Exploring Cortona

This morning we were awakened by the sound of the 9:30am town bells and an iPhone alarm, perfectly simultaneously. I shook Rich to get him to wake up and turn off his alarm, but he claimed it was just the bells. I said no, there's an alarm going off. No, he said, it's the bells. After a few minutes the bells stopped, but the iPhone was still going. And even though it sounded like it was in our bedroom, several minutes of searching for any idevice that might possibly have an alarm, we discovered the alarm was actually in the apartment next to us. From what I can tell, this apartment used to be larger, and at some point was divided by a CMU (cinder block) wall. And that wall transmits sound quite well. I actually discovered that at 2am when I woke up to a man speaking Italian right next to my bed (or so it sounded).

Our first task this morning was to find an Internet cafe, where the Internet actually worked. This proved to be surprisingly difficult. Even the cafe we were at the evening before didn't seem to have wifi anymore (but it does now). I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say we spent over an hour trying to get Internet just to check in on outside life. After morning coffee, we were off to lunch. (Meals seem to dictate our schedule for the rest of the day.). We had a fabulous lunch at Bar 500, a little street cafe on the main drag. In fact, this particular main drag is the only flat (that is, not on a steep hill) street in the entire city of Cortona. If you go there, I highly recommend the tapas platter, which is a very large plate of: melon wrapped in prosciutto curo, caprese salad, cheeses, arugula salad, and tomato bruschetta. Rich had a very good prosciutto pizza.

After lunch, we met Giovanni for our tour of Cortona. Giovanni was Rick Steves' tour guide for Cortona and the surrounding areas, and he did a brilliant job. He was knowledgable, entertaining, easy to understand, and he toured at a good pace. If you're in Cortona, give him a call.

We started our tour outside the town walls at a hermitage built for St. Francis of Assisi by his friar friend Elias in the 11th or 12th century. It really can't be described, you have to see it. It's built of stone into the hillside and has a steep river, almost a waterfall, running through it. Over the years, a monastery was added, with rooms for friars and travelers. There was a small kitchen, the layout of which was brilliant for keeping warm in the winter and letting the breeze through in the summer. The hearths were low, with the fires built on top, and metal racks on top like camp stoves to bring it all to a working surface height. There was also a chapel, and the tiny, windowless room that was the hermitage itself. Giovanni explained the local Italians go to the hermitage to relax and unwind in their free time, because living in crowded, ancient walled towns makes them a little crazy without some kind of escape.


If you're up for a hike, there is a dirt road beginning at the hermitage that winds around the surrounding hillsides. That is on my agenda for our next trip. We also took a troll down a Roman road that was thousands of years old.

Then we took a trip over to the basilica of Santa Margherita, which according to our tour guide, was new. Around here, a building is new if it was built within the last 250 years. Although the church was built in the 12th century, it had been remodeled significantly in the 17 or 1800s and was therefore new by Italian standards.

I won't go into detail to describe each of the churches we visit, but suffice it to say they're all different and all breathtaking. I don't think I'll get tired of the churches on this trip. Oh, and to point out the waves of Catholic guilt that flow over me when entering any of the churches for my failure to continue practicing Catholicism in my adulthood. Those Catholics get you we their guilt coming and going.

Giovanni also pointed out a fort at the top of the hill that the locals were not at all fond of, also "new," where the Umbrians watched over the town of Cortona. The watching was not for protective purposes, but for control. There is a very long history of Cortona - which is on the border of Tuscany near Umbria - being constantly sacked and conquered by the Umbrians and struggling for its independence and associations with Tuscany again. Siena was a long-time ally in this battle over the centuries, which didn't end until Italy as we know it today was formed in 1846. (Holy late republic, batman! Particularly considering the Romans kind of invented it, after the Greeks, thousands of years ago...). To this day, there is a strong rivalry between the Tuscans and Umbrians.

We then returned to the town of Cortona, which was originally established by the Etruscans in the 7th Century BC. However, they've recently found the remains of an Etruscan graveyard from the 11th Century BC, so the area has likely been settled at least since then, although no structures from that period exist or have been discovered - just bones.


The 7th Century Etruscans built the original city walls in that era out of giant blocks of stone, at least two to three feet high and maybe 5 feet wide, and I don't know how deep. Over the years the city was repeatedly raided and destroyed then repaired/rebuilt, until the city walls were rebuilt in the middle ages (about the 12th Century) out of smaller round stones, which were really just the broken fragments of the original Etruscan stones. the city was sacked by the Umbrians several times since then, and each war led to new development right on top of the old, a cycle that was ongoing for hundreds of years.

