Advertisement
Published: December 28th 2015
I haven't said very much about the place that we're staying at. This is a villa that Wendy found out about when searching the internet a year ago. Where we're staying is actually a duplex. We have three levels to ourselves, and the owners have two levels beside us - they actually live in England, and aren't here at the moment. The third level on the owner's side is extra room in case more than 3 bedrooms need to be rented out.
The building construction is stone, brick, and mortar with large timbers supporting the levels. The walls here are thick - not just in our building, but in Italy in general - about 2 feet thick. I thought that people were going to be losing out on so much space when we went from 2 by 4 to 2 by 6 framing on our Saskatoon houses! The other thing that is interesting is that a lot of the buildings look to have metal reinforcement to keep the walls from falling outward. It looks to be a metal claw with a rod bolted to it, and the metal bar runs through the length or width of the building and has
In the Villa's Garden
Red Grapes, Green Grapes, Plums, Apples, and I forget what else was there for easy pickinga matching claw on the other side. Just a guess that they run through the house, I haven't been allowed to build a house by hand here yet.
The top floor is kitchen and living space. We were kind of suprised that there didn't seem to be much for utensils and pots and pans and dishes here. Why? It seems that the outdoor kitchen by the pool is better supplied. On the hot days of summer, I'm sure not cooking occurs indoors, so why would they want the kitchen supplies in the house? The weather is a little cooler right now, only hitting 25 or so for the daily high, but it is supposed to warm up for the weekend.
The middle floor has two bedrooms, and both of these rooms have attached bathrooms. The lower floor has one bedroom, a laundry, and possibly some storage behind locked doors. There is a double-door with screen in every bedroom and the living room. We can step right out of our bedroom to a small outside nook with a table and two chairs and have our own private dining area, should be be feeling antisocial and not want to visit
with our friends.
The outdoor garden area around the house has a number of different seating areas. All of them have a beautiful view of the valley. We can see many different towns across the valley, We can hear the church bells from kilometers away. The area is crisscrossed with roads, but we only hear the vehicles that go right beside the villa.
Across the road from us, we have a building that is in ruin. It is owned by the same people that own the villa. I'm curious what their plans are, because I don't think the building is repairable, Too much of the wood has deteriorated and the mortar looks to be quite degraded. I expect that the easiest thing is to pull it down and start again. I'm sure that can't be cheap.
Right beside the ruin is another garden area, an outdoor kitchen, and the swimming pool. Unfortunately, the electrical cover is broken so that the pool cools off quite a bit at night. I find the water too cold, but I must be a bad Canadian. Elinor, Wendy, Wayne and Wey go swimming!
And this is harvest season. The area around
us has a lot of active agriculture. Where we are along the top of a ridge has a lot of olive trees and alfalfa for hay. There is a bee keeper down the road from us,and there are a few cows and chickens being kept. There are more cars than tractors going up and down our road, but I expect all the winding side roads lead to more fields.
And that's the base that we're using to relax, and ocassionally go exploring the local area of Italy. And we're right on the Tuscany-Umbria border, I'm pretty sure the people on the other side of the valley when I look south are in Umbria.
So I'm going to try and keep it straight as to what we did when, but I might have some the order wrong. If so, I'd appreciate it if you didn't correct me.
Monday notes for Glen: at the Villa I wonder if those people using "Air BNB" for their trips have a similar experience to what we're having. We knew that we'd be responsible for cooking and laundry. Monday was hanging around the villa, doing some exploring, some swimming, and some laundry.
And cooking. And eating.
I spent time Monday trying to figure out why I couldn't send email to a bunch of people. Some of my emails to individuals worked. Some didn't, and they were people I'd emailed before! I spent a bunch of time cursing Shaw and not getting any productive results from my cursing. I think I need stronger curse words. That's one of the reasons you haven't seen an email from me earlier.
Is there very much to tell you about Monday? No. Did we have a really good day? You Betcha!
Tuesday notes for Glen: Monterchi, Citta di Castello On Tuesday, Elinor and I went in to explore old Monterchi. It seems that every small town here has some sort of museum, because at some point in Italy's long history, somebody important has come from every small town. The thing is, without knowing all the details of Italian history, I can't tell you who the local people where that were important enough to be comemerated in a museum, or by a statue, or with a street name.
But Monterchi, small as it is, has two museums! The first museum that we went
Streets of Monterchi
Our car wouldn't fit, but a Vespa would to celebrated the history of scales. Two floors with nothing but historical scales. The early scales were simply balances that predefined weights went on the one side, and the object being weighed on the other. The "newer" scales were the ones with the slider on the arm with markings to indicate the weight when the slider balances at that point. Scales for people. Scales to hang sacks, or to dump produce, or to weigh people, or to weigh babies. And with all this, the history of standards being established again and again and again to try and keep trade consistent in an area. If you were planning on coming to Italy to see this museum, I'm sorry I've ruined it for you. Try the museum of typography in Citta di Castello, I didn't go there.
