Italy 2012 – Lucca

Sunday 24th June

I’d spent three whole weeks in Lucca, two years previously, and apart from a few day trips out by train, all my days had followed much the same pattern, which could be summed up as “being idle in Lucca”.

I did that again. I walked up to the San Frediano platform on the walls. It had been my regular spot to get some shade. After a strenous hour or so of sitting still, I reminded myself of my normal route back to the apartment I’d had. It didn’t look as though it was currently occupied.

I walked at random in the city. During the previous visit, I’d covered pretty much every square metre, including going right round the walls, both on foot and by bicycle. So nothing was novel, but happily familiar.

One minor excitement was on one of the bastions — I think it might have been San Paolino — there were young people who I guess might have been art or photography students. One group was photographing a pretty girl in full evening dress, and long gloves, in crimson; while the other included a band of them in costumes, which I vaguely recognized as anime or manga chracters. The girl with blue hair and cat ears? A cadaverous warrior with long white hair, a black trenchcoat and a huge katana? I don’t know.

Late in the afternoon, I returned to the hotel to freshen up before going back out for dinner. I picked a trattoria at random and ordered a ‘primo’ — a pasta dish — and a pizza. I don’t know if an Italian would do that, but it worked for me.

Monday 25th June

I wanted to make use of the car, rather than pay to have it rust in the car park. What attraction is near by? I remembered Collodi, from a holiday more than ten years previously, made famous from being the pen name of the creator of Pinocchio. There’s a Pinocchio theme park, which I’d be sure to avoid, but the villa has an impressive garden which is open to the public. A bit of work on the internet showed that it was only a half hour away. In practice, the first half of that was very suburban, traffic-plagued travel. Still, I got out into the country on the way to Collodi, in Pescia province, not Lucca.

I got to the town and made a small diversion by following the road signs to “Villa Basilica”, on the assumption that it meant “Villa, Basilica”. I mean, I knew there was a villa…

A brief excursion to the village of Villa Basilica and then I came back and found the large car park at Collodi. Gardens, then.

They’d opened a butterfly house since my previous visit, included in the price of entry. It was very, very hot and humid, like a sauna. This seemed to make the butterflies very active, and I didn’t manage to take any decent photos of any of them. I was grateful to get out into the open air.

I spent a couple of hours, exploring and sitting in the shade alternatively. The main focus of the garden is a great descending water feature. In one of the pools I saw a small snake swimming. That was probably my highlight.

It was only early afternoon by the time I’d had my fill. Pescia is almost adjacent, and it’s one of the well-known towns of Tuscany that I’d never seen. Off I went. Following the signs for “centro”, I came to Piazza Mazzini, with plenty of parking. It’s not actually the historic centre, which is on the other side of the river, but it’s only a sort walk across one of the bridges..

The river and the mountainous setting is very attractive. You couldn’t “holiday” there for more than a half day, unlike Florence or Lucca, but it’s nice for a visit. Or, actually, you could live there. Seriously.

I drove home via the toll-paying autostrada instead of the suburban roads. It cost me €1.30

In the evening, I walked into Lucca for dinner, and had a really nice one. Afterwards, I went up beyond the end of Via Fillungo, the posh street, where the Guardian-recommended hostelry De Cervasia sells craft beers. I tried a couple: Brùton (pale) and Tainted Love (dark). Not a beer expert, so I can’t really judge. I’m sorry I don’t pray that way.

Tuesday 26th June

With the Wednesday being the day of travel to the mists and rain of the North Atlantic, I was going to stay in town. The temperatures were high thirties again, giving the “taking it easy” option more weight. I took a book and took to the shade.

My reading was interrupted by the sound of car horns: a vintage and classic car parade was circling the walls.

Even in very hot weather, I don’t seem to feel the need to drink a lot (it’s the lizard in me) but I’d lifted a little glass bottle of fruit juice from the hotel’s breakfast bar, and even remembered to bring my Leatherman tool in order to open it. Note to self: your particular Leatherman model does not have a bottle opener. I had to use the pliers to peel the edges of the cap up.

When I’d had the fruity contents, I put the bottle upside down on the grass beside me, thinking that the scent might attract flies if the open top was upward. But when I looked after some time, the bottle was full of ants. And beneath it, where the dregs must have dripped, there was a heaving mass of more ants. I edged away a little. I even considered abandoning the bottle when I left, instead of responsibly taking it to the bin as intended.

