Cerchio Completo

Our last full day in Italy. The end of the trip. Nearly time to go home. But: it's a day in Rome.

Gallerie Borghese

When we were here nearly a month ago, we made a reservation to visit Gallerie Borghese, a museum in a villa that was built basically to show off to other rich and powerful people just how rich and powerful this owner was. The collection of art inside also came about following this principle, although there is an inscription on display inside that allows anyone who wishes, the opportunity to view it. On our last morning here, at the beginning of the month, we went and bought tickets for today. We could go in from 9am onwards, but had to leave by 11. Walking to the park, we realized we had come full circle: our first day in Rome had been here, because it was close to the B & B and easy to find. Now we had travelled around the country and come back on our last day to close the loop.

A David, who looks like Sting

The Gallerie is maybe 10 rooms on each of two floors. Each room is lavishly decorated: floors, walls, windows, ceilings, so that the Roman and classical statuary is plain and simple in comparison. There are several masterpiece sculptures, and dozens of masterpiece paintings, as well as hundreds of others that merely add to the overall impression of overwhelmingness, without being particularly worthy of inspection. There was a room full of Caravaggios (which I was pleased to have recognized without being told), another of Titians, and several Raphaels and Botticellis. We finished viewing naturally about 11, so right on time (despite having only arrived at 9.40; I hadn't realized there was an exit time, and I thought there was an hour-long window for entry.) That exit time, however, coincided with another entry time, and there was a massive queue for the toilets, for the café, and for the cloakroom - all bags had to be stored, so every hour on the hour, a couple of hundred people are either dropping bags or picking them up. What a silly system.

We came out of the Gallerie and sat outside in the sun for a while. It had been a bit cool, although sunny, while we were walking the kilometer or so to the gallery from the hotel, but a nice Sunday morning walk nevertheless. Now we had to think about what to do next. I'd had an idea in my head for a while about visiting Villa Medici, at the other end of the park, near the Spanish Steps. But suddenly the idea of another art gallery seemed somehow less enticing. After a rest, we decided to head on over there anyway and just see what else might come up along the way.

The Villa Medici grounds are contiguous with the park that is Villa Borghese.We walked the length of the park, coming back to a point near our first B & B in Rome, then crossed the road to continue further down. But the park now changed completely. The paths were unkempt and unpaved, there were ugly concrete tanks set into the ground, and there were no directions (that last was not particularly different from anywhere else.) We found some steps that seemed to be the only way to go, so we took them. They made us go up, then they made us go down, two or three levels. We found a passageway to take us back across and under the road we'd just crossed, some public toilets (thank you), a closed medical clinic, and car parking, but nowhere else to go. We went back up the stairs, and although we knew that the way to go to Villa Medici would be to follow the road further the way we had been going, it was just too hard. There was no path inside the park, and the road itself was beyond a fence and quite wide and busy, and from memory, only had a footpath on the far side. We turned and headed inland, to the interior of the park. The paths were still unpleasant for walking, the grass was overgrown and the tanks were still apparent. Finally we came to a part of the park that was clearly part of the municipal park of Villa Borghese. We weren't on track for Medici any more, but Stephen found another museum online, the Children's Museum, in the  direction we were actually going. It seemed like a nice idea. We've visited other Childhood museums before, in Japan and in Edinburgh, so we thought it would be a nice change of pace from another art gallery. We walked through the park, taking the roads that we'd been on before, on the "toast rack" train last time we were there. Google Maps showed that if we went out from that corner of the park we'd be in the right vicinity, but when we got there, there didn't seem to be an exit, and we were 50m above the road that we would need to cross.

Risotto, above,

and chicken, below

We followed the fence around, and almost immediately found an exit. It's as if they knew that people might want to leave! There were steps down the slope, and a crossing and more steps down into a big piazza. Google told us that we were in the People's Square, and it looked like some kind of event would be happening later. There was a stage with TV cameras pointed at it, and people were starting to gather with Italian flags. There may even have been officials already talking to the cameras, but none of it interested us. We passed by and went out to the right, and we were already on the street for the children's museum. We had about 300m to walk. There were a few pizzerias and trattorias along the way, and we noted a few that looked as if they might be good for lunch. When we got close to the museum, there was one that had pictures on its menu outside, and some of that looked very good. It was around 12.30, so worth stopping. It was a friendly, apparently family-run business, and I enjoyed my meal. For the first time I realized how little chicken I've had. I think this was only the second chicken dish I've had all month. And it was delicious. A slightly curry-y sauce, with soggy but curry-y potatoes. And the chicken was tender and juicy and excellent. The only thing that marred the meal at the end was a sign at the cashier that said there was a 30% surcharge for table service. Even for a full lunch! Sure, for coffee, I get that's what happens in Italy. The girl said, "Because it was a la carte."  They had offered us a set menu (without saying what was on it) but if a la carte is 30% more, then just put it in your bloody prices! But the food was good, dammit.

A few metres down the road we found the Children's Museum. And it was surrounded by kindergarten-style art and parents with kids and prams. Rats. The thought had momentarily occurred to me, but I had dismissed it: Was it a museum about kids, or for kids? It seemed apparent from the outside that it was the latter, so we didn't even go in.

Apparently I did take a photo

the first time we passed,

just not a very good one

Any other ideas? Well, yesterday I posted a picture on here of the Street of Four Fountains. I don't know why I translated the street name (probably because it was easy, and for once it wasn't a person's or place name) but it had been playing on my mind: what four fountains? I didn't remember seeing a piazza with four fountains in the area, so what had we missed? It wasn't far from the hotel, and only two Metro stations from where we were, so we thought we'd give that a go. We travelled with no problems, just 1.50Euros each for the fare (but the stations and lines are a lot darker and dingier than Japan or London. The tunnels at the stations here are lined with steel, not tiles. It looks quite wartime-esque.) We got off at Barberini Station, and as we were standing on the footpath, orienting ourselves, I realized... I know what the name is referring to. Those fountains aren't fountains any more. They are Renaissance-era statues on the corners of four houses facing an intersection that we have passed two or three times.  They were eye-catching, being quite intricate stone carvings, with lots of grapes and leaves, so I had looked at them with interest, and possibly even taken a photo or two the first time, but I'm pretty sure they were no longer working fountains. Or not permanently, anyway. So we didn't really need to go and see them after all.