Which leads me to a tangential musing: I keep trying to picture how these cities would have looked "originally," but of course there is no such thing as original here. There is simply the way the cities looked and felt and lived at different points in time. There is no "original" version of something that, for all practical purposes, was always there.


For example, once inside the city Giovanni took us into the "back rooms" of a pharmacy on the main drag of Cortona. (One of the benefits of a private tour.) The pharmacy was small but very modern, and we went through the staff only door down to the lower level below the street. There were file cabinets and iMacs on desks like any office, but half of the office was in an old Roman (early AD) arched passage. But that wasn't what Giovanni wanted to show us. We went down another flight of stairs to a similar office area - more iMacs and file cabinets - where a large part of one corner was occupied by an Etruscan well and stone doorway, likely put there several centuries BC when that floor was at street level. Giovanni also took us to an archeological site in the middle of the city (that apparently only he has the key for) that was discovered in the past few years when a building was undergoing renovations. The site is a (now underground) spring located in an ancient Etruscan tunnel, later framed by a large, thick archway when the spring was built into the Roman aquaduct system. Both were completely buried until just a few years ago.

We also toured two of the town's three churches, while receiving a brilliant (if not brief) Catholic art history lesson. The most interesting tidbit was that Baroque art was generally very boisterous and happy, but after the reformation, Catholics suddenly became very serious (and depressed) artists, with paintings dominated by large, ugly, dominating holy figures and groveling, humble little humans. The intersections of art, religious politics, and culture are fascinating.

After our tour, we went back to our (so far only reliable) Internet cafe to call Mo. Then we had a delicious dinner at Trattoria La Grotta, which is the restaurant directly below our apartment. Very good. By the time we finished our 8pm dinner it was past 10, so we headed upstairs for bed.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cortona, Italy

Sorrento to Cortona

I recovered my iPad! I was sure I'd never see it again, but the fabulous and apparently phoneless BA staff at Leonardo da Vinci airport found it and were keeping it for me!

The story begins with another fabulous breakfast at the hotel. Then we checked out of the hotel and got in the cab for Sorrento. Our driver was Francesco, and today I believe I learned one of the major differences between a private driver and a cab: the cabbies smoke in the car. Francesco didn't smoke while we were in it, but you could tell the second you got in that the poor vehicle had suffered years of cigarettes.




That said, Francesco gave us a brilliant tour of the coastline as we made our way from Vico Equense to Sorrento. Just before Meta, he stopped his car in the very busy, thin, winding highway so that we could get out at the vista and take photos while receiving his impressively knowledgable natural and cultural history of the peninsula's north coast. The steep rock cliffs were volcanic, and many of the buildings were constructed from and adorned with rock mined from the heart of the cliff sides. In particular, the rock was mined as man-made caves were excavated through the rock, all the way from the coastline up to the inland hearts of the towns, hundreds of feet up. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the original purpose of the caves, but in later years, Francesco explained, they were used for cool food storage in the summer, and boat storage in the winter. Later, they served as bomb shelters during the world wars.

Until the wars, the hillsides of the towns were almost ubiquitously lemon, orange, and olive crops. After the wars, tourism became the main industry, but the lemons and olives are still important. The crops all involve nets; the citrus fruits require nets covering them to preserve the humidity so the sun doesn't burn the blossoms. The olive trees all have nets at their trunks for harvesting. When the olives ripen, they fall into the nets, and they need to be made into oil the same day they are collected. Oh, and a lemon tree produces fruit four times a year! I want one.

Anyway, Francesco claimed he knew where the rental car shop was we were headed to, but he was a (long) block off so it took us several minutes to find it. But to Francesco's credit, he was very nice to make sure we did actually get there and get checked in okay. Then we parted ways, Francesco in his smoke infused older BMW, and us in our silver Renault.

As Rich


got used to driving the manual Renault in the tight and lawless streets of the Sorrento peninsula (where stop signs, lanes, and following distance were all optional), we made our way back northward along the autostrada for Rome. Driving the autostrada was much better than driving the coastal alley-like highway, but at an average pace of 120-150 km/hour, excitement was still to be had.