But by the time I was ready to leave (to buy a bite of lunch) all but three of the ants inside had gone. Perhaps it had got hot inside. I just had to shake the stragglers out onto the grass and go.

In the afternoon, I walked back to the hotel and asked to borrow one of their bikes. The availability of bikes had seemed like an asset when I booked the hotel, but the constant heat had made cycling unattractive. Even though it was after five, there was really very little dimunition of the temperature, but felt that a circuit of the walls by bike was a milestone I’d like to meet.

But I didn’t head for the walls straight away. I took the road parallel to the railway and came to the acqueduct. Actually, I’d missed the terminal of it by a hundred metres, but there was access to the path along its base anyway. On my previous stay in Lucca, I’d walked it, and found that you left the city suburbs behind very quickly, with countryside and farmland on all sides.

Walking had been more relaxed than cycling, to be honest, because there was just one deep wheel rut, about the width of your hand, and you had to either concentrate on keeping in it, or bump over the rougher parts of the path. I went as far as the motorway. There’s an old, rusty pedestrian bridge that allows you to follow the acqueduct for a while longer, but I didn’t fancy carting the bike over it. The shorter bridge at the railway station has a metal gutter alonside the stairs to allow you to wheel your bike smoothly, but this one did not.

I turned back and covered the same route, except carrying on to the “Tempietto” at the city end. They didn’t do industrial buildings for their water or other services in the nineteenth century, they built a classical temple in stone.

Then I rode back to the cycling-friendly underpass system that gets you from the railway station side to the city walls. There are modern tunnels under the railway and the main road, and then a sort of postern through the side of the Santa Maria bastion.

It was still pretty hot, even at six o’clock, and some segments of the pathway round the walls were straight-on to the sun and not shaded by the trees, but it was still an easy ride. After completing the circuit, I came off the walls and cycled in some of the quieter parts of the old town, before going back to the hotel to hand back the bike.

Later that evening, I took a final stroll around the city before having a ridiculously large calzone pizza for dinner. Then I walked the short distance to the Irish pub for a final pint. I know it was a mid-week night, but the place seemed to have quietened down since my previous stay in Lucca. One thing that did cheer me up was with the transvestite chap, who back then would wander in, sadly walk around the bar watching what was going on, and shortly depart without ordering anything. Now I could see that he was having a half-pint and chatting to other regulars.

Wednesday 27th June

I waited until the morning before pcking, figuring that it wouldn’t take long to tip everything into the suitcase. I paid my bill and got in the car. I had a half-day to fill before my flight, and hadn’t been able to think at first of what I could do with the time. But just the day before, it had come to me: Torre del Lago, Puccini’s home. On my previous stay in Lucca, I’d gone there by train, and then a kilometre walk from the station. Driving would be relative luxury. It would be about a half hour from Lucca, and then afterwards just another half hour to Pisa airport. Easy. I set the satnav for what I thought was the correct address, the long road which I had once walked to get to the lake, Via Giacomo Puccini.

Actually, it’s “Viale”, not “Via”: “Avenue” instead of “Road”. So what happened was that the satnav directed me into Viareggio. There was quite a lot of traffic, and the voice directing me was telling me to take left and right turns every fifty or hundred metres as though I was going stepwise across a grid. Something was not right.

At this point, I’ll mention that the particular voice is that of Naoimh Tuohy from Westport, who won a competition on Today FM to be the ‘voice of Ireland’. She’ll say things like “After two hundred metres, bear left onto the motorway. That would be the big road, there.” or “Sharp right. Oooh.” Anyway, Naoimh clearly wasn’t getting me there, but after accidentally driving twice round a carpark, I found a place to stop and corrected my error. It was simple from then on.

Actually, it was lucky, in a way. Previously, I’d only seen “the strip” at Viareggio, the typical beachfront scene, but I’d managed to get lost in the part of the city along the river, and that looked a lot more characterful and interesting. It might be good to know if I’m ever in the area again.

In a few minutes, I was driving into the car park at Torre del Lago Puccini, to give it the full name. Slightly excessive, I think. Just on the corner of the carpark is a large modern restaurant, and I had to smile at the near life-size figues of the Blues Brothers outside. Perfect for opera fans.

The lake area wasn’t busy. I took to a seat under the shade of a giant maple (I think), which I guess was probably full grown when the man himself lived there. When I got bored of sitting, I took a turn around the grounds of the modern amphitheatre which has been built to host opera festivals. I’m sure it’s a modern marvel but it’s an ugly, blue monstrosity. I don’t buy the argument that using modern materials as they are designed to be used gives an integrity equal to, say, a Roman building made from stone in the only way they knew.