Any other ideas? Let's have a gelato and see what comes up. We found a gelataria, we sat and ate our ice creams, and we had no more ideas, so we went back to the hotel. We had walked a huge circle (including two stops on the Metro) and we were ready for a rest. We came back to the room and had a cuppa and a lie-down. I felt guilty at wasting an afternoon in Rome like this. (Your last day! And you're sleeping!) But really, we were doing what we wanted to do. And we didn't have anything else that we did want to do. So, why not? Any other day it would have been fine.

But we had already decided to make our last meal in Rome a good one. We had thought that one of the fancy restaurants around Piazza Barberini would be suitable. Some are more fancy than others - we didn't mind expensive, but we didn't want pretentious. So at about 6.30, all dressed up nicely, we started walking down towards the Piazza. It's nearly a kilometer, and we've already walked it four times this trip, there and back. There are several different parallel roads available, so we took one that we haven't walked before, and this time we got it right. (Google Maps can make even a fairly straight route confusing.) But just before we got to the piazza, there was a nice-looking place with a menu outside. Stephen had said he wanted a calzone before he left Italy, and they had them on the menu, and I noticed that their steaks weren't expensive. It was a terrace restaurant, so a roof-top evening overlooking the piazza seemed like a good way to end our visit.

The rooftop restaurant

And yay! We were right. We hadn't seen a bar for an aperitif on the way, so we started with a wine, and finished the bottle over the meal. We had an octopus and potato salad to start, then Stephen had his calzone and I had the steak, then we liked the look of a couple of desserts, but there was another that we were curious about, so we ordered three desserts between us. (This was after the wine had been finished, so that might have had something to do with it.)  It was a great meal. The service was professional and friendly, the food was excellent, and the experience on the rooftop was lovely, watching sunset fall and people mill around below. We even saw a capuchin monk walking past. It will be a perfect memory: "Remember that last dinner we had in Rome? Where exactly was that again? Do you remember that monk?"

Sunset over Piazza Barberini

And soon we'll be gone. Italy won't notice, but we will. I'll put another post up after we get home, for closure, but it won't be for a couple of days.  Thank you for reading, and goodnight. See you again in Ho Chi Minh City!

Octopus and potato salad

Calzone, back, and 

steak with herbs, front

Top: Cheesecake

Centre: Deconstructed millefieulle

Bottom: Mint and chocolate semifreddo 

Torniamo a Roma

Sorry about yesterday's posting, everyone. Even now I can't get into the page myself, in order to re-forward the posting to you in the normal way. But I hope you were able to read it, because we had a wonderful day. The wi-fi here looks a lot better, though, so we should be back on track tonight.

This morning was clear and warm and lazy. We had nothing to do, and a peaceful sunny day to do it in. There was another 8 o'clock wake-up, some reading in bed for a while, then getting up over quite a protracted period of time. Stephen went to the tabacchi to get some breakfast bread and pastries, so we had a number of courses for breakfast, all taken at the table outside in the morning sun.

The land beyond the church;

outside Fratticciola

We read for a while longer. We were packed up by 10 or so, but our train wasn't till 12.34. Yesterday a woman came over to use the washing machine, and we chatted: she was visiting because her daughter would be getting married today. So Stephen and I thought we'd have a wander down to the church, about 5 or 6 houses away, to see if that was being made ready for a wedding, as the woman's vague gestures indicated it would be happening very close. But it wasn't. Still, we had a short walk and saw that the village is a little bigger than we had realized - behind the church are about 8 more houses, new(ish) builds, and 4 of them are in one block, terraced housing, so to speak. But then the farmland stretches out, and there is no more village in that direction.

You may remember that a couple of days ago we asked a taxi driver if he would be available to take us to the station on Saturday. He wasn't but his friend was. The arrangement was simply that the friend would pick us up some time between 11.30 and 12, because he wasn't sure when his previous job would finish, but we could live with that. I sent the friend a reminder at about 10.30, and he acknowledged it, so that was reassuring. And he turned up at 11.40, which was just right. Not too late for us to get anxious, and not too early that we had far too much time at the station with nothing to do.

The train trip was uneventful, from catching it to getting off. The scenery stayed pastoral virtually all the way to Rome, a 2 1/4-hour trip. And almost every town we passed through seemed to be growing. They all had new houses - nice ones, not cheap, nasty council housing - extending the towns outwards. People must want to live in the country and in small towns. It was also interesting to note that traditions are holding firm in the countryside. People grow grapes and olives, and make them into wine and oil, as normally and matter-of-factly as we might grow a herb garden. It's taken for granted as much as growing your own vegetables would be, in NZ anyway. We saw a discarded tray that looked as though it might have been used for wholesale fruit sales. It wasn't made of corrugated cardboard stapled into a shallow box shape, it was cheap pine with handles. Someone somewhere makes them (maybe in a factory, sure) but other people are still buying and using them. Even small businesspeople aren't cutting corners and going for the cheapest, flimsiest, easiest option; they're just continuing to do what they've always done, the way they've always done it. Thank goodness American capitalism hasn't reached everywhere. Yet.

The train reached Rome on time, but the platform was lengthways out of the main station, so we had quite a way to walk to get to an exit. The first exit we came to had no taxis, so we walked over to the other side, again none, and then we found the main taxi line in the middle. With a queue over a hundred metres long. There was nothing for it but to join the queue, but with 4 lanes for cars, there were sometimes 10 cars there at a time loading people on, so we were at the head of the line in only about 15 minutes.

