Thursday, November 1
A cold and blustery day that turned sunny and windy
This was a quiet day spent in my cabin taking care of my sore throat, reading a mystery novel catching up with my blog journal. I decided to join the community here in sitting in silent mediation for 30 minutes in the newly cleaned Gompo. It was nice sitting quietly in a room full of people (at least 80); time passed quickly. We were led by an old Tibetan monk who is obviously very ill; he has throat cancer and only whispered the prayers. He lives here and is intended to teach part of the Master Course next year but everyone is wondering whether he’ll make it past December.
Friday, November 2
Brilliantly sunny, windy and turning hot in the afternoon
Today, after a cappuccino and brioche at the little cafe here, Karen and I decided to walk to the little hill town of Castellina Maritima. It was a beautiful walk with magnificent views of the countryside, farmland and the Mediterranean shimmering in the distance. We explored the pretty little town, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in one of the red tile-roofed, bougainvillea-covered stone houses with chickens, cats and dogs in the yard. Decent size properties were being sold for about €200,000. Our lunch at the osteria in town, consisting of crostini with a variety of amazing toppings, white house wine, soup, and tagliatelli with fungi (mushrooms & pasta) was amazingly delicious and we had no trouble retracing our steps back down to our little cabins for a nap. It took us 3 hrs to walk the 10K. Tonight I’ll treat Karen to a dinner at the local restaurant and order some Brunello wine - the best red in the west.
Tomorrow, my last day in Italy, I take the train to Rome.
11/02/2007
11/01/2007
October 28 - 31
Sunday, October 28 A warm and sunny day.
Clocks went back so we got up an hour too early for breakfast.
Another day spent doing very little except eating, reading, walking in the hillside, drinking coffee, checking my email, reading guidebooks and planning my trip to Lucca. This pace is easy to get used to. The Centre is so comfortable to be in; my meals are prepared; my room is beautiful (I’m staying in a cabin vacated by one of the students for the week); the birds sing and the very many stray cats and dogs that usually have each attached themselves to a particular human or another, join us for walks, or sit around and look beautiful. There is a diversity of interesting people here from all parts of the world. Some are learning the Tibetan language, like Karen, while others are studying Tibetan Buddhism - some taking a 6 year Masters Program that begins in January. Some are already monks and nuns who wear traditional maroon vestments and shave their heads; others are beginners trying to decide whether this path is for them. Joan, the head of the Programs at the Centre has been here for 17 years. She's from Montreal and went to McGill where she studied physiotherapy!
Stupas, decorated sculptures, prayer flags, and various Tibetan imagery fill the garden. The main building is a large villa that has its own turreted tower. It contains living quarters, a dining hall, offices, kitchen, servery, Internet room and a library and a gompo or prayer room. Other people live in little houses on the grounds and in a series of lovely wooden cabins on a hillside nearby.
In the afternoon a group of us went walking up through the wooded hillside. The group included a Buddhist monk from Florida named Tsering, two English, Karen and I. We were joined by two of the Centre’s adopted dogs, one a flea-bitten scruff of a thing with a face of Tramp (as in the Lady and the Tramp) and the other a deaf hunting hound with a noble snoopy-like nose.
That evening after dinner I packed my backpack with a change of clothes, some water and an umbrella and made ready to take off the next morning for Lucca
Monday, October 29 For my birthday I received a brilliantly sunny warm day to go to Lucca.
Heidi, one of the participants at the Centre, drove Karen & me in her little car down to the railway station at Rosignano to catch the noon train north. I crouched in the little space in the back of the car where her golden retriever usually sits and we bounced along through the sunny countryside chatting about our lives.
The train trip was uneventful but a bit uncomfortable. As the day was a warm one, the train car was hot and stuffy but no one seemed to feel the need to open a window. Some even wore hats, scarves and coats! We changed trains at Pisa and on the Lucca-bound train I made the point of opening our window and was thanked by a young student who then talked a bit with us as he tested his English. He gave us the name of the top ten spots to visit and wished me happy birthday just before we stepped onto the train platform.
Lucca is a beautiful town, founded in Roman times, conquered by the neighbouring town of Pisa in the middle ages and by Napoleon in the 19th century. The old city centre is surrounded by wide walls and battements built in the 16th & 17th century. The tops of these raised ramparts, the width of at least 4 lanes of traffic, are lined with huge old oak and chestnut trees, turning gold and brown in the fall. Between them, people jogged, walked and bicycled along the sun-dappled pathways. We walked for about half an hour along the wall toward the direction of our hotel near the east end of the city at Porta Elisa, (named after Napoleon’s sister) but when we got to the B&B a note said it was closed until 15:00h. Fortunately, all we had to carry around for the following two hours was a back pack and a shoulder bag so we reserved a place for dinner at a restaurant nearby and then proceeded to explore the town.
We had lunch in a trattoria with a lovely garden courtyard, discovered the old Roman amphitheatre (anfiteatro) that has been transformed in a beautiful oval courtyard surrounded by shops and cafés and then spent time in the beautiful old church of San Michele. Its complex Romanesque façade is decorated with rows of columns (each column made in a different shape, size and colour) and is topped with a proud statue of St Michael. Inside, we found sculptures by Andrea Della Robbia and a beautiful painting by Fra Lippo Lippi on the wall to the right of the altar. It is in excellent condition and well lit to reveal its richly painted colours. We spent the remaining daylight hour between 5 & 6, sipping wine in a café in the piazza, watching passers-by and the light slowly fade on the beautiful façade of the cathedral.
Our B&B (that we’d booked via the Internet) was on the second floor of an old building on Rome Street with a door knocker shaped like a dog’s head. We each had our own high-ceilinged room containing a big double bed with ornate wrought iron bedsteads, old armoires and art deco lighting; our separate bathroom across the hall came with big white towels and all the modern conveniences. Not bad for $50/night!
Karen treated me to a delicious birthday dinner in what appeared to be a very popular restaurant. When we arrived at 7:00 there was no one there except for middle aged a couple from Michigan. We were seated right next to them, which felt quite bizarre as we tried to ignore each other’s conversations. But the restaurant filled up completely within an hour and there was a happy buzz as the place came to life while we sipped our Pino Grigio. Then to bed. Happy birthday me; now I’m sixty three.
Tuesday, October 30 Rainy and windy but mild
We woke to the sound of rain splashing outside our windows but we packed our bags, left the keys in the rooms and ran across the street to a cafe to get our morning breakfast of coffee and croissants. Karen bought an umbrella from an African street vendor (as I had bought one in Rome) and we spent an absolutely fabulous morning and afternoon following our noses and exploring the narrow cobblestone streets of the town. We climbed the 14th century, 44 m high Guinigi tower which has trees growing on top within the turrets and from which we had a great view of the red-tiled roofs, bell towers and domes of the town below.
As we continued on our way, we found a little hole-in-the-wall art gallery with a window display of whimsical, somewhat surreal lithographs by an artist named Antonio Possenti. We entered, looked at more of this wonderful work and followed the sounds of music through a series of small galleries until we tracked down a young dark haired man sitting in a workshop/office amid paints, canvasses, telephones, computers, and books (mainly by Borges). We asked him whether the works on display were for sale. They were - and at a reasonable price so we each bought one and chatted with him further. Upon a great deal of prompting, we found out he was Possenti’s son and that he too was an artist and, as we could see from a painting in progress, was working in a similar refined surreal manner.
It was a lovely encounter but then as we were congratulating ourselves on this discovery, we made another. Not 50 feet from that gallery we walked into a wood carver/ furniture restorer’s shop. The walls were completely covered with the decorative elements of ancient carved wooden objects, most of which were covered in gold leaf. There were parts of furniture, frames, or altarpieces that he uses or copies to restore or make new works. He enthusiastically told us about his work, that his father did this before him and his son is continuing in the trade. Entranced, we bought a few little decorative pieces to take home with us and asked him directions to a good local trattoria. He sent us to Gigi’s which served great soup, pasta and cheap wine. The place filled up with local workers in no time flat and we were obviously the only tourists.
After lunch we attempted to visit the local contemporary art gallery that had an exhibition of the work by Michael Snow! Unfortunately, it was closed for lunch so we decided to call it a day and take the next train back to Rosignano. When we arrived at the train station, some other Centre occupants were also there so we shared a taxi home where I checked the Internet at the Centre and enjoyed reading all my birthday emails from afar. All is well except for my cat Smudge who seems to be peeing all over my apartment; something to deal with as soon as I get home. It was nice to come back to my room here and unpack my purchases. My lithograph is now on display on a shelf over my bed.
Wednesday, October 31 Very very wild and windy
Feeling the signs of an incipient cold (sore throat) I spent most of the day indoors reading and writing this journal. In the morning I did spend an hour helping clean the Gompa - the assembly and prayer room which has religious images decorating the walls, ceiling and the floor. The community was giving it a good fall cleaning in time for an upcoming series of rituals that will be happening here over the next few days. It was odd to find myself crawling all over the normally sacred altar and polishing the glass that protected a case filled with exquisitely painted sculptures of monks and lamas. After lunch, the rest my day was spent listening to the wind outside, writing and reading in my cabin. Nice.
Clocks went back so we got up an hour too early for breakfast.
