got grapes and apples. Wheee!

Having dropped our produce and shopping prizes in our rooms, we prepare for an ascent of the hill and a visit to say hello to the patron saint of Cortona, Santa Margherita. Her lovely little mummy self rests in a glass box on the alter, dressed in her finery though without shoes for some reason. Cortona is a ‘hill town’. From the front door of our B&B to the steps of the Basilica of Santa Margherita is a climb of 552 vertical feet. The walking distance is 2296 feet. The average incline is about 20 degrees… most of which is not stairs. One must make preparations. Carry water, keep sight of one’s climbing companions, protein supplements, carb loading… it is not a journey for the wimpy.

It is worth it though. The Basilica is one of our favorite churches. Quiet and elegant without being over the top (so to speak). It was set up for a special event so the alter was roped off and we couldn’t get up close with Margherita but we were able to say hi from a distance.

On the way down we made quick stops at Chiesa San Niccolo (closed for the lunch hour) and Chiesa San Francesco. San Francesco is one of my favorites as well. Small and simple. The first time I saw it was in 2000 or 2001. It was barely more than a ruin. There was a crazy old priest who “took care” of it. The pews were mostly gone or broken, the alter was falling to pieces, there were pieces of the ceiling on the floor… it was bad. We happened to see the priest outside and asked if we could see the church. His robes were covered in dust and he smelled a little funny but he grinned and let us in. We walked up and down the isle and were getting ready to leave when he waved us over to a little room behind and to the side of the alter… he babbled quickly in Italian and pointed at a curtain on the wall… he smiled and pulled the cord and the curtains opened to a glass case in which was what he told us was a tunic actually belonging to St Francis. He was very proud and excited to show us. We were suitably impressed if maybe a little skeptical. Then he shooed us out and closed the door. Today the church is well restored. The priest is long gone and the tunic sits in a place of honor in a glass box in a place of next to the alter with big alarm warning signs in front of it.

Lunch at Cafe Bar 500. Pretty good food for a cafe bar… run by a brit ex pat… can you tell?

Random Italian cat number 2

tomorrow is someone’s birthday…;)

Tuscany 2017

Our nearly yearly pilgrimage to Italy was wheels up on Wednesday the 11^th.

We have been so looking forward to this trip since we decided that we needed it more than it wasn’t really in the budget, more than there wasn’t really a good time, more than we could just take a long weekend up north. No, we needed a trip to Italy to reset our souls, salve our spirits and put the order of the universe… back in order.

Traveling, blah blah blah no fun, I’ve said it before so there’s no need to go into lengthy sardonic accounts of airport security lines, (though this time we both got TSA Precheck and it was really quite nice) the general public’s lack of manners and inability to dress appropriately for travel, the size and comfort of airplane seats… and airplane food. So I won’t .

The one thing about the traveling part that I noticed this trip that seemed to be different than in the past was the recovery time. Refer to the comments I didn’t make about airplane seats and not sleeping and the 2-1/2 hour drive from the Rome to Cortona. Hence the delayed first dispatch from abroad.

We checked in at Casa Chilenne Bed and Breakfast at about 2 in the afternoon. After chatting with Jeanette and giving Carlotta’s ears a good scritch. (mandatory when checking in at Jeanette’s place) we bopped out to the hole in the wall pizza place around the corner to grab a couple of lunch slices and sit on the steps in Piazza Republica to have a little lunch and watch the people go by. A first day Cortona tradition for us going back about 15 years. Feels good to be back, feels right.

Thin, crispy and perfect every time, every year.

After just wandering around a little bit, I decided I had better lie down before I fell down and went back to the room for a nap before dinner. A couple of bottles of wine, some cheese, bread and apples and our first dinner in Italy 2017 was spent pleasantly on Jeanette’s rooftop patio watching the sunset.

A long walk in the park afterwards was a perfect way to wrap up a long day of traveling.

Day 2.

After a rather odd night of sort of sleep… confused by a cell phone clock that still read Michigan time I nearly got into the shower at 2:30 in the morning. I don’t know what made me do it, but maybe because the street sounded so quiet, I checked my watch… it wasn’t 8:30. Sheesh.

Breakfast at Jeanette’s is always amazing. Pastries, cakes, tarts, fruit, eggs and bacon if you really want them and of course the most important thing, my preferred breakfast…coffee. Really good espresso… dopio (double) and maybe one more just to top off the tank before starting out. I’m ready to hit the road!

First stop Siena. Siena was the first place we stayed the first year we came to Italy. It was February, it was the most snow they had had in 15 years, we didn’t even know where to find the street signs let alone know where we were and weren’t allowed to drive in a walled city. We were thoroughly lost. I decided to pull over and walk into the first open business I could find and point to the name of our hotel and a map and hope they could point me in the right direction. About 25 feet from where I left Donna in the car I walked up to the first business I saw with the lights on. A little brass plaque on the wall beside the door said Hotel Antica Torre. It was our hotel and at that point I thought maybe Italy is meant to be for us.

Today we wandered around watching the people and visited the Duomo.

The Duomo in Siena is one of the most spectacular we have seen. The inlaid floor, the striped marble, the incredible statuary, the windows and all of it have never disappointed us. This year though, we had to pay to get in… and you had to buy different tickets to access different parts of the building. It was crowded and noisy. It was still beautiful but somehow it felt like it had been in some way been taken away from us.

We had a nice lunch at one of the many restaurant/bars that line the edges of the Piazza del Campo. Donna and I waited in the piazza while Jack and Lynn climbed the tower. My gluteal tendonopathy hurt just knowing they were walking up all those stairs.

Bidding farewell to Siena we head off to Asignano. A small quiet typically Tuscan town off the tourist trail. Quiet is the operative word here. There were very few tourists… seems like maybe 6 including the 4 of us. There was a lovely simple basilica, some charming balconies and a most wonderful quiet.

Dinner at Ad Braceria. Lamb, beef tenderloin, swordfish and pici with pancetta for main courses with spinach, eggplant, zuccini and peppers all cooked over wood. MMMMmmmmmm.

And a random Italian cat of course…

Tomorrow a low key Cortona day.