Current room

When we were in Rome at the start of the trip, we asked our B & B proprietor, Martina, if she could take us again when we returned, but she couldn't do both nights. She contacted another B & B nearby, who could take us, so after an email exchange with them, we were satisfied that we could stay in a nice familiar area. It was a bit more expensive that Martina's, but that should mean it would be a nicer room too. But we got there today, and they didn't have our booking. We spent a while at reception, and it was clear there had been a miscommunication in the email conversation.  The receptionist kindly spent some time trying to find us another room nearby for 2 nights.  She finally managed to, and we set off to the second place, trailing our bags behind us. (I've often looked at people wheeling their suitcases through city streets, and wondered, "Couldn't you organize your trip a bit better than that?" Now I know. Maybe a mistake was made at them.) We had a few hundred metres to walk. As we got to the next address, a man came running up to us, calling my name. He explained to us that a mistake had been made in the second booking, and this B & B couldn't take us for two nights, so we would go to another place for tonight and then tomorrow come back to a nice big room in this B & B. I've worked in hotels, I know that mistakes can happen, but this was getting a little silly. We followed him to the third B & B for the day, telling him that we really didn't want to do this, we didn't want to change again, and if this had to happen, we should at least get a discount. He kept reassuring us, while not promising anything because he would have to check with his boss. When we got to the reception of the third place, I explained that we were only here at all because we didn't want to change accommodation from night to night, and pleeeease could you arrange it so that we can stay here two nights. Thank goodness he could. The second B & B just cancelled the booking we'd made with them, with no charge, and we'll just pay directly to Number 3, no mucking around. And the room is cheaper, and he's thrown in the visitor tax (3Euro per person per night) as well. So instead of the 120Euros that we thought we'd have to pay to Martina's friend's place, or the 110Euros to Number 2, we're actually only paying 70Euros to Number 3. The room is nothing special - the same as a hotel room - but that's fine. It's only 2 nights. Come to think of it, this place does call itself a hotel, it just also includes breakfast in its price.

Street of 4 Fountains, Rome, sunset

After settling in, we went out. We had hoped we'd be closer to familiar territory, but we're still not that far away. And when we went walking, aiming for an area that we had come to a few times at the beginning of the trip but using different streets, we discovered that we were surprisingly close to the main sights of the city. At the end of the street we were on: "Is that Victor Emmanuel's statue? Here??" That meant the Colosseum was only a couple of blocks away. We had to rethink our orientation  completely. The familiarity we cultivated here four weeks ago had got lost and confused in all the other images from all the other cities, and it was really difficult to remember what there was in Rome, let alone where it was.

We had a burger for dinner, thinking we were in a gourmet burger joint. We weren't. The burger was the closest thing I'd had to a McDonald's in years. So we had dessert at another place to compensate. Also underwhelming, but not as bad as it could have been if it wasn't Italy. Then we walked up the hill to B & B No 3. And that was that.

Sotto il Cielo Toscano

The wi-fi is a bit weak here tonight, so I’m writing this in Word, and hopefully the website will let me upload later in the evening. [It did!][...kind of.] 

This was a day of unexpected pleasures. We didn’t have much planned: visitors to this region either stay a week or more, travelling round in their own vehicles, or are allowed off their bus for a few hours. We have three nights/two days, and no transport. Yesterday we saw what you have to see, Cortona, and so what do we do today? Would it be the fantasy, sipping wine and eating cheese all day? Although the farmhouse we are in is lovely*, the outside is not quite so inviting, with the garden having some overgrown roses and plastic playhouses and other toys surrounding the deckchairs on the small lawn. It doesn’t quite meet the fantasy standards. 

*Remember I hazarded a guess at the building having been built at the same time as the 1764 house out the front? I was wrong. I noticed another brick in this building this morning: 1954! When you build to traditional methods, it’s hard to tell the age. I think ‘timeless classic’ is the phrase.

Anyway we started the day slowly again to see how it would work out. Awake around 8 (Stephen slightly earlier than me today) with a cuppa in bed and a bit of reading before bothering to get up. Finally dressed around 9, breakfast a bit later. Coffee outside in the morning sunshine. Nobody was anxious to make a decision. Or even move. Finally at around 11 something happened.

Grape picking

All the grape pickers: Aldo, Fiona, Anna-Maria, Francesca

Yesterday Stephen had videoed Aldo, the father of our Airbnb host, making wine. He needed to ask him to sign a release form, allowing him to use the video in his e-book, so at 11ish we set off over the road with the documents. Today the host’s niece was there too, Francesca, visiting from university in Perugia. We were hoping that Aldo would be back in the shed, because Stephen wanted to get some footage of him pressing the grapes, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, he was out in the fields, picking again. So Francesca and Anna-Maria suggested we go out there with them and film that. Off we went, a couple of kilometres up the road in Francesca’s car. They were taking some empty buckets and some water for him. And then while Stephen videoed, we all started to help cut the grapes. It was fabulous! I’ve never had a fruit-picking job (and I still don’t want one) but it wasn’t bad. The vines are grown at a reasonably comfortable height, and the secateurs were sharp. You don’t have to be picky about what goes in the bucket, because everything that is not juice gets strained back out again, so you just cut and drop it straight into the bucket. But the grapes are so ripe and soft and ready to burst, just holding a bunch while you cut the stalk can be enough to have juice exploding over your hand. It took no time to fill a bucket, so we just kept going. We finished the row in about 20 minutes, and I felt I had made a definite contribution to this year’s production. Not significant, but it was there. Who would have thought I’d go grape-harvesting in Tuscany on this trip?

Tuscany, more to the south. 

The lake you can see at the foot of the hills on the left

 is L. Trasimeno

From there Anna-Maria again offered to drive us in to Camucia so we could catch a bus back to Cortona for the afternoon. We had secretly been hoping she might, but we didn’t want to ask. We had read about a couple of places that we hadn’t seen yesterday that were probably worth a visit, so a second trip up the hill would fill in the day nicely. And of course we wanted to experience Cortona again. So that happened. Drop off at the station, buy return tickets, 10 minutes in the sun waiting for the bus, up the hill to the Etruscan gate, and then walk round inside the walls, away up to the right. There was a piazza and a park that we had missed, so we went to see them. Garibaldi Piazza was a little higher up, and a bit further round the hill to the south, from where we were yesterday, and so it had a slightly different view from its lookout. And there is a long park of French-style laid-out gardens stretching further off from there. We walked through the park for some time, although not to the end, before coming back. It was another of those times that you need to recognize when they occur: brilliant weather, beautiful view, agreeable surroundings, no worries. 