Another day spent doing very little except eating, reading, walking in the hillside, drinking coffee, checking my email, reading guidebooks and planning my trip to Lucca. This pace is easy to get used to. The Centre is so comfortable to be in; my meals are prepared; my room is beautiful (I’m staying in a cabin vacated by one of the students for the week); the birds sing and the very many stray cats and dogs that usually have each attached themselves to a particular human or another, join us for walks, or sit around and look beautiful. There is a diversity of interesting people here from all parts of the world. Some are learning the Tibetan language, like Karen, while others are studying Tibetan Buddhism - some taking a 6 year Masters Program that begins in January. Some are already monks and nuns who wear traditional maroon vestments and shave their heads; others are beginners trying to decide whether this path is for them. Joan, the head of the Programs at the Centre has been here for 17 years. She's from Montreal and went to McGill where she studied physiotherapy!
Stupas, decorated sculptures, prayer flags, and various Tibetan imagery fill the garden. The main building is a large villa that has its own turreted tower. It contains living quarters, a dining hall, offices, kitchen, servery, Internet room and a library and a gompo or prayer room. Other people live in little houses on the grounds and in a series of lovely wooden cabins on a hillside nearby.
In the afternoon a group of us went walking up through the wooded hillside. The group included a Buddhist monk from Florida named Tsering, two English, Karen and I. We were joined by two of the Centre’s adopted dogs, one a flea-bitten scruff of a thing with a face of Tramp (as in the Lady and the Tramp) and the other a deaf hunting hound with a noble snoopy-like nose.
That evening after dinner I packed my backpack with a change of clothes, some water and an umbrella and made ready to take off the next morning for Lucca
Monday, October 29 For my birthday I received a brilliantly sunny warm day to go to Lucca.
Heidi, one of the participants at the Centre, drove Karen & me in her little car down to the railway station at Rosignano to catch the noon train north. I crouched in the little space in the back of the car where her golden retriever usually sits and we bounced along through the sunny countryside chatting about our lives.
The train trip was uneventful but a bit uncomfortable. As the day was a warm one, the train car was hot and stuffy but no one seemed to feel the need to open a window. Some even wore hats, scarves and coats! We changed trains at Pisa and on the Lucca-bound train I made the point of opening our window and was thanked by a young student who then talked a bit with us as he tested his English. He gave us the name of the top ten spots to visit and wished me happy birthday just before we stepped onto the train platform.
Lucca is a beautiful town, founded in Roman times, conquered by the neighbouring town of Pisa in the middle ages and by Napoleon in the 19th century. The old city centre is surrounded by wide walls and battements built in the 16th & 17th century. The tops of these raised ramparts, the width of at least 4 lanes of traffic, are lined with huge old oak and chestnut trees, turning gold and brown in the fall. Between them, people jogged, walked and bicycled along the sun-dappled pathways. We walked for about half an hour along the wall toward the direction of our hotel near the east end of the city at Porta Elisa, (named after Napoleon’s sister) but when we got to the B&B a note said it was closed until 15:00h. Fortunately, all we had to carry around for the following two hours was a back pack and a shoulder bag so we reserved a place for dinner at a restaurant nearby and then proceeded to explore the town.
We had lunch in a trattoria with a lovely garden courtyard, discovered the old Roman amphitheatre (anfiteatro) that has been transformed in a beautiful oval courtyard surrounded by shops and cafés and then spent time in the beautiful old church of San Michele. Its complex Romanesque façade is decorated with rows of columns (each column made in a different shape, size and colour) and is topped with a proud statue of St Michael. Inside, we found sculptures by Andrea Della Robbia and a beautiful painting by Fra Lippo Lippi on the wall to the right of the altar. It is in excellent condition and well lit to reveal its richly painted colours. We spent the remaining daylight hour between 5 & 6, sipping wine in a café in the piazza, watching passers-by and the light slowly fade on the beautiful façade of the cathedral.
Our B&B (that we’d booked via the Internet) was on the second floor of an old building on Rome Street with a door knocker shaped like a dog’s head. We each had our own high-ceilinged room containing a big double bed with ornate wrought iron bedsteads, old armoires and art deco lighting; our separate bathroom across the hall came with big white towels and all the modern conveniences. Not bad for $50/night!
Karen treated me to a delicious birthday dinner in what appeared to be a very popular restaurant. When we arrived at 7:00 there was no one there except for middle aged a couple from Michigan. We were seated right next to them, which felt quite bizarre as we tried to ignore each other’s conversations. But the restaurant filled up completely within an hour and there was a happy buzz as the place came to life while we sipped our Pino Grigio. Then to bed. Happy birthday me; now I’m sixty three.
Tuesday, October 30 Rainy and windy but mild
We woke to the sound of rain splashing outside our windows but we packed our bags, left the keys in the rooms and ran across the street to a cafe to get our morning breakfast of coffee and croissants. Karen bought an umbrella from an African street vendor (as I had bought one in Rome) and we spent an absolutely fabulous morning and afternoon following our noses and exploring the narrow cobblestone streets of the town. We climbed the 14th century, 44 m high Guinigi tower which has trees growing on top within the turrets and from which we had a great view of the red-tiled roofs, bell towers and domes of the town below.
As we continued on our way, we found a little hole-in-the-wall art gallery with a window display of whimsical, somewhat surreal lithographs by an artist named Antonio Possenti. We entered, looked at more of this wonderful work and followed the sounds of music through a series of small galleries until we tracked down a young dark haired man sitting in a workshop/office amid paints, canvasses, telephones, computers, and books (mainly by Borges). We asked him whether the works on display were for sale. They were - and at a reasonable price so we each bought one and chatted with him further. Upon a great deal of prompting, we found out he was Possenti’s son and that he too was an artist and, as we could see from a painting in progress, was working in a similar refined surreal manner.
It was a lovely encounter but then as we were congratulating ourselves on this discovery, we made another. Not 50 feet from that gallery we walked into a wood carver/ furniture restorer’s shop. The walls were completely covered with the decorative elements of ancient carved wooden objects, most of which were covered in gold leaf. There were parts of furniture, frames, or altarpieces that he uses or copies to restore or make new works. He enthusiastically told us about his work, that his father did this before him and his son is continuing in the trade. Entranced, we bought a few little decorative pieces to take home with us and asked him directions to a good local trattoria. He sent us to Gigi’s which served great soup, pasta and cheap wine. The place filled up with local workers in no time flat and we were obviously the only tourists.
After lunch we attempted to visit the local contemporary art gallery that had an exhibition of the work by Michael Snow! Unfortunately, it was closed for lunch so we decided to call it a day and take the next train back to Rosignano. When we arrived at the train station, some other Centre occupants were also there so we shared a taxi home where I checked the Internet at the Centre and enjoyed reading all my birthday emails from afar. All is well except for my cat Smudge who seems to be peeing all over my apartment; something to deal with as soon as I get home. It was nice to come back to my room here and unpack my purchases. My lithograph is now on display on a shelf over my bed.
Wednesday, October 31 Very very wild and windy
Feeling the signs of an incipient cold (sore throat) I spent most of the day indoors reading and writing this journal. In the morning I did spend an hour helping clean the Gompa - the assembly and prayer room which has religious images decorating the walls, ceiling and the floor. The community was giving it a good fall cleaning in time for an upcoming series of rituals that will be happening here over the next few days. It was odd to find myself crawling all over the normally sacred altar and polishing the glass that protected a case filled with exquisitely painted sculptures of monks and lamas. After lunch, the rest my day was spent listening to the wind outside, writing and reading in my cabin. Nice.
10/28/2007
On the road again
Friday, October 26, Warm and rainy
This morning I packed my bags, made a sandwich for my lunch, and said a sad good by to the Colombaiolo household. It was pouring with rain. Verdiana drove me the 30 miles to Buonconvento where I boarded the train for my trip west. I had to change once at Montepaschaia but when I was ready hop down onto the platform, the train’s doors wouldn’t open and I was unable to disembark. The train moved inexorably on toward the town of Grosseto. In a panic, I ran what seemed about five cars toward the front of the train to find the capo di treno (the conductor) to tell him what had happened. He seemed unconcerned and told me to get back to my seat and get out at Grosseto. I did as I was told, gathered my bags, got out at Grosseto, and within 5 minutes with the help of the same conductor, I boarded the northbound train I should have boarded at Monepaschaia. An hour later, in torrential rain, I disembarked at the coastal town of Rosignano from where I was to take a taxi to the hill town of Pomaia and Karen McD.
Seeing no taxi stand, I made for the nearby bar that sells train/bus tickets and asked how I could find a taxi. I was pointed a booth with the phone number of the local taxi posted on the wall. Having no cell phone (everyone has one here) a kind woman called the taxi for me and I waited, watching the rain descend in buckets while I enjoyed a caffe longa macchiato and a little fruit pastry. Twenty minutes later the taxi arrived, loaded all my bags and we headed off. The driver asked whether I would mind sharing the cab and its cost with another passenger who was getting off a little sooner. Of course I agreed and found out that my fellow passenger is a clown who works for a living for various local circuses. He had a nice smile but told no jokes.