When I came back to the shady spot, there were two groups of young teenagers, one Italian and one Chinese. Much innocent fun was had between the two over instruction in gesture and broken English over how not to lose your gelato in the heat. It is a minor skill to lick it and control the melting, of course. The Chinese were total novices.

I held out as long as I could, but eventually, I had to go to the airport. The Hertz girl who took back my car got into the driver’s seat and, before even taking the key from me, immediately turned down the visor mirror and checked her hair and makeup. Ah, Italy.

Airports are tedious. There’s no getting away from it, but I had no particular delays and an uneventful flight. The landing though, into torrential, blustery rain, was quite exciting. Ah, the Irish Summer. Welcome home.

Italy 2012 – Umbria 2

Sunday 17th June

The medieval fest in Bevagna was to have stuff going on all day, but I thought I’d go specifically for the medieval food. The competing teams had two types of rustic establishment, the “taverna” for snacks and the “locanda” for full meals. The programme said that they’d be open 17:00 – 19:00 and 21:00 – 23:00.

I should have learned my lesson about punctuality. When I arrived at about five, I was able to see the last few shots of the archery competition, which had been due to end by three. And there were no tavernas open (apart from ordinary, non-medieval, commercial ones).

Eventually one taverna started to serve sandwiches and that sort of thing. I got one on crusty bread with a genuine medieval ceramic cup of wine. The first bite into the bread broke off my temporary front tooth topping, leaving me disfigured.

I think that accident made me rather grumpy, so rather than wait and have more substantial food in Bevagna, I went home and cooked my own.

Monday 18th June

I followed a similar pattern: enjoying the bright morning, taking cover from the midday sun, and then later venturing out. This time it was to Trevi.

Trevi is a neighbour of Spello, and something similar, clinging to a steep hillside. But Trevi is a little more scruffy and unkempt than Spello, probably because the latter has a better developed civic pride, with a constant flow of initiatives, such as “best flower display on the steps of your house” competitions.

But I like Trevi. There were signs of refurbishment going on, both private and civic. I hoped that they didn’t overdo it.

After Trevi, I went to the big supermarket and bought some supplies, including superglue. Back home, I glued my errant fake tooth onto the real half, and it seemed to stick. It survived dinner anyway, which was a very unusual one in a way.

I’d never stayed anywhere in Italy previously where I had a working oven. Some tiny apartments simply don’t have them, with very basic cooking facilities in a “kitchen corner”, and some don’t have the electrical supply to power an oven anyway. But I had an oven, and used it to heat a supermarket frozen pizza. Just for a change.

Tuesday 19th June

I waited until after the midday peak in the heat before leaving for Orvieto. Even so, the car’s display showed forty degrees at one point. I’d managed to take a wrong turning by trying to second-guess the satnav, and took the longer main-road route rather than the shorter, more direct one.

At Orvieto, you can park for free in the ugly, modern part of town and get the funicular up to the old city above, or you can drive up and pay a modest parking fee in the large car park. I took the latter course.

I’d been to Orvieto a few times before, and had no particular objective. The frescoes in the cathedral are very famous, but you only need to see them once. I just wandered the town, and managed to find bits of it that I hadn’t seen before, as well as the parts that I knew.

One thing I did which I’d missed on previous visits was to go down St. Parick’s Well, il Pozzo di San Patrizio. It’s named after the one on St. Patrick’s island in Lough Derg which tradition claims to be bottomless. The one in Orvieto isn’t, but it’s pretty deep, and fitted with a double helix of staircases which were intended for small donkeys to carry barrels up and down.

Actually, in retrospect, the donkeys plan doesn’t seem that progressive. They had the technology to drill a big well through solid, if rather soft, rock (it was in the 1500s) but couldn’t come up with a barrel hoist, or a series of archimedes screws, or something else? (Brunelleschi had huge, ox-driven cranes for building the dome of Florence cathedral a hundred years before then.)

After St. Pat, I took to the roads for home, the direct roads this time. I’d considered a stop-off in Todi, but decided I was too tired for it and just drove home for dinner.

Wednesday 20th June

This was an official “do not drive madly off somewhere” day. I spent the whole day in the garden at home.

Looking down into the valley below — wheat fields, olive groves, vineyards, woods — I felt my chest go tight. Perhaps for the first time on this holiday, I was feeling the desperate longing to be in Italy always. I can’t explain it.

