A full day in Florence

We had a fabulous local guide today for our time in the Medici Chapels and the Uffizi Gallery. He's an American teacher, an art archivist. Walking through the art in these buildings, he stopped at selected pieces and provided us a historical and artistic perspective. I never took an art class in high school or college - always went for the music and drama instead. I'm tempted to spend a few months in Florence and take every class he teaches! It makes a huge difference to understand what I'm looking at.

Between tours, we explored the public market - a lively place with the most tempting offerings. We decided against flowers, fruits and vegetables, but did pick up dry ingredients for pasta topping and a jar of truffles.

We enjoyed a rooftop lunch with friends. We laughed and chatted, most likely annoying the perfectly coiffed and dressed Italian women around us. Of the six of us, no one ordered a meat dish. We were ready for salads.

For dinner our group had big bowls of soup, stuffed artichokes(!) and custard tarts. It was the lightest dinner we've eaten in over a week. I asked someone in the group why we haven't seen any fat Italians. They said, "They're at home, eating." A good laugh. But my goodness, the food!

Florence, touring

Usually when we travel, we spend most of our time in small towns and in the countryside. When we were in the UK a few years ago, we spent a week 60 miles from London but only saw the airport. With a group, though, we go where the group goes.

So we're in Florence now. Beautiful city. Old. Famous paintings and sculpture and architecture. Gorgeous shop windows and interesting, tiny restaurants.

But also noisy, with motorscooters and buses and pickpockets.

Yesterday we walked with the group. With the day's theme "Florence in the Middle Ages", we visited San Miniato, a Romanesque church that stands atop one of the highest points in Florence on the south side of the River Arno. Quite a climb! We walked back down through the Piazzale Michelangelo, with its panoramic views of the city, crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and strolled through the city to the Piazza Santa Croce, where we had a guided tour of the church where we saw the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and assorted other famous souls.

I think I might be all cathedraled out!

Last night we had dinner "on our own", and we chose a little Chinese place next door to the hotel. Not exactly like our familiar place in Washington State, but good enough. And we don't gather with the group in the morning until 10:30, so we'll have plenty of time to sleep.

I love Italy and am glad for the city opportunity. But so far, my heart is still out there in the countryside of Umbria.

Just outside the walls of Florence

Assisi to Florence

On the way to Florence, we took a ferry to Isola Maggiore, the only inhabited island on Lake Trasimeno, with a current population of 35. St Francis lived on the island as a hermit from 1211. Today it looked like an off-season place.

On the way back from the island, we mingled happily with a classful of Italian teenagers on a field trip with their mathematics instructor. They sang to us, we sang to them, we all sang together on "Yellow Submarine" and "Volare". Love the serendipity of travel!

We'll be in Florence for six nights, I think. The Strozzi Palace Hotel is a boutique hotel situated right in the oldest part of Florence historical center, in a lively pedestrian area. Art set out to do the laundry and I went looking for an optical shop to fix my glasses, which got sat on back in Orvieto. I got lost and ended up at the laundromat, where Art was holding forth with other English-speaking travelers while he waited for our two loads to be done. I went back to the hotel, took another look at the map, and found the optical shop.

Our group took a short historical walk on the way to dinner. There's a richness in this city we'll be exploring all week.

Francis and Assisi

For some reason I never knew St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a wealthy man and, in his youth, was a "bad boy". At a certain point he narrowed his goal: "to walk in the footsteps of Jesus".

Today we visited the basilica built two years after his death to honor him. One of the finest tour guides I've ever experienced - knowledge of Francis' life and of art. All delivered in a low voice into my ear via headphone. I converted to Catholicism as a young woman and left the church 20 years later after a divorce. Today I was reminded again of the simplicity of the original message of Jesus.

Assisi is a hill town, built on rock. The hills are mostly steep and, it seems, mostly up. We walked four miles today on a self-guided walking tour suggested by our Rick Steves guide to Italy.

We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant two alleyways away from the central square. The proprietor noticed my Rick Steves book, brought me eight business cards in a torrent of Italian I didn't understand. Except I did. She wanted me to get one of those cards to Rick Steves. If a business gets visited by him or someone in his organization, and gets included in a subsequent edition of the guidebook, the business will thrive. I told her I would take the card to him. And I will. His office is two towns over from where we live.

Tomorrow we leave for Florence and a laundromat!

Olive picking in Agello

Our tour guide Stefania lives in Agello, a tiny hill town in Umbria. She made arrangements for our group to pick olives and then take them to the mill for the oil to be extracted.

Before the olives are picked from a tree, a large net is laid down around it - kind of like a Christmas tree skirt. Then the olives are removed from the tree.

Branches can be shaken, or the olives can be picked by hand, or a special rake can be used. The laborer is my husband Art.

The olives fall into the netting and are then transferred into baskets for transport to the mill.

We watched the milling process and each participant received a bottle of brand new olive oil.

Usually when we travel, after five or six days I become so relaxed I feel boneless.

I am there.

Travel day - Orvieto to Assisi

Traveling through Umbria today, we saw miles and miles of countryside that photos can't do justice to. I wanted to doze but didn't want to miss a single glorious scene out the window.

Our first stop was at a 12th century monastery converted to an Alice in Wonderland type place by an eccentric architect, owned for the last 22 years by a couple of men who reconstructed it, who now live there and give tours of the place. The architect had talent, but the outpouring of his creativity went into a place he never expected the public to see. It was a tribute to vanity and oddly disturbing to me.

Lunch was at an agritourismo place. The Italian government, seeking to save farms from being abandoned and falling into ruin, offered 150,000 euros to people who would move to the countryside, fix up the farms and develop some kind of business that would create jobs and contribute to tourism. This place was an idyllic restaurant. We had our usual multi-course meal: antipasto, first course pasta, second course meat dish, and dessert. This week I've learned to eat only what I really want of each course so I have room for the next. Even then, limiting my intake is a challenge.

We arrived at Assisi around 5. This is the place where St. Francis was born and is buried. Born to a wealthy family, he renounced the material and lived to serve the poor. Now, the entrance to the city is lined with tour buses and souvenir stands. The steep streets invite visitors to drink and dine and buy. I remarked to a fellow traveler that many have benefitted materially from Francis' presence in this place in the 12th century.

Our hotel is on a steep hill, midway up a flight of stairs. In all our travels, we've had only one hotel room smaller than this - in Dublin in 1999. We were also disappointed to learn the town's laundromat is closed until Monday, so we're washing the necessities in the bathroom sink. Add to that inconvenience the fact that I initiated conversations at dinner on both politics and religion with a couple of conservative fellow travelers. I should know better.

Field trip to Civita

We got on the bus today and took the slow backcountry road to Civita. Here's how Rick Steves describes it: "Perched on a pinnacle in a grand canyon, the traffic-free village of Civita di Bagnoregio is Italy's ultimate hill town....Civita is connected to the world and the town of Bagnorego by a long pedestrian bridge." The soft volcanic tufa stone is eroding, and sometime in the not-too-distant future the town will probably crumble into the canyon. In the meantime, though, it's a lovely destination.

I crossed the bridge by paying no attention to the canyon below me.

Once within the village, I didn't want to get too close to the edge.

Today we also visited Lake Balsena, Italy's largest lake formed in the center of an extinct volcano, and ate an extravagant dinner at La Bodia di Orvieto, a converted convent. A memorable day, our last in the Orvieto area.