Once we dropped him off, the taxi and drove through the sodden countryside and I made a dramatic entrance into the Lama Tzong Khapa Buddhist Institute as the rain came crashing down on stuppas and tea gardens and prayer flags. Thirty minutes later, Karen came down from her Tibetan language lessons and I was standing in the hallway waiting with a grin on my face. It was so great to see her! She showed me around this beautiful centre and took me to her little cassetta (cabin) with all she needs to be happy. From the balcony she has an extraordinary view of tree covered hills and the Mediterranean in the distance. It feels so good to be here. I’ll share her room on a mattress on the floor tonight, and tomorrow I’ll stay next door in the adjoining cabin temporarily vacated by the occupant who’s going home to Sicily for the Centre’s school term break. The day ended pleasantly with a walk around the town, dinner at a nice restaurant & a good night’s sleep (apparently I talked a lot).
Saturday, October 27, Warm, sunny and blue sky! Yippee
Woke up to brilliant sunshine and the sound of birds singing. Coffee and croissants at a local restaurant, a walk around the countryside, lunch at the centre and a lazy afternoon reading, chatting, writing this journal and planning the next 5 days: bliss. My shoulders are lower than they’ve been for months. They even have wireless Internet that should be up and running next week. I’m now off to do some laundry and enjoy the rest of the day. After a healthy lunch at the centre, Karen & I went for a nice walk around the neighbourhood - meaning acres of rolling farmland and country roads. Every so often the sound of a hunter's rifle shook the peace of the afternoon and the life of some small animal, pigeon or partridge. Dinner at 7:30, conversations with Karen's fellow students - a nice multilingual bunch of people and to bed at 9PM in my new little room of my own.
Sunday - another sunny day!
More later.
This morning I packed my bags, made a sandwich for my lunch, and said a sad good by to the Colombaiolo household. It was pouring with rain. Verdiana drove me the 30 miles to Buonconvento where I boarded the train for my trip west. I had to change once at Montepaschaia but when I was ready hop down onto the platform, the train’s doors wouldn’t open and I was unable to disembark. The train moved inexorably on toward the town of Grosseto. In a panic, I ran what seemed about five cars toward the front of the train to find the capo di treno (the conductor) to tell him what had happened. He seemed unconcerned and told me to get back to my seat and get out at Grosseto. I did as I was told, gathered my bags, got out at Grosseto, and within 5 minutes with the help of the same conductor, I boarded the northbound train I should have boarded at Monepaschaia. An hour later, in torrential rain, I disembarked at the coastal town of Rosignano from where I was to take a taxi to the hill town of Pomaia and Karen McD.
Seeing no taxi stand, I made for the nearby bar that sells train/bus tickets and asked how I could find a taxi. I was pointed a booth with the phone number of the local taxi posted on the wall. Having no cell phone (everyone has one here) a kind woman called the taxi for me and I waited, watching the rain descend in buckets while I enjoyed a caffe longa macchiato and a little fruit pastry. Twenty minutes later the taxi arrived, loaded all my bags and we headed off. The driver asked whether I would mind sharing the cab and its cost with another passenger who was getting off a little sooner. Of course I agreed and found out that my fellow passenger is a clown who works for a living for various local circuses. He had a nice smile but told no jokes.
Once we dropped him off, the taxi and drove through the sodden countryside and I made a dramatic entrance into the Lama Tzong Khapa Buddhist Institute as the rain came crashing down on stuppas and tea gardens and prayer flags. Thirty minutes later, Karen came down from her Tibetan language lessons and I was standing in the hallway waiting with a grin on my face. It was so great to see her! She showed me around this beautiful centre and took me to her little cassetta (cabin) with all she needs to be happy. From the balcony she has an extraordinary view of tree covered hills and the Mediterranean in the distance. It feels so good to be here. I’ll share her room on a mattress on the floor tonight, and tomorrow I’ll stay next door in the adjoining cabin temporarily vacated by the occupant who’s going home to Sicily for the Centre’s school term break. The day ended pleasantly with a walk around the town, dinner at a nice restaurant & a good night’s sleep (apparently I talked a lot).
Saturday, October 27, Warm, sunny and blue sky! Yippee
Woke up to brilliant sunshine and the sound of birds singing. Coffee and croissants at a local restaurant, a walk around the countryside, lunch at the centre and a lazy afternoon reading, chatting, writing this journal and planning the next 5 days: bliss. My shoulders are lower than they’ve been for months. They even have wireless Internet that should be up and running next week. I’m now off to do some laundry and enjoy the rest of the day. After a healthy lunch at the centre, Karen & I went for a nice walk around the neighbourhood - meaning acres of rolling farmland and country roads. Every so often the sound of a hunter's rifle shook the peace of the afternoon and the life of some small animal, pigeon or partridge. Dinner at 7:30, conversations with Karen's fellow students - a nice multilingual bunch of people and to bed at 9PM in my new little room of my own.
Sunday - another sunny day!
More later.
10/25/2007
Monday, October 22 Cold, wet and cloudy
The weather continues to be miserable - brutto tempo as they say in Italian - but Verdiana tells me they say it will warm up by the weekend. Thank heavens, as this weather is limiting to what I can do. I’m staying inside too much in order to keep warm and my watercolour painting will have to done be at the kitchen table instead of on a field in the sunshine. After my lesson, (where I found out Italians have four tenses in the subjunctive and two in the conditional) I did some grocery shopping to make a true Tuscan ribollita soup: many vegetables cooked with white and herbs poured over grilled Tuscan bread. That should keep us warm for a couple of days.
I’m beginning to worry about how I’m going to get to the little town of Pomaia where Karen is located. I plan to leave on Friday 26th. It looks like I’ll have to take a rather long, circuitous train ride and then a taxi. Ah well, it might be the prettiest part of my trip. I’ll ask Samuele to help me to find a route via the Internet when he returns home this afternoon from visiting his girlfriend (ragazza) up north.
Cooked the ribollita this afternoon but I think I overdid it- it was enough for at least 10 people and it turned out Ottavio wasn’t too fond of it - after eating a bowl he cooked himself some pasta instead of having more. Well- I like it! Good news is with the help of Samuele and the Internet I found a train to the west coast of Tuscany, booked it and paid for it. It’s apparently a four hour train ride that has me changing only once and it costs me only $10! From where I end up, Rosignano, it’s a 20 Euro/30 minute taxi ride to Karen’s Buddhist centre. Yippee.
Tuesday, October 23 but a bit warmer
The high point of this day was the family dinner we were invited to: Verdiana cooked a wild boar (cingale) stew and invited Ottavio and me as well as Claudio Serafini, the manager of the school and Ottavio’s instructor. We were joined by Pietro, Verdiana’s husband, and her son Samuele. Everyone chattered away in Italian, drank the vino rosso della casa (home made wine) and consumed vast quantities of food including bruschetta using the last of her tomatoes, spaghetti with prosciutto and parmesan cheese, cingale, and a desert that resembled ladies fingers, with Nutella inside and coconut sprinkled on top. The latter was washed down with vino santo - a home-made sweet wine that takes 3 years to mature. The wild board had been killed by Pietro a few years ago during a hunting party and taken out of the freezer to cook over a whole day. Another world, another life; god people, good conversation. Fortunately, I was hungry as I had gone on a long walk that afternoon along a tractor road across and on top of hills overlooking ploughed farmers’ fields that curved on for miles in all directions. I could have been a pilgrim in the 14th century.
Wednesday, October 24 grey, wet, cool
This morning, bright and early, Verdiana drove me to a factory where they squeeze the olives to make oil so I could have a look. The millions of olives the farmers have shaken from the trees have been put into hundreds of baskets and brought to the small factory to go through a long process. To begin with, the olives are first shaken of all their leaves and stems, washed. They are first put through an enormous mill or grinder when the olives are turned into a brown mush. This mush is then fed into another machine where the oil is squeezed out of it and transformed into the greed-gold liquid ready for eating. (The stuff that is discarded is dried and used as land fill.) The oil is then poured into 5 litre jugs and taken home by the maker or distributed in some other way. The olives grown in this region are meant to be used for oil; other forms of olives are grown to be eaten whole.
Today I had my last Italian lesson with Elisa. I wanted to free up Thursday, so we combined the two lessons into one: two hours at the school and then we went to Pienza where we had lunch and then later coffee and talked in Italian about her studies, my work and things in general, she patiently correcting me as I made mistake after mistake. It must be painful to hear her beautiful language being massacred by my foreign tongue. After waiting for me while I used the Internet Café, she kindly drove me back to Castelmuzio (it was raining seriously by then) where we said good by and promised to keep in touch. Her last name is Angelini and Claudio’s last name is Serafini - I said they had created some form of heaven at the school.
I’ve begun to paint my little post cards, using as my subject matter the fruit and foliage of the oak and olive trees around me. I’m enjoying it, though I doubt whether the cards will arrive in Canada before I do.
Thursday, October 25 cloudy but bits of blue, a beautiful sun rise (uh oh)
Today I went into Montepulciano on the 7:30AM bus with Samuele. He goes to college there most mornings and returns on the 1:30PM bus. I decided to do the same. The road was windy and made me feel a little dizzy as the bus took the curves at 60k/hr, but the landscape was so beautiful it almost didn’t matter. By the time I got into this old walled hill town it was only a little after 8AM , the place was just waking up and the streets were relatively quiet and free of tourists. I wandered up to the top of the town and the Piazza Grande surrounded by its large Renaissance buildings and found a café where I drank a head-clearing cappuccino and talked to an Australian couple at the table next to me. When I walked out and said “good by” to the proprietor and told him how beautiful his town was, he said I was beautiful too. It’s nice to be in Italy when one’s almost 63.