From a practical point of view, there’s a lot to be said for living up in the hills, in Summer anyway, with cooling breezes and probably a five degree temperature difference with the valley floor. Though from where I was staying, it was a fifteen-minute drive down to Bruna, the nearest shops, petrol stations and so on. It’s a trade-off.

I found that the bread I’d intended to use for dinner was already spotted with mould, another disadvantage of a warm climate, and had to improvise something different. But all was well in the end.

Thursday 21st June

I got up “early” at nine, and was able to depart before ten. This was to be my final big trip of the holiday in Umbria, and I’d had trouble deciding where to go: too many places I’d like to see and too little time. At first I’d considered Norcia to be too far, but when I checked out the actual distances with some route planning, I found that I could be there in little over an hour. I could even make the onward journey to Castelluccio.

I was very familiar with part of the route, from Spoleto to Cerreto, including the long tunnel through the mountain, from my stay in Preci for two months in 2009. I tried to guesstimate how many times I’d driven it back then. Probably a couple of times a week, given that Preci is quite remote and Spoleto marks the start of “civilization”.

Traffic was slow as far as Cerreto because of a big, foreign-registered, dual-trailer truck, although I did eventually get round him when my turn came, with a fully Italian suicide overtaking manoeuvre. Oddly (perhaps) when I returned down the same road later in the day, I was held up by another foreign heavy truck (I couldn’t make out the country of origin in either case). I couldn’t work out why there should be heavy transport traffic on such a twisty valley road in the mountains that doesn’t go anywhere significant. Maybe their satnavs are flawed, or perhaps there’s some scam going on.

I still got to Norcia before the midday heat, parked the car in a familiar spot, and entered the town through the Roman gate (fancifully reconstructed in the 1800s). When I’d stayed at Preci, Norcia’s Co-op, just outside the walls, was my nearest big supermarket, and I’d visited several times for shopping; and also just because I like the town. The architecture is quite distinctive — earthquake-proofed by thick, sloping walls on the ground floor — and the main piazza is very picturesque, with a relatively modern statue of San Benedotto in the middle, surrounded by the castle, the town hall and St. B’s basilica, and the mountains towering beyond.

It was to the mountains I was bound next, driving up twisty little roads stuck precariously to the hillsides. I get a distinct physical sensation of fear in such situations. There is a crash barrier, but beyond it a long, long drop. The road tops out on a high pass that must be about 2000 metres (I’ll check that), and then the incredible high plain of Castelluccio comes into view below. The altoplano is completely flat and mostly given over to agriculture, tiny Castelluccio being famous all over Italy for its lentils.

Rectangular fields define their form by the colour of the flowers growing in them, purple and yellow and red. The display of colour is better a little later in the season, say mid-July, but I was impressed enough. I had actually visited the town once before, even earlier, well out of tourist season and the snows still thick on the mountain, and had the inescapable feeling that there was something of the Wild West about it. There were even donkeys running loose in the main street.

No donkeys this time, just foreign and Italian tourists (quite a few bikers, and some obviously heroically determined cyclists). The place seemed scrubbed cleaner than I remembered it, although the tradition of writing epigrams on the walls of the buildings had been maintained. All the restaurants were doing good business, and there are quite a few for such a small place. I still got that Western feeling though. (There is a ‘Monti Sibillini Ranch’ on the valley floor where you can rent a horse and a cowboy hat. Honest.)

I drove onward from Castelluccio, up the hill and then twisting a long way down, to Visso. Visso is quite near to Foligno as the crow flies, which would have been a nice circular route taking me home, but when I consulted the map I found there was no reasonable way to drive it if you weren’t a crow. It meant I had to go back to Cerreto, via Preci, and back through the tunnel.

Friday 22nd June

With the long drive up to Lucca the following day, this was definitely one to take it easy. So I did. I only ventured away from home to put some petrol in the car and to buy a bottle of wine for dinner. That was my only visit to the supermarket in Bruna, and if it hadn’t happened that I’d bought enough when I was at the big one at Piazza Umbra, then this one would certainly have served my needs.

The only problem was that the wine was all too cheap. When you’re fairly ignorant, as I am, of all the multitudinous varieties of Italian wine, you can at least use price as a proxy for quality. It doesn’t always apply, of course, but it’s some kind of guideline. The Italian system of quality and regional labelling is even less useful.

The cheapest bottle was €0.99 and it was labelled DOC. The most expensive was a Brunello at €14.99 but I went for the second-most expensive, a very local Sagrantino di Montefalco at a reassuringly expensive €6.99.