After about two hours we had made it to Rome, although our navigator wasn't paying attention and we missed the exit we should have taken for the airport to rescue the iPad. After some backtracking, we were headed the right direction on the highway circling Rome toward the airport. Traffic made the going slow.

I made my way into the airport while Rich parked the car, and found BA customer service. There, the nice BA lady explained that the lost and found office was empty, and they wouldn't be back in for about 20 minutes. But luckily she got a hold of them after only 10 minutes or so, and.... THEY HAD THE IPAD! We just had to go downstairs to the Avia Partner desk and pick it up.

Well, she failed to explain that, in order to get to the Avia Partner desk, we had to go back to the international baggage claim through the staff-only security checkpoint. Which, by the way, was surprisingly easy to get through. Anyway, long story short, after about a half hour wait at the baggage desk, we were on our way with iPad in hand. In all, the detour around Rome to the airport and back and the wait at the desk took about 2 hours. But, we had two iPads again and and beautiful drive into the Italian countryside ahead of us.

Just outside Rome, we stopped at the Autogrill (the ubiquitous rest stop cafe/shop/restaurant chain) to use the Internet and get a light lunch. We accomplished one task, while discovering that the Internet system, while free, required registering by receiving a text at an Italian phone number. Rich bit the bullet and used his 3G to let the apartment company know when we'd arrive, and then we were back on our way.

The


drive was scenic to say the least. It's actually a bit like driving down the Fraser Valley in BC, with two key differences. First, in North America, the populations concentrate in the valleys, whereas here, there are very few buildings in the valley, with the population densely populated on the high cliffs and ridges. Second, instead of industrial warehouses and modern barns, there are entire medieval castle towns. Castles. Perched right on the tops of hills and edges of cliffs. Suddenly you remember you're not in the Fraser Valley anymore.

Two hours later, we arrived in Terontola, which is a sort of rural suburb of Cortona. We met the apartment company, and then headed up the hill to the town of Cortona.





The town is completely walled, and vehicle entry is by permit only, so we parked outside the town walls and the agent took us the rest of the way to the apartment (which we easily could have walked - it was only about a quarter mile in, although uphill). We stopped in the main piazza, where our apartment is, and turned into a small alley. Back into a courtyard claimed as outdoor dining by a nearby restaurant, and the apartment entrance was a large, old, dark, wooden door to the left. Up a flight of stone-cooled stairs were two more old, dark wooden doors, one of which was the front door of our apartment.

The landlady said this building was one of the first built in main Cortona, and is about 150 years old. (However, it sounds like Cortona has been settled and established with at least a monastery since the 11th Century. It's the walled city that wasn't built until about 1840.). The apartment appears to be original in many ways, but has also been maintained and updated. For example, the brick floor and most the interior doors are probably original, but the kitchen area has been remodeled, possibly with a different floor plan than the original. Also, the bathroom is likely I it's original room and location, but all of the finishes have recently been updated with beautiful tile surfaces and modern cabinets. I was worried there may be ghosts, but for whatever reason I don't think they're here. Or maybe there are just so many people in these dense little towns that one more presence goes unnoticed. Or, maybe there's just too much life here for the dead to be interested in sticking around. It all feels very alive.

Next stop was an Internet cafe to call Mo. We went to the Internet wine bar and relaxed for about an hour before we got a hold of her, only for her to be more interested in fruit snacks than video chat. But, she's cute as always, so the conversation was tons of fun. Unfortunately, though, it looks like there may only be two Internet cafes in the entire city, and neither one has computers we can use. This is a problem because not only do our iPads not get along with Google, but they also don't get along with my Garmin watch, or Garmin's website. So, maps of all our journeys will have to be added to the blog post-post.

Then it was back to the apartment for our welcome dinner, with a local bottle of wine, compliments of the generous people who donated the apartment to the PSKS auction. The dinner had some rich, creamy lasagna (among other treats), and a crisp, sweet, orange marmalade tarte. It was all divine, and we have enough left over for at least one more dinner.

Now it's bedtime. Photos and posting will have to be done in the morning. On tomorrow's agenda is time in the morning to explore the town, then a guided tour in the afternoon!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cortona, Italy

Capri & Sorrento

Today we woke up around 8:30 and headed to the (still scrumptious) hotel breakfast around 9. By 9:30 we were in the hotel shuttle that would drop us off at the Vico Equence train station, where we caught a 10ish train to Sorrento. We were hoping to make the 10:45 boat to Capri, but after several wrong turns that resulted in a nice little tour of the city, we were on board the 11:25.