The other place on our list was on the opposite side of town, so our plan was just to walk the streets in that general direction and have lunch along the way somewhere. The streets led from piazza to piazza, and were fairly full of more busloads of Americans. There were lots of galleries and artisanal craft shops along the way, and one group of pictures displayed outside caught my eye. We popped into a gallery that had paintings that were parodies of famous works, with cats. I nearly bought a “copy” of Leonardo’s Lady with a Ferret, which was a Lady with a Cat, but in the end I thought some of the details might annoy me a bit too much. Instead I bought a parody of God reaching out to touch Adam, in which a cat replaces Adam. I like the concept, and it made me laugh out loud when I turned the corner and saw it. 

We had lunch a few doors down from there, then continued across the town. We saw the opposite city wall much earlier than we expected, and our sense of direction had been spot on, as the Diocesan Museum was right in front of us too. We had spurned it yesterday, thinking we’d seen enough church museums, but I saw a list of the paintings it held, from local churches, which made it worth a look, if you had nothing better to do. It also had a Hall (not haul) of Treasures, which were mainly vestments worn by a Pope who held a Mass in the town some centuries ago then donated his robes. There was also a reliquary, and we asked at reception what the actual relic was (why wouldn’t they put that information on the display? It’s been the case several times. Nobody cares about the reliquaries, which they describe in loving detail; people just want to know what’s in it.) It turned out to be, ostensibly, a scrap of the clothing Jesus wore on the day he healed a woman with a hemorrhage.  Not a Bible story I remember, I have to say. And surely every single person who was told that this was a scrap of Jesus’ clothing, from one particular day, that turned up out of nowhere in the 13^th century, had to have had some private doubts as to its authenticity, and yet, here it is, surrounded by silver and jewels. I marvel at the extent of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” effect in the phenomenon of relics, and am impressed at the entrepreneurship of the medieval relic dealers and their gall.

We now started to wend our way gradually down and back across the hill, back to the Etruscan gate, keeping in mind that it was a good day for a gelato on the way. Another piazza, another gelateria, but soon we were at the bus stop, waiting for the 4 o’clock bus. We wanted to get back to the house because Aldo was going to be crushing the grapes at 5ish, and it might only take him half an hour, Francesca had said. We got the bus, went to the station and saw a taxi pull in. The driver went in to the Station Bar to have a coffee, and then he would be free for a little while, so he was happy to take us to Fratticciola. That was 5Euros saved in a call-out fee, and no time and frustration expended in phoning number after number looking for an available taxi. Perfetto!

When it was nearly 5, Stephen went across the road to get his videoing done, while I fell asleep on the sofa. Stephen didn’t get back till 6, with a broad smile, a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of wine. We had some as an aperitivo: it’s weak, but not watery: a very mild flavor. It’s made without any additives, not even sugar or yeast. All he uses is a hydrometer to check the alcohol content. There was a trace of spray on the vines, so it might not be organic, but it’s natural. They make about 1000 litres a year, and they have olives for oil, and Anna-Maria pointed out some ploughed fields today on the drive to Camucia, that she said were theirs too.  

Yesterday we had bought some ingredients thinking we’d end up having dinner at home. That wasn’t the case in the end, but tonight it was. We used a recipe that Filippo taught us 20 years ago and we have used often since: the simplest carbonara you’ll ever make: cut up finely or mince some bacon (or any other tasty meat – I think we bought pancetta or prosciutto), fry it lightly while your pasta cooks, then when the pasta is drained, stir it, the meat, and one raw egg per person all together, letting the heat of the pasta cook the egg. You can stir it over a low heat if you want the egg a bit more cooked and drier. We had this with more wine outside in the (just slightly less than) balmy evening. 

Then we went for a walk to see the sunset light and silhouettes of trees along the hillside horizons. We bought icecreams at the tabacchi for dessert, and that was the day done. A day under the Tuscan sky. Nigh on perfect.

Tuscan sunset

Una Regione Bellissima

My goodness, we slept well last night. I woke up at 7.50 and Stephen was still asleep, having gone to bed at 10. This is a man who can't sleep past 6 at home. I got up and read for a while, and Stephen followed suit about 15 minutes later. It was a clear sunny morning, but when I went outside, I huffed out a breath to see if I could see it in the cold air. It wasn't that cold after all, but it was certainly a little sharp. We gradually got ready for the day, and at about 10 to 9 we set off round the corner to the local shop to get something for breakfast. We came home with some bread, cheese and mortadella, some milk and some yogurt. We percolated some coffee Italian style and didn't stuff it up this time - the percolator survives. (In Naples I boiled it dry and stained the colour, possibly forever.)

Aldo pressing grapes

On arrival yesterday we mentioned the possibility of renting bicycles to go into the town, and Lorella immediately started arranging the loan of two bikes of her own. One was a mountain bike, and the other a lady's bike with no gears. They looked fine, and we signed the rental papers. But this morning when we came to leave, the lady's bike's tyres were completely soft and it was impossible to ride. The rubber had perished. But Mamma had come over when she saw us about to leave, and in full and voluble Italian she expressed a) disbelief that the tyres could be flat, b) horror that she had given us a bike with flat tyres, c) sympathy for us that our plans had come to nought and d) an offer to take us into town because she was going there anyway. Some but not all of this I understood at least the gist of, but she used Google Translate to reiterate the offer of a lift. This was one of the times when you do actually understand the words of a foreign language but assume you must be wrong because you can't imagine that someone could be saying such a thing. I got that she would accompany us into town, but I thought she was offering to walk with us, which we had said we would do. But apparently "accompany" means to give a lift to. What a lovely Mamma. So we followed her over the road to her home, where she introduced us to Aldo, her (presumed) husband, who was very picturesquely in the process of pressing grapes for wine. He showed us the process and gave us some of the juice to try, as well as a little of the must of the red wine he had pressed earlier. Of course, they also do their own olive oil.