When I got back it was late afternoon, and Michelle and Lewis very kindly invited me to partake of some antepasti and wine. That stretched out pleasantly quite a long time, so that it was almost nine o’clock before I was making my dinner: the last thing I had left in the fridge, a supermarket pizza. But I dressed it up a bit with some extra toppings, and I had the nice wine to go with it.

Saturday 23rd June

I took my leave, quite regretfully, at about eleven-thirty and hit the road. I’d decided on a direct, shorter but slower route than the motorway one recommended by Gooogle and TomTom. Well, less of it on motorways, because the first leg was up the familiar Flaminia route past Assisi and Perugia. I had selected Siena for a major break in the driving, at about two-thirds of the total distance, but after passing Perugia, I realised that a break at one third would put me at Passignano sul Trasimeno, giving me a chance to see the lake properly for the only time on this holiday. The previous year, I’d been based in Sant’Arcangelo on the southern shore.

I spent over an hour in Passignano. Stretched my legs and took some photos. Looked at the water. That sort of thing. Then I got back in the car and got back on the road.

For Siena, I’d tried to remember how to get to the underground car park called “Il Campo”, since it is just a stone’s throw from the town’s ancient piazza of that name. In the event, it was very well signposted. It’s expensive for parking, but the convenience and the coolness of the underground make it worth it for the occasional visit.

I didn’t have much time, but I did make a point of paying my way in to the town hall museum, mainly so that I could go up to the open loggia to enjoy the view. It’s my custom when I go to Siena.

In the town hall itself, there was a wedding and one room was filled with coloured ballons. I don’t know if those two facts are connected. Maybe not. The balloons could have been an art installation.

I bought a sandwich for late lunch, went and looked at the cathedral, watched the people in the Campo. The Palio was still over a week away, but the wooden barriers and some of the grandstand seats were in place. I don’t think I’d be interested enough to see the Palio as a “groundling”. A nice seat at the window of one of the overlooking palazzi and I’d consider it.

I left Siena on a direct-line route to Lucca, the latter part of which was on quite minor roads, but I was following instructions from the satnav. Sure enough, I eventually emerged onto the major route into Lucca and the hotel sits right on it. I’d picked it for ease of access and having a car park, although I could only afford an “economy” single room. The hotel people very kindly put me into an executive double instead.

The manager had also recommended a couple of restaurants in the city centre (about a ten-minute walk, or fifteen in the heat), and after taking a general wander round to check out the competition, I picked one of the recommended ones and had a very tasty dinner.

Italy 2012 – Umbria 1

Sunday 10th June 2012

I thought I’d take it easy, easy like a Sunday morning. It was sunny, and pleasantly warm; quite a lot cooler than baking Pisa had been. I made friends with one of the two little cats I’d been introduced to the night before (although I couldn’t remember if this was Maurizio or Giovanni who had turned up — Mo or Jo). I’d brought three, yes three pairs of cheap sunglasses, because I always scratch them. I had the idea of sacrificing one pair in order to repair my prescription driving glasses — yes, I had found the errant lens in the bottom of the suitcase. But I’d need a tiny jeweller’s screwdriver, and I had no idea where to find a tiny jeweller on a Sunday. Then I remembered, my Leatherman tool had a very fine-guage screwdriver, and it fitted perfectly. I stole a screw from the cheap sunglasses, causing a leg to fall off, and put it into the driving glasses. A total success.

And that was about it for my day. I made my own dinner and drank a bottle of chianti and went to bed.

Monday 11th June 2012

Monday dawned dark and stormy. Mid-morning, it even rained. With the afternoon looking better, I decided to drive to Spoleto and get reacquainted, it having been three years since I’d been there. I’ve always been ambivalent about Spoleto. It’s picturesque and there’s lots to see and do, but for some reason I’ve rarely warmed to it, really. It’s very hilly, for one thing, which means strenuous climbs to see those things worth seeing.

Or at least, that was always the case previously, but thanks now to the wonder of the age, the scala mobile, or escalator system, you can be whisked up from the base of the town to the castle that sits at the peak.

Actually, the first time, I made my way “manually” to the top, having seen no sign of promised escalator. I went round to the amazing Ponte dei Torri and went the minimum respectable distance of half-way across. There’s nothing much on the far side, and, anyway, I’m nervous with heights.

After winding my way back to the valley bottom, I made a more concerted effort to find the escalators, and located the bottom end in a part of town I had never visited before. There are about eight escalator segments, and I was surprised that at none of the landings is there access out of the system into the town. No, you have to go right to the top.