I spent the rest of the morning visiting the Duomo, the very well designed Museum (Etruscan ceramic and funerary urns, many paintings of crucifixes, the virgin Mary, and a wide variety of saints), shops selling cheeses (especially pecorino), local wines, woven goods, & ceramics that all began to look the same after a while. I bought a piece of pizza with mushrooms and was happy with that. I find I‘m not drawn to buying stuff as much as I was the last time I was here, perhaps because I have no room in my suitcases.
After returning to the bus station at the bottom of the town, and found a little market from which I bought cheese and bread for my train trip tomorrow and flowers for Verdiana. I returned home (more winding curving roads) to my lovely peaceful little room at Il Colombaiolo. This will be the last time I write from here - I’ll begin again when I’m with Karen in Pomaia. Ciao!
The weather continues to be miserable - brutto tempo as they say in Italian - but Verdiana tells me they say it will warm up by the weekend. Thank heavens, as this weather is limiting to what I can do. I’m staying inside too much in order to keep warm and my watercolour painting will have to done be at the kitchen table instead of on a field in the sunshine. After my lesson, (where I found out Italians have four tenses in the subjunctive and two in the conditional) I did some grocery shopping to make a true Tuscan ribollita soup: many vegetables cooked with white and herbs poured over grilled Tuscan bread. That should keep us warm for a couple of days.
I’m beginning to worry about how I’m going to get to the little town of Pomaia where Karen is located. I plan to leave on Friday 26th. It looks like I’ll have to take a rather long, circuitous train ride and then a taxi. Ah well, it might be the prettiest part of my trip. I’ll ask Samuele to help me to find a route via the Internet when he returns home this afternoon from visiting his girlfriend (ragazza) up north.
Cooked the ribollita this afternoon but I think I overdid it- it was enough for at least 10 people and it turned out Ottavio wasn’t too fond of it - after eating a bowl he cooked himself some pasta instead of having more. Well- I like it! Good news is with the help of Samuele and the Internet I found a train to the west coast of Tuscany, booked it and paid for it. It’s apparently a four hour train ride that has me changing only once and it costs me only $10! From where I end up, Rosignano, it’s a 20 Euro/30 minute taxi ride to Karen’s Buddhist centre. Yippee.
Tuesday, October 23 but a bit warmer
The high point of this day was the family dinner we were invited to: Verdiana cooked a wild boar (cingale) stew and invited Ottavio and me as well as Claudio Serafini, the manager of the school and Ottavio’s instructor. We were joined by Pietro, Verdiana’s husband, and her son Samuele. Everyone chattered away in Italian, drank the vino rosso della casa (home made wine) and consumed vast quantities of food including bruschetta using the last of her tomatoes, spaghetti with prosciutto and parmesan cheese, cingale, and a desert that resembled ladies fingers, with Nutella inside and coconut sprinkled on top. The latter was washed down with vino santo - a home-made sweet wine that takes 3 years to mature. The wild board had been killed by Pietro a few years ago during a hunting party and taken out of the freezer to cook over a whole day. Another world, another life; god people, good conversation. Fortunately, I was hungry as I had gone on a long walk that afternoon along a tractor road across and on top of hills overlooking ploughed farmers’ fields that curved on for miles in all directions. I could have been a pilgrim in the 14th century.
Wednesday, October 24 grey, wet, cool
This morning, bright and early, Verdiana drove me to a factory where they squeeze the olives to make oil so I could have a look. The millions of olives the farmers have shaken from the trees have been put into hundreds of baskets and brought to the small factory to go through a long process. To begin with, the olives are first shaken of all their leaves and stems, washed. They are first put through an enormous mill or grinder when the olives are turned into a brown mush. This mush is then fed into another machine where the oil is squeezed out of it and transformed into the greed-gold liquid ready for eating. (The stuff that is discarded is dried and used as land fill.) The oil is then poured into 5 litre jugs and taken home by the maker or distributed in some other way. The olives grown in this region are meant to be used for oil; other forms of olives are grown to be eaten whole.
Today I had my last Italian lesson with Elisa. I wanted to free up Thursday, so we combined the two lessons into one: two hours at the school and then we went to Pienza where we had lunch and then later coffee and talked in Italian about her studies, my work and things in general, she patiently correcting me as I made mistake after mistake. It must be painful to hear her beautiful language being massacred by my foreign tongue. After waiting for me while I used the Internet Café, she kindly drove me back to Castelmuzio (it was raining seriously by then) where we said good by and promised to keep in touch. Her last name is Angelini and Claudio’s last name is Serafini - I said they had created some form of heaven at the school.
I’ve begun to paint my little post cards, using as my subject matter the fruit and foliage of the oak and olive trees around me. I’m enjoying it, though I doubt whether the cards will arrive in Canada before I do.
Thursday, October 25 cloudy but bits of blue, a beautiful sun rise (uh oh)
Today I went into Montepulciano on the 7:30AM bus with Samuele. He goes to college there most mornings and returns on the 1:30PM bus. I decided to do the same. The road was windy and made me feel a little dizzy as the bus took the curves at 60k/hr, but the landscape was so beautiful it almost didn’t matter. By the time I got into this old walled hill town it was only a little after 8AM , the place was just waking up and the streets were relatively quiet and free of tourists. I wandered up to the top of the town and the Piazza Grande surrounded by its large Renaissance buildings and found a café where I drank a head-clearing cappuccino and talked to an Australian couple at the table next to me. When I walked out and said “good by” to the proprietor and told him how beautiful his town was, he said I was beautiful too. It’s nice to be in Italy when one’s almost 63.
I spent the rest of the morning visiting the Duomo, the very well designed Museum (Etruscan ceramic and funerary urns, many paintings of crucifixes, the virgin Mary, and a wide variety of saints), shops selling cheeses (especially pecorino), local wines, woven goods, & ceramics that all began to look the same after a while. I bought a piece of pizza with mushrooms and was happy with that. I find I‘m not drawn to buying stuff as much as I was the last time I was here, perhaps because I have no room in my suitcases.
After returning to the bus station at the bottom of the town, and found a little market from which I bought cheese and bread for my train trip tomorrow and flowers for Verdiana. I returned home (more winding curving roads) to my lovely peaceful little room at Il Colombaiolo. This will be the last time I write from here - I’ll begin again when I’m with Karen in Pomaia. Ciao!
10/23/2007
10/21/2007
Wednesday to Sunday, Oct 17-21
Wednesday, Oct 17. Hot and sunny
After my morning Italian lesson, I decided to spend the afternoon walking around the local roads and towns. There is a bicycle available here but it doesn’t look too reliable; I don’t have a helmet and the roads are a lot hillier and busier than I had imagined they might be. To support my ankle, Verdiana has loaned me her father’s walking stick so I set out at 11AM looking like a serious trekker with my stick, backpack & water bottle. I first headed up a hill to the old Dominican Convent of Sta. Anna da Camprena where the headquarters for the school for Italian Language & Culture is now located. It was first built in the 13th century and has high fortress like walls with holes from where they could pour boiling oil onto their enemies. Feisty those nuns. Now that the fighting is over and the Florentines have won, all that is left is the cooing of the doves nestled in the tall bell tower. I explored inside the building and its cloisters and came across the refectory decorated with 14th century frescoes by the artist Sodoma. They tell the story of the loaves & the fishes and the life of Sta Anna, mother of Mary. An American tour group came through led by English speaking guides who were quite knowledgeable about the frescoes, their technique and history. I had a good listen before I left them to explore more of site. I couldn’t get into the church itself, so after wandering around the garden and chatting with a lonely German student who was trying to make a painting I headed back home for a bite of lunch before I headed out again to explore the hill towns of Castelmuzio and Petroio.
After a short lunch and nap during the hottest part of the day, I headed off on my 3 hr. 10 K hike. I climbed up the hill to Castelmuzio (I have no idea where that name comes from; it sounds somewhat middle eastern) which is a lovely old town with buildings built in brick and stone, 2 restaurants, a post office and 1 or 2 churches. It was quiet as is normal for that time of day (people are either sleeping or away harvesting) and I contented myself enjoying the picturesque crumbling walls, old masonry, narrow winding streets that circle in on themselves ever upwards, laundry and bedding hanging from windows, bells ringing, birds singing etc.
I continued past the town on along the shoulders of the winding road, avoiding the cars as they sped by on this 2-lane highway with hardly any verge, for another 3 K to Petroio. I passed small oak and tall cypress trees, some hundreds of years old, that are posted like sentinels along the roadway, and watched people out harvesting in their olive groves. We usually greeted each other once I had made the first gesture of hello. I commented to a couple about the amount of work they had - molto lavoro and the woman grinned and replied molto lavoro, poco risultato! I guess it’s a common feeling whatever work we do.