Fake stonework and frieze 

Soon we were on the road with Mamma, to Camucia, the town whose station we arrived at yesterday. It's about 7km away, and a thriving little town, big enough to have a plurality of hairdressers, real estate agents, bathroom supply shops and so on. Today was market day, and several streets had stalls along the length of them: clothes, underwear, bags, shoes, as well as fruit and veges. We tried to find a sight to see but there's not much. We looked inside a church, but it was very new, although it tried to look old: the 1600's-style stonework was only painted on, and with very sharp edges. The bas-relief of the founding priest showed him wearing glasses.

We caught the bus up to Cortona. You can see it from below, nestled halfway up the hill, a smudge of terracotta squares among the green. As you get closer, some of the squares become churches, others walls, others houses. The bus pulls in at the foot of the city wall, near an Etruscan gate. The Etruscans had about 7 centuries of ascendancy in this region, ending in the 1st century AD when they were swallowed up by the Roman culture and language, being unable to coalesce into a political or military force.

Cortona street

Cortona street

Inside the walls, the entire town of Cortona is historic and beautiful. The exteriors of the houses haven't changed in centuries (apart from television aerials and satellite dishes and electric wires.) Every street you walk up, every lane you turn down, every alley you peek into, every single corner you turn reveals a delight. Part of the magic is the sky, I think. On a gorgeous day, as today turned out to be (again), you only see the high part of the sky at the end of an alleyway, not the lighter part near the horizon. So when you look at the stonework and the earthen hues of the render, the terracotta tiles of the roofline, and then further into the perfect deep azure of the sky, nobody can fail to be mesmerized.

Church of San Francesco

with relic of the True Cross

We walked up and down and across the town. We forgot to bring a map, and we hadn't looked at Lonely Planet, we'd just set off to see what there was. There was a church of St Francis (he of Assisi fame), and a museum of mainly Etruscan history, that we decided to visit. Otherwise we looked in shops, had some coffee, had some lunch - a proper wood-fired margherita pizza, which we've been meaning to have but only just got around to - looked a views, had some more coffee, and thought about dinner. It was a little after 4, and too early to have dinner in Cortona, or even in Camucia, but there was a supermarket nearby (disguised as two small shops on a piazza - I hadn't even noticed it this morning when we passed through) so we bought some prosciutto and eggs to go with the pasta Lorella had brought over last night. We would cook back at the house. Finally at about 5.20 we got back to the bus stop. It took a while, because we were following the city walls back towards where the bus had dropped us. We figured we would have to cross the street we came in by. But we got round to the south side of the town, and we hadn't passed it. How was that possible? When we followed the wall back again, at the base instead of along the top, we realized we had walked over the Etruscan gate without seeing it. It wasn't far to walk back, but the next bus wasn't until nearly 6pm. We already had the tickets, and it was a lovely evening. Stephen was waiting under the trees by the wall, but I kept getting up to cross the road just to look at the view. It was not unlike the Canterbury plains, but less geometric.

Tuscany

650g steak, and 

mixed seafood grill

The bus came and took us down to Camucia. By this time, it was worth considering having dinner in town. One thing Tuscany is famous for is beef (although I haven't seen a single cow) and I was hoping to try some Fiorentine-style steak while in the area. We're finding that some restaurants don't open for dinner until 7.30 or later, but there were a few places that were starting to open already, as they were pizzeria/ristorantes. We found one with Fiorentine steak on the menu, and sat down. The blurb that I had read about the traditional regional Chianina steak said a t-bone shouldn't be less than a kilo, but I didn't mind if my meal wasn't quite that traditional. As it was, the steak was costed by the 100g, and the minimum was about 500g. I asked for a small one but apparently, the smallest they could cut was 650g. Stephen ate some and I left maybe 50g on the plate. The steak was tender and juicy and mild in flavor, but it's a lot of meat to work through. Better than horse, though.

The only way home from dinner was walking or taxi. I used a photo of the list of local taxi drivers from the station and started calling. The third driver said he could be there in 10 to 15 minutes, so that was great. On the way home we asked if he would be free on Saturday morning, but no, he would be driving to Rome. But he had a friend... So that's one worry taken care of. His friend will pick us up for the train on Saturday. We were home at about 8.15. Time for a cuppa and writing.

Silence again in the countryside. That dog barked a couple of times a while ago, but he seems calm now. An annoying fly got caught in the dregs of my glass of milk, and is not annoying any more. Silence.

Un Villaggio Piccolo

A simple day today: the main part was spent travelling. Arrivederci Milano, hello to a new Airbnb home.

I had booked us on an 11.20 train out of Milano Centrale station, not entirely sure how we'd get to the station but sure we could figure something out. I didn't want to ask Filippo or his wife for a lift to the local station,  being sure that at least one of them would be at work. And anyway, I wasn't sure how often the local trains ran or how reliable they'd be - both times we've come in on one, they've been 10-20 minutes late. But after I'd made the booking, we starting using the local buses with their route through the airport, and every time I had noticed a shuttle bus to Centrale waiting there. I looked it up, and they run on the half-hour and cost 5Euros, so that seemed to be the answer.

Working backwards, that meant leaving the flat at 10. Leaving the key for Filippo presented another problem, because it wasn't a dead-lockable door. You needed the key on the outside to be able to lock up. But after dinner last night Filippo said that he had the day off work today, because he was taking one of the boys to the doctor, and he would come over at 10 to 10 to get the key. This was okay, but we had hoped to use the time right up to 10 o'clock for a bit more shopping. We'd had a walk or two through the local shopping centre, but not when the shops were actually open, so I'd hoped that this morning we could have breakfast at one of the breakfast cafes, then do a final bit of shopping, at some proper "ordinary" shops, just popping back to pick up our bags and then be ready at the bus stop at 10.