So I did that, and then followed the winding route back down a second time, before collecting the car and driving to the big supermarket to stock up on more food. By the time I got back to the apartment, it was eight o’clock, a good time to start making dinner.

Tuesday 12th June 2012

I was making a conscious effort to take time to smell the roses, rather than rushing off in all directions. Every year, I try. Some times more successfully than others. I stayed at home all day, with the farthest departure just a few hundred metres up the road to the signpost for ‘Milano’. I didn’t see anyone, so I can’t comment on this year’s fashions.

The weather had definitely turned, making the walk quite strenous in the baking heat.

Wednesday 13th June 2012

I hit the road for Assisi — not really very far away — and arrived by about ten thirty. I didn’t have any particular agenda, just a desire to see the old place again. I did go into the basilica, all three levels, with St Francis at the bottom. Somehow, it seemed significant that there was a Dominican brother sitting next to his tomb, collecting “offerings”. Not Franciscan, with their oath of poverty. (Although for a couple of hundred years after the death of Francis, the Church frequently strove to re-educate monks who insisted that the oath was to be taken literally. Sometimes this re-education was so strict that it involved burning the monks at the stake, presumably to make them see the error of their ways.)

It had become rather hot, but I carried on with my final plan, which was to see San Damiano, where Francis had his revelation. On a previous visit to Assisi, I had ditched that target at the last minute because I’d been wearing new shoes and my feet ached. This time, I discovered how good a decision I’d made, because the way down is steep with little shade, making the way back up…

My favourite part of San Damiano was the little cloister, full of flowers.

When I climbed back up, I didn’t go back into Assisi, but got in the car and headed on over to Spello, city of flowers. Actually, the day after I had arrived in Umbria was the town’s beautiful and famous “Infiorata” or flower-petal ceremonies. I’d have liked to see it, but I was tired from the day before.

There were some faint traces still left, where large artworks had been made in the streets. But, anyway, the main point was just to enjoy Spello. The polygonal towers at the Porta Venere had been wrapped up in scaffolding on my last visit, and although work was continuing, the towers were exposed, pink and clean. Maybe over-restored, but maybe a bit of weather will tone them down.

After Spello, I drove to the Fonti del Clitunno, taking the minor roads, not the SS3 Autostrada. The weather had been very hot, making the cool shade beneath the trees next to the water even more pleasant. I just like the place. It’s peaceful and somehow primeval, with the water bubbling out of springs in the embankment which carries the old SS3, the Via Flaminia, the Roman road between Rome and Rimini, on the distant Adriatic coast. Incidentally, it was named after Flaminius, the general who was whupped by Hannibal and his boys (and one surviving elephant) at Trasimeno.

On the way back home, I took the route which led me past Castel San Giovanni, site of my first stay in Umbria, in 2006. The castle had been cleaned severely. The little apartment where I stayed, within the thickness of the castle walls, showed no sign of life.

Thursday 14th June 2012

This time, indolence had a purpose. I was going to have an easy day and then drive to Bevagna (just 30km) for the opening ceremony of their Mercato delle Gaite, their two-week celebration of the town’s medieval history. The ceremony was scheduled to start at nine, and even being well aware of Italian punctuality, I was seated in one of the temporary grandstand seats in the central piazza shortly after eight-thirty.

Things kicked off puctually on the dot of ten o’clock, but I ddn’t really mind the delay, having a place to sit and enjoy the mild evening.

The ceremony basically consisted of the teams from the four competing town quarters arriving in full costume, being blessed by a (presumably fake) bishop, and sitting down to hear some brief speechifying.

Then there was entertainment with stilt-walkers, clowns, fire-eaters and that kind of nonsense. I quite enjoyed it.

By about twelve-thirty, it was all over, and I took to the car for the journey home. Since it was dark and I wanted to stick to main roads, I took the route through Foligno to get onto the autostrade south.

Towards the end of the journey, climbing up the hiils towards home, a big porcupine scurried across the road in my headlights. But he then found that the verge was too high to climb, trapping him at the roadside so that I could slow right down to have a look. The first wild one I’d seen.

Friday 15th June 2012

Another day of which there is little to report, apart from lazing around and ejoying the views, and the weather.

There was a hammock a little distance from the house, under the trees, with views down into the valley. I hadn’t tried it yet. I did. I fell out immediately. I tried again, more carefully, and succeeded in holding position. But it didn’t seem very relaxing, which I had thought was the objective of hammocks, because every small movement threatened to tip me out again. I gave up on it.