I climbed up to the lovely old town of Petroio with its many churches and old brick & stone buildings. It calls itself the “centre for Tuscan terra cotta” but unfortunately the little terra cotta museum there is closed during the week so I couldn’t have a look. I contented myself by having a chocolate cake and lemonade at a little café at the top and talking to the German waiter who is also one of the owners of the café/hotel. He gave me some good advice about getting around Tuscany, including how to get to/from Siena most quickly - by train rather than by bus. Had a nice walk back, taking pictures along the way, and arrived a little tired but happy, in time for dinner. Tonight I treated Ottavio and myself to dinner at the only restaurant open in Castelmuzio. It was really good; I had bistecca Fiorentina -grilled beef with rosemary, grilled veggies and a crème brûlé. Ottavio had the ribollita soup, which is, like it sounds - a reheated minestrone type of soup chock full of veggies, beans, Tuscan bread some form of meat base. Nice day but I decided, I’ll have a quieter day at home tomorrow and get some studying done!
Thursday, October 18 - cloudy and cooler
Thursday was relatively uneventful. I walked home from school through the farmers’ fields and then climbed the hill to the food cooperative at Castelmuzio where I bought enough groceries for 4 or 5 days. It’s amazing how inexpensive the food is here, and how fresh. They didn’t have any eggs but I was reminded by the person serving me that Verdiana has chickens…..and therefore fresh eggs. I spent the rest of the afternoon writing and studying my Italian pronouns and planning my weekend trip to Siena. That evening I made myself a meal of fresh onions, garlic, zucchini, tomatoes, herbs and local pork. Yum. I then packed my back pack for my trip to Siena the next day. Elisa will take me as she always goes into Siena on Fridays.
Friday, October 19 -
After a one hour lesson on the subjunctive tenses, Elisa and I climbed into her little Fiat and headed for Siena. The second half of the lesson was spent in conversation as we sped through the typical Tuscan landscape of green and brown soft rolling farmland, vertically punctuated by cypress trees and umbrella pines. We parked below, outside the walls (only residents and service vehicles can park inside the walls of this ancient medieval town) and walked up the winding cobbled streets into the centre of Siena where we said “good by until Monday,”- she continuing on to her classes at the university and I to my hotel on the other side of town. Once I checked in to a lovely little room with a view of a garden, I began my exploration of the town. I spent most of the afternoon in the Duomo - a huge Gothic (13th century) cathedral filled with Gothic and Renaissance painting and sculpture. I’d visited it in 2004 but it really is worth more than one visit; there’s so much to see. I was particularly interested in the Piccolomini library of Pope Pius 2 (of Pienza) which houses his huge illuminated manuscripts and which is decorated with frescoes on the (somewhat glorified) life of Piccolomini by the 16th century painter, Pinturicchio. Astounding. The stories that are painted are always explained in Latin underneath the images - but that’s no help to me as it’s been 40 years since I learned that language. I had to put myself in the place of an illiterate Sienese and to guess what was going on by what is portrayed. Piccolomini was killed fighting the Turks (those infidels).‘Nuff said.
Other high points of the day were primarily gastronomical: a delicious caffè macchiato at one of the Nannini cafés (Nannini is one of the best roasters of Sienese coffee), and a lovely dinner of pasta with porcini, salad and house wine. Vino de la casa is usually he cheapest part of the meal! Also nice was
finding an Internet Point café where for 4 Euros an hour (about $5.00) I could connect with you all and teach my class with the greatest of ease; it felt like having a little home away from home. Imagine feeling at home on the Internet!
Saturday, October 20 (very cold and windy)
After a nice breakfast at the hotel I walked out the door to be hit by the coldest weather that I have experienced since last winter. Lulled into complacency by the last week of heat, I had not brought adequate clothing from Il Colombaiolo to Siena for this weather and had to buy a hat, gloves and wind jacket before I could do any wandering around the town. Thank god for MasterCard.
That done, I visited the home of St Catherine, the patron saint of Siena who received the stigmata a young age when she gazed upon a crucifix. She was sanctified by our old friend Piccolomini when he became pope. The frescoes in the little chapel showed stories of Catherine’s life and included her being visited by an angel, her mother observing her floating up the stairs without a visible means of support, her father observing her praying while a halo containing the holy ghost (a white dove) hovered over her head, and Sta Catherine being sanctified and then becoming the bride of Christ. Fortunately, under these images, these amazing tales were described in Italian so I had an easier time deciphering them! The rest of the day was spent wandering around the streets, watching soldiers marching, drumming and singing noisily around the Piazza del Campo (no idea why), watching a wedding party parade through the streets - they must have had a glass or two to keep them warm in their skimpy clothing, watching someone dressed up as the statue of Dante perform for Euros, buying lunch, photographing and generally being a tourist. I did get a chance to spend 30 minutes in an Internet café answering all my emails and then walked back to my hotel, picked up my backpack, and went to the railway station where I took a fast train to the little town of Sinalunga. It cost me all of 4 Euros. Dear Verdiana picked me up in her car and in 10 minutes, drove me back to my own wonderful room at Il Colombaiolo. It’s beginning to feeling a bit like home. Ottavio and I have an invitation to dine with Verdiana and her husband on Wednesday. The menu will be pasta, wild boar in a tomato stew and some form of veggie. I’ll take pictures.
Sunday, October 21 (cold and sunny and windy)
Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary to Conti and Wallie Hewitson!!
After my morning Italian lesson, I decided to spend the afternoon walking around the local roads and towns. There is a bicycle available here but it doesn’t look too reliable; I don’t have a helmet and the roads are a lot hillier and busier than I had imagined they might be. To support my ankle, Verdiana has loaned me her father’s walking stick so I set out at 11AM looking like a serious trekker with my stick, backpack & water bottle. I first headed up a hill to the old Dominican Convent of Sta. Anna da Camprena where the headquarters for the school for Italian Language & Culture is now located. It was first built in the 13th century and has high fortress like walls with holes from where they could pour boiling oil onto their enemies. Feisty those nuns. Now that the fighting is over and the Florentines have won, all that is left is the cooing of the doves nestled in the tall bell tower. I explored inside the building and its cloisters and came across the refectory decorated with 14th century frescoes by the artist Sodoma. They tell the story of the loaves & the fishes and the life of Sta Anna, mother of Mary. An American tour group came through led by English speaking guides who were quite knowledgeable about the frescoes, their technique and history. I had a good listen before I left them to explore more of site. I couldn’t get into the church itself, so after wandering around the garden and chatting with a lonely German student who was trying to make a painting I headed back home for a bite of lunch before I headed out again to explore the hill towns of Castelmuzio and Petroio.
After a short lunch and nap during the hottest part of the day, I headed off on my 3 hr. 10 K hike. I climbed up the hill to Castelmuzio (I have no idea where that name comes from; it sounds somewhat middle eastern) which is a lovely old town with buildings built in brick and stone, 2 restaurants, a post office and 1 or 2 churches. It was quiet as is normal for that time of day (people are either sleeping or away harvesting) and I contented myself enjoying the picturesque crumbling walls, old masonry, narrow winding streets that circle in on themselves ever upwards, laundry and bedding hanging from windows, bells ringing, birds singing etc.
I continued past the town on along the shoulders of the winding road, avoiding the cars as they sped by on this 2-lane highway with hardly any verge, for another 3 K to Petroio. I passed small oak and tall cypress trees, some hundreds of years old, that are posted like sentinels along the roadway, and watched people out harvesting in their olive groves. We usually greeted each other once I had made the first gesture of hello. I commented to a couple about the amount of work they had - molto lavoro and the woman grinned and replied molto lavoro, poco risultato! I guess it’s a common feeling whatever work we do.
I climbed up to the lovely old town of Petroio with its many churches and old brick & stone buildings. It calls itself the “centre for Tuscan terra cotta” but unfortunately the little terra cotta museum there is closed during the week so I couldn’t have a look. I contented myself by having a chocolate cake and lemonade at a little café at the top and talking to the German waiter who is also one of the owners of the café/hotel. He gave me some good advice about getting around Tuscany, including how to get to/from Siena most quickly - by train rather than by bus. Had a nice walk back, taking pictures along the way, and arrived a little tired but happy, in time for dinner. Tonight I treated Ottavio and myself to dinner at the only restaurant open in Castelmuzio. It was really good; I had bistecca Fiorentina -grilled beef with rosemary, grilled veggies and a crème brûlé. Ottavio had the ribollita soup, which is, like it sounds - a reheated minestrone type of soup chock full of veggies, beans, Tuscan bread some form of meat base. Nice day but I decided, I’ll have a quieter day at home tomorrow and get some studying done!
Thursday, October 18 - cloudy and cooler
Thursday was relatively uneventful. I walked home from school through the farmers’ fields and then climbed the hill to the food cooperative at Castelmuzio where I bought enough groceries for 4 or 5 days. It’s amazing how inexpensive the food is here, and how fresh. They didn’t have any eggs but I was reminded by the person serving me that Verdiana has chickens…..and therefore fresh eggs. I spent the rest of the afternoon writing and studying my Italian pronouns and planning my weekend trip to Siena. That evening I made myself a meal of fresh onions, garlic, zucchini, tomatoes, herbs and local pork. Yum. I then packed my back pack for my trip to Siena the next day. Elisa will take me as she always goes into Siena on Fridays.