This plan nearly worked. We were packed and ready to go (we're getting so good at this) by 8.30, which meant we could go and choose our breakfast café from one of the half-dozen or so that were there. We thought the one that was furthest away was going to be the best (Stephen had glimpsed it one evening) but when we got there they had very little variety in their pastries, and very few of them, so we continued round in a loop, and found another with plenty of mouth-watering treats. I had a wholemeal croissant and a mini-donut, and Stephen had some focaccia with ham. I read a newspaper. It's wonderful how nearly I can read Italian! Vietnamese and Japanese newspapers - not a chance, there is far too much unknown vocabulary; but Italian! You get to make an informed guess at the meanings, and often it makes sense! What luxury, and so easy, to learn a romance language like this.

It was around 9, and we'd finished breakfast, so we set off to do our shopping. There weren't actually that many clothes shops, only two or three. One looked nice, but its hours were from 9.30 on. Peering through the window, it wasn't too promising (a bit too dressy for what I wanted to buy) and we walked on. Another shop had some clothes in the window, but I couldn't see a door. Going in the closest door, which I thought must be for the shop next door, it turned out that the whole place was a chemist's shop, and the clothes were just a display of pyjamas for invalids. Even so, I half-wondered if there might not be something I could use...? No, no, there wasn't. At 9.40 I went back to the shop that was to open at 9.30, but it was still closed. So that was that.

Back to the flat. Twice this week Filippo had had occasion to tell us he was running 10 minutes late, so we were wondering what to do if that happened. I used the time to get bus tickets on my phone. The tobacconist across the road from the bus stop didn't sell tickets (unlike most tabacchi), and there was no machine at the bus stop, so that will be why I was advised to download the app. I had, but it was a pain to use, and using a credit card for 3euros of bus tickets just seemed ridiculous. So this time I tried the app's other option of using my SMS credit. We've been topping it up 10Euros at a time, but I don't know how to check how much credit there is. Still, it was easy to buy the tickets, and so I did. It was now 9.52. Filippo was only 2 minutes late, but I felt I had better ring in case he got any later. When he answered, he was already at the door of the apartment block.

Filippo insisted on taking us to the local station. He said there would be a train at 10.30, it was a 20 minute ride, and even if it was 20 minutes late it would be okay, because we'd be at the platform already. We could hardly refuse, so that's what happened. 10 minutes later there were lots of hugs and thanks and see you agains, and we waved goodbye to our friend. I think we'll be staying in touch now.

And now we were travelling again. We were on the platform already when I realized that the bus tickets I'd bought to get us to the airport wouldn't cover us into town. (We're 1 1/2 zones away from the city, but only 1 from the airport.) It probably would've been okay, but it might not've. So I ran back to the ticket office to get the proper ticket. I didn't catch the price, and I didn't take note of the change I got, but I think it was about 70c each more than the bus tickets we had. But I had wasted 3Euros of my SMS credit.

Soon we had made the transfer from the local train on to a lovely fast express to Florence, stopping only at Bologna. It arrived in 7 minutes late after our 1 1/2 hour journey, which gave us only 8 minutes instead of 15 to check the platform and change to the next train. The fast train was fairly full, so it's like getting off a plane as people shuffle down the aisle with their wheelie bags, and you can't get past anyone. It's frustrating when you're in a hurry. But there were a few others going from that train to the regional one too, and we all made it in good time in the end.

A bit of Tuscany from the train

So, an hour and a quarter on a slow train through Tuscany. It's lovely scenery all the way, especially looking out to the left, where the hills are. The trees are still green, but the crops in the fields are yellowing or cut, or even ploughed over already. Over to the right, it's fairly flat, but the terrain becomes a little more undulating as we go on. Tall dark green trees, small round silver-green olive trees, and of course rows of grape vines abound.

Our destination today was the Carmucia-Cortona station, which is the one that is closest to the village of Fratticciola. Looking for accommodation for this part of the holiday, I just wanted "a week in the country" but it seemed that Tuscany was virtually the only option. Finally I gave in to the cliché, and booked this farmhouse, because it was a good price, reasonably close to a main train line, it looked pretty, and it was undeniably "in the country." (We're not here for a week, though, because when Naples entered the itinerary, something had to give, and on reflection, we thought that perhaps a whole week of sitting in a garden, eating cheese and drinking wine, could begin to pall. So we're down to three nights here.)

A couple of weeks before we left, and a couple of weeks after I made the booking, we watched for the first time the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun," and that had a very pretty town in it, which I was chuffed to see was Cortona, the town closest to our accommodation. (Please note that we are NOT here because of the movie or the book. I didn't really like the movie that much, and although I am currently reading another book by the same author, also set in Tuscany, I'm not actually enjoying it that much. She's a bit too gushy and poetic (she is a poet, after all) with no noun left unadjectivised. But I'll finish it. I can't not finish it. It would be rude.)

I am not yet clear how this works, but I think that Camucia is a separate town near Cortona, which is up a hill, and the station bears both names. There is no taxi service in Camucia, and there might as well be no bus service in Fratticciola (one bus out at 7.20am, and one bus back at 2.something pm!) There are private taxis, though, and that means you call anyone on a list of 12 or 15 drivers that the local council provides at the taxi stand and online, until you get someone who is available. Easy! When we got off the train at 2.30 today, we hadn't yet had lunch, but there was a bar next to the station who did some food. So we had a bite to eat in there, and while we were talking about how to go to the accommodation, the woman behind the counter offered to help, and she called a couple of drivers for us. It wasn't till the third call that she found someone available, and he zoomed up to the station only about 5 minutes later to drop someone off and welcome us on. It's 7km from Camucia to the village, and a narrow road all the way, that winds through fields that are mostly currently freshly-turned earth. There's lot of brown around, up close. But it's clean and tidy. And when you look out far, it's still beautiful in the natural cycle of the world.