Some time later, I tried the other hammock in the garden, and to my suprise, found it needed no effort at all to stay in it, and it was indeed relaxing. The other one was defective, obviously.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps the architecture of the ropes at each end was the problem. I tried untieing and re-tieing a number of times, but couldn’t decide if I was making improvements, or just learning better hammock skills.

That evening, Michelle, Lewis and I went to the very large restaurant-pizzeria at Montemartano, just a kilometre down the road. A nice evening out.

Saturday 16th June

In the morning, I hiked down a pathway which adjoined the house for a little distance, perhaps a kilometre. The weather was very hot and it was steep. Going down was fairly easy, but I was conscious that I’d have to climb back up. There was a ruined casale, or farmhouse, which once would have been a very substantial building. Next to it was a square pond, maybe four metres on a side, still fed by a spring from the hill. But something was dead in it. The smell wasn’t unbearable, but pretty distictive. I moved on.

Breaking out from tree cover, I entered an olive grove: regular rows of ancient, but obviously trimmed and well-tended trees cutting across the baked earth. At the other end there was another ruined farmhouse, giving a hint to the way the land would have been occupied and farmed in the past.

I climbed back up, sweating, and missed a turning in the path, because I came out at the road, a few hundred metres from home. Well, I squeezed out, actually, between two iron gates that were chained together, although not well. Back to the garden for some hammock work.

In the later afternoon, I went to Montefalco, just for a walk around. But when I saw the town museum, I remembered reading that it was worth seeing. When I asked the receptionist how much the ticket cost, she said “only six euros”. Only. Actually, I found it interesting enough, and there was no-one else there, even staff.

Italy 2012 – Pisa

Wednesday 6th June 2012

The invasion of Europe went well. The worst part was standing in line for 45 minutes at Jet2’s “bag drop”. (When you check in on-line, you still have to check in your luggage at the airport. It’s a stupid system.)

At Pisa airport, I decided to take the bus into town, rather than the train as I had done on previous occasions. The distance is only about two kilometres, which ought to make the train the obvious choice, if it was operated as a continuous shuttle. But it isn’t. They only run twice per hour.

Bus it was then. That only took a few minutes anyway, and I walked the short distance to the hotel. It was about seven o’clock by then, and so a short time later, I headed into Pisa centre. The area around the station isn’t as dingy as it used to be, and the newly-refurbished Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II is stylish and connects directly to Corso Italia, Pisa’s most upmarket shopping street.

That leads to the half-way bridge, the Ponte Mezzo, over the Arno, and directly to Borgo Stretto, a characterful street with medieval and renaissance buildings.

In that old part of town, I found a promising-looking restaurant and had a fine dinner.

On the recommendation of the Guardian newspaper [http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/may/25/tuscany-beer-bars-tour-italy] (Yes, I read The Guardian. Do you want to make something of it?) I located Orzo Bruno, a hostelry serving microbrewery beers. Now, I’m no beer expert, but for the experience, I had a half-litre of two of their offerings: Montemagno, red, double-malted with honey, 7.2%; and Gorgona, pale, double-malted, 7.1%.

Thursday 7th June 2012

I realised that I had only two full days in Pisa, and that the following Saturday would probably be tiring, with the long drive. I decided that if I was going to do a big trip then the Thursday would be the day for it. I walked to the station and, from the ticket machine, bought a ticket to Vernazza, in the Cinque Terre. As it happened, the optimum route, as selected by machine, was a direct and relatively fast Intercity to Monterosso, also one of the Cinque Terre towns, and then a local hop. It gave me two tickets, meaning that I could get off at Monterosso and then go on to Vernazza whenever it suited me.

The station at Monterosso is half-way up the cliff, with views down to the beach and the bay. There’s a promenade above the beach, and everything is quite small scale and low key. Not an over-developed resort.

The old part of town is “round the corner” in the next bay, with a tunnel bored through the cliff to link the two parts. I assume that it was a solution to allow the railway station to be accessible, in spite of the only possible rail route having to miss the town.

I bought a slab of foccacia with olives for lunch, and browsed and idled for a couple of hours. No beach or swims for me. Not my thing.

In the later afternoon, I went back to the station and found that there was a train to Vernazza in under half an hour. Actually, there wasn’t — I hadn’t noticed that the service was Sundays and Feast Days only. It meant that I had to wander around for about another hour, before taking the short, five-minute ride to Vernazza.