The second museum celebrates an artist that did some church frescos. The main draw of this museum? One painting. Nice, as good as many that we saw at the Ufuzzi. The rest of the museum was a local modern artist. I'm not so much into modern art, especially the type that rivals the work that my grandchildren do. Grandkids, keep doing those pictures and
paintings! You, too, could be featured in a small town museum some day! If not, you'll have to content yourself with artwork that only goes on Nana and Grandpa's fridge.
So how old is Monterchi? I'm not sure. I believe that a lot of the place was destroyed by an earthquake in 1917, and so many of the buildings are reconstructions. Maybe that doesn't change the age of the place, just the age of some of the buildings. And the constant reconstruction that is going on (and restoration of artwork) might mean that nothing is old in Italy except the story that goes with the objects.
The town does have its history. There are multiple war memorials for both the 1st and 2nd World War. I didn't see any from earlier wars, but when reading the histories of how some towns were founded after certain wars or civil unrest, I expect that they just didn't record the losses the same way. There is a book at the villa on the history of Monterchi, but it's in Italian (go figure!) and I'm too lazy to translate it.
And the hilltop portion of Monterchi is small. The township seems
to extend a ways along the highway, but the feel of that area is very different - more or less straight roads, and signs where they can be read easily. We parked at the bottom of the hill, and walked up the steps to (eventually) the top, stopping to read every sign along the way. I'm sure the locals know their way in and out of all the streets, but us tourists had to walk the long way around to be sure of getting where we wanted to go. I know, no sense of adventure.
After exploring the town, we thought we'd head over to a nearby town and look a supermarket to buy a bit more in the way of supplies. I wanted to get whole wheat flour and baking powder to make pancakes, and Elinor wanted to look for a different supply of fruits and vegetables. The GPS got us to Citta di Castello. Elinor figured out how to find a grocery store using the GPS, and then some parking. And then we started walking around the old part of a city with roads designed to frustrate the invading hordes. We were challenged, but walked where the
GPS told us to go. We ended up in the middle of a square with no grocery store in sight. Every street we started to go down the GPS told us to back to the square. Elinor tried asking some young people where to buy food, but they wanted to tell us about restaurants, not grocers. We finally walked down a street and found a small storefront that said "Supermarket". Actually, it was more like "Supermercato" but close enough. And although it was a small storefront, there was a good-sized food store in behind. Challenging trying to communicate "baking powder", but the store employees are very used to tourists, and were very patient and helpful. We got all the supplies we needed (Elinor to Glen: Why are you buying all these bananas?) and headed back to the villa. We caught up with Wayne and Wendy and Wey and Mireille, who unbeknownst to us had gone to buy groceries in .... Citta di Castello! Not much overlap in the groceries, because we had taken the grocery list. And we didn't come to Italy to go grocery shopping, so having some supplies is a good thing!
Wednesday notes for Glen: Chaos Scales at the museum of scales.
You'd think a museum that covers such a weighty issue would be in a bigger center. planning the day - excellent wine tour and wine tasting
Tuesday night we decided that we were going to try a wine tour. We had looked on-line and found a place that just said 3 PM to 7 PM with a wine tasting for 5€ each. Our decision was that it wasn't too far (maybe an hour drive) and we could see what the wine tasting was all about. Come Wednesday morning, there was much confusion as to what we'd talked about the night before. I sent an email to the address on the website, asking if it was a 4-hour event and we had to be there at 3, or if it was just something we showed up to between 3 and 7. The latter was what Elinor and I had done in Senoma Valley and in Michigan, so that was what I expected, especially given the price. I got a quick response to the email, and they confirmed that it was just show up, but if we reserved a time with 6 people it might be easier. OK.
Next challenge - I still can't set waypoints on the GPS. So I want to go past Arezzo, and
take a bigger highway down to Castiglion Fiorentino, and then take a minor road back to the winery. The GPS thinks that the winding roads up and down the hills are much more interesting. We set up google maps on my phone with GPS, and program the magellan to get us there (Magellan - no wonder it wants to go exploring). And we go over the maps, write down the important highway numbers, and see if we have any more luck with Wayne following in a second vehicle.
Things are fine until the map application on the phone exits, and the GPS starts telling me to make a u-turn to find the hill routes. Now I've got two female voices in the car panicking. We pull over, quick conference, reset the phone, and on we go. Still on route. Oh, yes, this road is mostly 90 km, some 110 km, and some 50 km. We get to Arezzo, We turn onto the highway we want. The GPS has giving up on the scenic route, and sulks by giving long periods of silence. On we drive. This road? 50 km per hour. Where I thought we were getting highway, we're
getting main street of one town joining with main street of the next town. No lights, few roundabouts, and lots of crosswalks!