The crossing to Capri was in a Victoria Clipper type boat, and took about 45 minutes. Then we had another wait of about 15 minutes for the funicolare up the hillside (in fairly dense cigarette smoke inflicted by the station employee while standing within a few feet of several no smoking signs). The funicolare (cable car) took 70 people at a time up the steep hillside. The wait today was fairly reasonable, but I can't imagine coming in the high season.

At the top, we found a very busy main square, almost packed with people.  We had decided to explore Villa Jovis first. Villa Jovis was Emperor Tiberius' favored villa on the Capri cliff side from where he ruled the empire during his last 10 years of life (died 37AD.)

The site was later fortified and used again in medieval times, with a small chapel eventually built right on Villa Jovis' roof. The ruins weren't in good shape like Pompei, and it looks like the site was never even fully excavated. But, you can clearly see the floor plan as at least a few vertical feet of most walls still exist, and the local historical ministry has posted helpful signs explaining what various parts of the villa were used for. It was fascinating, although it would have been helpful to view a few other, more well-preserved Roman sites before going here, as that would have helped my imagination to fill in the space.

However, I'm very happy we went, and I highly recommend it.  It was a great site, and it was also a wonderful way to get away from the crowds swarming downtown Capri. Since Villa Jovis sits on the top of Mount Tiberio, about 300m above sea level, it is about an hour walk uphill to get there from the center square of Capri. The walk is marked on the map as roads, but road really doesn't describe it. Instead, it's a thin, nicely paved footpath. The businesses of Capri drive the roads in golf carts because it's all that will fit. There are high (6-8 foot) stone walls on each side of the path all the way up, with occasional breaks for gated villa entrances.

After visiting the Villa, we stopped for a small lunch at Bar Jovis, just a few steps below.  If you ever make the trek up to Villa Jovis, you MUST stop here. The view was breathtaking, and the food and drink were nothing short of heavenly. I experienced the best Caprese salad of my life, while Rich had a toasted ham and mozzarella sandwich. Oh, and my beverage was fresh squeezed orange and lemon juice from local fruits.

It's plain from the quality of the food here that it's far less processed than anything we have at home, even at most nice restaurants. The freshness of the cheeses and vegetables is plain in both the texture and flavor. And the pork products have a "raw" flavor that gets processed out in the U.S. It will make me very sad to go back home to cook, and I may have to find some specialty stores to shop at to find really good food.

We headed back to the crowded streets of Capri, and after brief consideration we decided not to explore more and to head back to the mainland. The boat ride back was brief, and after climbing the 150 stairs back up to town from the marina, we wandered the city for a bit more while we simultaneously sought out gelato, a restroom, and the train station. After a few brief shopping and gelati experiences, we made our way back to the train station and caught the 7pm train back to Vico Equence.

We were told that the best pizza around was at Pizzeria Da Franco in Vico Equence, so that was our plan for dinner.


While good (and definitely several leagues ahead of American pizza with its over-processed cheese), we're still in search of the best pizza in Italy. Also, I haven't yet found anything that compares to my memory of the gelato from street vendors in Rome, so additional pizza and gelato is in our future.

Then, of course, we had our daily chat with Mo, which was fun. And now it's bedtime. Tomorrow we drive to Tuscany!

Location:Sorrento, Italy

Pompei and the Amalfi Coast

We did manage to fall back asleep this morning, but not until about 7:30am and we had to wake up again by about 8:15. We made it, and had a fabulous breakfast at the restaurant. Omeletes, lox, yogurt, fresh-baked bread with local preserves, fresh fruit, and the most flavorful drip coffee we've ever experienced. Strong bacon favors, with a light smokiness. It was so thick I was scared to drink more than a few sips for fear I'd be wired the rest of the day, but overcaffeination did not appear to be one of the side effects of this magical new coffee.

After breakfast, we met our driver, Giuseppe, at the hotel. He took us to Pompei, where he had also pre-arranged a guide for us. We spent about two hours there, but we easily could have spent an entire week without seeing or learning everything about it. The technology was fascinating, as was the political and geological history. Pompei was an established city for hundreds of years until it suffered a severely damaging earthquake in I think 62AD. Just 17 years later, it was buried.