There was one time earlier in the year when I was bored and channel-surfing on the television, and I came to a scene of a pretty Mediterranean seaside town. It looked to me as though it could be one of the Cinque Terre towns, and indeed, with a little internet research later, I discovered it to be Vernazza. (The programme was an episode of “Rosemary and Thyme”, which I don’t usually watch, even though Felicity has still got it, by God.)

Vernazza is smaller than Monterosso, and rather more “quaint”. I liked it.

All the Cinque Terre towns are still recovering from the floods and landslides of late 2011, but a lot of hard work has gone on, and most things are back to normal.

I took a slow, local train to La Spezia, where I changed for Pisa without leaving the station platforms. (Perhaps I should have performed a reconaissance for future reference.) In Pisa, it was a quick brush-up before going back into the old town for a pizza. Cheap and nourishing, like the half-litre of local wine which accompanied it.

Friday 8th June 2012

I’d seen the Leaning Tower on three or four previous visits, but had never been inside. In the early days, it was still closed for the rescue work which stabilized its lean, and then on later day-trips, I was up against the booking system. Because the authorities want to restrict wear and tear, only small parties may visit the tower, half an hour at a time, and it costs a whopping fifteeen euros. You must also book your time slot in advance, which in peak times might be many hours ahead. On previous occasions, I’d decided “some other time” when I saw the length of the wait.

Actually, on this occasion, the queue wasn’t so bad, about 90 minutes, and I could easily fill that time by looking around the rest of the site, the “Field of Miracles”.

To be honest, going up the tower scared me a little, particularly on the downward-facing sides of the slope. I’m nervous with heights anyway, but it just had to be done.

Back on terra much firma, I read the history of the tower and decided that if I’d been around I’d have insisted that they excavate and insert heavy foundation stones at the first hint of instability. Then nobody would have been much interested in the perfectly normal bell tower in Pisa. It has been pointed out to me that the Titanic, from Belfast, was a bit like that too.

When I’d bought the ticket for the tower, I’d also purchased one for the museum, the Opera del Duomo, which my guidebook had said contains stuff worth seeing. Indeed it does, but the best part is the internal cloister, which is peaceful and gives you views of the tower which the majority of tourists never see.

As I walked back to my hotel, I remembered that I had forgotten to visist Pisa’s second most interesting architectural area, the Piazza del Cavalieri. When I went out for dinner, I made a detour to visit it, but was disappointed, since most of the square was fenced off and dug up in a new prettification scheme. It will be great when it is finished.

The previous night, while I had my cheap pizza, I’d noticed that the neighbouring expensive restaurant seemed to be thriving. I thought I’d splash out on my last night. When I sat down, they brought me a glass of champagne and a little dish of soup as an appetizer before I’d ordered anything. “This will cost me,” I thought.

In the end, it wasn’t actually all that expensive, but I was disappointed in the food, which was over-pretentious and under-cooked.

Saturday 9th June 2012

I checked out of the hotel and dragged my suitcase to the station. This time, I took a train to the airport, since there was one leaving in three minutes. Not that I was going to fly anywhere — I was collecting the rental car, a Ford Fiesta “or similar”. I was worried they’d give me a Lancia. The arrangement for car hires had changed since last time I’d used it, a number of years before. Now there was a shuttle bus to a separate block of offices. Quickly being processed, and choosing the offered Ford over the Fiat, I found my car (The keyfob said “silver”. That was silver as in “black”.) and was on my way by ten thirty.

One minor hitch was when I opened the case for my “driving” sunglasses and found that one of the miniscule screws had come out, allowing a lens to come loose and, I hoped, lose itself somewhere in the chaotically-packed suitcase (I’d unpacked on arrival, then repacked that morning). It didn’t occur to me to try to drive on one lens, but with my vision being boderline legal, in my home administration at least, I put on a pair of the normal, non-correcting sunglassses and made the best of it.

I took a break at a motorway services after a hundred kilometres, a third of the way; and then a longer break at Cortona at two thirds. At Cortona, there was an English wedding in prospect, with highly-dressed guests wandering the piazza.

I broke the final leg at the big supermarket at Piazza Umbria to buy a few supplies to get me started. Then it was across country under the control of the satnav, to find my home for the next two weeks.

When I arrived, the owners, Michelle and Lewis, made me very welcome, and invited me in for a drink and then dinner. Australians, they had planned to do me a barbie, but the evening was unusually cool and blustery, leading to that plan being postponed. A pot of pasta and ragu was fine though.