Elinor struggles with getting the phone to zoom, so she only has a vague idea of distance using google maps, and we're not sure if the GPS really knows where we want to go. We ignore one corner, and when we take the next, we're into - you guessed it! - interesting town roads. It does however appear to the be correct way to get there, because the blue dot on the map is moving the right direction, and the GPS isn't in panic mode. We go on until we see the Buccelletti sign, and pull in.
As we get out of the car, it's my turn to panic. I look at the signs, and I'm not sure that we're at the right winery. OK, Wayne goes to the door and asks. Yes, this is the the right one. We're early, I said 3, and showed up at 2:50. I recall how rude is was to show up on time in France, were we being outright insulting by being early? No, I think that the Italians
have a relaxed concept of time. Early, late, whatever, just as long as you're there.
So the person at the door? The owner's son. He tells us, that if we're interested, they have a shipment of grapes coming in and we can watch them being crushed if we want. Silly question. Of course! OK, His wife will give us the tour. She's new to the family, and to Italy. She's from California. But, before the tour starts, it sounds like a different person might give the tour. We know we showed up at harvest time, so maybe the jobs are getting shifted around. And then the mother of the person who answered the door. The owner's wife? No, she's the owner. Well, she and her sister. It turns out the land had fallen into disuse after Lidia's grandfather stopped looking after the farm. They have 4 hectares in grapes, and are preparing a 5th. Lidia and her sister, a few years back, decided to revive to winery. Their husbands were in the landscaping business, so this was a Lidia and Roberta plan.
They consider themselves a boutique winery - 20,000 to 25,000 bottles of wine a year. They
do all their own "pressing" and have their own fermentation tanks. This is an interesting contrast to what we heard in California, where the small producers would just grow the grapes and the processing would be done by the big outfits. In Italy, it didn't seem unreasonable to have smaller teams and smaller trucks and not a huge facility in order to do the work. I don't know the economics of all this, but I think it might be a struggle to make a good living off of just the wine. They also produce olive oil, and do some distilled grape-based liquors as well grapas: and brandy.
Anyway, as soon as we found out we could get a tour we upgraded our visit from just a wine tasting to a tour and a tasting of more than just their standard wines. We sampled three reds, two whites, and Elinor and Wendy sampled the brandy and the grapas and a few other things. And we sat and visited with Lidia, and with one of the daughter-in-laws and we got to see the fancy machine that you dump in clusters of grapes and the grapes are stripped off the vine and
then squeezed of their juice and the juice is pumped into the tank.
The grapes had been brought to the winery by a van with about 30 containers of grapes. Each container was quite large, but Lidia told me that it would take about 15 minutes for an experienced picker to fill the bin. The van full represented only seven and a half hours of picking. Lidia got us a glass of grape juice as it was being pumped into the tanks. Quite good!
A lot of the challenge that they've faced has been missing the generation of wine production. They've had to re-learn a number of things, and also some of the grapes that they're growing aren't common in the area. One variety Lidia went to France to learn how they processed it. When they started making wine, it wasn't expected that a woman would be running winery. They got comments along the lines of: "This is good wine. Where's your husband so I can buy some?" Things are different now, and the success they've had with the quality of their wines has meant that it is now OK to be female and in the wine business.
How long did we stay? Almost 4 hours! Not quite what we expected, but we had an incredible time with the family, and bought some wine to drink - two reds, and a rose that is produced by reducing the amount of time the purple grape skins are part of the process. Some of the fermentation of other wines is done at a cooler temperature to slow fermentation and lock in fragrance. Other fermentation is done in barrels near the top of the roof so that it gets heating and cooling cycles through the season. If I ever need to be educated in how to make wine, I'm going to get a job there.
My original thoughts were that we'd do this wine tour and tasting and that would help us understand what was available in Italy and then we could go looking for a really good tour. Instead, I think we were spoiled and it will be hard for any other winery to offer as much as we got out of this tour.
We're still trying to avoid night driving here. We got back to the villa just as the sun was setting, which meant that
Grape Pressing
Juicing the grapes. No barefooted people stomping grapes here! we were getting hungry. We didn't want to stop along the way to eat. I'm quite impressed with how quickly six people can put together an excellent meal with what just happens to be laying around in the kitchen! And then an evening of just sitting and everyone recognizing that this holiday business can be tiring. Off to bed.
Thursday notes for Glen: Citta di Castello No alarms set today. I'm not sure what time Elinor first woke up, but I was making the effort to get back to sleep. No such luck. We got out of bed at 9, and the others started getting out of bed shortly after. How nice to take a slow start to the day!