Friday, October 19 -
After a one hour lesson on the subjunctive tenses, Elisa and I climbed into her little Fiat and headed for Siena. The second half of the lesson was spent in conversation as we sped through the typical Tuscan landscape of green and brown soft rolling farmland, vertically punctuated by cypress trees and umbrella pines. We parked below, outside the walls (only residents and service vehicles can park inside the walls of this ancient medieval town) and walked up the winding cobbled streets into the centre of Siena where we said “good by until Monday,”- she continuing on to her classes at the university and I to my hotel on the other side of town. Once I checked in to a lovely little room with a view of a garden, I began my exploration of the town. I spent most of the afternoon in the Duomo - a huge Gothic (13th century) cathedral filled with Gothic and Renaissance painting and sculpture. I’d visited it in 2004 but it really is worth more than one visit; there’s so much to see. I was particularly interested in the Piccolomini library of Pope Pius 2 (of Pienza) which houses his huge illuminated manuscripts and which is decorated with frescoes on the (somewhat glorified) life of Piccolomini by the 16th century painter, Pinturicchio. Astounding. The stories that are painted are always explained in Latin underneath the images - but that’s no help to me as it’s been 40 years since I learned that language. I had to put myself in the place of an illiterate Sienese and to guess what was going on by what is portrayed. Piccolomini was killed fighting the Turks (those infidels).‘Nuff said.
Other high points of the day were primarily gastronomical: a delicious caffè macchiato at one of the Nannini cafés (Nannini is one of the best roasters of Sienese coffee), and a lovely dinner of pasta with porcini, salad and house wine. Vino de la casa is usually he cheapest part of the meal! Also nice was
finding an Internet Point café where for 4 Euros an hour (about $5.00) I could connect with you all and teach my class with the greatest of ease; it felt like having a little home away from home. Imagine feeling at home on the Internet!
Saturday, October 20 (very cold and windy)
After a nice breakfast at the hotel I walked out the door to be hit by the coldest weather that I have experienced since last winter. Lulled into complacency by the last week of heat, I had not brought adequate clothing from Il Colombaiolo to Siena for this weather and had to buy a hat, gloves and wind jacket before I could do any wandering around the town. Thank god for MasterCard.
That done, I visited the home of St Catherine, the patron saint of Siena who received the stigmata a young age when she gazed upon a crucifix. She was sanctified by our old friend Piccolomini when he became pope. The frescoes in the little chapel showed stories of Catherine’s life and included her being visited by an angel, her mother observing her floating up the stairs without a visible means of support, her father observing her praying while a halo containing the holy ghost (a white dove) hovered over her head, and Sta Catherine being sanctified and then becoming the bride of Christ. Fortunately, under these images, these amazing tales were described in Italian so I had an easier time deciphering them! The rest of the day was spent wandering around the streets, watching soldiers marching, drumming and singing noisily around the Piazza del Campo (no idea why), watching a wedding party parade through the streets - they must have had a glass or two to keep them warm in their skimpy clothing, watching someone dressed up as the statue of Dante perform for Euros, buying lunch, photographing and generally being a tourist. I did get a chance to spend 30 minutes in an Internet café answering all my emails and then walked back to my hotel, picked up my backpack, and went to the railway station where I took a fast train to the little town of Sinalunga. It cost me all of 4 Euros. Dear Verdiana picked me up in her car and in 10 minutes, drove me back to my own wonderful room at Il Colombaiolo. It’s beginning to feeling a bit like home. Ottavio and I have an invitation to dine with Verdiana and her husband on Wednesday. The menu will be pasta, wild boar in a tomato stew and some form of veggie. I’ll take pictures.
Sunday, October 21 (cold and sunny and windy)
Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary to Conti and Wallie Hewitson!!
10/20/2007
Sun Oct 14 - Tue Oct 16
Being Sunday, there was nothing open where I could buy food in any form, so my wonderful hostess pulled together some cheese and wine and home grown tomatoes, olive oil and wine for dinner. A fellow student joined me a little later - his name is Ottavio and is a 19-year old Englishman who’s going to try to get into Oxford and read contemporary Italian literature. It will be nice to have someone with whom to share the day’s stories.
The farm household is made up of Sra Verdiana, her husband and 19 year old son, Samuele. They farm a few acres of grapes (San Giovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, & Merlot), over 500 olive trees, corn, tomatoes, chickens and white doves (that they eat.) To supplement their income they have recently added 3 big rooms with private bathrooms with all the modcons for bed & breakfast guests. I have a view out of my windows to die for - soft, tree-covered or perfectly ploughed rolling hills in the background, jacaranda trees in the foreground. Bird song all day long. The sun pours in during the afternoon. Black and quiet at night. Next door to my room here, is a kitchen where she brings my breakfast (freshly baked croissant, café latte, fruit, bread, yogurt) and where I can make my own dinner or lunch when I chose, buying my own food in Castelmuzio up the hill. Saves lots in restaurant bills.
I walked up to Castelmuzio to go to one of the two restaurants there and finding none open came back down again and proceeded to twist my right ankle on the steep, uneven roadway. I managed to hobble home and put a support bandage on it. Hopefully it will heal once I lie down for 8 hrs…..
Monday, Oct 15 Hot & sunny during the day, cool in the shadows and at night
Off to school today with Elisa Angelini, a student of philosophy studying in Siena, who is going to focus her thesis on Descartes - bringing together his writings (both scientific and philosophical) into a united whole! Whew. Very post modern, and brave of her She teaches me Italian at the Scuola Camprena which is about half an hour’s walk away from where I’m staying but where Verdiana will drive me each morning in 5 minutes. The school house is also an old converted farmhouse surrounded by farmland.
I am delighted the way Elisa teaches - and it’s one-on-one so I get all her attention for 2 hours a day. Some grammar and some conversation which is endlessly interesting. I walked back home, cutting through rough tractor roads feeling at one with the world and tried my luck again on the road to Castelmuzio to by food supplies before the co-operative closed at one pm. Nice little store, great food- pecorino cheese, ham, bread, fresh produce. I walked out without remembering to pay, realized this 10 minutes later and returned. The owner was completely unfazed - she knew where I was staying.
In the afternoon after a nap, I joined Verdiana and the dog Paula on a tour of the “estate.” We found her husband collecting olives. A large net is wrapped around the tree on the ground below, and each stem is “milked” of the olives growing on it and dropped into he net. A slow and laborious process that is repeated on each tree. Most of the olives were still green but she says that just makes the oil nicely nippy (picante). Sometime this week I will accompany them to a town nearby where the olives will be pressed. Should be interesting. There has been little rain this summer which makes the olive and mushroom harvest this year quite slim.
I made a giant salad for dinner of local lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and prosciutto ham in the local olive oil and vinegar washed down with local vino rosso and to bed for a solid night’s sleep. Not bad eh?
Tue -Thu, Oct 16-19
The days begin to blend one into the other. They are made up of Italian lessons, walking the country roads from hill town to hill town, visiting Pienza and its historic buildings, shopping for food (most stores are closed between 1-5 so it needs a bit of planning), cooking a bit in my kitchen and working on the Internet which entails teaching my course, answering emails and adding to my blog.
Because the Internet Point in Pienza is 7 K away from Il Colombaiolo, I have made an arrangement with Samuele, the son of the owner, to use his computer every evening for an hour for 20 Euros a week. The computer is in his bedroom and he’s often sitting on the bed working on his studies while I plug away. Not ideal but better than a treck into Pienza everyday.
On Tuesday, Oct 16, I went to Pienza with Elisa who dropped me there on the way to her home and spent the late morning & afternoon wandering around the beautiful old town. I toured the 15th C castle of Eneo Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius 2, and who, in the mid 15th century, hired the architect Il Rosselino to transform his birthplace into a “perfect city,” and renamed the town Pienza (=pious in Italian). He (PP2) managed to live long enough to have Rosselino reconstruct the town square (piazza) along classical architectural lines and there I sat in the piazza drinking my cappuccino to celebrate my return to this town. I later had lunch of risotto ai fungi (porcini) that was to die for in a tiny little trattoria nearby and the tour of the palazzo was about all I could do on my twisted ankle so I took a taxi home. Next time I’ll walk.
Being Sunday, there was nothing open where I could buy food in any form, so my wonderful hostess pulled together some cheese and wine and home grown tomatoes, olive oil and wine for dinner. A fellow student joined me a little later - his name is Ottavio and is a 19-year old Englishman who’s going to try to get into Oxford and read contemporary Italian literature. It will be nice to have someone with whom to share the day’s stories.
The farm household is made up of Sra Verdiana, her husband and 19 year old son, Samuele. They farm a few acres of grapes (San Giovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, & Merlot), over 500 olive trees, corn, tomatoes, chickens and white doves (that they eat.) To supplement their income they have recently added 3 big rooms with private bathrooms with all the modcons for bed & breakfast guests. I have a view out of my windows to die for - soft, tree-covered or perfectly ploughed rolling hills in the background, jacaranda trees in the foreground. Bird song all day long. The sun pours in during the afternoon. Black and quiet at night. Next door to my room here, is a kitchen where she brings my breakfast (freshly baked croissant, café latte, fruit, bread, yogurt) and where I can make my own dinner or lunch when I chose, buying my own food in Castelmuzio up the hill. Saves lots in restaurant bills.
