This year was my wife Eileen and my 25th Wedding Anniversary, so we decided to go to Italy for 17 days in June - spending our actual anniversary in Florence. I decided not to take my laptop with me, so I wasn't able to blog while we were traveling, so I am now taking the opportunity to tell the story of our "Italy 2008" trip.
We awoke to a beautiful morning - the Agriturismo has some new guests - a family of four - I think they are Italian, but we didn't get a chance to meet them - they were on their way before we got down to breakfast. We are heading for Cortona this morning. As Cortona was just off the road to Perugia and Assisi, which we had covered on our trip to Assisi, we decide to take a detour through the Abbadia forest - just to the south of us, hoping for some great views. However, there are no viewpoints and we are in the trees all the time.
We had to fill the car up with gas on the way - and its Sunday so all the gas stations are closed. - so we had to struggle with the self-service pumps. We were lucky that a local resident was filling up at the same time and saw me struggling - and helped out.
We found parking easily in Cortona - right on the Piazza Garibaldi - we couldn't get any closer than that. Cortona is perched on the side of a hill, although luckily most of the sights are near the main street which crosses the side of the hill and is fairly flat.
We visited the Diocesan Museum and the Etruscan Museum - this was more interesting than the one in Volterra. Eileen looked for Frances Mayes book - Under the Tuscan Sun - as it’s set in Cortona - no luck - although she got another of her books from the local English Bookstore.
Headed back to Pienza for dinner - we got there a little early (no-one opened before 7pm), so we explored the town.
Pienza
d1474222-5b08-47df-a654-edaba71e4a98|0|.0