We are downstairs, front and back of this building

Our Airbnb host was waiting to welcome us, and what a welcome we got! She and her lovely old mother acted as if we were the first guests they'd ever had, and they thought they had to treat us like family. They were wonderful. They had prepared food for us: salad, bruschetta, and wine in the fridge. The house that we are in is fabulous. I'd seen the photos online, but I didn't see how it could be that good for that price, so I was leaving a touch of skepticism in reserve, but it is totally unnecessary. One of the houses on the property has a brick dating it from 1768, and I'm sure this building is similar, whether it was a barn or a stable or a house. It has foot-thick stone walls, solid wooden doors and shutters, iron bolts and brick floors. This is what you want from a week in the country in Italy.

While we were setting in, the host, Lorella, came back, apologetic because she'd forgotten that today was Wednesday, which is the local shop's half-day, so she just realized that maybe we would have nothing for dinner. We thought that was what the bruschetta etc was for, but she'd brought more: a packet of pasta that we could cook along with tomatoes and basil from her garden, or alternatively, here were some hamburger buns (!) and jam if we'd prefer.

Tuscan lane; near Fratticciola

After a while we went out for a walk to inspect the village. For those familiar with North Canterbury,  Fratticciola is smaller than Cheviot, but bigger than Domett. I can't think of any other comparisons for other-countried people, sorry. Perhaps the fact that the tobacconist is the supermarket will help you understand. And this: we walked out to the left for perhaps 300m before coming to the "Leaving Fratticciola" sign, then we came back; the tabacchi is only about 50m from our starting point, and straight out forwards, and there's not much beyond it, so we came back; and the road to our right ran out of houses after about 150m, then there was a church. That was all, so we came back. Inspection over. The countryside is perfectly Tuscan. There was a crane building a house, there are electric wires, power poles, and pylons, but you can look between or beyond those things and know what the land has looked like for centuries.

Living room - the back added-on part of the house

We came back to the house and had dinner. We started with the bruschetta. Then we had the salad, the bulk of which was breadcrumbs damp with olive oil, and mixed through with tomatoes, basil, teeny zucchini, and I think eggplant was mentioned too. (Yes Mum, I ate it, just not the tomatoes.) I've just looked it up: this might be a dish called panzanella. Then we had the hamburger buns. They were a bit stale and dry, so I drizzled some olive oil over them and fried them lightly. (You might not want to know this, but I put some jam on some of it. It wasn't bad!) And then, Lorella had also provided us with a little pitcher of dessert wine and some biscotti (I can't remember the Italian name for it, but some of you will know it already) - very crunchy flat biscuits with nuts in, cut into lengths, which are then dipped into the wine and eaten. This was one of the best meals we've had, and (apart from the hamburger buns) the most authentic. And almost all home-made, I'm pretty sure, wine and oil included.

Since then, Stephen has spent the evening reading, and I've been writing this. There is a dog barking down the road, and a beetle came in and buzzed noisily a while ago, but they are the only sounds there have been for hours. No, there goes a car. Silence again.

Except for that bloody dog.

Bruschetta, left, and bread and tomato salad, right

Dipping biscuits in sweet wine

Nella Città

Today boded well. Nothing too stressful to start with; nothing booked until 2.30pm; a bit of walking in the city, but no traipsing unless we really, really wanted to. And we thought we might get an early start too. Some of this happened, but not all. It's been not a bad day overall.

The view from the bedroom. The towers on the right are 

the same as our building. 

Awoke at 8ish again, and we were out the door quite early. We had a cup of tea and a yogurt, but not a proper breakfast, as we had made time to do the Italian thing on the way to catching the bus. We wanted to try having breakfast standing up at the counter, because that's so common. Maybe that's why the coffee is served less hot than (our) normal here: so that you can just drink it and go.  

The bus came as we approached the bus stop. It was about 9.15, so this again filled us with confidence that the day would go well: a nice early start, so no rushing for that 2.30 appointment. And we were still able to travel on yesterday's public transport Day Pass, as it is a 24-hour ticket, and we started it at 9.38 yesterday. So the bus wound round its route, taking perhaps a little longer than we had remembered to get to the airport stop along the way, until at a bus stop in the middle of some residential zone somewhere, the bus was turned off and the driver told us we were at the end. Hmm. That was unexpected. But the next bus leaving from that stop was going to the airport (albeit via our home stop) so we just hopped on that one while we thought things through. Would we get off at home and catch the proper bus (this time making the effort to check the destination on the front of the bus) or just continue to the end of the line, and change at the airport? We went to the airport, partly because we would get more for our money - it was still before 9.38 when we got on, so we were still on yesterday's ticket. And we were at the airport quite soon: I had thought that the route might take us through lots of suburbs, but no, just one or two. Hop off the bus, look for one going to Il Duomo... What? the bus we just got off now says it's going to Il Duomo!! Hop on again, and pretend that our previous tickets are still valid for the rest of the trip.  In all, we'd actually only lost about 20 minutes from our nice early start, so it wasn't  a disaster.

First on today's list was a bit of videoing time for Stephen. We went back to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuale, the up-market shopping arcade by the Duomo. Stephen went filming, I did a bit of shopping (outside the arcade) (no, not at Tiffany's) and we met up after 20 minutes. Then, and before and since then, we saw a lot of photo shoots. We've seen one or two others during the trip, but since arriving in Milan, we've seen maybe 10 - mostly just the model and two or three others, but sometimes with a bigger entourage. Milan Fashion Week was just a couple of weeks ago, and there's still some street decoration up in conjunction with that too. But I'm not finding Milan as pretentious as I had expected. I thought there would be a lot of Beautiful People here, but actually, many of them are Pretty Ordinary People. It's quite a relief, really.