It was 12:30 by the time we were done at Pompei, and we headed to Ravello. It's a town built into the upper hillside on the Sorrento side of the mountains. We shopped at a very sizable ceramic store, then had lunch at what our driver described as an Italian Mama restaurant. The food was good, although I thought my pasta was over salted, if there is such a thing. Rich disagreed, so maybe it was just pregnancy playing with me. Either way, we had a nice lunch, then spent some time walking around the town. There's an old castle that the city is built in and around. Various different buildings in the city were built at different times (as in different centuries), and it's fascinating to see how the pieces all (sort of) fit together. There was also a long pedestrian Via that may have gone all the way down the mountain to the coast if we'd followed it that far.

Next was a drive through Amalfi, although we didn't stop there. The town was big, and plainly geared toward tourism. If I were in a shopping mood I would have wanted to stop, but just driving through was fine. Our driver lived in the next town, Positano, and he said we should spend more time there instead. I think he meant we should spend our money there instead. Either way, the Italians we've met so far have a lot of local pride, which is fun. They're also extremely friendly - and not just the people trying to sell you things. They're genuinely very friendly people, at least from what we've seen.

We took a stroll through Positano, but didn't end up buying anything there. But the town was very nice, and we easily could have spent at least an entire day strolling around it. We forgot where we were supposed to meet the driver, so we found his office and asked for him there. The other drivers greeted us very warmly, and we found cups of Limoncello in our hands almost immediately. Then we waited for a bit while they tried to call the Rome airport for us because my iPad claims to still be there. But, after 2 days of calling, we still can't find the right number for British Airways in Rome. Everything we try either gets us through to London (only to confirm multiple times that only BA Rome can help us), or the number we call does not exist. So frustrating! My iPad is so close, yet so far away.

Anyway, after some friendly refreshments and help from the other drivers, we headed back to our hotel. On the way out of town, the driver pointed out his house and his wife was on the deck waving.

Now we're in the bar, taking advantage of the Internet while we wait to call Mo at 9pm. We have dinner reservations at 9:30, and even though we planned to go to town for what is apparently the best meter of pizza we'll ever have, we'll do that tomorrow evening. Tomorrow is Capri day!

Update: Here's a map of our trip! Italy Trip: Pompei & Amalfi Coast by indieradiochic at Garmin Connect - Details

Finally, a daylight view of our hotel

Just took this picture when we got back to our room after an all day tour... The sun is getting close to setting.

Fabulous Lunch!

In Ravello

Traveling

It's five am in Vico Equense, Italy. I've been up since 3:30, though. Not sure if it's the time difference, or I have things on my mind, but either way, the only way I can think to pass the next few hours until the restaurant opens for breakfast is to start writing.

We left the house at 4pm Tuesday, and finally checked into our hotel at 9pm Wednesday. The flight from Seattle to Heathrow was uneventful, except that it left at 7pm and landed at 11am the next day (Wednesday), and they served a real dinner but only a continental breakfast. By the time we got to our terminal at Heathrow, all the restaurants had stopped serving breakfast. So, I missed my breakfast. Unfortunately, that was not to be the last tragedy of the day. We settled on a pho-type place for lunch, which was all together unimpressive.

Soon we were on our way from Heathrow to Rome. We'd slept (badly) for about four hours on the prior flight, so almost as soon as I sat down on the second flight, I was back asleep. Which was a problem, because I fell asleep so quickly I forgot I put my iPad in the seat pocket, and left the plane without it. One iPad down. Kicking myself like you wouldn't believe right now.

We landed in Roma at about 6pm that day (Wednesday). Our driver found us at the airport, and we had a 3-hour drive in the back of his Mercedes to Vico Equense, just outside Napoli (Naples). We checked in, had dinner, slept for about 4 hours, and then I just couldn't sleep anymore (and now of course, Rich can't either). I showered for as long as I could make it last, but alas, it's now only 5:41am, and I really want some breakfast. (Restaurant opens at 7:30.)

Our hotel is Capo La Gala, built right into the rocky cliff coast. The decor isn't my style - very stark and modern. The interior walls are plain white, and our room smells like paint. The bathroom towels are fabulously soft, but I needed a second shower after the first just to clean off all the towel lint. Putting on my lotion, you would have thought I'd been covered in cobwebs.

Our room has a private veranda that looks out over the bay. I'll add photos once we've seen it, as so far we haven't had any daylight. But from what we've seen so far, the view is spectacular.