I walked up to Castelmuzio to go to one of the two restaurants there and finding none open came back down again and proceeded to twist my right ankle on the steep, uneven roadway. I managed to hobble home and put a support bandage on it. Hopefully it will heal once I lie down for 8 hrs…..
Monday, Oct 15 Hot & sunny during the day, cool in the shadows and at night
Off to school today with Elisa Angelini, a student of philosophy studying in Siena, who is going to focus her thesis on Descartes - bringing together his writings (both scientific and philosophical) into a united whole! Whew. Very post modern, and brave of her She teaches me Italian at the Scuola Camprena which is about half an hour’s walk away from where I’m staying but where Verdiana will drive me each morning in 5 minutes. The school house is also an old converted farmhouse surrounded by farmland.
I am delighted the way Elisa teaches - and it’s one-on-one so I get all her attention for 2 hours a day. Some grammar and some conversation which is endlessly interesting. I walked back home, cutting through rough tractor roads feeling at one with the world and tried my luck again on the road to Castelmuzio to by food supplies before the co-operative closed at one pm. Nice little store, great food- pecorino cheese, ham, bread, fresh produce. I walked out without remembering to pay, realized this 10 minutes later and returned. The owner was completely unfazed - she knew where I was staying.
In the afternoon after a nap, I joined Verdiana and the dog Paula on a tour of the “estate.” We found her husband collecting olives. A large net is wrapped around the tree on the ground below, and each stem is “milked” of the olives growing on it and dropped into he net. A slow and laborious process that is repeated on each tree. Most of the olives were still green but she says that just makes the oil nicely nippy (picante). Sometime this week I will accompany them to a town nearby where the olives will be pressed. Should be interesting. There has been little rain this summer which makes the olive and mushroom harvest this year quite slim.
I made a giant salad for dinner of local lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and prosciutto ham in the local olive oil and vinegar washed down with local vino rosso and to bed for a solid night’s sleep. Not bad eh?
Tue -Thu, Oct 16-19
The days begin to blend one into the other. They are made up of Italian lessons, walking the country roads from hill town to hill town, visiting Pienza and its historic buildings, shopping for food (most stores are closed between 1-5 so it needs a bit of planning), cooking a bit in my kitchen and working on the Internet which entails teaching my course, answering emails and adding to my blog.
Because the Internet Point in Pienza is 7 K away from Il Colombaiolo, I have made an arrangement with Samuele, the son of the owner, to use his computer every evening for an hour for 20 Euros a week. The computer is in his bedroom and he’s often sitting on the bed working on his studies while I plug away. Not ideal but better than a treck into Pienza everyday.
On Tuesday, Oct 16, I went to Pienza with Elisa who dropped me there on the way to her home and spent the late morning & afternoon wandering around the beautiful old town. I toured the 15th C castle of Eneo Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius 2, and who, in the mid 15th century, hired the architect Il Rosselino to transform his birthplace into a “perfect city,” and renamed the town Pienza (=pious in Italian). He (PP2) managed to live long enough to have Rosselino reconstruct the town square (piazza) along classical architectural lines and there I sat in the piazza drinking my cappuccino to celebrate my return to this town. I later had lunch of risotto ai fungi (porcini) that was to die for in a tiny little trattoria nearby and the tour of the palazzo was about all I could do on my twisted ankle so I took a taxi home. Next time I’ll walk.
10/16/2007
FINALLY!
Oct 12; 2AM
Oct 9
Great stay with Don & Diane but too brief; arrived at 7pm and left at 8am the next day but enough time to catch up, eat a great mushroom & cheese lasagna made by Diane and have a great night’s sleep.
Oct 10
While checking in at the airport I was joined by a throng of people speaking in Italian - what a great sound. I was told that this was the Las Scala orchestra, leaving their gig in Toronto and on their way to a performance in Washington. I had allowed lots of time to make my flight from Kennedy Airport to Rome even though I was arriving from Toronto at La Guardia and leaving from JFK airport. An 1.5 hr flight delay because of the weather made the connection a little more tense as I waited for the airport shuttle at La Guardia. But there was little reason to worry - I even managed to get a 10 minute manicure before boarding. Business class was a real treat; champagne upon arrival on board, reclining seats, a virtual home entertainment unit at every seat and great food: I had the crab cakes and some nice Pino Grigio.
Oct 11
Somehow I think I contracted food poisoning as I arrived in Rome hot, dizzy and with a serious tummy trouble, having not slept a wink. The American Airlines staff as well as those at Fiumicino Airport were wonderful and I was put in a wheelchair, whisked through immigration, and brought to the baggage claim area where someone got me my suitcase and a luggage cart. Then I was on my own at 8AM on a sunny Roman day feeling like something washed up on the tide.
I pushed my 4 pieces of luggage to the train station at the airport, bought my ticket, and clambered aboard the Leonardo Express for Roma! Thirty minutes later I arrived at Roma Termini and took a short but far too expensive cab ride to my Hotel Montreal. (I walked the distance in 15 minutes when I returned there take the train to Tuscany.) My room was small but clean, painted in shades of pink, looking out over a quiet street on the second floor (which they call first). After showering and crashing for 3 hours I made my way to a Bancomat to get some Euros, have a small lunch of bean soup at a local café and then visited the large beautiful mosaic covered church of Sta. Maria Maggiore nearby. Then I crashed for another 3 hours and finally took myself on my first walk around this big old city, visiting Piazza Barberini, Bellini’s Triton fountain, The Spanish steps, Via Corso (a high class Robson St) - stopping in to a pharmacy to get stuff for my poor stomach, and then picking up some yogurt and mineral water - all I could comfortably digest. I made an attempt at using the hotel’s Internet (it couldn’t accommodate my own laptop) and was able to connect with my email and my U Vic course web site. Phew! I still don’t know the results of the Vancouver strike, but that’s for another day.
Oct 12
Woke at 9am after having slept 11 hours and felt 100% better. Walked to the Coliseum and then around the old Roman Forum. Wonderful, thousands of tourists speaking hundreds of languages moving around in groups of 30 or more. Just as I began to explore the Palatine Hill - the oldest part of Rome - the heavens opened up and dropped buckets of rain down on us. Imagine all of these tour groups dispersing madly in all directions, each individual trying to find cover under some ruin or other. I made do with a thickly leafed tree and then the entrance to some form of archaeological workshop, where I nibbled on bread and cheese I‘d brought from the hotel for emergencies When the rain abated I went in search of a place to sit down & have an espresso, but finding nothing nearby returned to the Forum as the rain seemed to have stopped. But 10 minutes later it poured down again and, giving up on that site, I made my way home by Metro and then by foot through the winding streets getting lost at least 4 times, back to my hotel where I napped for a couple of hours and worked on their Internet to teach my course. Had a nice meal of sole and salad and a glass of house white in a local trattoria and then to bed - a little later than the previous night. I think my inner clock is readjusting, as are my innards!
Fri, Oct 13. (Uh Oh)
A blue sky, hot day. A pre-booked morning visit to the beautiful Borghese Gardens and its amazing museum, (Galleria Borghese) containing the collection (often ill-gotten) of Schippione (sp?) Borghese, nepote (nephew) of the Pope (hence nepotism). Lunch was cheese, bread, apple and water, eaten sitting on the garden grounds under the trees, watching large grey and brown birds roughly the size of magpies, sing and fly around me. Umbrella pines, fountains splashing in the sunlight, acacia trees, cool shady paths made this a beautifully designed place of peace and beauty - not the Stanley Park wildness but a place where the senses are calmed, people bicycle and kids play.
Things heated up as I managed to find my very complicated way out of the park and into Flaminio Metro near Piazza del Popolo, exiting at Ottavio Metro and heading toward the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica. I had decided due to limited time that I wouldn’t visit the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel but had intended to do a walk through the Basilica, but one look at the mile-long line up to the entrance convinced me that it would have to wait until another year - time was precious and the weather very hot and steamy. Instead, I sat in the shade of one Bernini’s many columns that formed an oval colonnade around the obelisk in the piazza, and spend a pleasant 30 minutes watching the crowd and gazing on the magnificent façade and Michelangelo’s dome.
I then wended my way past the huge Castello di San Angelo (every early Roman building in this city seems enormous to me- that‘s what you get when you run an empire) across the San Angelo Bridge decorated with Bernini’s angels, and animated by living people dressed up as Tutankhamen or the Statue of Liberty standing still in the midday sun under their layers of costume collecting donations. What a way to make a Euro!
I loved best wandering the little narrow streets of old Rome, looking into antique store windows and coming across sun-lit piazza after piazza surrounded by Baroque or Renaissance churches. I bought a gelato (pistachio) and found my way to Piazza Navona but was disappointed because the main central 4 rivers fountain was under wraps being restored. So I enjoyed myself by watching the street performers and the crowds around them.
On to the Pantheon where I had a cuppa tea (more and more I’m beginning to feel like someone out of a Merchant Ivory movie - the older woman, not the younger, exploring the somewhat threatening old streets of some exotic urban capital, sipping tea and watching the world with detached wisdom) in the Piazza della Rotonda and read up on the oldest and biggest of domes ever….) Once I squeezed myself through the crowds in the entrance way to the Pantheon I found myself in that extraordinarily huge airy space lit only by sunshine coming through the oculus at the centre of the dome. Although there must have been 500 people in there, it didn’t feel crowded. I said "hello" to Raphael who is buried there along with sundry popes and emperors, and then left that majestic space and made my way to the obligatory Trevi Fountain where I deposited the one remaining Euro in my pocket into the hands of a beggar instead of into the water. Thousands of teenagers were hanging out, flirting and throwing coins over their shoulders, like wedding corsages, into the splashing waters. Took a long walk home, got lost at least twice, and back to the hotel for a much needed nap, pasta dinner and bed.
