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.