Elinor wanted to check out the Donatello artwork at Citerna, the town overlooking Monterchi. When I looked it up, they said they were closed Thursdays. What else was in Citerna? Trip advisor said two other things. Citerna was off our list for today.
Backup plan - Elinor and I head to Citta di Castello. No takers for joining us, the others decide they're going to relax at the villa. The GPS gets us to the city
(no missed turns this time!) and then we ask the GPS where we can park. It tells us the nearest parking is about 40 kilometers away. I don't think I want to walk that far. We watch for parking signs, and find a one-hour free parking. OK, that will give us time to see if we're in the right area. We are. We stop in a bread shop for some lunch (way too good!) and then move the car to where we can park for the afternoon. Citta di Castello, here we come!
Oh, wait. This is Italy. It is 1 PM. Everything is closing. Come back at 2:30. or 3:00. or 3:30. That's OK, that will give us time to wander around. Again, it looks like we're in the interesting old part of the city. There's museums and cathedrals and bell towers and ... closed information centers. There are signs, so that will help us. And we quite easily spend the time until the museum opens.
The museum is nice, kind of a min-Ufizzi. We looked at some of the modern ceramic art before checking out the old art, and reinforced why we don't go looking at
Where the Wireless Works
The Chess Table turned into our Internet Cafe, as the signal was best there. modern art. I'm not saying it is bad, I'm just saying that I don't understand it. People that understand it, please go look at it. But don't invite me along if you're going to take a long time in appreciating it, because I'll be wanting to leave well before you do. Whoops, sorry, rant time. Off my soap box now.
The artwork was obtained from a number of different churches and cathedrals in the area. They represented many of the local artists, and showed how the progression of art through history found its way through the Italian region quite quickly. Seeing the changes in lighting and perspective that we take for granted was once again very interesting. The other displays in the museum were period piece furniture, some of it authentic, and some of it reproduction. A lot of walnut wood. And the building itself was the third part of the display. Some of the construction is modern. But the main building goes back many decades, and I was quite amused by the sign that talked about the renovation in the 1500's that added on more rooms.
We didn't go to the other part of the museum that
Umbria History
As we were looking at this statue, a local man stopped to tell us that the statue represented the fight for freedom from the Vatican. Umbria had been a province of the Vatican until 1860. had more modern art.
We headed back towards some of the other places that would now be open. Elinor wasn't sure what she wanted to do, so I said I wanted to go up the bell tower. We looked around, couldn't see where to buy tickets. Circle the cathedral, and finally a young man tells us that the tickets are sold in the same place that the cathedral's museum tickets are sold. OK. We go buy tickets. The woman tells us to go to a back door, press a button, and she'll open the door remotely. She then gives us a key for an inside door to the tower, and tells us to bring the key back. I guess it isn't a common tour.
We go to the back door, press the button, go inside the cathedral and up a narrow - no, that's too wide a word - up a tightly squeezing winding staircase. We get to the door with the lock. The door unlocks, but doesn't budge. I can't tell if the door opens away, or towards, or slides open, or what! Elinor wants me to be careful, because she doesn't want me to pay for an
Garibaldi Statue
All the locals were quite willing to give us directions! ancient bell tower (the base was ancient, the upper tower is only medieval, so much more modern). Finally we give up, and I go back and say I can't open the door. The woman shuts down the ticket sales, comes back with me, and slams the door open. "Very Old" she explains. I think she meant the door, not me. I hope.
This tower has spacious, rebuilt stairs, and very easy to climb. Disappointment: it stops one level before the top. Oh, well. Still a great view of the city and surrounding country side. Photos taken through chicken wire, though. Or maybe its pigeon wire.
Down from the tower, check the bread store - not open until later! so back to the car, and back to Monterchi.
Back to the Villa. Stop for a few groceries. I ask for a some olives (both green and black). The lady at the deli section asks 'picollo'? I think that was the word. She then holds up a small container, says 'picollo', a medium container, I forget the word she used, and then another container and she said 'grande'. Thank starbucks for teaching me grande. But I wanted a picollo of
each of the two types of olives. The bigger challenge? I wanted a quarter kilo of sliced salami. We struggled. Finally she said two-five-zero grams. OK, I should be talking grams. Si, and we were away.
So the thing with the container sizes? I felt like I was in elementary school. Or kindergarten. And yet, if this is the way I'm going to learn the language, I shouldn't be upset if I've got to go back to that level. And I've got to thank the millions of elementary school teachers here in Italy that are helping me make my way here.
And back to the Villa for a wonderful supper that Mireille and Wey made - a lightly curried chicken with rice, fresh tomatoes, and the rose wine we'd picked up the day before. Elinor and I have done a number of wine tastings and food pairing sessions, and what I have learned is - wine goes good with food. I think I'm at the elementary school level here, too.
Arrivederci
Glen & Elinor
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0472s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