Sun, Oct 14 -Sunny blue sky day. Time to head north to Tuscany.
Breakfasted, packed and checked out in time for my 12:50 train to Chiusi, Tuscany and the main part of my trip. It was a smooth train trip - those Italians sure know how to run them efficiently. At 2:30 I descended from the train onto Tuscan soil.
Three hours later: I feel like I’m in a movie again! The kind of movie where a urban chick has to face up to her dependencies of the outside world - things like connecting to the Internet, going out to a movie, taking home a movie, going to her fridge, cooking, snacking in the middle of the night, taking a bus to anywhere she wants to go. Apparently I didn’t realize that the school is NOT in Pienza with its cafes, banks and bank machines and beautiful 15th century architecture as I hoped to get to know, but a 6 kilometer long winding road away only accessible by bicycle, car and foot…..
After a 60 Euro taxi drive from Chiusi, I had arrived at "Il Colombaiolo" outside Pienza and found out it was the wrong one. The one I was booked at was another place by the same name outside the ancient tiny village of Castelmuzio! Another 15 Euros later I finally arrived at the farm house and my room with a view. Back of the beyond. But beautiful! Here come the watercolors’ and the camera. More later...
Oct 12; 2AM
Oct 9
Great stay with Don & Diane but too brief; arrived at 7pm and left at 8am the next day but enough time to catch up, eat a great mushroom & cheese lasagna made by Diane and have a great night’s sleep.
Oct 10
While checking in at the airport I was joined by a throng of people speaking in Italian - what a great sound. I was told that this was the Las Scala orchestra, leaving their gig in Toronto and on their way to a performance in Washington. I had allowed lots of time to make my flight from Kennedy Airport to Rome even though I was arriving from Toronto at La Guardia and leaving from JFK airport. An 1.5 hr flight delay because of the weather made the connection a little more tense as I waited for the airport shuttle at La Guardia. But there was little reason to worry - I even managed to get a 10 minute manicure before boarding. Business class was a real treat; champagne upon arrival on board, reclining seats, a virtual home entertainment unit at every seat and great food: I had the crab cakes and some nice Pino Grigio.
Oct 11
Somehow I think I contracted food poisoning as I arrived in Rome hot, dizzy and with a serious tummy trouble, having not slept a wink. The American Airlines staff as well as those at Fiumicino Airport were wonderful and I was put in a wheelchair, whisked through immigration, and brought to the baggage claim area where someone got me my suitcase and a luggage cart. Then I was on my own at 8AM on a sunny Roman day feeling like something washed up on the tide.
I pushed my 4 pieces of luggage to the train station at the airport, bought my ticket, and clambered aboard the Leonardo Express for Roma! Thirty minutes later I arrived at Roma Termini and took a short but far too expensive cab ride to my Hotel Montreal. (I walked the distance in 15 minutes when I returned there take the train to Tuscany.) My room was small but clean, painted in shades of pink, looking out over a quiet street on the second floor (which they call first). After showering and crashing for 3 hours I made my way to a Bancomat to get some Euros, have a small lunch of bean soup at a local café and then visited the large beautiful mosaic covered church of Sta. Maria Maggiore nearby. Then I crashed for another 3 hours and finally took myself on my first walk around this big old city, visiting Piazza Barberini, Bellini’s Triton fountain, The Spanish steps, Via Corso (a high class Robson St) - stopping in to a pharmacy to get stuff for my poor stomach, and then picking up some yogurt and mineral water - all I could comfortably digest. I made an attempt at using the hotel’s Internet (it couldn’t accommodate my own laptop) and was able to connect with my email and my U Vic course web site. Phew! I still don’t know the results of the Vancouver strike, but that’s for another day.
Oct 12
Woke at 9am after having slept 11 hours and felt 100% better. Walked to the Coliseum and then around the old Roman Forum. Wonderful, thousands of tourists speaking hundreds of languages moving around in groups of 30 or more. Just as I began to explore the Palatine Hill - the oldest part of Rome - the heavens opened up and dropped buckets of rain down on us. Imagine all of these tour groups dispersing madly in all directions, each individual trying to find cover under some ruin or other. I made do with a thickly leafed tree and then the entrance to some form of archaeological workshop, where I nibbled on bread and cheese I‘d brought from the hotel for emergencies When the rain abated I went in search of a place to sit down & have an espresso, but finding nothing nearby returned to the Forum as the rain seemed to have stopped. But 10 minutes later it poured down again and, giving up on that site, I made my way home by Metro and then by foot through the winding streets getting lost at least 4 times, back to my hotel where I napped for a couple of hours and worked on their Internet to teach my course. Had a nice meal of sole and salad and a glass of house white in a local trattoria and then to bed - a little later than the previous night. I think my inner clock is readjusting, as are my innards!
Fri, Oct 13. (Uh Oh)
A blue sky, hot day. A pre-booked morning visit to the beautiful Borghese Gardens and its amazing museum, (Galleria Borghese) containing the collection (often ill-gotten) of Schippione (sp?) Borghese, nepote (nephew) of the Pope (hence nepotism). Lunch was cheese, bread, apple and water, eaten sitting on the garden grounds under the trees, watching large grey and brown birds roughly the size of magpies, sing and fly around me. Umbrella pines, fountains splashing in the sunlight, acacia trees, cool shady paths made this a beautifully designed place of peace and beauty - not the Stanley Park wildness but a place where the senses are calmed, people bicycle and kids play.
Things heated up as I managed to find my very complicated way out of the park and into Flaminio Metro near Piazza del Popolo, exiting at Ottavio Metro and heading toward the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica. I had decided due to limited time that I wouldn’t visit the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel but had intended to do a walk through the Basilica, but one look at the mile-long line up to the entrance convinced me that it would have to wait until another year - time was precious and the weather very hot and steamy. Instead, I sat in the shade of one Bernini’s many columns that formed an oval colonnade around the obelisk in the piazza, and spend a pleasant 30 minutes watching the crowd and gazing on the magnificent façade and Michelangelo’s dome.
I then wended my way past the huge Castello di San Angelo (every early Roman building in this city seems enormous to me- that‘s what you get when you run an empire) across the San Angelo Bridge decorated with Bernini’s angels, and animated by living people dressed up as Tutankhamen or the Statue of Liberty standing still in the midday sun under their layers of costume collecting donations. What a way to make a Euro!
I loved best wandering the little narrow streets of old Rome, looking into antique store windows and coming across sun-lit piazza after piazza surrounded by Baroque or Renaissance churches. I bought a gelato (pistachio) and found my way to Piazza Navona but was disappointed because the main central 4 rivers fountain was under wraps being restored. So I enjoyed myself by watching the street performers and the crowds around them.
On to the Pantheon where I had a cuppa tea (more and more I’m beginning to feel like someone out of a Merchant Ivory movie - the older woman, not the younger, exploring the somewhat threatening old streets of some exotic urban capital, sipping tea and watching the world with detached wisdom) in the Piazza della Rotonda and read up on the oldest and biggest of domes ever….) Once I squeezed myself through the crowds in the entrance way to the Pantheon I found myself in that extraordinarily huge airy space lit only by sunshine coming through the oculus at the centre of the dome. Although there must have been 500 people in there, it didn’t feel crowded. I said "hello" to Raphael who is buried there along with sundry popes and emperors, and then left that majestic space and made my way to the obligatory Trevi Fountain where I deposited the one remaining Euro in my pocket into the hands of a beggar instead of into the water. Thousands of teenagers were hanging out, flirting and throwing coins over their shoulders, like wedding corsages, into the splashing waters. Took a long walk home, got lost at least twice, and back to the hotel for a much needed nap, pasta dinner and bed.
Sun, Oct 14 -Sunny blue sky day. Time to head north to Tuscany.
Breakfasted, packed and checked out in time for my 12:50 train to Chiusi, Tuscany and the main part of my trip. It was a smooth train trip - those Italians sure know how to run them efficiently. At 2:30 I descended from the train onto Tuscan soil.
Three hours later: I feel like I’m in a movie again! The kind of movie where a urban chick has to face up to her dependencies of the outside world - things like connecting to the Internet, going out to a movie, taking home a movie, going to her fridge, cooking, snacking in the middle of the night, taking a bus to anywhere she wants to go. Apparently I didn’t realize that the school is NOT in Pienza with its cafes, banks and bank machines and beautiful 15th century architecture as I hoped to get to know, but a 6 kilometer long winding road away only accessible by bicycle, car and foot…..
After a 60 Euro taxi drive from Chiusi, I had arrived at "Il Colombaiolo" outside Pienza and found out it was the wrong one. The one I was booked at was another place by the same name outside the ancient tiny village of Castelmuzio! Another 15 Euros later I finally arrived at the farm house and my room with a view. Back of the beyond. But beautiful! Here come the watercolors’ and the camera. More later...
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