Castle, main gate

From the Galleria, we wanted to visit the Castle. In the elevator lobby of this apartment building, on our floor, there is a copy of an old (18th, 19th century?) map of the city. There is a big empty block  in the north-west, and I glanced at it and thought, "Oh, that's the Duomo and its piazza." But no, the Duomo and piazza are tiny on that map. The empty block was the castle and its grounds. The land is labelled "Piazza d'Armi" so the castle was the armoury. We saw it from a few blocks away and walked towards, and then through it. We didn't visit its museum, so I can't tell you much about it, but it is big, and there are piles of stone cannonballs inside, still ready and waiting. But I didn't take a photo, because I didn't think they were interesting enough at the time. I liked the moat (now dry.) I took a photo of the moat, but the three cats and two soccer balls now inhabiting it probably won't be visible.

Here's the moat. You can see the soccer balls,
after all, but not the cats

Now the grounds are a park, and it felt a lot like walking through Christchurch's Botanic Gardens. Lots of deciduous trees just starting to turn, (and yet also) dead leaves underfoot, sunny day, dappled light, joggers, people sitting, walking, kids playing... I saw an acorn for the first time in years. There aren't many oaks in Vietnam, and I haven't been in NZ in the autumn for ages.

Park behind the castle

We were now on our way to the Design Museum. It's a big, relatively new building, in the grounds of the castle, but we had to walk all the way around it, because the entrance is from the street. Fair enough, but if you approach it from the park, there are no signs to tell you where the entrance is. So we walked about 330 degrees around the fence, thinking that the entrance must be just ahead. Eventually it was. The museum had an exhibition on by a Korean artist that was okay. It's not work that made you (me) question life, the universe, and everything, but more made me ponder the effort and precision that went into the making of it. Is that what art is about - the artist just wants me to think about him/her?

The rest of the museum, though, had more about design itself: a few exhibits showing how industrial design is changing because commerce is being transformed by the internet, and then the main part of it was what you expect from a design museum in Italy: a line-up of classic Italian designs. Many of them, however, were either domestic or European classics; only a few were familiar to me. But they had some good, useful explanations in English. For example, the 3-wheeled Bubblecar (you know, the one whose whole front face opens up) was designed as a two-seater travelling sofa. 

Teatro Alla Scala

Interior: four levels of boxes, then two levels of

gallery above.

We had lunch at the museum café (who charge 4Euros for the tiniest bottle of Coke you have ever seen) and walked back around the park for our 2.30. This was a tour of La Scala. We had hoped to go to a performance, and I brought a decent dress and shoes all this way just for the show. I tried to book tickets the other day, when it looked like there were just 2 left at about 50Euros each, but I couldn't get the payment to work. Then it came to a choice between having dinner with Filippo and Valentina again, or going to the opera, so I didn't try very hard to get tickets again. Instead, I booked these tickets for a tour. For a bit more than half the price of the show. If it had been a quarter of the price, it might have been worth it. As it was, we got a 5-minute look at the theatre from one of the boxes, then the guide explained a lot about the construction and recent renovation of the theatre using an interactive TV screen that most people could only see half of, and then we got a tour through the small museum. We got more out of the museum part than we would have otherwise, but this was not a 29Euro service.  

After the hour-long tour was finished, we felt that we hadn't quite worn ourselves out completely, so we went shopping. Stephen wanted polo-shirts and shorts, and I wanted some clothes as well. Obviously the high-end brand-name shops were no good for us, but Filippo had suggested Corso Buenos Aires as being more ordinary, so we took a taxi there. First up when we got there, time for a coffee. Luckily, even though it's not normal for Italians to drink milky coffee after about 11am, they don't spit on you and throw you out if you order a cappuccino in the afternoon, so that's what we did. Refreshed, we set off down this shopping street. Unfortunately, Filippo's definition of 'ordinary' was not ours. These were mostly still brand name shops, just a different tier of brand. Guess, Diesel, Vans and their ilk don't particularly want us as customers, and the feeling is mutual, to tell the truth. These shops were for teenagers and just-finished-being-teenagers, and/or skinny people. We got close to buying some polo shirts, but the sizes were misleading, and the biggest were just a bit too small. For me, there was niente. There was about a kilometer of shops, and we got to the end and caught two buses home (consecutively, not simultaneously.) And for once there was no drama! 

We still had a bit more left in us, so when we got off the bus at our neighbourhood shopping centre, since there were a few shops still open, we gave it one more effort for a few more shops. But no: again, nothing at all for me, and although a shop with a lovely helpful owner had polo shirts, she had nothing in Stephen's size. 

So home at around 6pm. Valentina is picking us up at 7.45 to go out for dinner, with her partner, and all of Filippo's family.

...

And what a fabulous dinner that was! We went to a local restaurant that serves traditional Milanese dishes: polenta, veal, game... and I don't know what else. The restaurant was perhaps an old farmhouse, and the food, although professional, had a home-cooked air about it. Stephen and Valentina's appetisers of pumpkin risotto with truffles was delicious, according to all of us who had one bite, and they agreed; someone ordered the polenta dish to share, and they liked it (it was virtually the same recipe as the pizzoccheri that we had in Bellano - just polenta instead of pasta); and I had horsemeat for the first time. It was a cutlet, and from their description, (or maybe Valentina's translation), I thought it would be breaded and fried, like a schnitzel. "How would you like it cooked?" they asked, as if I could possibly know the answer.  It turned out to be more like a steak, so medium-rare was the right answer. But it was pretty tough. It was a strong flavor, but fine to eat. The rarer pieces were actually better; the meat around the edge was perhaps a little over-cooked and too dry, so I left it in order to have room for dessert, which for me was tiramisu, and the others had various tarts. If you're wondering, the bill for 6 adults, all having a first course, three having a second course, four having dessert, plus two simple kids' meals, was just over 200Euros. Oh, and there was a carafe of a robust local red.

A wonderful meal with friends

Antipasti: 2 risottos, a vegetable strudel with

cheese sauce, and a veal cutlet (breaded and fried);

centre, a platter of meats

Horse cutlet, medium rare

A hazelnut tart with white chocolate (rear),

and tiramisu